Midnight Wolf (Shifters Unbound #11)(43)

“Just a chat, lad.” Dylan’s voice was deceptively quiet. He could sound like the most reasonable man alive, living only to throw back a pint with his sons and friends. Then he’d look you in the eye and tell you what he really wanted. “I heard through the grapevine that you were helping an un-Collared Shifter woman run from the Bureau.”

“That would be me,” Tamsin said, lifting her hand.

Sean sent her an amused look. “We figured. By the grapevine, he means Ben, who mentioned it to me. Ben’s motive wasn’t to get you into any trouble,” he said quickly to Tamsin. “He was worried about you. So this Bureau shit took Ciaran?”

Ciaran answered. “Yep. Locked me in a crypt. I didn’t even know what a crypt was until I was in one. At least it had a TV. But they mostly used the TV for a computer feed. Weird place for a hideout.”

“Clever place,” Dylan said. “Humans don’t mind looking at monuments to the dead, but they don’t like going inside the tombs, especially at night. The agents knew they’d be relatively undisturbed.”

He switched his stare to Tamsin. Tamsin looked boldly back at him, not dropping her gaze like a good submissive. Tamsin had either learned to suppress the instincts that all Shifters had to not make eye contact with one more dominant, or else she was dominant herself. Or maybe fox Shifters had a different view of the hierarchy.

“So you ran with Gavan?” Dylan asked her.

Angus jumped. He didn’t remember talking to anyone but Tamsin and Haider about that.

“Ran a little bit with Gavan, a long time ago,” Tamsin said. “Why?”

Dylan glanced at Angus. “Gavan was, you could say, a bit extreme. I checked you out, Angus, pretty thoroughly before I talked to you, because of what I heard about your brother. He had good intentions but bad tactics.”

“He didn’t have any tactics at all,” Angus said impatiently. “Except to have his own way or kill everyone else trying to get it. He ended up dead in the end, didn’t he?”

Dylan acknowledged this with a nod. Neither of them mentioned the other person who’d ended up dead because of Gavan—Angus’s mate, April. Angus didn’t like to bring that up in front of Ciaran.

“You didn’t know much about Gavan’s activities,” Dylan said. “You told me that right away, and I believed you. But she knows.”

He turned his body so he could take in Tamsin without giving Angus any attack advantage. Dylan had spent his entire life making sure he held the best position in the room.

Tamsin gave him a bright look. “You want to know Gavan’s favorite color and what movies made him cry? I hate to disappoint you all, but I wasn’t as close to Gavan as everyone thinks. I was idealistic and na?ve when I joined him, and I left when my idealism faded. I wasn’t his bestie, or his lover, or even his dreamy-eyed admirer.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Dylan said, pinning her with his blue gaze. “You, lass, are one of the few left who knew him and what he did. Tell me what you remember.”

Tamsin touched her chin. “Let’s see. His favorite color was puce, and he really liked The Sound of Music. Wept every time the kids stood on the stairs and sang before going up to bed.”

“Oh, hey, I saw that movie,” Ciaran said. “I liked when the nuns sabotaged the cars so the family could get away from the Nazis.”

“Yeah, I liked that too,” Tamsin said. “The song is how I learned to say Auf Wiedersehen. It’s German for until we see each other again. Such a nice, succinct phrase.”

“Is that what that means?” Ciaran tried it a couple of times, and Tamsin helped with his pronunciation.

Dylan, who must have met and dealt with Shifters from every type of personality in his long life, waited patiently until she and Ciaran finished.

“Anything you can tell me will be a help,” he said, his voice calm.

“Goddess, does no one believe me when I say I don’t know anything? Gavan never confided in me.” Tamsin sat up straight and tapped her chest. “I. Don’t. Know. Anything.”

Dylan only gave her a quiet look. “I’m an old Shifter, as my sons like to remind me. That means to me, you’re little more than a cub, and I have several hundred years of experience on you. I also have a finely developed sense of smell, even in my human form. I can scent a lie at a hundred paces. You know more than you admit, Tamsin Calloway.”

She didn’t blink. “I lie about tons of things. Which one are you scenting?”

Ciaran gave a gleeful chuckle. Angus could see him storing up the line to use himself one day.

Angus took a deliberate step and put himself between Dylan and the bed. “Enough. She knew my brother but he didn’t confide in her. She told me all this—you could have asked me instead of bringing her in for an interrogation. Ciaran’s tired, and it’s time to go.”

Dylan didn’t move. “I agree—you should take your son home, or at least somewhere to sleep. The house I share with Sean is open to you, and I’ll keep Shifter Bureau off your back so you can take us up on our offer of hospitality.”

“Or we could stay here,” Angus said. “I can come up with the price of a motel room.”

“If you’ll take advice from a father who raised three sons from hell, best you get your cub indoors in a real house. He’ll be safer in a Shiftertown and have a home-cooked meal. Sean and his mate will see to that.”