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Then Raj turned to me. “Do you got this?” he asked, the tone of the question much kinder than what he’d used on Hart.

I blew out a breath. “No idea,” I answered honestly. “But I’m going to try.”

Raj looked skeptical. I couldn’t say that I blamed him. I’m a CSI tech, not an actor.

“At least he gets all weird every time he talks about El being dead,” Hard muttered.

Raj rolled his eyes. “It’s weird that you don’t get weird,” he replied, and the lightness—comparatively, anyway—of his tone told me that whatever hostility there had been between the tiger shifter and the elf had already passed.

Probably a good sign about their working relationship.

What it meant for the rest of us remained to be seen.

“Don’t be jealous that I know how to compartmentalize,” Hart retorted. “Instead of making kitten-eyes at?—”

“Shut up, Keebler.”

It was hard to tell with his dark skin, but I thought Raj might have been blushing.

But then we hit the doors of the Sheriff’s Office, and all teasing had to stop.

“Is there a particular reason you won’t show us the body?” Raj asked, emphasizing a slight southern accent that didn’t sound Virginian to me. Maryland, maybe?

We were back in Deputy Sheriff Cabell’s office, and Cabell was about as happy to see us as we were to see him—in other words, not much.

The Sheriff himself was, yet again, absent.

We’d been given no more explanation today about his absence than we’d been given the last time we were here two days ago.

Only two days.

Five days since Elliot had been driven off the road. Four since I’d been able to breathe again. Fourteen since Humbolt had called me. Fifteen since my mother’s murder. Just over two weeks.

It felt like a goddamn lifetime.

I wondered if I was even the same person I’d been when we’d left Shawano.

If I’d just be able to go right back to working for the Shawano County Sheriff’s Department as though nothing had happened.

As though I’d not had to rethink my entire existence, nearly lose the love of my life, had to watch my brother sit in jail.

Do you go back to your regular life after that?

I didn’t have much experience carrying on after major life-changing experiences.

When Noah got Arcana, we’d run away from home and completely rebuilt our lives.

When I’d gotten it, I’d ended up halfway across the country in the arms of a lover I wasn’t supposed to have feelings for—but did.

Not that circumstances hadn’t improved both times—they definitely had—but did I really want to start all over again now? Would I have to?

I reminded myself, again , that it had only been two weeks. Two absolutely horrible and insane weeks, but still only two. You didn’t get over things that fast.

Especially not if the circumstances surrounding them hadn’t actually been resolved. Were still unfolding, in fact.

“My understanding,” Cabell was saying, “is that the body is…” He paused, then glanced over at me.

I tried to look suitably upset. “Traumatized,” he finished, his cheeks going blotchy from the stress of trying to think of some politic way of saying damaged beyond recognition that wouldn’t be wildly inappropriate to say to the victim’s boyfriend.

“So then dental,” Hart put in. “DNA if you’re telling me his teeth melted .”

I almost opened my mouth to say that teeth wouldn’t melt in a fire fueled by the gasoline in a car’s engine, but decided against it.

That was probably the point Hart had been making.

Even a hot car fire that reached 1650 degrees Fahrenheit wouldn’t melt teeth—damage them, sure, but not melt them.

And even then, there was usually available particulate evidence that could be extracted.

And given what I knew about my car, it wasn’t likely to hit that temperature.

Which meant that as… badly damaged as a body burned inside it would be, odds were in favor of teeth that were intact enough to check dental work.

And even if they couldn’t do a dental match, there would definitely be enough left to do a DNA test.

Cabell stared at Hart.

“Did you attempt to confirm identity using dental records?” Raj asked Cabell.

“I—That decision is the purview of the investigating officer,” he finished.

It was a lame, bullshit excuse, and everyone in the room knew it.

“So you have no idea why you won’t show us the body, no idea whether dental or DNA has been run, and no idea when or if the body will be released?” Raj asked, and Cabell’s face went blotchy again.

“What was the name of the IO, again?” Hart asked casually, examining the fingernails on one hand, as though he didn’t know the answer.

Cabell didn’t answer, exactly. Instead he got up, walked to the door, opened it, took a step outside, and bellowed “Mosby!” as loudly as he could.

I exchanged a look with Hart.

This was about to get interesting.

Cabell waited until Mosby had crossed the bullpen, then pointed into his office, following behind and nearly running into the other man when Mosby froze, staring at Raj.

Raj’s lip curled, just slightly, then went back to where it had come from, closed over his teeth and pressed together in a grim, serious line.

Mosby’s narrow eyes were fixed on Raj’s warm brown features, and the bigger tiger shifter stared back, unblinking, a predator assessing, and then dismissing, another animal as inconsequential. Neither prey nor a threat.

When Cabell spoke again, it was clear Mosby had completely forgotten about his boss in the less-than-five-seconds since he’d walked through the door.

I suppressed a smirk.

Hart didn’t even bother trying.

