Shadow of Doubt - Hailey Edwards Page 0,57
in Midas eased several degrees as I watched, and he openly looked at me now, inviting me to do the same. I’m embarrassed over how long I sat there, drinking him in. I would have felt worse if he hadn’t been doing the same. I felt like both an animal in an exhibit at the zoo and the person admiring it.
Ford was right. Midas was starved for contact. Not physical, but… I don’t know how to describe it.
Once he noticed he still held me, he frowned at his palm, which had grown damp, and broke his grip.
“Now that we have the formalities out of the way, we have a small problem.” I pinched my pointer and thumb together to illustrate. “About the size of a lab mouse if you want to get technical.” I waved Ford over, but his gait was stiff when he crossed to me. “Bonnie tried to escape this morning.”
“Shut the door,” Midas told Ford. “We need privacy for this.”
Ford handed Bonnie off to me then did as he was told and took up a position there.
“Release her.” Midas eased onto the floor with me. “She won’t run.”
Trusting him that she wouldn’t bolt for the gap under the door like a runner sliding into home, I removed the coaster and tipped the glass gently on its side where she could scurry out onto the polished concrete.
“You’re under no obligation to answer my questions,” he began, and I choked on an instinctive rebuke. “Refuse to cooperate, continue to endanger my pack, and I will turn you out. You have made no effort to socialize, and you refuse to live at the den. I didn’t push you because I thought you weren’t ready. Do you want a new life as a member of the Atlanta pack, or are you only using our resources to escape your old one?”
The two weren’t mutually exclusive, and Midas had a right to want an answer. I had no doubt he would do all he could to help her in any case, but there was no reason to shelter her at the Faraday, or employ her as his PA, if she had no interest in either long-term.
The mouse flexed its whiskers, jerked its head to glance back at me, then whipped its tail.
“No one is going to hurt you,” I reassured her. “We just want answers.”
The air around her shimmered, standing her fur on end, and she began to grow until I had to scoot back to make room for Bonnie the human to sit between Midas and me.
Dressed in the same outfit she wore to Perkerson, with the same damp hem, she inched away from Midas until she sat beside me.
Reading into her body language, Midas held my stare to convey this was my show.
As much as her posture begged for it, I didn’t touch her or comfort her. “Did you know Shonda Randall?”
“No,” she rasped. “I might have seen her in passing, but we were never introduced.”
New to the pack, living separately, I could buy that. “You were acting as Midas’s personal assistant.”
“Yes.”
“Did you intercept the call about Shonda’s death?”
“Y-y-yes.” She twisted her hands in the fabric of her skirt. “I took a message and gave it to Midas.”
Unlike my first exposure to her, where her fragility called to my protective instincts, I had trouble swallowing the act this time. I had spent too much time around her while she was glamoured to believe the stark differences in her personalities were genuine. A gwyllgi form could definitely boost her confidence. I had no trouble with that. But a corgi? A mouse?
A slim chance existed that she had blossomed under my care, but that smacked of an inflated ego, and I tried to keep mine squashed flat. Hubris had landed me with Ambrose, after all.
An edge crept into my voice I didn’t try to dull. “Did you recognize the caller’s voice?”
Bonnie wilted on the spot, and a sob escaped her. “Yes.”
“Who is it, Bonnie?” Unable to resist the misery pouring off her, I rested a hand on her shoulder. “Who are we dealing with here?”
“My son,” she whispered. “He’s my son.”
Pity softened my tone, but I wasn’t done yet. “That’s why you investigated Perkerson Park alone.”
“Siemen asked me to meet him, and I thought I could reason with him, so I went alone, but he wasn’t there.” A tremor shook her fragile limbs, and I tightened my grip. “Once I saw what he had done, I knew there was no saving him. That’s