Wild Cat Read Free Page B

candidate—she was strong, powerfully strong, and besides, she was still grieving her mate, and Shifters were barely alive when they grieved. He’d be doing her a favor, he’d convinced himself.
    His self-loathing filled him again, but his need to work the spell overrode it. He needed to get home. He could taste it. Exile was bitter. This time, he’d succeed, no matter what.
    T hey gave Cassidy a blue coverall to wear and made her sit alone in the interrogation room, her hands on the table. At least they’d let her out of the cuffs.
    The room smelled like something rotten, the walls dirty yellow and puke green. Shifters liked warm colors, clean paint, and places that didn’t stink of human sweat. Humans considered Shifters to be wild and dangerous, but Shifters had much better taste in décor.
    The door opened, and Cassidy tensed. She’d been sitting in here for hours, no one coming to her, no one offering to let her call a lawyer, or even her brother. But that, she’d heard, was what they did with Shifters.
    The man who came in was the cop she’d saved up in the building. Lieutenant Escobar, she’d heard the others call him.
    He’d been the one to usher her into the back of the patrol car, after he’d draped a blanket around her naked body. His movements had been quick, efficient, his large hands warm.
    She hadn’t realized that humans could be so warm. His voice was dark, sliding around her in liquid syllables, though he hadn’t spoken directly to her since telling Cassidy her rights.
    Which he should have known wasn’t required for Shifters. The man must not know much about Shifters or human laws for Shifters. So why had they sent him in here?
    Lieutenant Escobar gave her a dark-eyed look as he shut the door. Without saying a word, he moved to the table and placed a file folder on it. He took off his suit coat—again, his movements economical—and draped the coat over the back of a chair.
    His white button-down shirt hugged powerful muscles, his black holster and butt of his gun stark against his left side. If he removed the shirt, she knew she’d see an undershirt pasted against hard abs, muscles solid under dark skin.
    Escobar’s black hair was cut short, almost buzzed, which emphasized the sharp lines of his face and a scar that cut across his temple to his forehead. His dark, almost black eyes held intelligence and something even an alpha Shifter would acknowledge.
    I’m not taking shit from you , those eyes told her. If I like what you say, I might play square with you. Try to fuck with me, and you’ll regret it.
    He sat down, smoothing his tie so it wouldn’t be caught by the table’s edge. Escobar opened the file folder and flicked a switch next to the small microphone on the table.
    Without looking at her, he said, “Interview with Cassidy Warden, Shifter from the Southern Nevada Shiftertown, by Lieutenant Diego Escobar, arresting officer.” Diego looked up at Cassidy with those bottomless eyes. “Tell me, Ms. Warden, what you were doing at a closed construction site forty miles west of your Shiftertown.”
    Cassidy felt a strange impulse to blurt out the whole story— tell me everything, and it will be all right , he seemed to say. But Escobar was human, and Cassidy had to be careful. Going out to make her peace with the place her mate had died was only half the story.
    “Shiftertowns aren’t prisons, Lieutenant,” she said, pinning him with her gaze. “I’m allowed to come and go as I please.”
    He didn’t seem impressed. Diego Escobar either didn’t understand that her looking straight into his eyes was a challenge to his authority, or maybe he just didn’t give a rat’s ass.
    “You broke into a fenced-off property on a shut-down, private construction site,” he said. “Plus you endangered the lives of three police officers, one of which happened to be me. So, tell me what you were doing there.”
    Cassidy folded her arms. “None of your business.”
    Diego eyed her for a