“Where’d you send the bod—” Cabell stopped, cleared his throat, and started again. “Where are Mr. Crane’s remains being kept?”

Mosby turned away from Raj, his shoulders tense. “They’re not identifiable,” he answered.

“I didn’t ask you if they were identifiable ,” Cabell all but growled. “I asked you where the he—where they were.” Cabell shot a sidelong glance over at me, as though I would be offended if he used anything even borderline profane, despite the fact that Hart had, as usual, been cursing up a storm.

Mosby shot a look in my direction. “Ah, sir, I don’t think it’s, uh, appropriate?—”

“Where the hell’s the body, Mosby?” Cabell snapped.

Mosby swallowed, his sunburned skin going pale under the pink.

“Oh, I don’t think he knows, do you, Mosby?” Hart drawled.

Both Mosby and Cabell turned to stare at him.

“The hell do you mean?” Cabell demanded.

“I mean,” Hart replied, ignoring the shut up look Raj was giving him. “That Mosby here has no idea where the body is, because running the car off the road wasn’t his idea, now, was it, Mosby?”

Mosby’s nervousness was starting to look worried.

“What are you getting at, Hart?” Raj demanded, and there was a definite note of warning in his tone. This had not been the plan.

“Well, see, I’ve got a theory,” Hart replied, looking very much like he was enjoying himself. “And that theory is that Mosby here isn’t responsible for jack shit.”

Cabell and Mosby were both gaping at him. I tried to look suitably concerned, as I would have been if I hadn’t known what Hart was talking about. Not that anyone was paying any attention to me.

“Not to say that he didn’t drive Elliot Crane off the highway, because you did, didn’t you, Mosby?

” Hart leveled his lavender stare at Mosby, who shot a panicked look over at his boss, then at Raj, then back to Hart, although he didn’t answer.

“Probably smart of you not to confirm that out loud,” Hart remarked.

“But hear me out. Mosby here drove the car off the road, then set it on fire—what did you use, Mosby? Molotov? Matches? Flamethrower?”

The idea that he’d been carrying around a flame thrower was completely ridiculous, and we all knew it.

Mosby opened his mouth, realized how utterly stupid it would be to say anything, and then shut it again.

“I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” Hart assured him. “After all, Mays here has arson investigation training.”

Both Mosby and Cabell turned to stare at me.

“Is there anything you don’t investigate?” Cabell blurted.

I blinked. “I don’t investigate anything,” I replied calmly. “I gather and interpret evidence, including for arson investigations.”

“And car crashes.”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?” Cabell asked grumpily.

“Anything I get called to,” I replied, trying not to be a complete asshole.

Hart had no such reservations. “Including homicide, domestic violence, robbery, kidnapping, animal cruelty, drowning, drug paraphernalia…”

“So anything,” Cabell grumbled, but the glance he shot my way had grudging respect.

“I don’t do cyber or forensic accounting,” I replied. “I’m a biochemist.”

Cabell studied me. “Assuming it weren’t wildly inappropriate, if I let you look over the vehicle, you’d be able to tell me how the fire started?”

I nodded. “I would.”

Cabell turned his gaze on Mosby again, and it was both angry and disdainful. “Give me one reason other than the obvious one why I shouldn’t,” he demanded.

Mosby was an almost alarming shade of grey under his sunburn. And he didn’t answer.

“For shit’s sake, Mosby. What happened out there?”

Mosby shut his mouth, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

And then I realized that it wasn’t a muscle—or, rather, it wasn’t twitching, it was shifting .

“Shift!” Raj got it out a second before I could.

Hart grabbed Cabell and shoved him against the wall at the same second, pushing the Deputy Sheriff behind him and placing his body between Cabell and a very angry wolf.

Adrenaline surged, but I understood that shifting would probably not significantly improve my survival odds—wolf or man, my left leg was useless. And the pain of shifting would render the rest of me just as useless.

I wrapped one hand around the metal bar of one crutch. I might not be able to walk, but I’d built up enough muscle that I knew I could do some damage with it if I had to.

But I was relying on something else.

The fact that Rajesh Parikh was much bigger and meaner than either me or Mosby, wolf or no wolf.

Tigers, for the record, are huge . Tiger shifters are huge-er.

There wasn’t even a fight, although several things, including me, ended up overturned on the floor.

Mosby lunged at Cabell and Hart, and Raj leaped out and flattened him with one gigantic paw, then closed massive jaws around Mosby’s throat.

The wolf immediately froze, whining.

“Good choice, dumbfuck,” Hart remarked, his tone completely casual, although it did not escape me that his gun was pointed at Mosby’s now-furry forehead.

“Holy shit,” was Cabell’s only comment.

Raj bared his teeth in a low growl.

“That, shithead, means that your pathetic ass is under arrest for attempting to assault a federal officer. Also your boss. Also Mays here. Oh, and the attempted murder of Elliot Crane.” He paused. “Anybody else I need to add to that list?”