“Thank you, sir,” Heath said, hurrying off towards the locker room.
Rollo continued into his office, sipping his coffee. As he sat down behind his desk, Damien walked into the room.
“I hope you have good news for me Damien.”
“I have the forensic results from my lab work, sir,” Damien said. “I’m afraid there isn’t much.”
Damien set the files on Rollo’s desk, and Rollo opened them as Damien took a seat across from him. Rollo flipped through the files, seeing that the human fingerprints they found throughout the room belonged to staff members and to Caitlin herself. He had also researched the attendance at the auction where Caitlin had purchased the Louis the Fifteenth chest.
One familiar name jumped out at him. It was Dimitri Ivanov, a notorious Russian Mafia boss. No one had ever been able to nab him because as soon as the law got close, Ivanov threw up a smokescreen. No one ever found any concrete evidence to put him away. Rollo read over the files on Ivanov, feeling for the first time that he had some kind of lead on this case.
“Have you done any further digging into Ivanov’s recent movements?” Rollo asked Damien.
“I’ve started tracing Ivanov. He has talented people working for him in the tech department so his movements are hard to trace. But I’m still working on it. There’s more information in the forensic files that you might find interesting,” Damien said, pulling out a fingerprint.
“This isn’t human. It’s a paw print,” Rollo said.
“It’s a large cat paw print. This was the one print found at the scene that didn’t belong to the staff or the homeowner. It’s possible that the thief was a shifter.”
“Maybe Ivanov has a shifter working for him.”
“It’s possible,” Damien said.
“Find out exactly what kind of animal this print belongs to.”
“I already ran a scan on the print, but it’s too damaged to narrow down exactly what species of large cat it is.”
“We have to work with what we’ve got. I want as much information as you can find on Ivanov and any shifters he may be associated with.”
“On it,” Damien said standing from his chair just as Heath walked into the office wearing his uniform.
“When do I get my gun?” Heath asked.
“Slow your roll, Cadet,” Rollo said. “You’re still in training. You don’t get a gun or a badge until your training is complete. Now, where the hell is Knox?”
“I just saw Knox at his desk,” Heath said.
“You’ll be with Knox today.”
“Deputy Knox already left with Detective Gauge,” Heath said, his voice cracking.
“Freaking Gauge,” Rollo grumbled to Damien. Damien shrugged, and Rollo focused on the new kid. “You’re with me today, Cadet. If you’re going to be on the Bear Patrol, you need to patrol with a bear.”
“Awesome. I can’t believe I get to go out on patrol with Commander Rollo Morris,” Heath said too enthusiastically. “What are we doing today, sir?”
“We’re going to visit Angus Grant.”
5
Zoe was nervous about her first day as Angus’s apprentice at his woodshop in town. As she got ready to go to work that morning, she felt an impending sense of doom hanging over her. It was like a heavy weight that was ready to fall at any moment.
She knew she never should have signed up for Mate.com. What had possessed her to do something so stupid? Willow’s prodding and prompting had gotten to her, and she had relented. In a moment of loneliness and weakness, Zoe had signed up for the stupid dating site, believing she too, for a brief moment, could have her own happily ever after. How could she have known that she would be immediately be matched with Fate Mountain’s chief of police?
She was in eight hundred thousand dollars of debt to a mob boss and she had stolen jewels under her bed. Rollo would see right through her. She had to avoid him at all costs. If she were smart, she would leave town right now and never come back.
But she had spent the last six months learning about woodworking and didn’t want to give up her newfound love. She had gone into carpentry for the sole intention of studying up on how to get into Caitlin Somerset’s Louis the Fifteenth chest.
Coming to the Bright Institute for Shifters had just been a cover in a long game heist. She had used the woodshop at the institute to study how the chest was put together. She had successfully broken into Caitlin Somerset’s Louis the Fifteenth chest while inside the mansion and had managed to steal a million dollars’ worth of jewels.