“I haven’t heard from Mom at all since I left.”
“She isn’t talking much to anyone. She seems … stunned. Like it never occurred to her that you’d truly ever leave.”
“She’d convinced herself that her plan to stop me from one day joining the Olympus Pride would pay off. She wouldn’t have allowed herself to consider that it might fail.”
Mitch puffed out a breath. “I’ve tried talking to her about it, but she shuts me down every time I bring it up. She’s taking the admirer situation seriously now, though. She told Embry that he’d better ID him fast. She’s convinced that it can only be Gabriel. Embry’s next move is to find and question him. She could be right, you know.”
“Yes, she could. She’d just better not pin it all on him so she can say ‘case closed’ and pressure me to return to the pack.”
“You keep saying the pack, not our pack. You’re really not coming back, are you?” The question held no judgement.
“No. I’m where I need to be.” Where she wanted to be.
“Has Luke claimed you yet?”
Memories of this morning flashed to the forefront of her mind. “Not yet, but he will.”
“Why the delay?”
“Involuntary cockblockers.”
Mitch made a weird sound. “I don’t want to hear my sister say ‘cock.’ As far as I’m concerned, you don’t know what one is, you’ll forever remain a virgin, and any children you may bear will be immaculate conceptions. Misogynistic, yeah, but whatever.”
She snickered. “You’re an idiot.” Her pulse skittered as Luke stalked into the kitchen, stirring up her hormones with all that natural smolder. “I gotta go.”
“Keep me posted, Blair. Don’t hold anything else back from me. I want to be kept in the loop—you’re my sister, I sort of love you.”
A snort popped out of her. “Sort of love me?”
“Well, I can’t be certain.”
She rolled her eyes. “Like I said, you’re an idiot.” She promised to keep him updated and then ended the call. Studying Luke’s grim expression, she asked, “What’s wrong?”
He moved to stand between her legs. “I just heard from River. The plates on the van were false.”
She sighed. “Of course they were. It can never be that easy, can it?”
“A group of us are going to grab Davis Regent from his house later on this evening so that Camden can question him.”
“Question him where?”
“We usually hold interrogations at my dad’s apartment. But we don’t want to take the human there, so we’re going to use the pack’s small motorhome. We can haul him inside, question him, and then … well, what happens next will depend on what he has to say.”
“Sounds like a plan. You know I’m coming with you, right?” Blair narrowed her eyes when she sensed he’d object. “Don’t. This particular plan is not fraught with peril. There’ll be a bunch of us. I will be fine. And if you try to dispute that, you’ll just be lying your ass off.” And yet, he still seemed about to argue. “Pick your battles wisely. You won’t win many of them and you know it.”
His jaw went tight. “It could get ugly.”
“I know all about ‘ugly.’ Bush dogs take it to the extreme, and I’ve been present for plenty of interrogations. It was all part of my enforcer training. You know that. So quit being difficult, we have things to do. Regent ain’t gonna question himself.”
Luke drew in a long breath through his nose. “All right, we’ll both go.”
She pursed her lips. “Not sure why you thought I needed your consent, but okay.”
Humor briefly flickered in his eyes. “Brat.” Luke skimmed a hand over her hair. “Before we leave, how did your conversation with Mitch go?”
Shoving her phone back in her pocket, she replied, “He isn’t happy that he learned about the email from Embry, and he struggles with the idea that someone from the pack could have sent it. But he’s not dismissing the idea out of turn. He’s going to be open-minded.”
“Good. Because it might be that he’s the only person in the pack who will be.”
CHAPTER SIX
Sitting on the motorhome’s sofa, Blair watched as Camden dragged Davis Regent into the vehicle. They’d reached the human’s house only to find it empty, so Luke had parked the motorhome out of sight while they waited for Davis to make an appearance. It had been no more than half an hour later that the human had pulled up in his driveway.
He hadn’t been hard to grab. Blair had observed from the window as Camden crept up behind Davis, slapped a hand over his mouth, and then dragged him away. Even now, the human struggled and yelled against Camden’s palm, but the tiger wasn’t whatsoever fazed.
Given that Davis’s closest neighbors were half a mile away, there’d been no great need to muffle his shouts. Blair suspected that Camden had done it merely to ramp up the fear factor.