Page 40 of Scarred Resolve

“Oh, you’re another one of those f?—”

“Excuse me?” I leaned over, making sure the older agent saw me, something rising up in me, knowing my eyes had turned gold. “Hi, I’m Jacky Leon. I’m the werecat representative to humanity. I’m the one the BSA leaked to the public a few years ago. That’s my brother Niko across the table, and this is another brother of mine who would like to maintain his privacy right now. We’re focused on a very serious case, so we’re going to need you to step out of the room and leave us in peace. If you don’t turn off the surveillance, we’ll go ahead and get rid of it ourselves. Take your pick.”

“You would destroy government property?—”

“I’m so sorry.” One of the younger agents who’d picked us up came running into the room. “I’m so sorry. Buck, please. Leave them. We were just about to head into the security office and tell you that this room’s monitoring needed to be disabled while they’re here. They need to talk about sensitive topics.”

“We follow those sorts of orders?”

“In matters of national security, yes!” the younger agent seemed a bit desperate. I looked at Davor, gesturing for him tolet me take control of the agent. There were things I could get away with that he couldn’t, not if he wanted the BSA to respect that we weren’t going to mess around with keeping Davor’s privacy. He pushed the older agent’s hand at me, making him cuss. I grabbed it and proceeded to pull the older man out with ease as he fought uselessly.

“How fucking dare you!” he roared as I gently pushed him into the opposite wall once we were out of the evidence room.

“There’s always at least one like you,” I said, rolling my eyes as I turned away. “Follow orders and keep your job. We’re not going to be here very long.”

“I’ll let you know the moment everything is disabled and will make sure it stays that way. We can’t turn off the hall’s cameras, however.”

“That’s good. You’ll know when we’re done,” I said, smiling as I went back inside and stood beside Davor. “Good work, and thanks for letting me take it from there.”

“No problem. They know you, not me. It’s better that you toe the line about what you can do to them.”

“Exactly. Niko, what the hell? Didn’t want to step in at all to help?”

“You two had it covered,” Niko said, waving between us. “I didn’t need to get involved.”

I almost argued with that but decided against it.

“Yeah, that’s a good point,” I said, clicking my tongue.

He only chuckled. We waited until the young agent came back and gave us the all-clear that we were safe to discuss the sensitive matters at hand.

“Anyone caught the smell of the werecat yet?” Niko asked, looking at the items on the first table again.

I finally paid attention to what my nose was telling me, leaning down to get closer to the debris left from the attack. I had been hit with the strong scent of blood the moment the door hadbeen opened, but I hadn’t begun trying to decipher all the scents in the room yet. I knew to ignore the humans’ scents, looking only for the werecat. Davor, Niko, and I hadn’t been in the room long enough to contaminate any items.

“It’s not on everything but… the tent here, and a lot of the clothing has it,” Davor murmured.

“Yeah, it’s there,” I said, confirming.

“That’s what I noticed too. So, the werecat spent the most time getting into the tent, shredding through it, shredding the people… Everything else was knocked around and collateral damage.”

“Male?” I guessed, paying close attention to the scent. “It seems… masculine, but I could be off.”

“I wish I could confirm that, but we have the bias of already thinking it’s male. We know what it smells like, though, and that’s really all we needed.” Niko began walking, freely picking up things from other tables. “They had a lot of good gear.”

“A bear-proof cooler,” Davor pointed out as he walked his own route around the room. I picked a different direction.

“They took a laptop camping,” I said, shaking my head as I touched the destroyed electronic. “To work on the road or maybe download movies in the quiet hours.”

“I don’t see the point, and I like computers,” Davor replied, coming toward me. “You go camping to get into nature. Not everyone needs to do it from scratch. Having good equipment is a good safety measure for humans, but a laptop? How is that disconnecting? If it was work-related, how did they get an internet connection?”

“Wifi hotspot,” I reminded him. “My phone can do it.”

“I believe your phone would need service,” Davor countered.

“When we’re out there, we’ll check if we have service, but the couple isn’t our concern, you two.” Niko kept walking away.“Let’s talk about what we see about the werecat. Maybe we can find hairs, a piece of claw. Anything like that could be useful.”

“From what you were saying, it focused on the tent and the victims. It was there to hunt or eliminate a perceived threat.” Davor’s tone turned clinical. “That’s how we work. It might have been hungry and thought sleeping humans would make an easy meal.”

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