He’d done a little digging, a little research, called a couple of places posing as a possible client before all the dirty secrets about benevolent ownership and what was done to the girls in those places came crashing down on the prophecy industry. One question, one cut on a girl with low-end talent and basic training, cost a couple of hundred dollars. Someone like Meg Corbyn, who was intelligent and absorbed information perhaps too well, who saw strings of images and was frighteningly accurate? A cut on someone with Meg’s skill would cost thousands.

Plenty of motivation to abduct and interrogate men who would know where to find girls who might not be as well protected as the Others believed—mainly because they would never consider that a human would be rash enough and greedy enough to try to get past them and snatch a girl.

Burke pushed away from his desk. He wanted to go to the Courtyard and assess the situation. But first he would get Kowalski started on locating the missing doctors, or at least getting some idea of where and when they were last seen. And then he needed to apprise the mayor and police commissioner of the potential trouble this attempted theft of meat might cause the city.

• • •

“What?” Simon snapped when Vlad, who was behind HGR’s checkout counter doing nothing useful, continued to stare at him.

“I noticed that all the books you’re putting on the display table are thrillers by terra indigene authors and are the type that could be described as ‘rip and tear.’”

“So?”

“Don’t you think the message is a little too blunt?”

Snarling, he turned toward the counter—and noticed Miss Twyla standing quietly between the shelves that separated the front area from the rest of the store.

“Is there something we can do for you, Miss Twyla?” Vlad asked.

“I understand that all the meat that was delivered yesterday was stolen.”

“Currently there is nothing in the butcher shop for sale.”

“I see.”

Simon couldn’t stand having her think there was no meat, that the female pack would have nothing to eat but greens. “The meat the thieves didn’t take we gave to Meat-n-Greens to use. And we can thaw a couple of packages of bison meat.”

Miss Twyla nodded. “That’s a good plan. And humans don’t need as much meat as you folks do, so a little can go a long way.”

He wanted to believe her. Wasn’t sure he did.

“The girls tell me you have creeks running through the Courtyard. Any of you catch fish in those creeks?” Miss Twyla asked.

“Henry does.”

“Fish is another kind of meat.”

Did Meg like fish?

When Simon didn’t say anything, Vlad smiled at Miss Twyla. “Thank you for the suggestion.” When she didn’t go away, he added, “Is there something else?”

Miss Twyla looked at Simon in a way that made him want to back up a step—or show her his better set of teeth as a warning.

“My James was a good man, and I loved him for all the years we were married. Still do, even though he’s been gone some years now. But he enjoyed eating a cheese that smelled up a house worse than a bad case of farts.”

Simon blinked. Scratched behind one ear. He didn’t know how to respond to Miss Twyla saying “farts.” “Did you like the cheese?”

“I did not. But once or twice a year he would get a craving for it and buy enough of that cheese to make a sandwich, and it was the best treat he could think to buy. He ate those cheese sandwiches before we were married and every year we spent together.”

“But it was stinky.”

“It was. But it was part of who he was. He didn’t ask me to eat it, and I didn’t ask him to give up eating it. That’s how it works when two people are partners.”

She took a step forward. Simon held his ground as long as he could before taking a step back.

“You have more courage than you’re showing right now, and avoiding that girl doesn’t do either of you any favors. You talk it out, set it right, decide what each of you can live with.”

“I ate a human,” he snapped, feeling cornered.

“All by yourself? You must have been hungry.”

“No, not by myself! We—” Simon glanced at Vlad, who shrugged.

“You think there’s anyone here except the children who hasn’t figured out what happened to the thieves? Miss Merri says you used to put a sign on the butcher shop door when you’d caught some of what you call special meat, although the only thing I can see about it being special is you didn’t catch it all that often and certainly didn’t go looking for it off your own land.” She looked pointedly at Vlad. “Not the meat anyway.” She turned back to Simon. “Am I right in thinking you don’t mix that meat with other kinds?”

“We never sold it at the butcher shop,” Simon growled. Before Meg, they might have stored a bit in the big refrigerator because meat was meat, but they learned the difference between clean and human clean, and as they got to know the human female pack, it began to matter that they not do things that could make the girls sick. “And we haven’t kept any of that meat in the shop for a long time now.” Not since the day Meg called Boone and asked for some special meat for Sam, not knowing that there was a special kind of meat.

“You had one package in the shop,” Miss Twyla said.

“In a separate cooler. And the cooler wasn’t in the shop for very long.”