Chapter 89

Zane POV

“Soon, I’ll be able to prove my devotion to you.”

“Please don’t.”

The recording replayed the noises of going into my purse, and I turned it off. Zane sat for a moment, thinking.

“I particularly liked the part where you called him a psychopath,” he said finally.

“I thought you might.” I was watching him, but his face betrayed nothing. I knew he wouldn’t be ready to make plans until Travis, whom he’d called twenty minutes ago, arrived with a new laptop they wouldn’t be plugging into a network before they used it to read the flash drive.

“I have some spares on hand,” Zane had told me, “but Travis said he had one with some sniffer software he wanted to use.”

Now, the silence as we waited was growing uncomfortable. I never wanted that for Zane and me.

“Would you like to see the books I got them?”

“Yes, the one he said was rubbish first.”

I laughed and dug into my bag to pull it out.

“The Little Mermaid,” he said with genuine pleasure. He flipped through it. “Great illustrations.”

“Aren’t they? I’m glad you like it. I was going to run it by you in any case, considering how spiritual Anderson’s stories can get.”

“Humanly spiritual, you mean. She does end up a good fairy doing good deeds to earn a soul.”

“Exactly.”

He shook his head. “A good lesson for us all.” His chin went up, and if he’d been in his fur I’m sure his ears would have as well.

“Travis?” I asked.

He nodded, and soon the agent was joining us in Zane’s study. He wanted to listen to my recording first, so Zane and I sat through it again with him.

“The first thing to do is find this Josh and hear his side of things,” Travis said, booting up the laptop he’d brought with him.

“If he exists,” Zane growled.

“Oh, I’m sure he exists, but was he really part of the trafficking ring? Did Scott just pay off some pup to corroborate his story? We’ll need to do a background check.”

Travis held out his hand, and I placed the flash drive into it, half-expecting the thing to blow up or something. While he was accessing it, I told Zane, “If he really did start five months ago, that’s right before you and I met.”

“Do you think he knew about you?” Zane asked. “Could he have known Chloe was with you?”

“Why would he hold onto information like that when he could have used it to get basically anything from you?” I asked.

“Someone arranged for you to end up as Ella’s maid,” Zane said. “It may well have been Scott.”

“To what purpose?”

Travis cleared his throat. “OK, so far, it’s a ton of audio and video files and no signs of viruses, trackers, or Trojan Horses.”

Zane snorted softly. “Beware of humans bearing gifts.”

Travis nodded. “And werewolves, in this case. We’re going to make sure this computer is never hooked up to anything more than a surge-protected power cable. The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have been disabled.”

He hit a few keys and frowned. “I should have more in a minute.”

“You do know that fated mates—” Zane began.

“Don’t work the way Scott said? Yes, I know.” I sent him a smile, remembering his words about feeling a “faint” matebond with me. All I knew for sure was that if he were human, we’d be engaged by now, if not already on our way to Vegas.

Sounds of screaming and moaning came from the laptop. Travis swapped at a key, and it went silent.

“I’m going to have to watch this back at the office,” he said, his cheeks a little ruddy. He looked at me then, and I saw his eyes were hesitant. “Sarah, our files on you are thin at best.”

“Travis,” Zane warned.

I held up a hand. “You’d have been an idiot not to have checked me out the second you could.” I looked at the agent. “What would you like to know?”

“You have no idea, at all, who your parents were?”

“None.” I spread my hands.

“And you grew up in foster care?”

“Completely. I had some health issues as a child, I was told, and no one wanted to adopt a sick baby. By the time I was healthy, I wasn’t an infant anymore. I lived with seven foster fAmelies until I was sixteen, at which point I successfully petitioned the court for emancipation and could live on my own, provided I checked in with CPS regularly.”

“And these were all human fAmelies?”

I shrugged. “Yes. There was a foster sibling I had for three years in my tweens who was half-were, and we were friends, but then he was placed with distant relatives in another territory, and I never heard from him again.”

“What was his name?”

It easily sprang to mind. “Manfred. He hated it, but he’d been told it’s what his mother called him before she died.”

“Was she the wolf, or his father?”

“She was. A beta. And no, he never told me her name. I don’t think he knew it.”

“No last name?”

I shrugged again. “Sorry.”

Zane leaned forward. “Sarah, I would like your permission for Travis to start a proper dossier on you.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I need to know more about you, and I think you would like that as well. May I ask Travis to research your background more thoroughly?”

“Well, first, thank you for asking. I know you don’t actually need my permission. Second, yes. I’d love to know more about my family tree if you can find the forest it’s hiding in.”

“If I may,” Travis said. “I’d like my investigation to include just why you look so much like Clara Maxim.”

I laughed. “You know, I’ve had some time to really look at that photo, and, first, it’s blurry, and second, a lot of the resemblance is about the way I wear my hair and the fact she’s smiling and has dimples, like I do. I really don’t think there’s anything mysterious going on there.”

“But you’ll allow me to indulge myself?” he asked.

I nodded, thinking it was probably time to go get the girls.

“Have at it.”