Chapter 29
Canyon drove fast, getting them to SPD quickly.
The place was buzzing with activity—uniformed officers and the public coming and going through the various parking lots and doors.
He parked in back, near the duty desk and they spotted Trevor right away.
He was wearing the KSRT uniform of dark blue cargo pants and shirt, plus black boots, pacing near the door, head down, hands behind his back, obviously deep in thought.
He saw them and steamrolled toward them.
“I need something new on White.” Trevor said, looking agitated.
Timber shook his head. “You pulled us off White last week, LT. We’re back on the missing foxen.”
“You’re off the foxen and back on White.”
Timber held up his hands. “Wait. We’re right in the middle of something that’ll blow this foxen thing wide open, and it might find us White, too.”
“Good,” Trevor said. “I need miracles and I need them now. My house is compromised.”
Timber cocked his head. Canyon listened up. Compromised?
“White did that ‘notes appearing from thin air’ thing again and gave us info about Trent. Now that’s great and all, but she did that shit in MY house. That’s horseshit.”
Timber punched him in the chest excitedly. Trevor knocked his hand away.
Timber didn’t notice. “Trent’s good?” he said.
“Yeah, since this morning. It was a big fucking spectacle. White asked for amnesty, then she told us to ‘use the hot portal,’ which ended up being Kendra. It worked—Trent woke up. He shifted right away and he’s already out at the Harlem Reservoir with his mate.”
“His mate!” Timber looked shocked. “Wait a second. Trent hasn’t shifted into a man even once his whole life, he’s been missing for the last month, and now he’s suddenly back, shifted, and he’s got a mate?”
Trevor waved them off. “Yeah. Mate. I need Abigail White out of my shit today—not tomorrow, not the next day. Right. Fucking. Now. I need one or both of you to go relieve Sebastian so he can check my house.”
Timber looked at Canyon. Canyon looked at Timber. Canyon shook his head slowly, his eyebrows raised. He didn’t care; he was still trying to figure out how in the fuck Trent found his mate so easily.
“I’ll go,” Timber said. He pointed at Canyon. “Spookville at dusk.”
Canyon nodded and Timber took off.
Trevor appraised Canyon. “Spookville?”
Got time for a briefing? Canyon asked.
“Yeah.”
Ok. Lemme get my stuff—and I need the full details about what happened at your house, for Predator.
Trevor nodded and waved him off.
Canyon jogged to his truck, climbed in the back, and opened the master toolbox.
The mobile version of Predator was on top, housed in a military-grade tablet.
Canyon growled lightly. In response, the tablet powered on.
A black wolf silhouette with fiery silver eyes set against a silver background stared at him, indicating Predator was ready to respond.
He grabbed it and used the voice command function to input what Trevor had just told them, linking it to their ongoing Abigail White investigation.
He closed and locked the toolbox and made his way back to Trevor.
Canyon held up his stuff. Trevor waved him inside.
They tromped down the noisy hallway to Trevor’s office and sat on either side of his desk.
Trevor pulled out an evidence bag with the notes and dropped it onto the desk.
He pulled the notes out, arranged them, then hammered his fist on the first one.
“Graeme says someone asked Abigail White for help in ruhi but didn’t know they did it.”
Makes sense, Canyon said.
Canyon fed the information into Predator, all the while wondering about what physics was involved in making paper appear out of nowhere.
“Graeme says he thinks it was either—”
Trevor raised his hand to tick names off on his fingers, but Canyon interrupted him.
LT, hold up. Let’s see what Predator says. Who all was there?
Trevor rattled off a list of the people who had been at his house. Canyon entered the names into Predator’s interface, and the program went to work. A few seconds later, the system beeped and Predator responded.
:Estimated 72% chance that ABIGAIL WHITE contact was initiated by CONRI BLOOM— flashed on the screen.
“Conri,” Trevor whispered, reading over his shoulder. Irritation filled his voice. “Graeme mentioned Conri. He says the bearen have a way to call on White.”
Canyon growled. That made sense, too, but Conri hadn’t said a word about it any of the times they’d interviewed him about White. Canyon pulled out his phone and fired a text off to Conri.
Dude. You holding out on us about White? WTF? No response from Conri.
Trevor leaned back in his chair. “Spookville…”
Canyon nodded, but before he could pull up the map, Predator beeped.
:Motion detected on Street Zero. Accessing cameras—
Canyon showed the message to Trevor and they both bent over the tablet.
Street Zero was the investigative name of an incident that was part of the Abigail White case and another time that foxen had abandoned houses en masse.
