Page 13 of Curse of the Wolf
“Something the newspapers always fail to mention.” I cleared my throat. “I called to ask for another favor.”
“What do you want my dad to look up now?”
“Can he use his elite computer skills to find an address associated with a license-plate number?”
“I don’t think that’s legal, but that’s not what you asked.”
I hesitated. “I don’t want to get him in trouble.”
“He and Mom donate to the National Fraternal Order of Police, and he also helped solve three crimes in the last ten years by analyzing imagery from public traffic cameras to get faces and license plates of miscreants that nobody else caught.”
“Does that mean that even if he got caught snooping in the DMV’s database, he might not get in trouble?”
“I wouldn’t think so, but I couldn’t say for sure. Text me the license plate number, and I’ll ask him.”
“Is that Jasmine?” Bolin whispered, not stepping closer butleaningcloser, as if drawn by her magnetism oozing through the phone.
“Yeah, she wants you to send that license-plate photo.”
“Who’s there?” Jasmine asked.
“Bolin.”
“Oh, did he hear me making fun of his blow-up garage?”
“I’m not sure, but, if it helps, I make fun of it frequently. Also the plastic owls he used as hisfirstattempt at a bird-poop deterrent.” I smiled at Bolin.
He frowned at me.
“Tell him I was just teasing,” Jasmine said. “I’ve seen weirder things. He’s an okay guy. Good taste in music.”
I didn’t mention that Bolin would ensure his taste matched exactly whatever her taste was. “Yeah, he’s decent.”
Bolin’s frown faded, his eyebrows rising hopefully. I made button-pushing motions in the air.
“I don’t have her number,” he whispered.
“Jasmine, is it okay if I give Bolin your number? He’s the one with the photo of the license plate.” Sure, I could have asked Bolin to send it to me, then relayed it to her, but… I owed Bolin a few. I doubted he would pester Jasmine relentlessly with memes about love and adoration, and maybe this would open up the line of communications.
“Oh, sure.” She didn’t sound worried about him having her number. That was promising.
As he sent the photo to her, a text came in on my phone, another photo. It was from Dubois and showed a police officer arresting a bearded man in black leather and another officer chasing a guy with a similar look who’d been in the process of springing over a car in the coffee-shop drive-thru to get away. They were both familiar. The one escaping…
“That’s the one I have a potion for,” I blurted.
Bolin looked up from his phone. “Hm?”
“Nothing. I need to find Duncan.” And grab Rue’s potion from my apartment.
“On my way here, I saw him dangling a rope into a koi pond in the courtyard of the condos on the corner.”
To think, Jasmine thoughtBolinwas the odd one around here.
“The rope has a magnet on the end,” I explained.
“Thus making his actions… normal?”
“I didn’t say that.”
