Oak cocked his head at the two. He patted the second male on his back. Flint and Oak strolled away to the building without a wave to the car pulling out of the lot.
“How the hell have you been?” Oak slapped Flint on his back.
“Better.”
“I can imagine. I need the full story about what happened to you. Not the sanitized bullshit version I got from the billionaire.” Oak pulled a canvas bag with thick handles out of the back of his rental and put it on the hood. He pulled out a case and, with one hand, opened a vial. “Do me a favor. Put those gloves on and wipe the paper across my hand and then do it to the other one too.”
“Sure.”
“Scent profile of those two morons. I’ve been watching the cameras. There was a third. But I should be able to pick it out from other scents.”
Flint nodded. “I did a walk around before you got here.” He sniffed the two rivals’ samples before closing them. “There are two scents on the perimeter that I don’t recognize other than these two.”
“Yeah, I’ve been watching the surveillance feedback. There’s someone snooping around. Staying right out of the sights of the imbeciles.”
“Seriously?” Flint stopped a few feet away from the new front door. The scents he could pick up were from after the crew fixed the door. He couldn’t pick up on any of his cousins, and Eloise had said they were the ones who had fixed the door. That meant the scents around the building were from the last four days, after the rainstorm that followed the snowstorm. “I’ll take you inside.” He’d stop by and talk to Ledger after Oak finished up here. No way could he leave Emma alone if some crazy witch was on the loose. He’d been fighting his wolf to give her her own space. But no more.
“I’m picking up on a bunch of wolf shifters. I’m guessing those are the firefighters who keep checking the building out?”
“Yeah, I can vouch for the wolf scents. They’re all guys I work with.”
“And the bear?”
“I’ll introduce Jack to you. We have to go that way to get into the building.” They walked over the spongy lawn to the loading dock.
Flint pulled on the locked door and then knocked. A saw was going, so he banged harder. The metal door echoed under the overhang.
“Hold on.” Sawdust clung to Jack when he swung open the door. “Flint, come on in. I locked the door. Those mall guards kept poking their butts in here. And they wouldn’t stop talking to me. I’ve got work to do.” Jack’s eye twitched. “Sorry, I’m not saying . . .”
Flint laughed. “Jack, this is my friend Oak North. He’s taking over the investigation from the human assholes.”
“Please tell me they’re gone.” Jack pivoted to the Plexiglas window scratched to the point of opaqueness next to the door.
“Like they were never here.” Oak pulled another vial from his case.
29
Emma turned and waved goodbye to Mirabel, but instead of going inside the house, she sat on the stoop and called Daphne. She pulled Flint’s flannel tighter around her, and his orange citrus tones hovered in the air. It dawned on her finally . . . orange Creamsicle. Flint-Frustrating-Larsen smelled like a summer afternoon treat from the ice cream truck. Too bad he was more infuriating than tax day and assembling boxed furniture rolled together.
The phone rang five times before Daphne picked it up, which was long enough for Emma to take it away from her ear to make sure she’d hit the right button in her contacts. Daphne never didn’t pick up, not even when she was dealing with a crying toddler or hungry baby. Daphne’s husband Peter and Shiori both joked about how Daphne would have a phone surgically attached to her hand if she could.
“Emma,” Daphne huffed out.
Emma laughed. “Were you running?” Daphne didn’t do exercise unless you counted the steps from the car to brunch, which Daphne did.
“No, I . . . Are you okay?”
Emma clenched the phone tighter, hit the button to turn it off speaker, and held it to her ear. Not that there was anyone around to eavesdrop on her phone call. The neighbors weren’t back from their winter stay in Florida. At least they understood the weather. The sun was shining today, all the snow had melted, and other than the darn cold wind, she would have called it a perfect day. She thought back to Flint’s face in Mirabel’s side mirror. The stupid grump in his gray Hundsburg T-shirt, the wind blowing at his hair. His scowl and the sad puppy dog expression. No, she wasn’t going to bite on his flip-flopping behavior.
“Yes. No.”
“It’s that wolf, isn’t it?”
“Of course it’s that wolf.”
“I thought you said you were done with males, that you were going to take this time to grow as an individual.”
There were two types of friends out in the world . . . well, maybe more. But right now, there was the kind of friend who called you out on what you said, and there was the other type, the type she wanted Daphne to be. The keep-your-mouth-shut-and-listen kind.
Daphne had never been that kind of friend. Not when they were six, when she told Emma to stop eating peppermint candy. Turned out Emma was allergic to it, but Emma’s parents didn’t figure it out until she was twelve. Not when they were eleven, when she told Shiori and Emma that the three of them were strong enough and smart enough to perform the binding Power of Three spell. The one that tied the three of them together for the rest of their lives. Only, she said they should think it through because forever was, well, forever. Not when they were fifteen and Daphne said Emma picked train wrecks for boyfriends and it wasn’t Emma’s responsibility to fix every male in their school district. Or at twenty-four when Daphne met Sean and told Emma he didn’t have a good aura and she should run in the opposite direction. Instead, Emma had started a four-year relationship that ended with Carter hiring a helicopter to take her ex off the cruise ship.
“You got my texts earlier. I saw you’d read them.”
“Yes, Daphne. I saw your texts.” Those texts had pulled her out of her post-explosive-sex happy time.
“And?”
“What do you want me to say, Daff? That I won’t go near him again? I’m not sure I can follow through with that. He’s like a magnet. A grumpy, hot magnet. Even his scowl does something to me. Okay?” Emma crossed her arm in front of her chest.
“Goddess, Emma.”
“Daphne.” She didn’t know what . . . “You’re right, okay? Is that what you want me to say? You’re right. I should stay away from him. Floating isn’t worth having my heart ripped into a million pieces.”
“What?” Daphne was quieter now. “You floated?”
“Yeah, to the ceiling, after spinning like a top. Okay? Like ‘I might need to wear a space helmet’ floated.”
“Well, I mean, at least he knows his shit. But Emma, he’s not human. They all want their fated mate. What are you going to do when he runs into her on the river walk, or at some pack meeting? You’re going to be another ball on my sofa again. I can’t have that. I had to do something.”
