“Don’t worry about that, love. I’ll time it just right.”

Andrea wasn’t certain what he meant by that, and by the way he stopped talking, he didn’t want her to ask. Andrea shrugged to herself and looked out the window as they turned and wound northward through town.

Bronco’s, the bar where she’d found Glory yesterday, sat back from the road in a littered parking lot. Behind it, an old wooden fence separated the property from a creek, and beyond that lay suburban houses. To either side of the bar were one-story shops. A vacuum repair store occupied one of the buildings; the other held an antique store and a tobacconist. All closed for the day, Sunday.

The bar was also closed, but a few vehicles were parked around it. From the age of the cars and trucks plus the fact that they’d been kept well, Andrea could tell that they belonged to Shifters.

Sean smiled in anticipation. “Let’s see what they’re up to in there, shall we, love?” The sun gleamed off the sword on his back, and Sean’s smile added to the deadly picture he made. No wonder Liam had sent him as liaison.

The door to the bar was locked. No grate had been pulled across the door, and it was fastened with a simple dead bolt. Sean wrapped his fingers around the door handle, let his hand become his powerful lion’s paw, and yanked. The lock splintered, and the door opened.

“Nice trick,” Andrea said. “Wish I was a big, bad Feline.”

“I’ll teach you someday, if you’re good.”

“Mmm, I’ll never learn it, then.”

Sean’s answering grin stoked the heat already burning in her, and then she fell in behind him as he strode inside.

“Hey, we’re closed,” someone yelled.

Sean didn’t stop. The bar was thick with cigarette smoke, which meant humans. Shifters didn’t smoke. A knot of people sat around a table in the back, and a human worked behind the bar, likely prepping to open the place later that afternoon. The bartender had been the one who’d yelled.

From the scent beneath the gagging smoke, three of the men at the table were human. They wore jeans and biker vests, their guns in shoulder or belt holsters evident. But it wasn’t just their scent that betrayed them as the ones who’d been responsible for all the shootings. One human rose as Sean came in and pointed a black pistol at him.

Sean drew his sword, the silver glittering, the blade ringing as it swept out of its sheath. The human laughed, but one of the Shifters knocked the gun from his hand with the swipe of a claw.

“He’s a Guardian,” the Shifter snarled.

The human opened his mouth to jeer, looked at the Shifter faces gone hard and cold, and sat back down. He retrieved his pistol from where it had landed on the other side of the table and shoved it into a shoulder holster.

Sean brought the sword around and rested the point of it on the table, the hilt rising like a cross. He scanned the faces that turned to him, Sean quiet and unafraid, the Shifters tense and worried. Sean’s gaze stopped as he picked out a Shifter to address, and that Shifter shrank back in his chair, looking like he wanted to wet himself.

“So tell me, Ben O’Callaghan, of me own clan,” Sean said to him. “What exactly have you been up to?”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sean smelled Ben’s fear even before the man spoke. “You should leave, Sean.”

Sean rested his hands on his sword hilt, driving the point a little way into the table. “Now, why would I be wanting to do that? We had some humans shooting at Shifters, and then I walk in here and find humans with pistols sitting at this very table. A suspicious man might make a connection.”

Ben’s blue eyes clouded with worry. “You really need to go. Pretend you never walked in.”

“I’m not good at playing pretend, me.” Sean caressed the hilt while he scanned the faces of the other Shifters. “Why don’t I join you, and we’ll have a nice little chat?”

“No one’s talking about anything,” another Shifter said. He was a Feline Sean recognized, but he wasn’t from Sean’s clan, and he wasn’t from Austin. “Especially not with you,” the Feline finished.

“She can stay,” another of the human men said. He grinned at Andrea, showing unnaturally straight teeth.

The Feline growled. “She’s Fae.”

“Half Fae,” Andrea shot back.

The Shifter’s brows lowered. “Abomination.”

“I’ve heard that before.” Andrea looked right at the furball, not dropping her gaze like a good submissive should. It pissed off the Feline and made Sean want to laugh.

“Callum Fitzgerald, isn’t it?” Sean asked him. Callum was an alpha, a pride leader. Sean knew this from the database he maintained of information on all Shifters but nothing much about him.

“The great Sean Morrissey knows my name,” Callum said. “I’m honored.”

He couldn’t meet Sean’s eyes, though. “The honor’s all mine,” Sean said. “Or it will be if you tell me what the hell is going on.”

“So you can run back to your brother and tell on me?”

Sean reached into his pocket. The humans tensed, but Sean only pulled out his cell phone. “If you’d like me to have Liam and my father join us, I’m happy to call them.”

A ripple of discomfort circled through the Shifters. Dealing with Sean was bad enough; dealing with Dylan was nothing any Shifter wanted to do on a good day. Callum didn’t look worried at all, which was a bad sign.

“You’d summon the might of your clan to interrupt Shifters having a private drink on a Sunday morning?” Callum asked. “I’d heard you Morrisseys liked to abuse your power.”

“Having a beer, is it?” Sean picked up a half-empty bottle on the table, looked at the label, shook his head, and put the bottle back down. “I don’t call this much of a beer. And just yesterday my friends heard you saying you thought Shifters should have nothing to do with humans, but here they are. So, which is it, Callum?”

“Your friends are mistaken.”

Sean glanced at Andrea, who gave him the barest nod. These were the ass**les she and Glory had overheard, all right.

“I trust them.” Sean looked up and down the table again. “Tell me, Callum, which one of these is the man who shot Ely Barry?”

The wave of fear that came off the humans made Sean’s nose curl. “Hey, we didn’t aim to hit anyone,” the one sitting right next to Sean said. He had long hair pulled into a ponytail and a scar across his jaw. “He jumped in the way.”