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“I’m sorry you dealt with that kind of pressure. I can make you a promise, though.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“You’ll never be lonely again. In fact, this might be some of the only alone time we get.”
I kind of loved that. I was an only child, and my immediate family was small. My cousins were either a lot older or a lot younger than me, so I’d never really had a lot of people around. Even though I’d only known Nero and his family for a couple of days, I liked his brothers. They were quirky and interesting, and Julius and I got along really well. “Are you always going to live with your brothers?”
Nero nodded. “And their mates and kids should they choose to start families of their own.”
“Guess it’s a good thing your house is huge.”
He laughed. “Yeah, it’s an orca shifter thing. I told you before we usually live in matrilineal, multigenerational homes. Some of the larger pods have real multibuilding estates. My family is one of the largest in the Seattle area, but up near Vancouver and inAlaska, you can tell where the orcas live because the houses are huge and usually near the water. I’ll take you up there to visit someday.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. My grandmother will want to meet you.”
“Why doesn’t she live here?”
“She met my grandfather in Alaska. I think she feels closer to him there. He died not long after my father was born, so I never met him, but she used to talk about him all the time, and she would talk to him like he was still around.” I raised my eyebrows, and Nero gave me a sort of sad half-smile. “It’s another orca thing. We believe the spirits of our fated mates stay with us even if our mates die. My grandparents were fated, and I know it sounds crazy, but she would have conversations with him. I used to listen outside her door every night as she told him about her day and the stupid things we’d done. After she retired from the University of Puget Sound, she moved north. We were all grown, so it made sense. She comes back for a month or two in the winter, and when she retires from teaching altogether, she’ll probably come back full-time.”
“Sea otter shifters are kind of the same, though we don’t live with our extended families, just near them.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Yeah, both sets of my grandparents lived down the street, and lots of my aunts and uncles lived within a five-mile radius.”
“Do you still see them often?” Nero asked.
“No. My grandparents died when I was younger, and my aunts and uncles moved away after their children found mates and started families.”
“Interesting.”
We talked for a while longer, hitting on some of our favorite things. I learned we both liked ice cream more than cake, Nero’sfavorite color was—unsurprisingly—black, and his favorite food was anything Cal didn’t cook.
“Is it really that bad?” I asked.
“Worse.”
There was movement outside near our skip’s house, and Nero turned to check it out. He let go of my hand, and I hated losing the contact. A lady was walking her dog, and the pup had wandered up the driveway. “Not our guy.”
We’d been staking out his house for almost two hours, and there had been no sign of him, though he should have gotten home from work already. “Do you want me to check and see if he’s even in town?”
“How?”
I reached down and picked up the matte-black laptop Julius had given me, my fingers itching to do something productive. “A few quick keystrokes and I’ll be able to tell you the last place he used a credit card.”
My mate’s eyes widened. “Yeah, okay, give it a try.”
Flipping open the laptop, I entered the password and encryption key Julius had given me and started digging in. Ten minutes later, we had learned our guy, who had originally been arrested for carrying a concealed weapon—a real samurai sword he’d bought at a comic convention—in his car after getting pulled over for speeding, had been in Japan, presumably on business because his flights had been booked through the company he worked for, for the last two weeks.
“Well, that explains why he missed his court date.”
“Yep. He’s going to have a mess to sort out when he gets back.”
“No doubt.” We still had a few files, and I nodded to the pile I’d set on the dash. “Should we try another one?”
Nero shook his head. “I know I should probably take you back to the house, but can I take you out instead?”
