Page 36 of Elven Prince

She stepped through the open doorway and leaned back against the frame. “Did anyone check the cameras in the front lot?Outsidethe garage?”

Everyone in the room turned abruptly to face her.

Rick’s mouth popped open this time.

Maxwell’s face went completely blank, as if his understandable rage had short-circuited his ability to form expressions even with his silver eyes, which strobed violently at her.

“What are you doing?” he snarled.

“Trying to help. There’s definitely an explanation for what happened. We just have to find it. Which will be a whole lot easier when we coverallthe bases. Like pulling the footage from cameras outside the garage.”

“Yeah.” Whit pointed at her, then spun back toward his workstation, his fingers instantly flying over the keyboard again. “It’s a really good idea, actually. I’ll grab whatever I can find.”

Rick kept a wary eye on Maxwell a moment longer before swiveling back toward his station as well. The new guy gaped at Rebecca now, his mouth still slackly hanging open.

She tried to ignore him, despite not having quite been stared at like that in a long time, now that she thought about it. She scanned the various monitors across the workstations lining every wall of the office, then returned her gaze to Maxwell and stepped toward him. “Maybe—”

“Get out,” he growled.

She stopped, unsure how to react to this—when the tingling warmth filling her from head to toe in his presence urged her closer, beckoning her, reaching for more, but at the same time, the murderous fury rippling off every inch of the shifter warned her to keep her distance.

So she settled for the middle ground—a tight, confused smile to show she didn’t take his anger personally and a wry laugh to hopefully cut through some of the tension. “Excuse me?”

“How hard was that to understand?” he shouted and surged toward her, stabbing a finger at the doorway. “Get.Out.”

“Hey, I’m trying to help—”

“When I need your help, I’ll ask for it! But until then, I don’t want you anywhere near this office. Putting ideas in my team’s head. Compromising this investigation from start to finish.”

“Compromise? I sent word to you thesecondI knew something was wrong. And then I came here to check on your progress and offer a few ideas your team hadn’t even thought of yet.”

“Of course! And what will you offer next, hmm? More misdirection? More impossible solutions in place of real fucking answers?” The shifter stomped across the office as he barked at her, grabbing another ceramic mug off the closest table before hurling it in her direction.

It hit the wall on the opposite side of the doorway from which she stood, sending chipped shards and the dregs of someone else’s coffee splattering nearly up to the ceiling.

The throw had been intentional, but he’d still launched it in her general direction and notather.

He was trying to scare her off.

Rebecca ignored it all and watched him with a careful eye, but her Head of Security wasn’t finished.

“Tell me, what’s your help worth these days?” he asked through a snarl. “More unanswered questions leading to more hidden half-truths. How many more secrets do you plan to hide by redirecting the focus ofmyinvestigation withmyteam while Archie lies upstairs in a bed at death’s door?”

Then he surged toward her, flashing silver eyes wild and violent, teeth bared in a furious snarl. “For all we know,youcould have been the one who beat him senseless and locked him up in the trailer. None of us would be the wiser for it, would we? Because you showed up herejusttryingtohelp—”

“Hannigan!” Rebecca shouted, surging away from the wall to lunge for the shifter before he finished his crazed stalking toward her. She stopped a foot in front of him, forcing him to stop as well or risk barreling right through his Roth-Da’al.

Maxwell snarled and looked ready to sink his teeth into her neck and rip out her jugular at any second.

“Fuck that,” she continued. “I’mthe one who found him there, andI’mthe one who made sure we got him out before he died in the back of a fucking supply trailer! This isn’t on me. Whatever else is going on with you right now, you need to pull your shit together and do your job. Based on what I’ve seen here in the last five minutes,thisisn’t it!”

The end of her explosive rebuttal echoed around the office, leaving in its wake a tense, heavy silence pregnant with uncontained rage, helplessness, confusion, and the crackle of an altogether different kind of energy surging between her and Maxwell.

Tugging them inexorably closer yet simultaneously pitting them against each other in another battle of wills.

Rebecca hadnotseen this coming, but she sure as hell wouldn’t back down from the shifter trying to bully her out of his way with condescending remarks and bold-faced accusations he couldn’t back with a shred of evidence.

The ominous popping of his knuckles as he clenched both hands into tight fists cut through the silence first. Then he stepped closer, looming over her with another deadly snarl, his eyes still strobing wildly.

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