Bayou Blues (16 page)

Just as my heart started to beat wildly, a key rattled in the door. I had to resist the urge to make a run for it the second it opened. That was a sure-fire way to ensure I’d be locked in here for another couple days with no sign of sunlight or fresh air.

The door opened, and a young, female deputy stood at the entrance. She was holding a cup of coffee so fresh steam was still rising from it.

“Miss McQueen.”

Since I hadn’t been all that forthcoming with information when they’d brought us in, I supposed they’d found Wilder’s bike and gone through the contents. That’s where I’d left my wallet. Of course they’d fingerprinted us, but
I
didn’t have a criminal record. I couldn’t speak for Wilder, but something told me the Shaw brothers had a history with the law.

“Where’s my friend?” I asked. “The guy I was brought in with.”

She held the coffee cup out to me, but I shook my head. Taking food from these people was about as smart as Persephone accepting pomegranate seeds from Hades. I wasn’t going to tempt fate with unknown coffee, or anything else. Maybe I was getting paranoid, but if that was the case, it was because a twisted world had given me good reason to be.

“No thank you.” I might not trust them, but I had been raised to be polite.

She sighed as if she’d expected my response, then sipped the coffee herself. Either she actually wanted it, or she was doing it to prove to me they weren’t trying to poison me. I didn’t care which it was, I just wanted to see Wilder.

“Mr. Shaw is being questioned by Sheriff McGraw. You’re up next.”

“Can I see him?”

“He’s being—”

“I don’t mean right now. But before my questioning.”

The deputy—her name tag read Dwyer—rolled her eyes. “We’re a small town, Miss McQueen, but we’re not stupid. No you can’t see your
accomplice
before questioning.”

“I don’t need to talk to him. I just want to see him.” I was getting frantic now. Between the small room, the fact we’d been arrested on made-up charges, and what we’d witnessed last night, I was worried Wilder was dead and they were hiding it from me for as long as they could.

“Look. Eugenia is it?”

I preferred Miss McQueen, but since she wasn’t part of my pack, she didn’t need to abide by the rules that would apply to subservient wolves. I was accustomed to being treated with some respect, and sometimes it flustered me to have a stranger call me by my given name.

“Genie,” I said. If she was going to be familiar, she might as well call me by a name I liked.

“Okay. Genie. My name is Josie. I know you’re worried about your boyfriend, but he’s fine, I promise.”

I shook my head. “He hit a cop. There’s no way I believe he’s
fine
.”

“Ah. Yeah. That didn’t help matters. He broke Anderson’s nose. He’s going to face some extra charges, and I won’t lie… They weren’t all that easy on him during booking. But he’s no worse for the wear today.” She shrugged, like I should be relieved Wilder getting beaten by the police hadn’t left any bruises. “We were a little too busy for y’all this morning anyway.”

“Why?”

She sipped her coffee again, then threw the empty cup into a garbage can near the door. “Waiting on the county coroner to show. Then we arrested an honest-to-God werewolf.” Her eyes went wide. “Been a crazy day.”

My stomach bottomed out. Coroner meant dead body. “The…werewolf. Is that who you needed the coroner for?” My guilt was overwhelming. I’d failed Wilder, but more importantly I’d failed Hank.

Josie stared at me like I’d grown horns. “No. It’s for the woman he killed.” She must have realized she’d said too much because she paused guiltily before speaking again. “I’ll come get you when Sheriff McGraw is ready for you.”

When she left, I went back to the cot and drew my knees up to my chest, staring at the blank wall across from me. She’d given me enough information that, coupled with what Wilder and I had seen happen last night at the church, I formulated a clear idea of what was happening.

I didn’t know if Hank had killed the woman, but I’d seen him lunge at her. Whether he’d finished the job or not, it was the church who had really killed her. They’d driven Hank to the edge of madness and shoved the woman in his path. They might as well have pushed her in front of a speeding train. They’d known what the results would be.

For a second I thought I might be sick, but I couldn’t even get up to go to the toilet. I swallowed the urge and rubbed my eyes with the heel of my hand, wiping away any tears that dared sneak out.

