Page 25

HUNTER

T here was a brand new electric car parked in front of the Bear’s Den, looking very out of place among the pickups and beat-up Subarus.

Hunter frowned at the temporary plates, and texted the number to Baxter to look up. Often, if something didn’t belong, there was a reason for it.

It was early, but it was also a Saturday, and there were more people at the bar than Hunter expected.

Most of them were already drinking. He scanned and immediately saw a familiar face: Feather, the woman from his first night in the bar.

She was the type who would buy an electric car thinking it was more environmental.

She was also wearing a brand new North Face jacket over her torn jeans.

A vehement hippy rolling in unexplained sudden money?

Hunter didn’t need instinct to tell him something suspicious was afoot here. From across the room, he glared at the man at the bar next to her until he got uncomfortable and left, then casually took his stool, ignoring Feather to order a beer for himself.

Feather looked up at him cautiously as he sat. She was drinking something in a tall soda glass and smelled faintly of weed and new car. She was also a shifter.

“Aren’t you one of the guys working the Carthridge project?” she said suspiciously.

“Quit,” Hunter said shortly. It was technically true. Trixie never had officially hired him back.

Feather raised her glass to him. “Good,” she said. “That project deserves to burn.”

Burn our mate? Hunter’s bear said in outrage.

Hunter tried to evaluate her statement around his snarl of anger. Did she only mean it rhetorically, or was she truly planning to escalate to arson?

“Nice car,” he growled, testing his theory. Shame if something happened to it.

“ Zero emissions,” Feather preened.

Hunter figured it probably wouldn’t do any good to point out that the power plant making the electricity it ran on made plenty of emissions for her. He hadn’t seen a lot of turbines or solar arrays here.

“I hear you got some alternate opportunities,” Hunter said, glaring at his beer without drinking it.

Feather looked nervously at the bartender, who was at the far end of the bar glaring at a sports game on the television. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Let’s just say… I’m in the business.” Hunter suddenly hoped that she wasn’t dealing drugs; there were other ways to get shady money. But his bear, more attuned to instinct than he was, seemed to think that they’d found the cause of Trixie’s woes.

Feather’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t say.”

“I’d like to meet your contact,” Hunter said boldly.

“Oh, I haven’t met him,” Feather blurted. “I mean… ah… I don’t know what you’re talking about. ”

She was really bad at this, and Hunter was really good. “You tell me who he is and how to get in touch, and I’ll pay you twice what he is,” Hunter said firmly.

Greed bloomed in Feather’s eyes. “Yeah. I mean. Sure. His name is Jay. I can give you his number.”

Jay.

Like Trixie’s slacker partner Jay .

All the pieces fell into place at last. Jay had been trying to buy Trixie’s share of the business out.

Maybe he thought that money was better served trying to drive her out of it.

Feather was an easy target, poor, young, and outspoken, and she already had an established vendetta that played right into Jay’s hands.

And Jay was supposed to be showing up that afternoon to work for Trixie.

Hunter shoved back his stool and threw a twenty on the bar. “I’ll be in touch,” he snarled at Feather.

To his dismay, Noah was pulling up at the bar, which meant he wasn’t at the worksite with Trixie. Another truck was right behind him with Sam and Dylan, their antipathy apparently set aside.

“You missed the big finish!” Noah called. “Got the roof up! Made the cut! Smell that snow? It can come now!”

“Don’t taunt the universe,” Sam warned him.

“Where’s Trixie?”

“Back at the site,” Dylan said with a shrug, getting out of his truck. “Her partner Jay is there swinging his dick around and taking credit for everything. She said she’d take us out to dinner on Monday to celebrate.”

Hunter was already pulling himself up into the cab of his truck, swearing.