Page 39 of Raven's Instinct
“Am I advised to warn the concerned parties?” Alan asked the question carefully.
“You arenot advised. The agency is not convinced Owen actually plans retaliation. They consider him completely rehabilitated, and he is being established basically as far away as we can get him. A restraining order for the entire Nickel City district was part of his deal.”
“But…?” Alan had worked with Juliette long enough to know she wasn’t telling him everything. He also noticed that Juliette didn’t specificallyforbidhim from warning Theo or Addison. He was justnot advisedto. She would understand that distinction.
“I have a bad feeling about it,” Juliette said bluntly. She wasn’t a shifter, but she did have something akin to a shifter’s instinct and could recognize them on sight. More than that, Alan respected her intuition. “This whole thing gives me red flags from top to bottom. Even if we keep tabs on him, we don’t have the manpower to enforce his isolation from some of the questionable parties we suspect he’s had dealings with.”
“Stork?” Alan confirmed.
“Possibly,” Juliette agreed. “And he might have had friends in Nickel City itself.”
“Veronica Chase.” She was the landlord for Tiny Paws, and had been threatening to break the contract just that morning.
“We already suspect that she may be investigating the day care center, and she was chummy with Owen before his detention. Don’t underestimate her.”
“I promise I won’t.” Alan looked at the clock again. Kendra would be there with Amy at any moment. She was usually prompt at day care pickup, or courteously called with changes in her schedule, and Alan didn’t expect that a date—if that’s what this was!—would be any different. “Is there anything else?”
Juliette didn’t miss the desperation in his voice. “Do you have somewhere to be?”
“I have a dinner engagement.”
“Business or personal?”
Was that a note of humor in her question? “Pisiness,” Alan quipped. “Orbersonal. A bit of both.”
“You’ve been working with kids too long,” Juliette said dryly. “That’s the kind of answer Darius would give me.”
“Or, maybe I haven’t been working with them long enough,” Alan said, recognizing the truth of it as he spoke.
“You’re really fitting in there, aren’t you,” Juliette said softly.
“I may have found a new vocation,” Alan admitted. “I won’t say that I love the diapers or trying to negotiate with the proto-verbal, but…there’s a real sense of purpose here. Purpose I’m not sure I have with the agency anymore.”
“Does that have something to do with your dinner plans?” Juliette guessed.
Alan made a non-committal noise and then distracted her the best way he knew how. “Jackson is doing great. He’s even making some strides towards potty-training. He’s addedball, booty,andcowto his vocabulary.”
“Booty?”
“Like pirates’ booty. The kids are super into pirates lately. We’ve got part of the play room made into a sailing ship.” That had been his idea, and he’d even built a tiny plank that they loved to throw themselves off of onto the beanbag.
Juliette laughed. “That’s much better than the booty I first thought of.”
“Speaking of…” Alan thought he heard Kendra’s rig in the driveway.
“Go enjoy yourbersonaldinner with your booty call,” Juliette teased him.
“Oh, I intend to,” Alan assured her, and he was glad to hang up so he had a moment to compose himself before the front doorbell rang.
27
KENDRA
Kendra wasn’t sure how Alan managed it. Whether he was covered in kids, juggling dirty diapers, or facing down a snorting shifter stuck in bull form, he always managed to look completely serene and composed.
She, however, was holding a howling child who had a death grip on her hair. “I am not taking the food away from you, Amy,” she assured the girl, but the fit had gone beyond greed and straight to irrational rage and heartbreak in equal measure.
“We are sharing with Mister Alan,” Kendra said desperately. “You like Mister Alan!”
