Appetite gone—not that she’d wanted any food since she’d seen Simon’s note on the kitchen table—Meg got her purse and carry sack out of the BOW and headed for the back door of the Liaison’s Office. She’d just opened the door when Kowalski walked up the access way, dressed for work.

“Hey, Meg.” Kowalski smiled, but he seemed distracted by the sawhorse and sign that blocked the third archway leading into the Market Square. Then he looked at the second story of her building. “Do you know if Agent O’Sullivan is here? Or if he has company?”

“I think he’s still in Hubb NE,” Meg replied. Then she blinked. “Company? Like, romantic company?” Greg O’Sullivan seemed too intense to have a girlfriend, and if he did have one, she probably lived in Hubbney. Besides, O’Sullivan knew the rules about bringing anyone into the Courtyard without telling Simon or Vlad. She couldn’t imagine him doing something that might get his friend killed.

“Being an ITF agent doesn’t eliminate canoodling.”

“Canoodling?” What an odd-sounding word.

He grinned. “Something you and Simon might like to try sometime.”

She couldn’t say one way or the other until she figured out what the word meant.

The humor faded from Kowalski’s face. “I asked because I noticed a van in the Stag and Hare’s lot. Could be someone parking there to make an early delivery to one of the other buildings on that side of the street. But if it belonged to someone’s friend who had stayed overnight without permission . . .”

“You would encourage them to cease canoodling and go out for breakfast before anyone else noticed?”

“Something like that.”

His answer provided no clue, so she mentally flipped through the training images of games, since that’s what the word brought to mind. Maybe it was something like bingo? But she couldn’t picture anyone risking Simon’s wrath—or Blair’s teeth—to stay up all night playing bingo.

Kowalski tipped his head toward the Market Square. “Know anything about that?”

“Jester said someone made a mess.”

He tensed for a moment before trying to give the impression of being curious but not overly concerned. “A mess? Stores were vandalized?”

“Don’t know. When I drove by, it looked like they were working on the open area, not the shops. You’d have to ask Simon or Vlad. I didn’t know about it until I drove by a few minutes ago.” Meg studied him. “Karl? Is something wrong?” Suddenly the banter about canoodling seemed off, made her uneasy—just like the look in Jester’s eyes had made her uneasy.

“Probably not. But as Captain Burke likes to say, we try to keep things smooth.” He smiled. “It’s my turn to get the coffee, so I’d better get going.”

She had a feeling Kowalski stopped smiling the moment he headed for A Little Bite’s back door and she could no longer see his face. She had a feeling Kowalski, like Jester, knew more than he was saying.

And she had a very bad feeling that she should know what had happened in the Market Square last night.

• • •

Simon walked out of the butcher shop and saw Meg drive past in the BOW. For a moment, he felt happy, excited to see her. Then he felt uncomfortable. Queasy. Guilty.

“Boone is washing the display case, making it human clean,” Henry said, coming to stand beside him. “When he’s done, he’ll put out the remaining meat.”

“No. That meat will go to Meat-n-Greens for the meals served there.”

“Then Boone won’t have anything to sell until the next shipment of meat comes in from the farms,” Henry said. He waited a beat. “Nothing wrong with the meat that was taken. It wasn’t out of the refrigerator long enough to start spoiling.”

“The meat is fine for us, but not for the humans.”

“Meat is outside longer than that when humans buy it from a butcher shop and carry it home.”

Simon hesitated. Henry was right. The meat hadn’t spoiled in the short time it had been out of the butcher shop, and there was no reason to tell the humans it had been outside. Then he pictured himself bringing home one of those roasts for Meg to cook and eat, and he shook his head, frustrated that he couldn’t explain his feelings, even to himself. The pork and beef might not be spoiled in a way that made it inedible for humans, but the theft had spoiled it nonetheless. “It won’t be cow or pig, but Boone will have something to sell to anyone who wants to purchase meat.”

Everyone in the Green Complex, and every freezer in the other complexes, had some packages of frozen bison meat from the yearling they had killed a few weeks ago. The terra indigene wouldn’t understand why the cow and pig meat that had been taken out of the butcher shop couldn’t be rinsed off and put back in the butcher shop for Boone to sell, but most would come to the conclusion that this meat, for some reason, would upset Meg and the female pack, and they would give Boone a package of bison meat to sell at the butcher shop in exchange for fresh cow or pig.

But Meg didn’t like bison meat. Maybe, when he wasn’t so full, he could catch a bunny just for her. Or he could call Steve Ferryman and see about purchasing a little beef, or even a chicken, from one of the shops in Ferryman’s Landing.

Thinking of Meg and the reason he was so full made him snarl. “They were invaders. Thieves. Bad humans. It wasn’t like we ate one of her friends.”