Even though I knew none of this was my fault, I still felt the blame of it sitting firmly on my shoulders. The entire point of me coming here against Callum’s wishes was to make things better and prove I was a capable leader.

Now Wilder and I were stuck in the shit heap, and once the sheriff figured out we were werewolves too, the situation would go from bad to worse. Timothy already had a wolf to pin a murder on. Soon he’d be able to add resisting arrest and assaulting an officer to the list.

This was
bad
.

The doorknob jostled, and the door swung open. Josie stood just outside, and next to her was a tall man with dark hair going gray at the temples. He had two black eyes and a bandage over his nose, but his uniform was impeccably clean.

“Deputy Anderson, I presume.” I tried to sound cool, but I’d want to break his nose again if I found out he’d hurt Wilder.

“Get up.” There was an unspoken threat in his voice, and I decided I was better off not pushing his buttons. If I’d been more like my sister, I might have kept poking the angry bear, but it wasn’t yet in my nature to make trouble worse. Secret was a master of turning a bad situation into a truly dire one. It was no wonder she’d almost been killed a dozen different times.

Instead of throwing a cheeky one-liner at Anderson, I got to my feet and approached them in the most nonconfrontational posture possible. It made no difference. He still grabbed my arm forcefully and dragged me out of the room. I gritted my teeth and focused on Josie’s round cheeks and bright blue eyes. She looked appalled by his behavior but did nothing to stop him.

There might be hope for Josie, but not the kind that would be of any benefit to me.

As he shoved me down the hall, another door opened, and Wilder was brought out of a room.

As Josie had promised, he appeared unhurt. That didn’t mean they hadn’t done anything to him, but it
did
mean they hadn’t done anything recently.

“You’re okay,” I breathed, before realizing I’d have been better off keeping my mouth shut.

Wilder nodded but was smart enough to not speak. I wanted to tell him everything I’d learned. That someone was dead and I was pretty sure they were blaming Hank, but with four deputies around us all I could do was stare at him and hope he understood I hadn’t given up on this yet.

We passed without saying anything else, and I was ushered into a small meeting room before I had a chance to see where they took him. Anderson not-so-subtly manhandled me into a chair, then handcuffed me to the table. The sheriff, who’d been sitting there the whole time, said nothing about my treatment.

In fact, he said nothing at all until Anderson and Josie left.

Then he opened the slim folder sitting on the table in front of him and cleared his throat to be sure he had my attention.

“Do you know what I found when I ran your prints through our database, Miss McQueen?”

“Nothing,” I replied.

He gave me the same thin-lipped smile he’d used the previous night right before arresting us. Sheriff McGraw wasn’t an unattractive man. He was probably in his late forties, with dark blond hair receding in a widow’s peak. He had cheekbones a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon would go wild over, and a sharp, hawklike nose. If cowboys were my thing, I might have called him handsome.

Since he was giving me a shit-eating grin and I knew he had let his men beat Wilder, I was less inclined to think warmly about him just because he wasn’t ugly.

“Nothing,” he parroted back to me.

“Yeah, I know. I think I’d remember having a criminal record.”

“Well, funny thing about that, Eugenia, because when I couldn’t find anything in our database about you, I fired up the old Internet search engine.”

“Oh yeah? Did you send me a Facebook friend request?” There was some fight left in me, it seemed. A bit of the famous McQueen spitfire coming through after all. I didn’t want to piss this guy off, but I also wanted him to know he couldn’t intimidate me.

“I found out plenty about you. I know all about your family.”

That was impossible, naturally. If he knew all about my family, we wouldn’t be playing this game because he wouldn’t want the wrath of an FBI special investigation team coming down on his head. And that’s exactly what would happen if Secret and her crew found out we were being held on trumped-up charges.

I assumed he was talking about Callum. “Good for you.”

“Thing is, rich girls like you have a habit of getting their big mistakes wiped under the rug. Money can buy a lot of things, including a clean record. So you’ll have to forgive me if I’m not awed by your blank sheet.”

