Paul had gone into the bathroom and emerged, shaking his head. "Did he rob you?"
"It doesn't look like it," I mumbled. My thoughts had been fuzzy at first, but they rapidly cleared. I'd been conned. I didn't know how or why. I winced, grabbing my chest as I pictured Kansas's sweet face. The fact that he'd duped me didn't seem to matter as much as how that made everything that had happened between us turn to rot.
"It's a good thing he didn't know where your office was," Paul said.
The blood drained from my face. Paul had been in no state to remember that Kansas had gone upstairs with me. He'd seen the office, had received the best blow job of his life while balanced on my desk. I slid as I ran for the stairs, leaping up them in a single bound.
On the surface, the office looked untouched, in the same exact state as when we'd left it. I went to the safe; it was unlocked like I always kept it because I was a stupid shifter who operated under the belief that I'd catch anyone who tried to steal from me long before they'd gotten this far.
The bank deposit pouches were still there. I let out a sigh of relief to see the thick pouches present, accounted for, and zipped closed. But, in the spot where I'd kept the small envelope I'd stuffed full of repair funds, sat the ripped-off corner of a piece of printer paper, the word Sorry hastily scrawled on it. I snatched the note from the safe, scowling when Kansas's scent wafted from it, tempting me even now with its allure. "Fuck!"
Less than an hour later, the sheriff pulled up. At the exact same moment, Branson and Aver parked their work truck on the curb in front. Riley, Phineas, and Nash were already here, asking me the same questions over and over.
"How much did he get out with?" Nash asked again. I was still getting used to the idea of my brother with a baby. Phineas, his mate, had given birth to twins. Both #blessed, which was a shifter term that should've meant impossible. Phineas and Riley were both the reason why I'd asked Kansas about curses and powers. I'd sounded like such a fool to him. There'd never been a risk of what happened to Nash and Branson happening to me.
I growled and gripped my shirt at the spot just over my heart. He'd tricked me, fooled me from the first word. In the time since Paul had woken me up, I'd replayed every exchange between Kansas and me. The more I replayed it all, the angrier I got. "Ten thousand, give or take. All that I had saved for repairs."
"But, he didn't take it all?" Phineas asked. He'd offered to take a look at the security footage, but I only had one camera over the door to record the lounge for insurance purposes. And the footage was so grainy, you could hardly make out my face on the screen. I didn't hire people I didn't trust, so I didn't need to have a camera behind the bar, and I wasn't about to film all that I did upstairs.
Kansas could have left with much more than he did; that was true. The booze alone was easily another thousand. Combine that with the till and the bank deposit pouches, and he could have left with thousands more. And I would've been fucked.
Instead, he'd taken a single envelope and had left a note.
Jake Maslow, the town's sheriff, pushed open the door with Branson and Aver on his heels. No one had called them. In fact, I hadn't even called Nash or the others. All I'd done was call 911 to report the robbery. The news had spread on its own. I could at least be glad that Nana wasn't here as well.
"Call said you were robbed?" Jake said, his brown eyes landing on each body in the space. Maybe he was wondering what they were all doing there. I knew I was.
"The guy made out with at least ten thousand I had kept separate in an envelope in the safe."
Branson and Aver smirked while they listened intently from behind the sheriff. Jake had his notepad out, scratching with his pencil over the paper. "How did he get the combination to your safe?" Jake asked.
My lip curled. I really didn't want to say this out loud. "It was open."
Jake stopped scratching and looked up at me. "You left the safe open? Did he catch you at the end of day?"
Aver and Branson were now trying not to laugh. If I'd turned to see Nash, he'd probably have been doing the same. I'd been stupid, I could see that now. But I'd left that safe unlocked for years without an issue. "No. It wasn't end of day. The last I remember—"
"The last you remember?" the sheriff parroted.
"He must have drugged me. I remember feeling really tired. Jasper was here, and the customers had left. I told Jasper to go, and then… I woke up."
Jake nodded, writing down everything I told him. "How do you feel now? I think we should get you to the hospital and—"
"No," I said more forcefully than I'd intended. The sheriff didn't deserve my ire, but I was starting to regret calling in law enforcement. This couldn't have been the first time Kansas had pulled something like this. I knew it. He'd targeted me while I'd targeted him.
The others lost their battles not to laugh. I figured they were all imagining me in a hospital gown with my finely sculpted ass hanging out for all to see.
"I'm sorry, Sheriff. I don't think I need medical assistance. Whatever he gave me seems to have worked its way through. And honestly, he had plenty of chances to dose me. We hung out for hours, drinking and chatting."
"And at some point during that, you decided to show him your office?"
Put that way, I sounded like a fool.
In fact, I was having a hard time trying to frame this situation in a way that didn't make me feel like a fool. Kansas had tricked me. Whether he'd tricked me from the beginning or had decided halfway through meeting me that he would, the end result was the same. And though I should have wanted nothing more than to find him and throw him in jail, I wanted to find him, but for other reasons.
Most of all, I wanted to ask why.
I didn't think Sheriff Maslow could help me with that mission. Not because I didn't think Jake was great at his job. He kept Walkerton and the larger Walker County in tip top shape. But if Kansas fooled me, that meant he had more than a few tricks up his sleeves, and finding him would require more than good old-fashioned police work.
It would need good old-fashioned shifter work.
"Do you want me to show you the safe?" I asked. I needed a break from the smirks of the others.
They were quiet as I led Jake upstairs, showed him the office and the safe, and then went back down to where Phineas had his laptop out, reviewing the feed from the security camera.
Kansas looked like a slim, blurry black-and-white blob on the screen. The cameras hadn't been able to capture his likeness in a way that truly reflected the man. He'd been like a breath of fresh air. The first drop of rain after a dry summer.
And it had all been an act.
Jake finished taking his notes and told me he'd contact me with the next steps. Since I had zero personal information about the guy, there wasn't much he could do at this point but put out an alert for the law enforcement in the area to look out for men with his likeness. Kansas wouldn't strike again in the same area. I hardly knew the man and had just discovered he was a thief, but I knew that. The more I thought over his actions from the night before, the more I saw the desperation. Every time Kansas had seemed off, I was pretty sure he'd been changing his mind.