Della gave one. One word. “Ghost.”
* * *
Della stood outside the door gathering her courage and pulling the elastic band of her big-girl panties up. She’d asked for this, now she had to come through.
Even with the core temperature of a vampire, she felt little pin-sized drops of sweat appear on her brow. Nerves. Nothing but nerves.
What if she was wrong? What if she’d only imagined the smell of were? What if the kid didn’t know crap? What if she failed? Both Burnett and Chase were watching back in the room with the glass wall.
Lordy! What had inspired her to do this?
Find Natasha.
Oh, yeah, that was what. The voice. The ghost.
Stiffening her spine, remembering Natasha and Liam’s lives were on the line, then cramming any sign of insecurity deep inside, she opened the door.
Remembering how Burnett’s presence had filled the room, she stepped inside. She didn’t immediately look at the vamp.
“They sent you in?” he asked in a condescending voice.
She crossed her arms and finally looked at him. “It’s because of what I know.”
“What do you know?” he asked, his brown eyes not showing the same fear as they did with Burnett.
She swallowed a lump of doubt. She considered picking him up and slamming him against a wall. But she suspected Burnett wouldn’t respect that.
“Cat got your tongue?” he asked, almost smiling.
Failure loomed right ahead, but she wasn’t going down without a fight.
She pulled out the chair across from him, letting it screech across the tile floor, and dropped down into the seat. “I know that you were about to vague up the truth when answering the agent.”
“You know that, huh?” He smirked.
She wanted to smack him. “Yeah, you weren’t planning on telling him about the weres.”
The look in his brown eyes told Della she was going to be able to walk out of here with her head held high.
“You don’t understand…” He paused, then added, “Shit!”
“Give me the names now and you’ll be placed in the best facility.”
He actually seemed to cringe. “I think I’d rather take my chances at the bad prison.”
“Really?” She leaned in, purposely getting into his space, hoping to push him to talk. “’Cause I’m imagining about half the convicts in Parkrow are werewolves. And from gangs,” she added, hoping like hell the weres he feared were wrapped up in a gang. “And you know we’re going to find answers and they’ll assume you were the snitch.”
He jumped up, grabbed the chair with his chained hands, and tossed it against the wall. It clattered against the floor a few inches from where she stood. It wasn’t so much an attack on her, as an expression of fury.
Della held out one hand to the wall where she knew Burnett and Chase watched, hoping they’d realize she was asking them not to come in. Getting the rogue angry was part of her plan.
She went over, carefully picked up his chair, and dropped it back down by the table. “Sit down!” she ordered, and when she stared him in the eyes, she was reminded how young he was. Being young didn’t excuse his behavior, but she again felt fortunate that she’d had her cousin to help her through the turn, then Shadow Falls to keep her grounded. Had this guy had anyone?
When he didn’t immediately respond, she tried another tactic. “Look, I know you’re pissed. And you’re probably scared. But tell us what we need to know, and I’m thinking the FRU will make sure you stay alive long enough to make something out of your life.”
He practically flung himself into the chair. His pride looked chipped, he looked … desperate. She knew that feeling too well.
“I … don’t know much. I saw a group of weres with that kid. I think his name was Liam. Marco was going to try to recruit him when we spotted the weres with him. He backed away really quick like. He said the weres were bad ass, said they collected fresh turns and it wasn’t worth fighting for him.”
“What’s the name of the gang?” Della asked.
When he didn’t answer, Della banged her hand on the table.
“I don’t know. He didn’t say the name of the gang. I’m not even sure they are a gang.” He paused a minute. “He said the name of one of the weres though. A Damian Baker, or maybe Bryan, a B name. That’s all I know.”
Della believed him. She started to leave, but then remembered getting the familiar trace of a were at the restaurant.
“Does Damian or one of his friends hang out at Buck’s Burgers?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I guess they could.”
“What did the weres look like?”
“Like all weres—dirty dogs.”
Without warning, she got this empty-pit feeling in her stomach. Hunger to the point of pain, and she knew it came from Natasha.
“I’m going to need more than that!” she said, and her hollow-feeling gut said she was going to need it quick if she was going to find Natasha and Liam alive.
* * *
Burnett interrogated the other rogues using the info Della had gotten from Jason Von. He ended up getting more info. The name of the were seen kidnapping Liam was Damian Bond. Burnett was going to run the name through the FRU’s computer database to see if they came up with anything.
Before they left the FRU office, Burnett called her aside and told her how well she’d done in the interrogation. Yet even now, still whirling in the feeling that Natasha and Liam were running out of time, Della couldn’t bask in the compliment.
In spite of Burnett’s orders to go straight home, she and Chase had gone by Uck’s Burgers. At almost one in the morning, it was closed, most of the businesses were, and they sat in the parking lot, top down. No weres were in the area that they could smell. It was quiet, and they shifted their seats back just bit, comfortable in the night and the silence, and just watched the stars.
“I see the little dipper,” Chase said.
“Yeah. I just spotted it.”
“My mom was a stargazer,” Chase said. “Sometimes, at night, she’d bring our sleeping bags out, and we’d just lay out there and stare up at the sky.”
“That sounds nice,” Della said, and glanced at him. “Do you still miss them?”
“Yeah, but it’s not as bad as it was.”
After another ten minutes, with thoughts of pissing off Burnett, she told him they should go.