He was skirting the issue. If he’d Googled me and he’d found Callum, then he
had
to know what I was. The McQueens were the public face of werewolves in the South, and both Callum and I had been interviewed in papers and profiled on TV. If he knew my name, he knew I was a werewolf. I wasn’t sure why he was beating around the bush and why deputies like Josie were still out of the loop.

“I don’t have a record because I’ve never been arrested. We had no idea we were on private property. Last time I checked most churches are open to the public.”

“The church might be, but the land around it isn’t. Care to tell me what you and your boyfriend were doing out there?”

This was the second time someone had called Wilder my boyfriend, and for the second time I ignored it. If they thought they could use it against me somehow, I didn’t want to take away a bargaining chip they
assumed
they could use.

I said nothing.

“Funny thing, you and your friend coming to town last night.”

“Hilarious.”

“Because Mr. Shaw clearly doesn’t have the same friends in high places you do. He has a record, a pretty extensive one.”

I pretended to know this, which wasn’t too hard because I’d had my own suspicions about his criminal past. Regardless, curiosity crept over me, and I was more than a little interested to find out what Wilder had been arrested for in the past. I was willing to bet it wasn’t unpaid parking tickets.

“He and I are different people.”

Sheriff McGraw nodded. “Indeed you are. But are he and his brother so different?”

“Yes.” I should have kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help myself. Wilder and Hank
were
different. Problem was I couldn’t be sure why McGraw was bringing Hank into this conversation.

“They can’t be all that different, if they were both arrested on the same night. Now can they?”

It
was
Hank they’d arrested.

Meaning Hank wasn’t dead.

“Is he here?” I asked. “Hawk Shaw. You said you arrested him. Is he here?”

McGraw didn’t respond, but that was enough of an admission for me. Plus Josie had said they’d brought in a werewolf, which meant Hank was somewhere in this building.

“Care to tell me why you’re so concerned about him?” McGraw asked.

Was he really going to play coy? “You looked me up, right? You said you know who my family is, and you claim you know who I am. Now, your deputy told me y’all brought in one werewolf last night, but I think you know better. I think you know you brought in three.”

He sat back, and his thin smile grew wider. With blue eyes twinkling merrily, he said, “I think you and I might finally be on the same page.”

“Sheriff, you and I are in totally different books.”

“I want you to tell me about Hank Shaw.”

It was my turn to sit back and smile. “Sure thing. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. After I call my lawyer.”

I was not the most popular girl in Franklinton after I lawyered up.

I was
also
not the most popular girl in Louisiana when I called Cash and told him I was in a pickle and could use his legal expertise. Like,
right now
.

“I’m sorry, you’re
where
?” he asked.

“I’m in jail.” If I’d told him I was doing research on Mars, he might have sounded less incredulous.

“In the middle of nowhere,” he added.

“It’s complicated.”

“Are you okay?”

I let out a little sigh of relief as the annoyance left his tone. I’d been worried he might be mad enough to just leave me here, but that wasn’t like Cash. If I was in trouble, like now, I knew I could count on him. My heart swelled with appreciation. I was too damn lucky to have him.

“I’m okay. It was a rough night, but they’re not treating us too badly.”

“What are they charging you with?” He had gone into all-business mode.

“We were arrested for trespassing, but there’s something more going on. I can’t get into it over the phone, but I need your help.”

“I can wire you money for bail. How much do you need?”

“No.” I chewed the inside of my cheek, wondering how best to phrase this next part. “Cash, I need you to come out here.”

“Genie…” There was a long silence. “Baby, it’s the middle of the week. I have classes.”

“I know, I know, and I’m sorry to even ask, but I don’t know if there’s anyone else who can help me.”

Voices were muffled in the background. Lots of chatter and people laughing. It sounded like he was already at school. “Why didn’t you call your uncle? He must have lawyers.”

He did. Callum had at least a half dozen highly skilled lawyers on retainer. They were experts in finance and contracts; they kept his businesses running and his secrets safe. But none of them knew a damn thing about paranormal law because they’d never had to before. Cash, on the other hand, was the closest thing I had to an expert, and I was hoping he might be able to use that magnificent brain of his to save our asses.