In the wild, some animals puff themselves up to seem bigger, I thought. It was a defense mechanism, an attempt to fake strength. The sheriff was posturing.

I didn’t particularly care why.

“You don’t know me,” I said. I had a tendency to fall on the wrong side of the line between looking at someone and staring them down. At the moment, I didn’t fight it. “You don’t get to talk about my judgment—or Cady’s.”

Despite his best efforts not to, the sheriff looked away first.

“Do you know how Gabriel Cortez came to work for your grandfather?” The question was aimed at a spot just over my left shoulder. “Bales Bennett trains animals—for law enforcement, personal security, general obedience. But for the past few years, his pet project has been a pilot program that uses juvenile delinquents to train service animals.”

Service animals, as in Seeing Eye dogs, I thought, remembering the litter of rough-and-tumble golden retriever puppies. And juvenile delinquents, I continued silently, as in Gabriel.

“Why don’t you ask Bales where he met Gabriel?” The sheriff took a generous step back and smiled in a way that made me wish he’d taken two. “Better yet, ask Bales why he trusts a kid who went to juvie for kidnapping and assault.”

Chapter 24

Some words got a visceral reaction out of me. Hunt. Threat. Hunger. Blood. But kidnapping and assault were different. They didn’t hit me the way they might have hit Jude or Free. I didn’t recoil.

I thought.

I remembered Gabriel helping me find Saskia, the wounds I’d left in his arm, and the expression on his face when he’d shrugged them off.

When the sheriff made his exit, Jude and Free descended on me, but Silver was the one who gave me a piece of her mind: a high-pitched whine in the back of her throat, followed by a five-point check: hand, hand, knee, knee, stomach. She wasn’t quite as gentle as she could have been.

“Somebody’s in trouble,” Free said tartly.

I’d allowed the sheriff to take me aside. I’d put myself in a vulnerable position, then chosen to let some fraction of my animal instincts out. Free probably wasn’t any happier about that than Silver was.

“The sheriff said that Gabriel has a juvie record.” I stuck to the bare-bones facts—and kept the words kidnapping and assault to myself.

“So he has a record.” Free shrugged. “If I wasn’t a blond-haired, light-eyed looker, so would I.”

The shopkeeper came out from behind the counter. “I’ve known Bradley Rawlins since he was a kid. His bark is worse than his bite. He’s a good sheriff, cares about the community, even coaches soccer at the local high school.”

“I’m sensing a but coming here,” Jude said hopefully.