Mine for Eternity [Council Enforcers] (Siren Publishing Classic) Read Free Page B

now his responsibility. He had a bad feeling Tessa would fight him on that point, but he didn’t care. It was one issue he wouldn’t back down from.
    Mitch headed back downstairs and grabbed Tessa’s bags from the kitchen. He should have felt guilty for going through her things, but he didn’t. His mate was tight lipped about who she was running from, so he was going to find out the answers on his own. He was glad his mate had literally walked right into his life, but she wouldn’t have been on the run if someone wasn’t threatening her, so Mitch needed to find out who it was and eliminate the problem.
    He went through both bags noticing there was nothing but a few sets of dirty clothes between them and a few pictures. He gritted his teeth when he only found twenty-seven dollars, knowing Tessa wouldn’t have made it much farther. There was no way he was letting her leave, so the little bit of cash she had was no longer a problem. Once he had Tessa’s ID, Mitch headed to his office. Working as an enforcer, he had made a lot of contacts. Contacts that owed him a lot of favors. He planned to call in a few of those favors to find out everything he needed to know about his mate. He started first with his contact who worked at the police precinct closest to the address listed on Tessa’s driver’s license. The man was human, but his mate was a shifter who Mitch had saved from a member of her old pack who had become obsessed with her. He thought of his mate as he waited for the other line to pick up. According to her address, she was from a suburb of Chicago. If that was where she had run from, then she was a long way from home. He lived about thirty miles outside of Flagstaff, which meant that she had run halfway across the country.
    “This is Detective Reynolds,” the man announced when the line picked up.
    “Hey, Detective, this is Enforcer Ericson.” Mitch used the enforcer title to let the man know this wasn’t a social call. He knew enforcers were feared. They were the boogeymen that parents told their kids about to keep them in line. No one wanted a visit from an enforcer because, nine times out of ten, it meant instant death. It was a lonely life, but Mitch took his job seriously. He did it to protect his race, to keep their secret from getting out. They were judge, jury, and executioners all in one. The gasp of breath and quiver he could hear in the detective’s voice proved his point. Evidently the man’s wife had clued him in on the shifter world.
    “How can I help you, sir?”
    “I need some information on a Tessa Palmer. Her last known address is in that area.” He could hear the detective typing as he spoke.
    “I have a Tessa Palmer, age twenty-three, listed as missing along with her son, Nico Palmer, age two,” the detective read.
    “Does it say how long she has been missing or who reported her?”
    “Yes, it looks like she has been missing a little over two weeks. It was reported by her employer when she didn’t call or show up for work for a couple of days. Also—oh no.”
    “Also what?” Mitch didn’t like the pause he heard. He had a feeling whatever he heard next wouldn’t be good.
    “It says Tessa called in a murder at a park near her home one night before she disappeared. She said she saw a man ripping a woman’s chest open. The case had been flagged as one of ours, and a cleanup crew was sent to check it out. Tessa was informed that there was no body or blood found at the scene and she must have imagined things since it had been so late at night and she was walking home by herself.”
    “So you’re telling me she watched a rogue kill a woman and she was told that she must have imagined it because she was spooked?” Mitch could feel his fangs dropping and his claws lengthening at the thought of his mate coming into contact with a rogue.
    “Yes, sir,” the detective squeaked.
    “Was the rogue caught? For that matter, why wasn’t Tessa being monitored?” Whenever humans came