It had happened ten months ago, after Khain had surfaced in the Ula and kidnapped Abigail White’s great-granddaughter.
The young child had been recovered alive and fine, but she and her family had never returned to the house.
The neighbors hadn’t either. All eight houses on the street had been abandoned.
The incident had happened long before they knew White was a foxen witch.
She’d scented human to everyone, even Troy.
“Hey, it’s Mac,” Trevor said, “and Rogue.”
Mac and Rogue knocked at the front door of the house where the abduction had taken place.
Police cameras were set up all along the street and twelve images filled Predator’s screen, each showing Mac and Rogue from different angles.
Mac wore a blue KSRT uniform, with duty belt, cargo pants and black boots.
Rogue wore skin-tight jeans, a pair of Mac’s boots, and a leather jacket.
“They’re following a lead on Sage Greene.”
The name intrigued Canyon. Who’s Sage Greene?
Trevor gave him a funny look, then said. “A possible One True Mate.”
Won’t be no answer at that house, Canyon told him.
“Right,” Trevor said. “Lemme call him.”
Trevor called on speakerphone, and they watched Mac answer his phone.
“’Lo,” Mac said. Rogue leaned against the wall, looking carefully up and down the street.
“What are you doing there?” Trevor asked.
On the screen, Mac looked straight up at a well-hidden camera, then he pointed across the street at another. “We saw the cameras, who’s watching us?”
Rogue snapped to attention and flipped off the cameras in sequence, starting with camera #1, all the way to camera #12.
Mac grinned at her and pulled her into his body. “That’s my sexy criminal,” he whispered into her ear, his hand hooked into one of her belt loops.
“We can hear and see you,” Trevor said stonily. Mac took his hands off his mate. Trevor motioned to Canyon that he had the floor.
“We’ve got eyes on all those houses,” Canyon told Mac. “That’s Street Zero—where Paisley White was taken from.”
Mac was nodding. “I remember. We’re here because a bartender at Mugshots said she dropped Sage Greene off at this address once.”
“Only foxen lived on that street,” Canyon said.
Trevor raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
Canyon tapped Predator and pulled up their map of Street Zero. It showed the houses, and a list of the few names that they knew of the people who had lived there. Trevor read them out.
Abigail White
Wheaton White
Mina White
Rissa White
Paisley White
Fredgar White
Frannie White
Bristol White
Glendale White
Markham White
Trevor read through the list twice. “Where’s our workups on all of them?”
Canyon swiped the screen and pulled up what they knew about the foxen who had lived on Street Zero—little more than what could be found on a driver’s license.
Trevor tried to swipe the screen again.
“That’s all there is, LT,” Canyon said. “That’s all we know. I sent you a report on this two weeks ago—did you read it?”
Trevor waved his hand. “I read it. It said several conflicting things were found in the records and that shouldn’t be possible.”
Canyon agreed wholeheartedly. It shouldn’t be possible. Before he could speak, Mac asked a question.
“Does Abigail White own this house?”
“Yeah,” Canyon told him. “That house and every other house on the street and they’re all empty.”
Mac cupped his hands against the front window and looked inside. “It’s full of furniture.”
“They left in a hurry. Everything’s still inside—clothes, furniture, electronics. Someone hired a cleaning company to empty the fridges and pantries, but little else was touched. We haven’t been inside—we have no legal reason.”
“Who hired the cleaning company?”
“A law firm downtown. Serenity Sentinel Law.”
“Ah,” Trevor said. “That’s a law firm full of lawyers with the last name White.”
Canyon nodded. “Two Van Crimsons, too.”
“Van whatsons?” Mac asked.
“Have you read the Foxtrot-22 report yet?”
Mac shook his head.
“Read it at your earliest convenience,” Trevor growled, like this was something he’d already told Mac to do. “The Whites and the Van Crimsons are the only two foxen families in town. There used to be a third family, the Van Boesons, but they moved out of Serenity decades ago.”
Rogue’s expression went stony and Canyon figured it had something to do with Boe, also known as Boeson, the foxen male who lived at her house. Mac put an arm around her. She socked her hip up against his hip and went back to watching the street.
“So Sage Greene is a foxen?” Mac said.
Trevor and Canyon looked at each other.
Rogue looked directly at the closest camera and smiled an evil grin. “Ha! Wade’ll lose his damn mind,” she said. “He thinks foxen are evil.”
Trevor shook his head. “Let’s not jump to conclusions. How could she be a foxen anyway? We don’t have any foxen males on our team,” although his expression twisted when he said that.