NOW.
He agreed with that too. He felt strangely antsy.
“This is my territory,” Colby said simply, meeting Martin’s eyes. “I’ll play it as safe as I can, but I have to make sure Ms. Clarke and her family are okay.”
PROTECT, his wolf growled, this time so loudly that Colby flinched even though he knew the noise was coming from inside his own head.
“What’s wrong?” Martin said instantly.
“Nothing.” He rubbed his forehead. “The mutt’s just freaking out. It’s weird.”
“I’ve said this before,” Theo said, “but your wolf isn’t a mutt. It’s one hundred percent pure-bred wolf. I’ve seen you shift. You’re being inaccurate.”
“I know. I do it to bother you. And the mutt, for that matter.”
“You should pay attention to your wolf,” Martin said. “Especially in a case like this. Maybe he knows something you don’t.”
3
Colby felt bad for the Clarkes being stuck at the police station so long.
He felt bad for their having run into a buck-naked psycho in the woods, too, but that probably went without saying.
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The particular glumness of sitting for hours in uncomfortable plastic chairs in the city’s ugliest and gloomiest concrete blob, however, was like the equivalent of one of those bad, nagging colds that dragged out for weeks. It wasn’t dramatic, but in Colby’s experience, it could really knock a person on their ass. It wore you down.
In particular, he thought it might wear a kid down. Take an already scared little girl and dump her in a gloomy police station? Colby couldn’t imagine that going well.
Colby liked kids a lot, but he usually only ran into them in the form of their cranky, sullen, and troubled teenage offenders. (Usually he did his best to steer them to Theo’s mate, Jillian, and her thriving community center.) He wasn’t sure what he could do at short notice to cheer up an eight-year-old girl. What had he liked at that age?
Correction. What had he liked as an eight-year-old that he might plausibly have on his desk as a thirty-three-year-old?
Bingo. His White Elephant gifts from last year’s holiday party.
“I knew I lucked out on these,” he said, snatching up the Slinky and Rubik’s Cube.
Gretchen was combing through their property listings for the right place to stash their new witness, but this made her look up.
“You’re taking a Slinky with you to track a fugitive?”
“If he’s running down a flight of stairs, I can set the Slinky up at the top and trip him,” Colby said. “Or I could throw the Rubik’s Cube at him, and then he’d have to stop to try to figure it out.”
“I want to believe you’re joking, but—”
“I’m joking. Aria Clarke has her daughter with her, I thought these might cheer her up.”
“That’s really nice,” Gretchen said, her furrowed brow smoothing out as she smiled. “If you want to pitch in my White Elephant from last year, I still have that fuzzy pink Christmas sweater in my car.”
“Pass.”
She went back to the property listings. “It was worth a try.”
“You’ll unload it someday. You think I should swing by Starbucks on my way and get them a bunch of venti whatevers? You know what police station coffee is like.”
“I think you should go have your cool fugitive hunt. The Clarkes will be impressed enough by the toys.”
“Right,” he said. He just felt at loose ends.