Trouble in a Fur Coat (The Fur Coat Society Book 1) Read Free

questions flooded her mind. How did he know about shifters? And why was he talking to the mayor about them? Silver had a sinking feeling in her stomach that, whatever the answer to that question was, she wasn’t going to like it.
    “We have to get rid of them,” Tim said, his voice growing louder and angrier. “It’s unbelievable to me that, as advanced as society has become, we still sit around and let such dangerous creatures roam freely among us.”
    “I agree,” Mr. Astor said. “We have to do something about this. We have to plan carefully, though. We don’t want to alert the shifters in time for them to figure out a way to hide from us or escape. Or, worse, to attack us before we attack them.”
    Silver bit her bottom lip so hard that she could taste blood. There was a gap between the floor and the bottom of the desk’s front panel, and Silver could see the feet of the two men walking further into the room. Silver squeezed her eyes shut and tried to come up with some plausible excuse for why she was hiding behind the desk. She could always just pretend that she had passed out from the pain in her knee, right? She could play dumb and act like she hadn’t heard anything the men had been talking about.
    “How are you going to find the shifters?” Tim asked.
    “I’m working with someone down at Hook Labs,” Mr. Astor said, a hint of pride making its way into his voice. “He’s an older scientist, and worked on a failed attempt to wipe out shifters years ago. He’s been pretty quiet since then, keeping his head down and working for the government on other projects. But he recently discovered a way to program the eye scanners used in security cameras so that they will sound an alert if the eyes they are scanning contain traces of animal DNA.”
    “Which is why we need the mayor’s help,” Tim said.
    “Exactly. The mayor is a close personal friend of the president. If we can convince the mayor that it’s a good idea to require security scans of all citizens, he’ll convince the president for us. The shifters won’t be able to hide anymore. All we have to do is stir up fear in the general public about the dangers of shifters, and the momentum will snowball from there. We’ll have the support we need to wipe shifters from the face of the earth.”
    Much to Silver’s relief, the men stopped walking before they made it anywhere near the desk. Her palms were sweaty, grasping the fabric of her cocktail dress so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.
    “We should get back to the dining room,” Mr. Astor said. Silver watched his polished dress shoes turning around in one smooth movement as he headed toward the door. “We don’t want to be late for dinner. I can show you these books afterwards. And we can discuss the shifter situation more then.”
    “Alright,” Tim said. “But it’s going to be hard to concentrate on the dinner conversation. I just want the shifter scum gone from Chicago and gone from the country.”
    “Me too, my friend,” Mr. Astor said. “Patience, though. We still have a lot of details to work out. Our time will come. And when it does, we’ll be the heroes of this nation.”
    The two men laughed as they left the room, as though they were part of some sort of evil inside joke. The sound of their laughter sent chills up and down Silver’s back, and for several moments she remained frozen under the desk in shock, unable to move.
    She’d heard stories from her parents and the other elders in her clan about attempts decades ago to wipe out shifters. It had all seemed like a crazy, unbelievable part of the past. Silver thought that society today had advanced past the point where it would judge someone merely for being a little bit different. Out of respect, she’d heeded the warnings from her parents to not tell anyone she was a shifter, but she’d always thought they were being overly dramatic.
    She’d just found out how wrong she was.

Chapter Two
     
    Silver wasn’t