CHAPTER THREE

When Soren strode into the office of Shrew & Company the following morning, carrying his usual bribes of premium donuts and name-brand coffee, the receptionist stopped him at the hall. Putting up her hand in a halting gesture, Drea shook her head.

“Come on, don’t be like that.” He held up the coffee box. “I brought you stuff.”

“They’re in a meeting, Soren.”

“But they usually don’t mind me popping in.”

She raised her shoulders coyly. “Rules change all the time.”

“But you should make an exception for me.” He was, after all, her brother-in-law. Soon enough, they would be related twice over. Her brother, Bryan, was married to Tam, and Drea was Peter’s mate. He’d been at their apartment less than twelve hours prior. “You’re cock-blocking. That’s not nice. We’re family.”

“Gimme a donut.”

“No. Not until you play nicely.”

“Shush.” She snatched the box from him and set it on her desk. “I missed breakfast and didn’t have time to grab anything on the way in.”

“You didn’t have a problem getting into work in plenty of time before Peter moved in with you.” Not that Soren was bitter at all. He was happy that his brother had found a Bear who’d put up with his pathetic ass.

“Well, I had fewer distractions then.” She set a éclair onto a napkin. “Besides, they’ll be out in a couple of minutes, anyway. They’re rehashing what Sarah and Marcella learned from Gene last night. I’m waiting on them to give me something to work with, so I can start searching the usual places for info.”

“Ah. I see.” Soren didn’t bother digging because he’d already gotten the skinny on Gene. The Shrew grapevine was extraordinarily robust, seeing as how Ridges and Ursus used it heavily. Soren got access to supposedly confidential information with no fuss. Sarah had told the Shrews about the meeting, then Drea had told Peter, and Peter had told Soren. He admired the restraint Marcella had demonstrated during the interrogation. That was what he’d gone to the office to tell her.

As a start, anyway.

He had plenty of other things to tell her, some of which were almost certain to get him slapped. He didn’t mind being slapped when he was in a particular mood, but he knew better to say that out loud in mixed company.

The conference room door opened with a squeak, as always, and Bryan stepped out and into the hall. His eyes went wide, briefly, at the sight of Soren, and then he narrowed them. “Better not let Tam see that you’re here.”

“So what if she does?” Soren performed a dismissive shrug. “So fucking ridiculous. I’m not afraid of her. I’ve blown things that were larger than her into tissues.”

“Your life. Waste it if you like.” Bryan grabbed a couple of donuts and leaned his butt against the edge of his sister’s desk. “The ladies are mobilizing. Trying to figure out whom to send out in the field. Most of the time, their problem is understaffing, but right now, they’re actually okay.”

“Mmm.” Drea relieved Soren of the coffee box and rooted her BEARly Awake mug out of the lower right drawer of her desk. “Plenty of staff now that Gene’s not around raising hell, but we’ve got training gaps, or skill sets aren’t quite right for certain jobs.”

“What do you need to have done, precisely?” Soren asked. “Anything I can assist with?”

Bryan expelled a dry laugh.

“What?”

“They’re not gonna send you out with Marcella.”

“Oh, I see.” Soren rubbed his chin contemplatively. “Marcella’s going out, is she?”

“I don’t like your tone. That’s the same tone Tam uses when she’s plotting shit I’m not gonna go for.”

“Fortunately for me, then, this isn’t a matter left up to you to decide.”

“You’re right. It’s a matter left up to Dana, since she calls the Shrew shots, and Marcella. If she doesn’t want to work with you, back off.”

“She should want to work with me. I’m the best at what I do.”

“Peter would argue with you on that,” Drea said with her lips against her mug.

“I’m sure that bastard has plenty to say about which of us he believes to be more efficient at what we do, but I’ve got something he doesn’t.”

“Not sure I want to know, but what?” Bryan asked.

Soren grinned broadly. “A relative lack of conscience when I’m working.”

“That’s not a good thing, bro.”

Soren shrugged. “You might be surprised to hear that I actually inherited the trait from my mother.”

“Huh.” Bryan narrowed his eyes and shoved a hand through his black hair. “Don’t tell her I said so, but I can kinda see that. That glint she gets in her eyes sometimes…” He shuddered as Shrews piled into the hallway from the conference room.

Soren spotted Marcella easily enough over the sea of heads. They were all so short compared to most born-Bears.

He leaned against the front wall with his arms crossed and watched her pretend not to see him.

Ignore me now, pet. Just wait.

“What’d you figure out?” Bryan asked.

Dana nabbed a pastry from the box and plucked a napkin out of the bag. “Still working. Might send one or both of the Coyotes. Nate and Hardy are good, but I worry they don’t know Marcella well and they’ll end up getting in each other’s ways.”

Soren forced himself to stop digging painful runnels into his biceps.

Not those fucking Coyotes.

They were good guys. He’d worked with them a little and knew they didn’t mess around on the job, but they also had a knack for putting people at ease. Soren didn’t want Marcella at ease around them. They were a little too pretty for his liking, and maybe she liked her men pretty.

