Layla grabbed a bottle of water and drank it in one go. “Right, let’s get ready to go to another realm. Where, I assume, we’ll be pissing off a whole new bunch of people.”
Chapter Six
NATE GARRETT
“I want my lawyer,” I said after having been deposited on a chair in an interview room.
“You’re not under arrest,” the sheriff said.
“Then I’m leaving,” I told him, standing up.
The deputy stepped in my way with a glare. “We can always find something to arrest you for.”
I looked over to the sheriff. “You letting this jackass talk to people like that?”
“Take a step back, Deputy,” the sheriff said with a sigh.
The deputy did as he was told.
“You answer our questions, and we’ll see about letting you go,” the sheriff said.
“I’m pretty sure that isn’t legal,” I told him.
“You volunteered to come to the station,” the deputy said.
“Yes, volunteered,” I repeated. “Phone call, now. Talk once it’s done.”
The sheriff stared at me and heaved another sigh. “Fine.” He removed my mobile from the bag he’d put it in before I’d been placed in the squad car. “Two minutes.”
“Alone,” I said. “Or at least stand behind the two-way glass so I feel like I’m alone.”
The sheriff and deputy left the interview room, and I looked around. The room was large enough for a gray metal table that was bolted to the concrete floor. Four chairs sat around it. There was a gray metal door and a large window that couldn’t have screamed two-way mirror any louder than it did.
I called Chris Hopkins, who picked up on the second ring. “What did you do?” he asked me.
I told him everything that happened at Duke’s and my current whereabouts.
“Shit,” he said.
“Can you come down to the station and make sure I get out? I don’t trust the deputy; he seems angry about something. And frankly, I’m not sure that some hick cop won’t try to set me up because I’m not from around here.”
“Anything else?”
“I’ll let you know.” I ended the call and sent him a text, asking him to look into Robert Saunders, before I quickly deleted the outgoing messages and locked the phone down. It would take a six-digit number to open it, and I was in no mood to give that number to the sheriff or his people.
“Can I assume you won’t be telling us what you did with your phone?” the sheriff asked as he entered the room.
“Yep,” I told him. “I’m not under arrest, right?”
“You’re a person of interest,” the deputy said as he leaned up against the mirror. He was a few inches taller than me, with blond hair and a thick blond beard. Tattoos adorned his forearms, including an Army Rangers badge.
“So why am I here?” I asked, placing my phone on the table.
The sheriff opened a folder in front of him. “Yesterday you were seen arguing with one Jackson Miller.”
“Ah, the Nazi? Yes, I did step in and stop the Nazi from hurting anyone.”
“You broke his arm,” the sheriff said.
“I did.”
“You also broke his nose and smashed his face.”
“That’s true; I did,” I said. “He wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“So you decided you were a tough guy,” the deputy said.
“Not particularly,” I said. “I just wanted to stop him being a threat.”
“Well, we found his body this morning,” the sheriff said.
“What?” I asked.
Sheriff Adrian King removed two color photographs from the folder and put them in front of me. One was a picture of the body in a dumpster in a snowy alleyway. He was missing an arm, although the lack of blood there meant he’d been killed elsewhere. The second photo was a close-up of the ruination that was Jackson’s face. It looked like a bear had tried to rip it off and had done a pretty good job.
“Well, he’s definitely dead,” I said, sitting back in my chair.
“Show some damn respect,” the deputy snapped.
“No, he was a Nazi thug. Fuck him.”
The deputy took a step toward me.
“You going to beat me with a phone book, Deputy?” I asked.
The sheriff motioned for the deputy to step away, but I could see the anger in the younger man’s face.
“You knew Jackson?” I asked him, already knowing the answer.
“We were in the army together,” he said. “He was a good man. A good friend.”
“And a Nazi,” I pointed out.
“Maybe one of your friends did it,” he snapped. “Maybe some werewolf piece of shit killed him, and you’re hiding them.”
“What the hell does that mean?” I asked.
“We looked into your background,” the sheriff said. “There’s nothing there to suggest that you are anything other than human, but maybe you know someone who isn’t.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Maybe that Asian family?” the deputy said. “One of them an animal who looks like a human? Maybe that little boy gets kept in a cage at night, but he got out. Should we go test them all? Are you protecting them? Maybe it’s one of the girls. Should we get them in here instead? See if we can’t get a confession out of them?”
I stared at the deputy, absolute rage bubbling up inside of me. “I’m going to say this once, slowly, so you both hear me.”
There was a knock on the door, and Chris walked in without waiting for it to be opened. “This is my client, and we’re leaving,” Chris said.
“You’re a lawyer too?” the sheriff asked.
“I’m all kinds of things,” Chris said, his voice dripping with anger. “Are you charging my client?”
“No,” the sheriff said. “But he should hang around in town.”
“What were you going to say?” the deputy asked me as the sheriff placed my car keys on the table.
“I was going to say that if I ever hear that bullshit out of your mouth again, I’m going to forget that you wear a badge.”
The deputy took a step toward me. “You threatening an officer of the law?”
“I heard no threat,” Chris said, looking at me with an expression that told me to keep my mouth shut. “I heard only a comment that you shouldn’t spout off unsubstantiated shit.”
“I bet he’s involved with the animal that did this,” the deputy said. “Maybe he’s eyeing up the Kuros as his next victims. Although I guess if they go, it’ll be no great loss to the community.”
“Jesus Christ, Deputy,” the sheriff said. “I won’t have that kind of shit said in my department. Get out, get changed, and go home.”
I turned to the sheriff. “Maybe you need to check that the Nazi sacks of shit haven’t gotten jobs in your office.”
The sheriff waited for the deputy to leave, the latter giving me an evil glare as he walked past. “I’m sorry for his behavior,” the sheriff said to me. “I didn’t expect him to . . . say anything like that. He’s not one of them. But Jackson was his friend, and I think he feels a little upset that he couldn’t stop Jackson from sliding toward the beliefs he had when he died.”