Wardens’ files, which he’d read cover to cover, that this was Jace, Eric’s son.
Shifters’ life spans were about three hundred or so years, and cubs didn’t come of age until they were nearly thirty. Jace was a little past that; Eric, pushing a hundred twenty.
Both father and son watched Diego slide his ID back into his coat. Diego realized that they were waiting for him to drop his gaze, to concede that they ruled here, that he was an outsider. It had been much the same in the neighborhood in which Diego had grown up, so he understood what was going on. But too damn bad. Diego had a job to do, and he wasn’t Shifter. His gaze was staying put.
“Cassidy here?” he asked.
Eric didn’t blink. He didn’t look away, and neither did Jace, because that would be giving ground to Diego on their territory.
“Look, I’m not here to mess with you,” Diego said. “The sooner I see Cassidy, the sooner I get out of your face.”
“She’s not here,” Eric said.
Damn it. “Then where is she?”
Jace folded his arms. “She has a friend who lives behind us. Cassidy likes to visit her.”
Diego, who’d lost count of how many hardened drug dealers he’d interviewed over the years, caught that Jace never actually said that Cassidy had gone to visit her friend.
Diego picked up some old car magazines from the sofa, set them on a table, and sat down in their place. “I’ll wait.”
Eric growled, a strange sound to come from a human-looking throat. His eyes flicked to wildcat white, and he gave Diego another long look. Diego tensed, feeling his gun heavy in his holster.
If Eric shifted to his wildcat, the only way Diego could fight him was with firepower. Diego’s research since yesterday had told him that yes, bullets would hurt them, even kill them; you just had to get lucky or pump a lot of rounds into them. If Eric attacked, and his Collar didn’t stop him, there would be nothing else Diego could do.
It lay between them. When Eric went for Diego, Diego’s gun would be out. End of story.
Eric saw that. Jace, behind him, did too.
Eric’s eyes finally changed back to human and green, and he relaxed his stance. “Jace,” he said. “Get the man a beer.”
Diego let out his breath, muscles unclenching. “Not for me. I’m on duty until I’m done here.”
“Get him coffee, then.”
Jace wordlessly strode back into the kitchen, and soon they heard water running in the sink. Jace was going to brew it from scratch.
Eric sat down on the coffee table, resting his arms on his blue-jeaned thighs. The enviable tattoo swirled around Eric’s muscular shoulder and down the inside of his arm. Nice ink. When Diego had gotten the jagged chain tattoo across his shoulders at age sixteen, his mother had expressed displeasure. Loudly. For a long time.
Diego suddenly wondered what his mother would make of Eric—or Cassidy.
“Lieutenant Escobar, let me tell you a little bit about my sister,” Eric said. “Cassidy has had a rough time of it. Really rough.”
Diego thought through the files he’d read. “I know her boyfriend died last year.”
“Donovan was her mate, not her boyfriend. Mating is like a marriage, in human terms, but much more powerful than that. When Donovan died, we thought Cassidy would die too. Cassidy has a lot of spirit, a lot of guts. Not afraid of anything. But she grieved for a long, long time. She still is grieving. It’s been tough.”
To Diego’s surprise, he saw tears in Eric Warden’s eyes. A big, bad Shifter, weeping for his little sister.
But then, Diego’s brother, Xavier, had cried for Jobe when they’d buried him. Diego’s thoughts flashed before he could stop them to the huge, loud-laughing black man—Jobe pouring drinks into Diego the first time Diego had brought down a suspect with deadly force; Jobe with his arm around his beautiful wife at one of his backyard parties; Jobe laughing as he lifted his daughter into his arms. Jobe, who’d gotten to his knees and