He couldn’t tell from her neutral expression what she thought about the nominations. Her blank-face was almost as good as his father’s.

She studied her nails and leaned against the bank of file cabinets behind Drea’s desk.

“What about Dustin?” Bryan asked. “He’s been nagging me to put his name under your noses for more fieldwork. Or even one of the Tolvaj brothers. They never say no to a gig.”

“Yeah, negative on Dustin,” Sarah said. “I think if we’re going to pair folks on these shifter jobs, we really need to send out born shifters, or at least shifters who have senses that rival them. We thought about Eric, but he’s busy with lodge renovations, and we promised Maria we’d leave him alone for a while.”

Eric would have been a good, safe male for Marcella to partner with, if Soren wasn’t the obvious choice. For one thing, he only had eyes for Maria. For another, he treated the rest of the Shrews—his sister, Astrid, notwithstanding—as little sisters, as well.

“And the Tolvajes?” Soren asked flatly.

“I forgot,” Tamara said. “Andarbek found a sweet Chechen girl to marry when he was in Europe looking for information about his family last year. He and his brother will be out of the country for three weeks.”

Soren hoped his smile wasn’t too predatory. He was a Bear. He didn’t see how his grin could be anything but untrustworthy, but still, he tried to look harmless. “I’m available.”

Marcella scoffed.

That scoff was starting to turn him on whenever he heard it, as if he were some lab animal being conditioned to respond to certain sounds. But he knew his brain wasn’t quite right. Too many warring compulsions. The man part of him was always at odds with the beast. They often collided and resolved their differences in ways that didn’t make sense.

“The last time you did a job for me,” Dana said, “I had to call in favors with the chief of the Myrtle Beach police to make the charges he had pending for you disappear.”

“That was because he didn’t understand the way I work and that I was doing him a favor.”

Letting her breath out in a sputter, the lead Shrew massaged her temples. “Yes, but I need you to do favors for people a little bit more discreetly. Our business thrives because we’re discreet. We don’t beat people up in broad daylight.”

“At least not in public,” Tamara said under her breath.

“I’ll behave,” Soren said.

“I believe you’ll try,” Dana said, “and I have no problem with giving you another shot, but it’s Marcella’s audition. She decides if you get to tag along.”

“I’ll be doing more than tagging along.”

“That’s what we’re worried about,” Tamara said.

He cut his little sister a quelling look, knowing full well she wasn’t one to be cowed by attitude from her brothers. He still needed to make sure she knew he objected.

“So, it’s him or no one?” Marcella asked.

“I wouldn’t go as far as to make that sweeping claim,” Dana said, “but the truth is…I don’t think there’s anyone better for the job who’s also available. Hell, even if our available slate of staff and associates were full right now, I’d probably still send him. Not sure what that says about me, seeing as how I know how he works.”

Soren wasn’t sure if he should thank the woman for the backhanded compliment, so he opted to keep his mouth shut for a change.

Marcella stuffed her hands into the pockets of her gauzy olive-green harem pants and stared at the floor.

Civilizations could have risen and fallen in the time it took her to look up and into his eyes, but she relented. She looked at him. For the way his heart pounded and skin flushed, the simple action may as well have been an overt provocation.

“I need room to work,” she said.

Ah!

A tacit yes was still a yes, and Soren wasn’t going to let that one escape. He turned to Dana. “When should we leave?”

“Depends on how long Drea needs to pull research and book accommodations.”

“And also get in touch with local agencies down there, so they don’t tread all over what we’re trying to do,” Drea said. “We’ve never worked with those folks in Georgia before. Maybe I’ll be done tonight. Tomorrow morning, at the latest.”

“How exciting,” Maria said in her typically droll way, giving her sister a half smile. “There’s nothing quite like waiting around on intel so you know precisely how deep in the murk you’re going to be.”

“You never seem to demonstrate any anxiety about the murk one way or another,” Astrid said to her former roommate.

Maria shrugged in her deadly hippie kind of way. “Suppressing emotions is easy. Letting them out is the hard part. Eric helps. He’s got a way of—”

“Nope. Nuh-uh.” Astrid closed her eyes and put up her hands. “Spare me the details about what my brother does, because I suspect they’re not entirely of the Rated-G variety.”

“Suit yourself,” Maria said blandly and nibbled at one of her cuticles.

Soren kind of wanted to hear about Eric’s Shrew magic trick, but he could always ask the Bear later when there weren’t so many feminine ears around.

The space around Drea’s desk cleared. Ladies disappeared back down the hall, and some, including Drea with her coffee and the office dog, out the front door.

Marcella lingered for a while, staring in Soren’s general direction, but not quite at him.

Then she scoffed, turned on her heel, and followed her sister down the hall.

“Okay.” Soren drummed his fingertips against the wall for about a minute, grabbed a donut, and figured he should go pack a bag. He didn’t have clean laundry, but Peter probably did. Since Peter wasn’t at home, he wouldn’t know his clothes were missing.

Soren liked having a brother sometimes.