“You should have thought of that first,” Bentley said to Hans.
“Why didn’t you think of it? You’re supposed to be her boyfriend, so you say,” Hans said.
“You’re her brother.”
“And I’m not my sister’s keeper.”
The door closed behind them, mercifully, and Kintail shook his head. He called Hans and Sheri’s dad, even though he knew they’d just left on a vacation to Cancun. He doubted they had any idea Sheri or Elizabeth were even gone.
Still, he had to try. They wouldn’t get away with this. Not while he was pack leader.
“Hey, it’s Kintail. Did Sheri say anything at all about taking a trip anywhere, like to Seattle?”
***
Stuck at home while Elizabeth and Sheri were in the office, David felt worry start seeping in again. He was afraid that no matter what she’d said, if Elizabeth had any doubts about being with him—and she must have, since she hadn’t decided to be his mate yet—this might have tipped the scale in favoring a quick retreat for her. Sheri too.
He finally managed to shift. He threw on clothes and walked to the office.
Two cars were sitting there, and he hoped things hadn’t been too busy for them.
But when he walked in, he found Elizabeth and Sheri huddled over a computer together, pointing at the monitor and agreeing or disagreeing about something, while Gavin was taking care of one client and Owen the other.
“Oh,” Elizabeth said, jumping from the desk chair. “We got some inquiries for background investigations.” She handed David the requests.
“Come into my office.” He took Sheri and Elizabeth there and shut the door. “This is your first official training.” He showed them how to do thorough background investigations on potential new hires for a business, using the multiple databases they had at their disposal.
“Oh, wow, how cool is this?” Sheri asked, wide-eyed.
“It is.” Elizabeth read over some of the information on the monitor.
David motioned to the screen. “We get a lot of these, and we want to be thorough so that hiring the wrong person doesn’t come back to bite us, but we also want to get the results back as soon as possible so that the business—the client—can hire or reject the application without too much delay.”
“Right,” Sheri said, as he showed them how he went through the various sources to investigate the cases.
“Now, we don’t tell them who to hire, but we’ll give them the details of what the individual applicant’s criminal records look like. In other words, it’s on the businesses to do what’s right for their employees and customers.”
“Good,” Elizabeth said.
“These five potential hires are clean, no records. This one has five parking violations and four moving violations—all outstanding. Now, if it were me hiring the person, I would say no because he just doesn’t seem to want to obey the laws and he hasn’t taken care of his violations. What if he was the same with working in an office? Ignoring the rules and regulations?”
“I agree,” Elizabeth said.
“Do you both want to work on these, then?”
“Oh, yeah,” Elizabeth said. “Filing papers and answering the phone is important, but actually handling cases? I’m in.”
Sheri was eager to do them too.
David had a high-priority mission of his own this morning. Make the ladies legitimate U.S. citizens. That would mean making sure they had all the papers they needed, including birth records, social security numbers, all that. Every pack had to play around with that because the pack members aged so slowly. He could imagine someone whose passport said they were born forty years earlier than they looked in human years. Or driver’s licenses, any ID like that.
It was just something they had to do from time to time—not as much for David and the other newly turned wolves, since they hadn’t lived that long as wolves, but royals who had lived a long time already definitely had to hide their true age.
Elizabeth and Sheri worked on cross-verifying information on the applicants, and then after David looked them over, he had them share the information with the businesses.
“We can do these from now on,” Sheri said, the pleasure at having done a good job evident in her joyful expression.
“What’s next?” Elizabeth asked.
“I’ll see what else we have that you can work on. Anything that takes some research in our databases should work. We’ll need to work out salaries too.”
“Looking forward to earning our keep,” Elizabeth said.
He smiled and kissed her. “Believe me, you’ll earn it. We’ve needed some administrative help, but when we have shifting issues, we’ll need you for investigations too. Thanks for being here for us.”
“Yeah,” Gavin said, coming to join them after his client and Owen’s had left. “You managed to get us a couple of cases we would no doubt have lost because all of us were having shifting issues this morning. It’s the worst at the peak of the full moon. So now the worst of it will be over.”
“Oh, that’s good. Ms. Moore seemed…eager to meet with you,” Sheri said.
“She was happy we’re getting right on it. Speaking of which, Sheri, I need to take a trip to start the investigation. If you don’t mind, you can go with me, and if I have trouble with shifting again, though usually we’re good for several hours, you can help me out,” Gavin said.
Sheri handed Elizabeth the papers she had in hand to file and smiled at her. “I’ll help you with this when I return, if you’re not done by then.”
The phone rang and Elizabeth hurried to answer it. “This is Elizabeth Alpine at White Wolf Investigative Services, how may I help you?” She glanced at David. “Just a moment, I’ll see if one of our investigators is free to take your call.” She put the call on hold. “She’s looking for her birth mother. Is that something we do?”
He nodded. “I’ll take the call.” Once Elizabeth had transferred the call to his office, David said, “This is David Davis, how may I help you?”
“My name is Lisa Lamont. I have a medical condition that means I need to locate my birth mother as soon as I can. Is there any way that I can solicit your services to locate her?”
“Yes, we’ll take the case. I need to get some more information from you.”
“My mother gave me up for adoption when I was a baby. I never knew the reason. My parents only just told me that they weren’t my birth parents. I’m still shocked over the news. I never suspected they weren’t my biological parents. According to them, my mother said my dad had died in a car accident and she couldn’t take care of me any longer.” She gave David the names of her adoptive parents. “They said they were eager to talk to you, but that I had to initiate the request. They’ll pay for your services, whatever they entail.”