middle of a mess she didn’t make. But she’s here, right? Getting shit done. She got sent to keep an eye on you guys . . . and you land her in this kind of trouble? When she could have said fuck you to all of us and stayed home?”
He knelt beside her, took her hand in his—
worry anger fear anger love love love love worry anger love love love
—and said, “Rache, I know you’d never do anything like this. These guys aren’t touching you. Nobody’s laying a finger on you, got it? We’ll get you out of here and you’ll call your cousin and he’ll fix everything or you’ll engage your awesome brain and solve the crime.
“But I’m not letting them put you in a cage for even one nanosecond. I know you guys—the Pack . . . well, I don’t know the Pack. I only know you. And you couldn’t stand being in a cage. Not even a dinky holding cell downtown for a couple of hours. And as long as I’m here—”
“Encouraging you to add resisting arrest to your résumé,” Detective Berry said dryly.
“—nobody’s gonna lock you away.”
“Edward . . .”
“I mean it, Rache.”
“Edward, you’re a fool.”
“Thanks, I lo—wait. You aren’t saying the lines I imagined you’d say,” he admitted, looking flustered.
“You’re a fool and I love you.”
“Oh. I imagined you saying something like that, even if you’re not saying it exactly the way I pictured.”
“I’d like to take you for my mate. I’d like to bear your cubs.”
He looked at her. He looked and his eyes got bigger and bigger and she was getting a little alarmed—would he pass out?—when he turned away from her and said to the room, “Y’see? She loves me! And I love her! (I’ve just realized.)” He turned to her. “You knew I loved you before I did. This is one of those cool werewolf things where you knew something about me I didn’t know!”
“That isn’t true, Edward.” She kissed him, a long one full of what they both knew. “You knew before your body could give me the cues. Otherwise, there wouldn’t have been anything for me to pick up on.”
He quickly kissed her back. “I love you.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Are you really gonna be smug about this?”
“Sure.”
He laughed, and then remembered they wanted to arrest his lover—except was she now his fiancée, maybe?—for multiple murders.
Right. Back to work.
Forty-seven
“Right! Okay.” He took a few seconds to get his bearings. “So, in closing, don’t you dare even waste half a minute arresting mah woman—I always wanted to try pronouncing it like that—when she’s not guilty. Mah woman!”
Edward was watching the others carefully; he was the only one standing. Not even the cop had stood. They were just sort of sprawled in their chairs around the table, sipping smoothies and watching him.
Good. Maybe they were going to stay cool. That’d be unexpected and lovely. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. Worse, nothing like this had ever been written about in a movie or graphic novel or book before, as far as he knew, so he had no idea where to go from there.
“Rachael, Detective Beriberi said it himself, it’s not even his jurisdiction. So you and I are going to get up and walk out of here and then you’re gonna call your cousin and get the cavalry out here to find the real killer—”
“We’re pretty sure we know who that is,” Detective Berry said, “so if you need a name or address, just let me know.”
“—so you can clear your name.” Wait. What? “Wait. What?”
“Well, let’s see. If you have a name, that means not only did you find my DNA,” Rachael guessed, “you found proof that it was planted DNA. Something I couldn’t have left behind by accident. And since I wouldn’t go to the trouble of planting my own DNA at a crime scene when I’m a good source of my own DNA, you knew someone was trying to frame me.”
“Hey, that sounds pretty good . . . hmmm.” Okay. Well, he knew Rachael was as smart as she was hot. Good to have further verification on that. “Uh, what have you guys all figured out that I don’t know yet?” It was gonna sound vain, but he was sort of used to being the smartest person in the room, in most rooms . . .
“I didn’t figure anything out,” the queen said, looking sympathetic. “Honest. They had to explain it to me, too.”
It worked! He smiled