Collins locked the muscles on his jaw.

“No warrant?” Barabas smiled.

Tsoi was looking around the room, doing the math. Ten shapeshifters vs. four cops. Suddenly everyone’s face turned grim.

“All this would go away if you cooperated,” Collins said.

“We’re willing to cooperate, if we get full disclosure on the antique dealer case with access to evidence,” Jim said.

“Not happening,” Tsoi said.

“Your call.” Jim shrugged.

Collins turned and walked out.

“This isn’t over,” Tsoi said and left, the two uniforms in tow.

Nobody said anything until Sandra at the window announced, “They are getting into their cars.”

“I told you,” Jim said to Barabas. “I know Collins, he’s a reasonable man.”

Barabas sighed. “But I was looking forward to a fight.”

Suddenly things made sense: somehow Jim had discovered the cops were coming to pick me up, and he’d brought his posse over to keep them from taking me off.

“How did you know they were coming?” I asked Jim.

“I have my ways.”

“You bugged the PAD station.” Sonovabitch. If he got caught, there would be hell to pay.

Jim smiled without showing his teeth. “Something like that.”

“They are under heavy-duty pressure from above to solve the case,” Barabas said. “People with snake fangs made somebody in the mayor’s office really nervous. Almost makes me wonder if they know something that we don’t and they want to put a lid on this whole thing as fast as they can. The plan was to pick you up and sweat you a little for information. We can’t let them do that—you have things to do and there is no reason you should be wasting time in their interrogation room. Since your phone was out, we decided to show up before they did.”

“We take care of our own,” Lucrezia said.

But I wasn’t their own. Well, not officially. And yet they had come here to back me up. I looked from face to face and realized they would do it again and I would do the same. In their heads, I already belonged.

Wow.

For once in my life I didn’t have to hide who I was. They had my back and that was that.

Half an hour later everyone filed out of my apartment. Kyle took the computer with him. On the way out, Sandra stopped by me. “Aunt B wants a word. Today at ten at Highland Bakery. She said not to be late.”

The gentle paw of the Bouda alpha. “I’ll be there.”

Jim was the last to exit. He paused at the door. “I’ve got the legwork. My people will do the background and they’ll dig up whatever dirt Anapa has.”

“Aha.”