“Thank you.”

Blayne walked over to Livy’s desk. “What’s that box?”

Livy opened the box, looked inside, and said, “I think it’s my father.”

“Sorry?”

“This can’t be all of him, though. I’m guessing Mom has the rest.”

She put the top back on the box and turned to see Blayne staring at her with wide, wet eyes.

“Are you about to cry?” Livy asked.

“No. Of course not,” she sobbed.

Livy moved toward Blayne and the wolfdog opened her arms for a hug. Livy stepped in close so that she could put her hands on Blayne’s waist, but before those long wolfdog arms could wrap around her, Livy pushed Blayne right out of her office and closed the door in the wolfdog’s wet face.

She walked back to her desk and stared down at the box for several seconds. Didn’t seem like much, did it? After all humans went through to survive on this planet, when it was all said and done, you still ended up in some box on your bitter daughter’s desk. Didn’t really seem fair.

Picking up the box, she started to put it away in one of her many desk or file drawers, but at the last second, she couldn’t do it. After looking around, she finally placed her father by the art award she’d received when she’d lived in France for those two years after high school.

Livy smiled, though, as she settled down to work, because she couldn’t help but remember how much her father had always hated the French.

Vic found Livy’s uncle Balt in the kitchen drinking coffee and trying to recover from what looked to be a magnificent hangover.

“How did it go?” he asked, sitting at the table across from the older man.

“We have name,” Bart grumbled. “Lyle Bennett.”

“Good. I’ll start looking—”

“No. We had your giant panda friend track him down. He wanted to try nice way first, so I let him. But that did not work. So now my cousin and his sons are handling it.” Balt rubbed his forehead. “My cousin will do good job. He is smart, like me.”

“And as modest?”

Balt snorted. “Why be modest when you already know you are amazing?”

Since Vic didn’t know how to argue with that logic, he didn’t bother to try.

“Where is my little Olivia?” Balt asked.

“I dropped her off at work.”

“Good. She needs to work. It will get her mind off things.” Balt raised bloodshot eyes. “And you seem to be helping with that, as well, feline.”

“Actually I’m bear and feline.”

“Do not care.”

“Yeah,” Vic sighed. “Didn’t think you did.”

“My little Olivia is not like other girls, you know.”

“I know.”

“She is smart likeme. Devious like her mother. And short on patience like her father. But she is good girl. Has big heart. So you do not break that heart because you get bored like most felines.”

“I’m really more bear than—”

“Do not care.”

“Right. Forgot.”

“And just so there are no complaints later, if you two have baby—”

“Baby?”

“It will be honey badger.”

Vic paused in his panic over Balt assuming he and Livy would be having children to say, “Well, actually, any children we had would be a mix of—”

“No. There will be no mix. Just badger.”

“That might true be with full-humans.” A shifter with a full-human mate created shifter babies, and that was one of the many reasons why shifters were very careful about whom they settled down with to create a family. Because a full-human who couldn’t handle what their mates truly were definitely couldn’t handle the shifter offspring they would eventually have. “But shifters of different species or breeds create hybrids.”

“You mate with badger, feline, you will only get badger.”

“How is that possible?”

Balt shrugged. “I do not know. Maybe honey badger cells too mean to let others live. But you will need to prepare. Badger children start throwing things in anger before they can walk.”

“Balt, Livy and I aren’t really at the point where we’re considering children. Or anything else along those lines.”

“Maybe my little Olivia is not . . . but you are. I see it in your big, dumb cat eyes.”

“Well, that was unnecessarily mean.”

“So understand what you get into now rather than later, yes? So you do not complain. I hate when felines complain.”

“I’m really more bear than—”

“I still do not care, feline.”

“I know, I know. I guess I’m just so dumb I keep forgetting.”

CHAPTER 25

“Honey, are you okay?” Lyle Bennett’s much younger wife asked him once he’d turned off the car and his three kids had jumped out and run into their house.

“I’m fine,” he lied. “Just thinking about work.”

It had been hard not to panic and start making calls about the police showing up at his office today. But he knew better. They were probably tapping his phones, waiting for him to call, so they could not only trace the call but somehow connect him to Whitlan.

Lyle had never thought the police would show up at his office door asking about Frankie Whitlan, of all people. There had been many layers between Lyle and Frankie since the man had gone on the run, and since Lyle did nothing to attract attention, he never thought anyone would link them together.