Page 304 of As The Shifter World Turns

But the judge believed Archer wasn’t a flight risk and gave him bail.

“Thank Gods,” Micah mumbled.

We spent more hours waiting for Archer to be released and it was late in the evening before he fell into Micah’s arms. We thanked the lawyer and he said he’d be in touch.

“Go home to your babies.” I gave Archer a big hug. “Forget about this tonight and just be with your family.” There was no way either of them could put it out of their minds but Elune and Jasper needed them.

I got in my car and texted Nate, Neil, Ryder, Ivor, Martin, and Anthony. As a human who didn’t know shifters existed, Anthony was sometimes excluded from our get togethers, but we needed everyone to help Archer. By the time I arrived home, everyone was in our living room, including Toby, Charlie, and Dyani.

I summarized what had happened and everyone shouted questions at once in typical Sunshine Manor fashion. “Obviously, Archer wasn’t out driving in the middle of the night, but someone used his car.” Either the plan was to frame our friend in order to get back at him for some reason. or it was possibly a bunch of kids who’d seen the car and decided to steal it on a whim. “We have to find out who did it.”

“Why us?” Martin asked.

“Because the police have his car on security footage, as well as the damage and blood spatters on the car. As far as they’re concerned, they’ve got their man.”

140

DID WE JUST BECOME THE SCOOBY GANG?

Nate

There was absolutely no way that Archer took his car, got into an accident, hit someone, and then brought it back and went to sleep as if nothing was wrong. Absolutely none. The lawyer had a copy of the security footage, and we all sat in his office and watched it. It was blurry, but even I could see the person driving was too tall to be Archer. It was all kinds of bullshit.

But that didn’t make the police change their point of view. They said it was officially in the hands of the DA’s office and the case against Archer was a slam dunk. Jerks.

We would just have to prove them wrong.

But since none of us could prove definitively that Archer did not take the car out in a weird sleepwalking horror movie type situation, our hands were tied. Or were they?

I spent the morning looking up the kind of surveillance system Daire had installed before I met him. We could see the car being taken out but it was too dark to see who it was.

To steal the car and freak out after hitting someone, they’d have ditched it. At least that’s what I assumed. So why did they return the car? None of this made sense so pretending that I could logic my way to problem solving wasn’t helping.

The manor family hadn’t asked me to look into this and I was probably stepping on toes but I needed to do something. The thought of Archer having to go through a trial and then potentially ending up in jail made me sick to mystomach. He was a father and those kids would be just as heartbroken as he was if he was gone for I didn’t even know how long.

They said the victim had no life threatening injuries but that didn’t mean the same thing as being non-life altering. The paper didn’t give details and Archer hadn’t gotten any reports from his lawyer about the extent of the injuries. And even if he did, not all scars are visible.

We were having a day of shifting and eating and basically forgetting the bad shit and focusing on the good at Daire’s family estate. I understood the purpose. But also I wanted to fix things and I couldn’t really do that from there. Not that I could do it from here. But still…

“Are you ready?” I came into the kitchen where Daire was packing up some snacks. We each took a type of food, almost like a potluck. Or maybe exactly like a potluck but without the expectation of anything being homemade.

To make it fair we pulled food groups out of a hat. Worked for us. We got snacks and that meant buying chips, dip, and cheese.

“I felt weird bringing a lot of junk food.” My mate picked up a large covered plastic bowl. “So I made a fruit salad too.”

“You know that someone had fruit, right?” We were going to have so much fruit.

“Watch. No one is going to stick to their list. No one.”

And he was right. When we all arrived and started setting up, not one person only had what was on their list. We had enough subs for a crew twice our size, fruit for thirty, junk food to rival any Super Bowl Party, and three trays of deviled eggs.

There might not have been too many of those, though. They were eaten lickety split.

“I’m so full.” Toby fell into his blanket. “Why did I keep eating?”

“Because you’re a growing boy,” Martin reminded him. “Maybe take the kids onto the grass and play. Help everyone to burn off some of your lunch.”

Toby got up and brushed off his jeans. ”But don’t think I don’t know this is so you guys can have some grown up talk,” he said pointedly.

---