Andrew

The ride to the police station was uneventful. He’d kept expecting the captain to make threats or something, but in reality, nothing happened. They didn’t exchange a single word. Then again, they didn’t have to. Both parties knew what was going on. Andrew was aware now that this had been Al’s plan all along.

He had to give the wolf shifter credit. Instead of coming after Andrew with pure violence, he’d instead deployed a cunning plan that the gryphon shifter hadn’t seen coming at all. He’d walked into each trap over and over again. The cherry on top had been Karri’s father and his missing persons report. That had to be entirely coincidental; there was just no way he could envision Kirttle working with shifters. But it had been the final nail in the coffin. His coffin. The police captain had never truly struck him as bribable before, but with all the evidence in front of him, he wasn’t being bribed to make something up anymore.

No, all the captain had had to do was see the evidence from a certain—albeit unrealistic—point of view. There was enough evidence to support his claim though, which was what mattered in the here and now. Andrew didn’t see a way out of it yet, so he’d gone along quietly, and without issue. The last thing he wanted was a real resisting arrest charge.

Andrew didn’t know much about human courts, but he knew that they would never buy the story about Myles being sent on behalf of the police force. Shifter-on-shifter violence was outside of human jurisdiction, even if it happened on human ground. No court would try to change that. So that could get thrown out. He was positive the video of him and Karri leaving the house, when shown to an impartial jury, would also be dismissed. The home was owned by a shifter, which meant that he wouldn’t be in trouble for breaking into it in the same way he would if it were human-owned.

That left the shifting in the city limits, and then the charge/accusation by Karri’s father that he had kidnapped her. Things would probably be okay if that charge could be dropped. If all he was convicted of was shifting within city limits, he could return to Cadia a free man. Karri’s testimony should put that to rest.

As he was removed from the car and walked inside, Andrew became confident that he would be a free man. Unfortunately, that didn’t matter. The damage to his reputation had been done. There was no way he would be allowed to continue as ambassador. Cloud Lake had perfectly clear, unaltered evidence of him shifting inside the town’s limits. He couldn’t refute that, couldn’t say it was someone else. That alone would be enough to have him removed and sent back in disgrace, although without further recrimination.

The police station was a squat three-story affair. A plain concrete building with minimum amounts of windows and a very spartan look to it. There was little in the way of decoration, just a coat of arms above the main doors and the police department flag to one side of the door, and the national flag to the other.

“Lovely joint you’ve got here,” he muttered as he was escorted through the front doors.

There was no response.

Oh boy. White. My favorite color.

Everything was white. The walls, the ceiling, the lights. Even the floors had once been white, though they were now faded and scuffed with age. What was it with humans and white? Andrew couldn’t understand it.

He followed the directions, expecting to be thrown in a holding cell. Instead he was directed to what he could only surmise was an interrogation room. The eight by eight room featured three solid walls. The fourth had a rectangular pane of glass that he knew was one-way.

In the middle of the room there was a metal table that had been bolted to the floor, and two metal chairs. A metal ring protruded from the table in front of one of the chairs. A similar ring was anchored into the concrete floor. For prisoner chains. He gave the captain credit for not bothering to put those on him. They wouldn’t have hindered him in the slightest, and would actually have ticked him off, since he’d said he would come in peace.

“Take a seat,” the captain said, gesturing to the chair with the rings near it.

Andrew did as directed, expecting the captain to sit. Instead, he turned and left the room, closing the door behind him.

“Are you seriously trying to play the intimidation game?” he asked loudly, knowing that someone would be listening.

Almost immediately the response came back. “No. The person coming to talk to you is just running behind. They’ll be there momentarily.”

He didn’t recognize the voice. With a shrug he settled back into the stainless steel metal chair, enjoying that unlike most chairs—including the one in his office—it didn’t squeak and groan in protest as he relaxed into it. It was a small thing, but it made his lips twitch.

Just as his eyes began to droop toward sleep the door opened and an older woman in a suit walked in.

“Who are you?” he said immediately, dropping his feet from where he’d put them on the table.

Without a word the woman dropped some stapled papers onto the table.

“Sign this, and you’re free to go.” She held out a pen.

“Let me guess, this is my resignation as Cadian ambassador to Cloud Lake.”

The pen moved in her hand, the only acknowledgment that he was correct. He took it and twirled it around as he contemplated what would happen if he signed it.

If you sign it, you go back to Cadia. If you go back to Cadia, Karri can patch things up with her father. She’ll get the company.

It was that argument that kept coming back to him.

“Who is going to be assigned as ambassador to replace me?” he asked, still flipping the pen around.

The woman just gave him a knowing look.

“I’d do it in a heartbeat if I didn’t think that Al was going to abuse the position and ruin all the good faith that I’ve built up here in town. He’ll fuck it up, and all of his buddies will come here and someone will get killed. A human. Then Cadia will come under attack as a result of it. Al is a loose cannon.”

The woman’s lips became a thin line, a look on her that he realized meant she was contemplating.

“You have no idea who I’m talking about, do you?” he sighed.

“I was retained to come here and have you sign these documents, that is all,” she said tartly.

“Of course you were.” He sighed. Did he really have much choice? He was going to be forced out either way. At least this way he resigned on his own terms, and wasn’t stripped of the position in disgrace. He’d consider himself lucky, except he knew that it would take them weeks to file all the proper paperwork back home to have him recalled, then a trial, and finally a verdict. Lots could change in that time. By having him resign, it was effective immediately. So despite the fact that it would allow him to go free, he didn’t see it as a nicety.

His mind kept coming back to Karri and her father. If he did this, her life could be restored, put back on the right track. He’d correct that wrong, and in doing so, ensure that all the employees of her company had jobs for decades to come. Wasn’t that exactly why he’d taken the position in the first place? To try and help better the lives of the humans any way he could?

But there was all the damage Al was likely to do that he had to consider as well. With someone like him in power here, he would do a lot of damage before he was stopped.

Probably. You can’t know that for sure. Whereas you know for sure what will happen if Karri doesn’t get her father’s company.

With a sigh he made his decision. The pen stopped spinning.