Page 94 of Contested Crown

Earl scratched his arms, looking between us. He’d put on weight, the flesh on his bones turning to muscle, and his eyes were no longer sunken. Even his wolf smelled clean.

I dragged one of the other chairs closer, sitting in it.

“What do you want?” Earl said, raising his chin.

When I had first been tracking Tabitha, she had spent a lot of time with Earl. He was a wolf who had been kicked out of two packs because of his addiction to Reaper.

When high on it, he would challenge the alpha, when he was off the drug, he was the most mild-mannered person you could meet. I had felt just sorry enough for him that I let Tabitha get him on the antidote, kick his habit.

At the time, I had told myself I was only gathering information. I was seeing how she worked, how she turned perfectly good customers of Declan’s away from the product he offered.

In reality, it had been hard not to feel sorry for Earl. He’d been a customer long enough that I felt a certain obligation to him, the way you started to care for the stray cat in the neighborhood.

There was something pathetic about him that made it hard to be too hard on him.

“I want to know where Tabitha is,” I said.

Earl’s jaw clenched, his fists tightening and his shoulders going back. He started to stand, but I reached out, pressing on his shoulder until he settled back in his seat.

“No,” he said. “You can kill me or… whatever… But I’m not going to tell you anything about her.”

I narrowed my eyes at him before leaning back in my chair, crossing my arms. With Cade’s disguise still on, Earl didn’t recognize me. Even if Cade took it off, it wasn’t like Earl was going to trust me anymore. I had been the man behind the drug dealers, the one who knocked on his door if he didn’t pay on time.

“Declan has a hit out on her,” I said.

“And what? You’re offering me a cut if I tell you where she is?” Something glittered in the corner of his eye, and he clenched both hands on his knees. “No. I’m telling you no.”

“What is she to you? Your alpha?” I hadn’t seen her that way. None of the people she helped called her their alpha; she had told me that she didn’t want a pack.

Too much work, too much drama, her sweet voice echoed in my ears.

“N-no,” Earl stuttered, but the way his eyes cut from side to side meant that even if she wasn’t his alpha, there was something else there.

“Declan has a hit out on her, but I don’t like Declan, so I want to make sure that she sticks around long enough to do more good work.” I leaned forward. “Plus, I’m a wolf, I get it. We understand each other?”

Earl swallowed then. He glanced at Cade before dropping his eyes to his hands. They trembled in his lap, and he clasped them together.

“She doesn’t hang out here anymore, not after one of Declan’s bullies shooed her away. If you want to find her, try the Zoo.” He nodded sharply, then stood, the abruptness toppling the beach chair as he ran away.

“Does Los Santos have a zoo?” Cade asked, frowning.

“Kind of.” I stood, jerking my head. “Come on.”

We drove as close as we could before leaving the car. By the time I found a decent parking spot, shadows were beginning to grow long, and Cade’s stomach was rumbling regularly, hunger making him snappy and annoyed. I felt it in his magic as well, the pressure of the glamour he had cast on my skin faded in patches, revealing pieces of my real self underneath.

On our way to the Zoo, I stopped at a food truck, not one of the fancy ones with a wraparound paint job, ready for Instagram photos, but one of the white ones, the lettering chipped and faded as it advertised food for hungry people who worked in the factories and industrial areas of town.

Cade ate the massive burrito faster than me, consuming it so quickly that I gave him what was left of mine and went back for another two.

“Thank you,” he said, his tongue flicking out to lick at a red line of salsa that lingered in the corner of his lips. He frowned, looking around us. “This is where the zoo is?”

I jerked my head, still enjoying my own burrito as we began walking down the Los Santos River.

It wasn’t actually a river. Instead, it was a long concrete aqueduct carved into the city, dividing it into two halves. It emptied into the ocean, there to protect the city from flash floods and rainstorms. Occasionally, the water treatment plant would dump gallons of clean water in, but I had never seen the river as anything more than a trickle.

Sections of the riverbank had been converted into a walking path of varying degrees of safety depending on the area of town. The area we were in wasn’t the best, and if we kept walking, we were headed into the worst.

“So it’s not an actual zoo, is it?” Cade glared at me. “Is this what it felt like at House Bartlett when I provided you with less information than you wanted?”