The Wolf Marshal's Pack (U.S. Marshal Shifters 3)

She stepped forward and put her hands on her hips, hoping that it made her look authoritative. It was a pose that worked with Mattie, but Mattie was eight. And human.

“Where was Eli going?” Aria said.

“I don’t know,” the kid said. “He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Are you two family?” Colby asked.

He sounded almost casual, but Aria could see that he was paying an incredible amount of attention to the answer.

“He’s my cousin.”

“And the two of you, you know, take after each other?”

“Uh, yeah. I guess.”

The kid looked confused. Aria couldn’t blame him. Since they already knew what Eli looked like, what was Colby trying to figure out here? He was messing up her attempt at a werewolf interrogation.

She broadened her stance even more, hoping she’d strike a vibe between tough Old West gunslinger and disappointed mom. If one half didn’t work on the boy, the other half might.

She just had to hope he would be smart enough to figure out what she was really asking him.

She chose her words carefully.

“I saw your cousin earlier. He probably mentioned that.”

The kid’s eyes widened until they were almost the size of saucers.

“You’re her? Then you—”

“—know exactly how dangerous your cousin is,” she finished for him.

A split second later, it occurred to her that she would have been better off seeing if the kid would blurt out the whole furry werewolf truth on his own. It would have given her a safe way to broach the subject with Colby without seeming nuts.

Protecting the half-assed code of their conversation had been sheer, dumb instinct. It was like they were playing a game of Taboo and she didn’t want to lose.

“And,” Aria said, “I know about Eli’s dog.”

“Dog?”

Colby cut in there, his voice as sharp as a razor: “She saw a big dog around your cousin, kid.”

The boy wrapped his arms around himself. The movement stretched his shirt at the shoulders, widening a hole near the collar.

“I’m eighteen, you know,” he said sullenly. “You don’t have to keep calling me kid.”

“I asked you your name when I came in here,” Colby said. “Sorry if I didn’t think ‘fuck you’ was the actual answer to the question. Is that what I’m supposed to be calling you instead?”

The kid actually cracked a smile at that, and it changed the whole look of his face. Without that fug of fear and glumness hanging over him, he was actually cute, in a puppyish kind of way. The smile showed off a chipped front tooth and put a lively light in his clear green eyes.

“Only my friends call me Fuck You,” the kid said. “You can call me Luke.”

“I’m going to have to keep my distance and make sure we don’t become buddies, then, Luke,” Colby said. “Because I like one of those names a lot more than the other. Now, my friend was asking you a question about a dog.”

“Are you gonna tell me your names?”

“I’ll tell you mine. Deputy US Marshal Colby Acton. You can call my friend by whatever cool alias she wants to pick.”

She tried not to feel smug about him letting her choose her own alias. (But she was willing to bet actual witnesses under US Marshal protection never got that same privilege.)