Chapter 39 Bruno
brUNO
“What is that?” Bruno asked, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Clarice’s look of guilt told him more than instinct did.
“This way,” Noah said shortly, leading them back down the hallway to where everyone was crammed into the living room, packed tightly on couches, spread out on the floor, or on chairs dragged in from the dining room.
Darius was vehemently protesting being sent to the kid’s room. “Oh my God, Dad, do I have to? Can’t I sleep out here? I’ve got my earbuds. I won’t hear any of the secret agent action hero stuff. How about outside, or in the garage? It’s not that cold. I could sleep in a car.”
Theo was frowning at Darius. “It would make everyone feel a lot better if there was someone responsible in there with them all night. I know, it’s asking a lot—”
“FINE.” Darius did a patented teenaged slouch down the hall with his sleeping bag, managing to look like a sullen martyr. “Not like I have my own life or anything anyway.”
“It’s DELIRIOUS!” Gil’s shrill voice greeted him from down the hallway. There was a shriek that might have been a bird or a baby.
“Shove over, kid, I’m your night nanny, apparently.”
The door shut behind him, muffling the pleasant drone of Cherry’s ongoing story. Several of the adults chuckled.
Noah gave the binder to Juliette, who flipped through it with a frown. “You’ve certainly been industrious, Ms. Turner.”
“What is that?” Bruno asked again. They were the attention of most of the room, though there were a few quiet conversations around the edges.
Juliette handed him the binder. “It’s an investigation journal. Most of the parents of Tiny Paws are in here, and several other colorful local characters.”
“I didn’t know who any of you were,” Clarice protested.
“But even I could tell that there was something going on. I didn’t swallow the cult Kool-aid that Veronica’s unsavory friends were peddling, but there was something that logic couldn’t explain, and I wanted to know what it was before I got in…
too deep.” Her face was flushed. Shame? Guilt? A spike of emotion, certainly.
There was a whole spread on Bruno. It included all of the publicly available information on him, plus a few personal observations, notes about Gil (teleports?) and the houses he’d been shown.
Bruno wrestled with his feelings of betrayal.
Were they valid? Would he do the same, in her shoes?
Was that his high school graduation photo?
She had told him she was investigating, but for some reason, Bruno hadn’t expected such a thorough binder.
Clarice was bright red now, all the way up to the roots of her hair, and Bruno realized that she’d put hearts around his name.
“I’m sorry,” she said meekly. “I didn’t realize what I was uncovering.
” They had everyone’s full attention now, and Bruno could feel the prickly judgement and mistrust in their gazes.
He wished he could wrap Clarice in something to protect her. Curtains, maybe.
“It makes sense,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. Too neutral. “She didn’t do anything wrong.” Bruno wasn’t sure that was better.
There was a spread on Theo, too. “Personal escort from LV - met him at Lonnie’s birthday party, doesn’t remember me THANK GOD!” was scrawled across the top.
Juliette took the binder back and flipped several pages, slowly. “You’ve got intriguing notes. It’s enlightening to see what can be dug up without any agency resources or back doors.” She paused. “These are Veronica Chase’s contacts in the Stork Foundation. And this is a profile for Hunter.”
“I didn’t know who to trust,” Clarice explained desperately. “And I didn’t know who was connected to who. I was trying to figure out all the sides of the story. I only used the contacts that had come through the main office, I didn’t use any of Veronica’s personal information.”
“It’s thorough,” Juliette said approvingly, “even if it’s not anything we didn’t already know.” She handed the binder back to Clarice. “I hope that you’ve made up your mind which side you’re on.”
“Obviously I’m not rooting for the gene company that wants to put little kids in cages, or the obsessive ex-boyfriend.” Clarice said smartly. “Shifters are just people, magic tricks aside. I’m not going to hate you by default because you’re different.”
Bruno could not have been more proud of her in that moment, and he wondered if it would be too presumptuous to take her hand.
They had been too late to get seats, so they were still standing, and Juliette gestured to a free space on the floor as she sat in the last kitchen chair.
Bruno slid down to sit next to Clarice, leaning against a bookcase.
“This raid on Tiny Paws means the administration is finally willing to take action. I’m authorized to bring some of you—some of you!
—on board because you would be valuable assets to an assault.
The office is still trying to figure out where these guys went to ground, but we need a head count of participants in order to coordinate our efforts once we have that intel. ”
“Oh!” At Bruno’s side, Clarice suddenly startled and dug into her pocket. “I have Veronica’s phone!”
“Does that help us somehow?” Juliette asked impatiently.
“Yes,” Clarice said defiantly. “She had Find My Phone on it.”
“But we have her phone,” Juliette pointed out, irritated.
“But they have my phone, and she’s been tracking me.” Clarice unlocked the phone and stretched to hand it to Juliette. “That’s where they are, probably.”
Juliette looked briefly surprised, then pulled out her own phone, dialed it, and started relaying information to Aiden. “Yeah? That could be it. Anders Canyon, at the decommissioned military base. Let me know.”
