She shrugged. “I’m going to take care of my other patients now.”
Meg. He had taken a step toward the medical office when Vlad called him. He hesitated, but Jane knew about not licking Meg’s blood and she knew how to care for Sam. And Theral and Jenni were inside to help as well. So Emily Faire didn’t need anyone else crowding the office.
He walked over to where Vlad and Henry stood next to Starr Crowgard. Henry pointed to the words chalked on the pavement.
White car. Man. Pain face. Bullet. Numbers and letters that Simon realized must be a license plate.
Those images were the answer, but what had been the question?
“The police pack is dealing with that Cyrus and his pup,” Henry said.
“Shall I call Captain Burke?” Vlad asked.
Simon nodded. “And we’ll show this to Agent O’Sullivan as well.”
? ? ?
Burke swore under his breath when he saw Agent O’Sullivan waiting for him outside the consulate. “I heard about the fight. A tempest in a teapot.”
“If Cyrus Montgomery gets his hands on a weapon, it will become a lot more than that,” O’Sullivan said, reaching for the door.
Burke shot out a hand, stopping the other man. “What do you know that I didn’t hear?” Had Monty downplayed the severity of the collision between Sam Wolfgard and Clarence Montgomery? Or was Monty, caught between loyalties, unwilling to consider the worst about his brother?
“I think Cyrus is a bully who uses charm or belligerence to get what he wants, depending on the situation. I had the impression that he thinks shoplifting is an insignificant act when his children do it, and he becomes resentful when they’re caught and held accountable. Seeing Sam Wolfgard in a form that wasn’t completely human freaked him out, and he’ll use ‘he’s not human’ as a justification for any harm he does to the youngster—or anyone else in the Courtyard.” O’Sullivan hesitated. “I didn’t see anything, but there was something in the Market Square that seriously spooked Simon Wolfgard and the rest of the shifters.”
Elders. Gods above and below. “Anything else?”
“I don’t know if he understood the significance of her bleeding, but Cyrus did see Meg.”
Not a cut with a razor, but that didn’t make any difference for a blood prophet. If they were all lucky, Cyrus wouldn’t have noticed the evenly spaced scars. But he didn’t think they were going to be that lucky.
O’Sullivan opened the door. “None of which is what Simon wants to talk to us about.”
When they walked into the consulate’s meeting room, Simon didn’t give him a chance to say anything about the altercation or inquire about Meg and Sam. He held out a piece of paper.
Burke looked at the words and sucked in a breath.
Simon touched the paper. “Meg said she saw Sam get hit and thought about needing a doctor. When she was hit and her lip split, she saw this.”
“Dominic Lorenzo drives a white car,” Burke said. “I don’t remember the license plate, but that information is easy enough to find.”
“The doctor was supposed to spend some time in our medical office every week, but he hasn’t been here in a while,” Simon said. “That’s why we hired Emily Faire to be the human bodywalker in the Courtyard.”
“Isn’t Dr. Lorenzo part of the task force that was checking on the blood prophets?” O’Sullivan asked.
“He is,” Burke replied. And the last time I saw him, he’d expressed concern that members of the Humans First and Last movement might waylay him on a stretch of empty road and interrogate him for the hidden locations of the blood prophets. The Others put an end to the HFL movement, but greed could motivate men as much as a political agenda, and those girls could make some men very powerful and very rich.
An uncomfortable beat of silence before O’Sullivan said, “I’ll call the governor’s office and make some inquiries, see if they’ve heard from Dr. Lorenzo recently.”
“And I’ll do what I can to locate him.” Burke folded the paper and put it in his pocket. Since prophecy was about the future, maybe they could find Lorenzo in time to stop the pain and the bullet. Maybe Steve Ferryman could help with that, since most of the girls who had been freed from the compounds were hiding in Intuit communities. “Are your nephew and Ms. Corbyn all right?” he asked Simon.
“They will be.” Simon pulled another piece of paper out of the back pocket of his jeans and handed it to Burke.
“Ravendell on Senneca Lake? What’s this?” Senneca was one of the Finger Lakes, but he wasn’t familiar with Ravendell.
“That’s where the Sierra and her pups are now,” Simon replied. “Ravendell is a human village within settled terra indigene land.”
Not land leased and under human control, which meant there were no boundaries, no delineation between what was human and what was Other.
“Not on the rail line from Lakeside to Hubb NE,” O’Sullivan commented. “Is it on a bus route?”
“Not on a route between human cities,” Simon replied. “There is a bus that travels around the lake. It is considered local, the way the buses in Lakeside are local. Lieutenant Montgomery thought it safer for the Sierra if he and Miss Twyla didn’t know where to find her, but I thought you should know this much.”
“I will be officially relocating to Lakeside, but for now I still have a residence in Hubbney and try to get back there a couple of times each month,” O’Sullivan said. “I could find an excuse to visit the Senneca Lake area if anyone wanted to send something to Ms. Montgomery.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Burke said. With nothing left to communicate, O’Sullivan left, but Burke held back. “If Clarence was shoplifting, why didn’t the shopkeeper stop him?”
“The Hawk would have let him get outside, so he couldn’t claim he meant to pay.” Simon shrugged. “Like all the terra indigene, the Hawkgard are larger than ordinary hawks. Not large enough to lift a human child that size, but the talons would have done a lot of damage. That’s what would have happened, except Sam, and Meg, intervened.”
“Clarence was wearing a couple of rings—a kid’s version of brass knuckles. He could have caused some serious hurt on another child.”
“Sam had one cut that bled.” Simon smiled dryly. “A few months ago, I would have licked the cut clean and that would have been that. Today, Sam’s cut cheek and Meg’s split lip justify coming to the Market Square after dinner for ice cream, followed by a Wolf Team movie marathon.”
“I’m surprised Sam and Meg didn’t campaign to have ice cream for dinner as well as dessert,” Burke said.
“They did. But Katherine Debany put on her mother hat and said ice cream wasn’t enough for dinner and recommended scrambled eggs because they would be soft to eat. Everyone in the female pack is bringing an egg to A Little Bite for me to take home.”
Sounded like Simon was still trying to figure out the pack status of Officer Debany’s mother. Fortunately the Wolf didn’t ask for a description of a mother hat. “Could be worse.”