Free Lycan Unleashed by Tiffany Allee Page B

from now on.” If Mason wasn’t going to bring up the close call we’d just had, neither was I. But I’d be damned if I’d go in to question a suspect like Isaiah without a gun again. Legality be damned.
    Mason grunted his agreement.
    I pulled a small bottle of Advil from my purse and tossed a couple in my mouth. I chewed them, an old trick to make them work faster, but the taste made me grimace. Part of me wanted to ask if his reaction to what he perceived as a threat against me from Isaiah meant anything. But how did I start the conversation? And what if he would have done the same for any coworker who’d been standing in my place? The whole thing made my head pound harder.
    “There’s a bottle of water in there.” Mason nodded toward the glove box. “It’s old, but unopened, so it should still be okay.”
    I flipped down the glove box door and grabbed the water. I swallowed the remnants of the pills with a large gulp, thankful I didn’t have to choke them down dry.
    “Thanks,” I said after I’d dislodged the crushed pieces of the pills from my throat.
    “Sure.”
    We drove to my townhouse in silence. Mason parked on the street in front of my building and followed me up the sidewalk to my house. But he stopped in the doorway. I turned to see his face scrunched in concentration.
    “What is it?” I asked, glancing around my foyer. Nothing appeared disturbed.
    “Your cat never comes out to say hello.” He shut the door.
    My headache had started to fade—probably more from the time away from Isaiah’s energy than from the Advil kicking in—which left me in an almost good mood from the relief. I grinned. “Yes well, I’m sure he doesn’t particularly want to meet you. His name is Charlie. And this is his house more than mine, so you’ll have to show him some respect.”
    “Respectable people have dogs, you know,” he informed me as we walked to the kitchen.
    “Do they? Guess I’m not respectable.”
    He just snorted and sat at my small eat-in table.
    “Want something to drink?” I asked, suddenly nervous again. I couldn’t put this conversation off. There was no way to avoid Mason finding out that I’d been dishonest without lying further. And I couldn’t lie about Isaiah’s signature. If I said it was his coin, the vampire could get in trouble for something he may not have done—his past history as an assassin notwithstanding. Besides, that kind of deceit would be so morally wrong that just thinking about it made my stomach turn.
    And I couldn’t tell Mason that I didn’t recognize Isaiah’s aura and still pretend that I could ID the vamp off of the coin. That would make Mason think that Isaiah definitely wasn’t responsible, which he might very well be.
    I’d backed myself into a corner.
    I opened my refrigerator and peered inside. “I’ve got orange juice and Coke. Or beer.”
    “Beer, please.”
    Of course. I grabbed a Heineken and a Coke and poured them into glasses, avoiding Mason as long as I could.
    “What’s wrong, Astrid?” Mason asked.
    I set his drink down and then sat in the seat next to him. His face had softened, and his concern was apparent. Crap. Of course he’d look at me like that right before he was going to be out of my life for good.
    I drank a swallow of my Coke and for once wished it had something alcoholic in it. “I don’t know if Isaiah is the killer. I can’t tell.” I kept my eyes firmly affixed to the glass and tensed in preparation for the explosion I knew was coming.
    Mason sipped his beer and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. When he spoke, his voice was low, but something in the air had changed. Electrified. “Because you can’t get as good a read as you thought you’d be able to, or because you knew you’d never be able to ID the killer from what you felt on that coin?”
    It was a question we both already knew the answer to, and it hurt my heart that he thought enough of me to even consider the other possibility. Part of me