Conversation sprung up when she hung up, with volunteers and questions. Juliette put up a commanding hand. “Thank you, Clarice. That was helpful. Aiden is sending a drone to look over the location now.”
“I could go,” Kendra and Alan said in unison, shooting their hands into the air.
Juliette shook her head. “They have shifters working for them, or at least shifter-sensers. A drone isn’t going to tap their spidey sense. And you aren’t a full agent yet, Kendra.”
“I can still be useful in the raid,” Kendra said.
“I’ll do whatever you need,” Olivia said confidently.
“I could make room in my busy social schedule,” Theo said. “My unique skills might come in handy for extractions.”
“I can help heat things up,” Ian offered.
“A wolf could be useful,” Roderick said, crossing his arms.
“You might need me,” Becket volunteered.
Juliette frowned at him. “Our objective is to destroy as much of Stork’s data as we can and round up the ringleaders. We’re hoping to minimize casualties that would require a doctor’s services.”
“Don’t underestimate my particular services,” Becket said grimly. “I’m the one that Hunter is after, and the reason he’s after Tara.”
“Do you have something to share with the class, Dr. Becket?” Juliette asked piercingly. Bruno was shallowly glad to watch someone other than Clarice squirm under her gaze.
“It’s personal,” Becket said. “But I swear I would be an asset you don’t want to overlook.”
“I’m going to need a little more to go on than that,” Juliette said with great frustration.
She raised a hand. “But keep your secrets. God knows you’re all getting a heavily redacted version of all of this already.
Involving civilians is not ideal and I want to keep a capable crew here to protect the kids.
” Her look lingered on each of them and Bruno was reminded that two of her own children were nestled down in the sleepover room.
“W-what about Veronica?” Clarice asked tentatively.
“What about her?”
“What are you going to do to her when you find her?”
“Probably put her in jail for the rest of her life,” Juliette said pitilessly.
“For what?” Clarice asked, as Bruno asked thoughtfully, “For what charges, exactly?”
“We’ve got evidence of collaboration,” Juliette said, with a frown. “It’s not solid, but we could make it stick.”
“Let her go,” Clarice begged.
“Why should we?”
There was a murmur from the others, a dark undercurrent of anger and frustration.
“She’s the reason you knew they were coming,” Clarice said staunchly. “She was only a part of all of this until she knew better. Isn’t that worth something?”
“Veronica Chase is a self-centered, meddlesome bitch.”
Bruno turned in surprise to find gentle and mild-mannered Cherry at the entrance to the hall, standing with her hands on her hips. He hadn’t even known that she could swear.
“But she saved our kids, and that counts for a lot,” she said warmly, and that was the Cherry that Bruno knew. “Disappearing a bunch of mad scientists and unethical mercenaries is one thing, but Veronica is a staple of the community, and it’s bound to draw a lot of attention if she goes missing.”
“We could come up with some kind of cover story,” Juliette said.
“Or we could just let her go and try to make peace at last,” Cherry said patiently.
“She thought we were the bad guys. We thought she was a bad guy. Maybe people aren’t as simple as bad or good.
Maybe it depends on the angle you’re looking at them from.
She’s shallow, selfish, and good at manipulating people, but that doesn’t warrant a lifetime behind bars.
It would only prove all the awful things she thought about us.
She didn’t have to help us, and she did so at great risk to herself when she betrayed those men breaking into the day care. ”
“She might become an asset,” Vivian suggested reluctantly. “She’s got powerful friends.”
“She jacked up my rent last year,” Chloe grumbled. “But she did fix the porch, and I know things are more expensive now.”
“She always tries to get my work done cheaper, but she pays every bill on time,” Roderick conceded.
“Her realty company is always the first one to sign up for charity events,” Addison said with a sigh. “She’s not a wholly bad person.”
Clarice, with a brave little wobble to her voice, added, “She said she stopped giving Stork information or answering Hunter’s number, and that’s why they had to trick her into meeting at the listing.
She said it wasn’t on purpose that I went instead, and when she realized what happened, she came to help me. ”
“I’ll send a recommendation above my head to let her off,” Juliette agreed at last. “I’m not the one who makes that final call.”
Unsurprisingly, Bruno found himself sorted into the team that would remain behind. “I’m not much good in a fight,” he said sheepishly, wishing not for the first time that he was something bigger and tougher.
“I can cook,” Clarice volunteered. “I had a look at the kitchen and I could probably come up with a few meals that would feed some hungry kids.”
Her offer was accepted and Bruno was grateful for her easy going nature and her willingness to be helpful.
She had volunteered to help clean up in the kitchen without prompting, and did an admirable job being tolerant and patient with all the screaming children underfoot.
It was a lot even for Bruno, and he was at least already used to Gil’s boundless energy.
“Let’s get some rest,” Juliette suggested. “And since this is my bedroom tonight, I want the rest of you to get out. Cherry, which couch do you want?”
Bruno got to his feet and helped Clarice to hers. “My fingers still feel funny,” he admitted, after they’d said goodnight to everyone and retreated back down the hallway.
“You probably frostbit them,” Clarice said, and it was perfectly natural to lace his fingers with hers as they returned to their only-one-bed room.