Boarlander Silverback (Boarlander Bears #3)(52)

She slammed her hiking boot down on the bugs and crushed them to dust, and then she pulled her knife and cut the lining of her suitcase. She hadn’t come into this weaponless. She’d come to this job just as she had any other because she would never taper her instincts again. She wouldn’t feel safe as long as she was working this job.

With trembling fingers, she pulled the burner phone from the lining and turned it on, then dialed the number of someone she knew she could trust.

“Porter,” her handler answered.

“It’s hot as hell in here,” she murmured darkly. He would get it. He always had. Porter needed to get his hands on a burner phone quick and call her back because if she was being spied on, so was her handler.

“Give me five,” he muttered, and the line went dead.

She paced the tossed bedroom, chewing on her thumbnail as her mind raced. Was this about her, or about the shifters? Was it about a case she had worked? She’d built up a mass of enemies, but as far as she knew, she hadn’t been outed. Her tats were a giveaway, but she hadn’t gotten them until the Chicago job. Fuck, what was Finn into?

Her burner rang, and she rushed to answer. “I’m here.”

“What’s gone wrong?” Porter asked.

“Something’s not right. I’ve felt it since they assigned me the job. I’m sitting here, doing nothing, waiting for something I don’t understand. And then I found five cameras in the woods, all pointed at my cabin, and none around Finn’s house. I thought, okay, maybe it’s just security for the post, but I just asked my partner about them, and he gave me a whole lot of bullshit reasons I’m being watched. And I just disabled three bugs that were in my house.”

“Shit. Did you get them all?”

“Yes. I searched every inch of this place. Can you look up Finn Brackeen’s file?”

“Hang on.” The sound of typing clicked over the line. Porter sighed an irritated sound. “He’s clean.”

“Clean? No, he had sexual harassment reports. Three of them from female officers in his precinct.”

“No, Holman. If he did, that information has been wiped. In the system, he’s clean as a whistle. Hang on.” More typing. “Holman, you won’t believe this.”

“What?”

“You’re in the system. Still active duty undercover.”

“No, no, no, I’m not in any system. That’s the f*cking benefit of being undercover.”

“You are, and it has no mention of your discharge, your break, the self-defense case, none of it.”

Alison backed up slowly until her shoulder blades rested against the bedroom wall. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make her look clean. “What does this mean?”

Her handler was quiet.

“Porter, we’ve been working together for a lot of years. Tell me straight. What does this mean?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted low. “I really don’t. I have to get off this phone. I’ll look into it more. How do I get ahold of you?”

Her mind raced around like a hurricane. “Let me think.”

“No time,” Porter said in a rush. “I’ll figure it out. Be careful.” The line went dead, and she yanked the burner from her ear, stared at it in horror.

With a trembling breath, she dialed Kirk’s number. No answer, which made perfect damn sense because he and the Boarlanders were up at the Gray Backs’ landing today, rushing to make their final numbers for the last day of logging season. They would be working until dark, maybe beyond.

Her instincts were kicked up like dust in the path of a tornado. All the fine hairs had risen all over her body, her stomach was in knots, and there was this little voice at the back of her mind that was saying, Time’s up. Run!

Alison yanked her suitcase out of her closet and tossed it onto the bed. Fingers shaking, she called Kirk again from the burner phone. No answer. Shit, she didn’t feel right going to Boarland Mobile Park for sanctuary without the shifters’ permission. If she had Damon’s number, she would call him.

Should she even go into his mountains knowing what she knew now? They had enough on their plate without an undercover cop on the run. No, Kirk would want her to stick around. She was a Boarlander, and even if that meant nothing in the eyes of human law, it meant everything to her, to Kirk, and to the crew.

A messy armload at a time, Alison shoved her clothes from the drawer into her suitcase. A couple pair of panties fell onto the floor, but f*ck ’em. Run, run, little ghost.

She called one last time, and certain Kirk wouldn’t pick up, she put it on speaker phone and set it on her bed so she could shove a knee on her overflowing suitcase and zip it up.

“Hello?”

“Kirk!”

“Ally? What’s wrong? Why are you calling from this number?”

“Are you up on the landing?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I just took a five minute break to get some water and see if you texted me. Ally, you sound panicked. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Something’s wrong.” She searched for words. What could she really tell him? He already knew something was off from the cameras he’d found, but explaining her flighty instincts were tricky. She lowered her voice and explained, “Finn knew about those cameras, and when I confronted him, he—”