Page 103 of Bears Behaving Badly
Or the police. Or 911. Or the fire department. Or Pet Control.
“Why the hell would I call Pet Control?”
But we can go help A&D. I know what you’re gonna say, we’re just cubs, we should leave it to the adults, but we can’t.
“Found the keys. C’mon.”
Dev whooped and leaped off his stool. “I fuckinglovehanging out here.”
“Language. I don’t need Annette biting my face off for teaching you bad habits. Okay,morebad habits.”
“Literally every twelve-year-old in the world has heard ‘fucking’ at least once. You’re not teaching me anything.”
“Excellent. That’s the story I expect you to stick with. We—” Pat cut himself off and tilted his head, listening. “Huh. That’s Oz Adway yowling away out there again. The guy just will not knock like a civilized were.”
Caro tensed and Dev asked, puzzled, “What’shedoing here?”
“I imagine Annette sent him to check on us. Good, we can make use of him. Now go start the car while I find Mommy’s shotgun.”
Chapter 33
Is it a trap if we know about it beforehand?
Annette had no idea. And no time to worry about it. She and David weren’t stupid—at least, not entirely stupid. It was beyond obvious that at least two Shifters were in the warehouse with them; the stench masked a lot, but not everything.
It didn’t matter. They couldn’t reach out to IPA. They couldn’t call for backup or for help. But they couldn’t dodge the syndicate anymore or walk away, either.
We’ve been hares to their hounds too long.
“Are you okay?” he asked, bending close and almost whispering.
“Not at all.”
He squeezed her hand and she closed her eyes, the better to shut out the sight of the place. But she couldn’t shut out the smells.I’ll bet—if I hadn’t sworn off betting—that David holding my hand is the only affection this squalid shithole has seen.She let go, opened her eyes. This was business. They had work to do. She’d cry and scream and vent later.
“Well, he got some of it cleaned up,” David announced, hands on his hips as he examined the scene. He was obviously sticking close to her, which she decided was adorable and only slightly irritating. “But the place still smells like piss and blood.”
To be expected. There were cages, and restraints, and crates, and hoses, and collars, and prods. No clothes, though. Which made sense. Clothing was for people, not pets.
There were rows of unforgiving fluorescent lights, because all the windows were blacked out. And it was cold. Annette shivered and defied Nadia by putting her arms through her cardigan sleeves.How about THAT, you treacherous harpy?
David let out a hiss. “Christ. Once he broke them, he’d ship some of them overseas. No wonder the hospital couldn’t find them. They must’ve shit themselves when Sharon and Dr. Tilbury started asking questions.”
“So they brought in Brennan. And they had him ‘find’ the missing cubs, but only on paper. It would have been a stalling tactic while Lund tried to get those particular Shifters back from overseas. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, Caro escaped.”
There were desks and file cabinets and paperwork. There were manifests to the Ukraine, Kenya, Qatar, Turkey, and the United Emirates. All in a poorly locked (David had broken in without half trying) warehouse by the river because nobody gave a shit.
The one spot that didn’t seem completely terrible was a comfortable-looking twin bed made up to the left of the desk, with thick blankets and quilts, and two space heaters.
“It would appear that after a long day of torturing children, he would sometimes sleep here, too.” Annette quelled the urge to spit on Lund’s pillow. “Twospace heaters for that fraudulent fucking coward. It must have made him nuts that he couldn’t grow fur and they all could. Ha. Good.”
“Lund must have come here straight from the hospital. Cleaned up as best he could with missing fingers and a broken foot.”
“And it’s not like he could have called a service. So he called the syndicate for help. But he was a liability to them at that point.”
“Then he went home,” David said, using a pen to sift through shipping manifests. “Got himself murdered. And whoever killed him didn’t finish the cleanup.”
“No, of course not.” This from a new and entirely unwelcome voice. “Harder for us to pin it all on Lund if we didn’t leave, y’know, evidence. The files you stole. The pictures you didn’t know what to do with. And this shithole, of course.”
