Patrick knew if he asked to see the records on who had purchased it, he’d be denied. That was information he’d need a warrant for, but getting one required probable cause, and the SOA didn’t have any they could use yet. It was up to Patrick to find it. Hearsay wouldn’t hold up in the courts after all.
Patrick picked up his dagger and flipped it around with deft fingers, sliding it back into the sheath on his right thigh. The ifrit didn’t relax even after the weapon was put away, glaring at Patrick and keeping his distance.
Patrick rapped his knuckles on the glass countertop. “See you around.”
He left the pawnshop, feeling the ifrit’s gaze boring into his back on the way out. Once outside in the cold, Patrick didn’t lower his shields. The group with the low-riders was gone, but the car now parked in one of those spots carried its own set of problems.
The black woman sitting behind the wheel wasn’t looking at him, but her phone. She might have been just another person running errands if his magic didn’t recognize her as a werecreature. There’d been one in the hotel lobby that morning, and one walking past the SOA field office when he’d arrived. He hadn’t seen one when he’d left, but it was looking more and more like Patrick was being followed, judging by the latest arrival.
Patrick got into the SUV and started the engine. He backed out of the spot and headed for the street. He kept half his attention on the road and the rest on the rearview mirror. He wasn’t surprised in the least to see the black Chevrolet follow him onto the street ten seconds later.
Patrick cast a silence ward in the SUV, static washing through the frame of the vehicle. He lifted his hips to get to his phone, glancing at the screen a couple of times in order to unlock it and call Wade.
“Where are you?” Patrick said when Wade picked up.
“Uh, why? Are you in trouble?” Wade asked.
“Not yet, but I’m being followed.”
“Werecreatures? I saw a couple this morning before I lost them.”
Patrick scowled and drummed his fingers against the steering wheel. “And you didn’t think you should go back to the hotel once you identified them?”
Wade snorted. “The hotel doesn’t have good snacks. I’m at Target getting better ones.”
“Of course you are.”
“It’s not like I can’t tell what they are, and I’m good at ditching people in a crowd. I’m not being followed right now. Trust me, I’d know if I was.”
“Get back to the hotel, Wade.”
“After I get snacks. And maybe another hot dog.”
“Wade.”
“Food first, fight later, bye.”
Wade ended the call, and Patrick swore. “Fucking teenagers.”
Patrick shoved his worry aside, knowing Wade could fend for himself these days. Patrick and Jono had made sure he could. That didn’t stop Patrick from wishing Wade would listen.
He didn’t know what was more annoying that morning: an uncooperative teenager or the werecreatures who kept following him around Chicago. When Patrick finally made it back to the hotel room for a late lunch and found Wade on the bed, surrounded by an overabundance of chips, candy, crackers, and other snacks, he decided it was teenagers.
Wade shoved a handful of goldfish crackers into his mouth. “I’m not sharing.”
Patrick rolled his eyes.
Definitely teenagers.
4
Jono parked the Mustang in front of a cluster of red-bricked residential buildings in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Midwood. It was a couple blocks from the Q stop, but it was late enough and cold enough that Jono had opted to drive rather than take the subway.
Leon opened the passenger-side door and took a deep breath. “I don’t smell anything out of the ordinary.”
Jono finished texting Patrick an update before he got out of the car. He breathed in and got a lungful of icy winter air, the wind smelling like snow and the metal-and-smoke scent that permeated the New Rebels pack territory. Beneath it was the usual mix of urban street smells, but Leon was right. Jono couldn’t smell any trace of Estelle and Youssef’s New York City god pack.
“It doesn’t mean they won’t show up,” Jono said.
The door leading to the closest apartment building was pushed open and a man almost as tall as Jono stepped out. He was lankier though, with a friendly smile on his face.
“Thanks for coming out,” Austin Capaldi said, sounding relieved as he approached the pair.
“That’s what I’m here for, mate,” Jono replied as he and Leon stepped onto the sidewalk.
Austin came to a stop in front of Jono and tilted his head to the side, showing throat in an act of submission that always looked easy for him when it was Jono standing in front of him. Jono had seen Austin show throat to Estelle and Youssef in the past, and it always looked like the DMZ between North and South Korea in physical form.
Austin’s pack had come to them in early January, looking to switch alliances and ready to argue their case if Jono had any doubts. Not that there’d been any. Austin and his beta had come to Tempest one night, introduced his pack, managed to get two sentences into his request for protection before Jono had agreed to take them on.
With fifteen werewolves in their pack, all of whom called Brooklyn home within three blocks of where they stood, the New Rebels might have been small in numbers, but they made up for it in connections. Austin originally hailed from Los Angeles and had followed his wife to New York City for her medical residency. He’d left behind his old pack whose alpha had been married to a member of the Los Angeles god pack.
That two-hundred-member god pack was the largest in the United States, young in terms of years active, but not without power. Bringing Austin’s pack into Jono’s circle of protection meant they had an avenue of communication with the Los Angeles god pack, something Estelle and Youssef lacked.
Most god packs tended to honor pass-through
