Sissy held up the spoon for him again, but Mitch didn’t open his mouth. He only stared at her.

“What?”

“Why does it matter that the Feds can tap phone lines?”

“You ask a lot of questions for someone who can barely keep his eyes open. Come on. One more spoonful, and then you can get some sleep.”

He let her feed him the soup even while he watched her.

“What about your Pack?” he asked after swallowing.

“They’re in New York. They’ll watch out for Bren and Marissa, so don’t worry about that.”

Mitch smiled. “Will Marissa know?”

“Of course not.”

“I guess she’s probably handling this well.”

“You’d be wrong. It really…” She couldn’t get the memory of Marissa’s tear-stained face out of her mind. “It tore her up, Mitch.”

“See, Sissy, when you lie to me, you strain the love and trust we’ve built.”

“Don’t believe me. But I know what I saw, and I know Ronnie looked freaked out because she had to calm Marissa down. She was crying. But don’t believe me.”

“I won’t. Although I appreciate you trying.”

She put the empty bowl on the tray and helped Mitch to settle back down on the bed.

“Sissy…”

She finished tucking in the sheet and looked at Mitch. “What, darlin’?”

“I know this can’t be easy for you…bringing me here. How much trouble will this get you into?”

Sissy gave her cheeriest smile. The one she used when she didn’t want her father to know she’d just shoved some boy out her bedroom window moments before Daddy had walked in. Her momma never bought it, but Daddy usually did. She’d never used it on Mitch before.

“Not a bit of trouble, darlin’. Don’t you worry.” She picked up the tray and headed toward the door before her smile could slip.

As she used one hand to hold the tray up and the other to close the bedroom door, she heard Mitch mutter, “That has to be the fakest smile on the planet, Sissy Mae.”

Chapter 5

Desiree MacDermot-Llewellyn watched her new partner sniff a tree. If she lifts her leg, I’m leaving. Wait. She was feline. That meant lifting her tail and…

Dez shuddered.

She still wasn’t quite sure how this all happened. She’d gone into work like she did every Monday morning only to find everything had changed. Absolutely everything.

She now had a new partner and was part of a new…unit? Actually, the unit had been around when most cops were still Irish and really did walk a beat because there were no cars. But the unit was new to her.

She knew there were things Mace hadn’t bothered to tell her. Not because he was hiding anything, but he didn’t think about it. Some things simply neveroccurred to her husband.

Telling her that the NYPD had its own shifter unit had apparently never occurred to the man. They were based out of Brooklyn—and true, she wouldn’t mind the convenience of not battling into Manhattan every day—and had their own foot patrol, detectives, and SWAT Unit. All of them had been cops in other precincts, and about ninety-five percent were shifters. All kinds of breeds. But five percent were like her. Full-humans who had a link to the shifters, which made them…safe.

For Dez, what made her safe was her son.

He was too precious to her, too important for her to ever risk him.

Especially when she already had so much to worry about when it came to her boy. Just the other day, they had to change out his crib because he’d punched through the wood slats. Once he had done that, he had grabbed hold of the broken pieces of wood and yanked until he’d made himself a nice hole. If the dogs hadn’t barked like the house was on fire, he would have tumbled out headfirst.

But because they knew how important her son was to her, the shifters felt they could trust her to protect them all. When she’d called Mace, he’d sounded part impressed and part worried. The cases this unit took on could be more dangerous in some instances and safer in others. But to get in, even for a shifter, was a big deal. It was an important unit, and silence was mandatory.

And her first case…Mitch’s attempted murder. The attempted murder no one else in the NYPD knew about.

“No one was here.”

Dez turned to face her new partner. Her name was Ellie Souza, out of the Bronx PD. She was strikingly beautiful and freaky tall. But it was those light gold eyes that Dez found most disarming. Mace’s always seemed like melted gold; this chick’s were a stark light gold that did nothing but make Dez feel she never wanted to meet this woman in a dark alley. Apparently, she was jaguar, the product of a full-human West Indian mother and a shifter Brazilian father. She didn’t say much, which Dez appreciated, but she did have a tendency to stare.

And that stare wigged Dez out.

Dez again gauged the distance from this tree to Mitch’s room. “It had to be here. Look at the distance.”

Souza said nothing, simply turned and walked away. Dez followed, annoyed she felt compelled. But this woman had a way about her. Dez wondered how Souza’s other full-human partners had dealt with her before she’d gotten moved to this unit. This unit with no name and no official record? Hell, at least Dez knew what Souza was. Had a handle on what to expect based on breed. She did wish, though, that they’d hooked her up with a wolf instead. She was a total dog person.

Suddenly, Souza’s head swung, and she sniffed the air. Her head moved as she searched for the scent. It reminded Dez of when she hid treats around the house and sent her dogs off to find them.