Chapter 3

THREE

"Uh, yeah."I wasn't sure why I was suddenly worried about Felix's reaction to what I did for a living. I was damn good at my job. The check in my pocket proved it.

"That's cool."

I shrugged.

"You don't like it?"

"It's okay." But my tone wasn't convincing.

"Do you like bodyguarding better?"

"Dunno. This is my first time."

Felix laughed. "Well, I think you're doing a pretty good job so far."

"It's been less than an hour."

I felt Felix smile and glanced his way, taking my eyes off the road for a second. He was beautiful—dark skin, dark eyes behind tortoiseshell glasses, full lips that begged to be kissed. He looked like the genius he was. I wasn't a computer guy, and I was generally pretty impressed by anyone who was. My youngest brother kept all my electronics up to date and made sure I was at the bare minimum making an attempt to live in this century.

"How did you end up working for the SPD?"

Felix turned in his seat, but this time, I didn't take my eyes off the road. "McMahon didn't tell you?"

"No. He just told me you were in trouble. He's usually pretty stingy with the details. Kind of his MO."

A sigh shifted the air between us. "The short answer… I fell for the wrong guy."

Killer whale shifters were big believers in fated mates, and I'd been told stories about how my grandparents were fated and how hard it had been for my grandmother when my grandfather died. He was gone before I was born, but my grandmother spoke about him like he was going to walk back through the door any minute. And maybe he would. Maybe he did. Killer whale shifters also believed the spirits of our ancestors walked among us until they were reincarnated in a future generation. This was especially true for the spirit of an orca's fated mate. I'd caught my grandmother talking to my grandfather more than once, and I had to believe even death couldn't tear him from her side. He was supposed to be the one who was there to take her to the next world when it was her time to go.

So was I surprised when Felix had revealed that he thought we were fated mates? No, not really. I'd felt something click into place the first second I saw him and caught his scent, something that made me feel like even if we could no longer physically be together, his spirit would stay with mine. And for the first time, I understood what my grandmother had meant.

When I was younger, I used to look for my mate everywhere, and I had a feeling I'd just know when I found them. I knew Felix was it for me.

But I didn't like thinking about him "falling" for someone else. Not at all. It made me feel like I was swimming in water that was too warm. My skin felt tight and hot, and I had a sudden urge to smash something.

This fated mates thing was no damn joke.

I pulled in a harsh breath and unclenched my fingers from around the steering wheel, which was creaking under the pressure of my grip. A light grasp of fingers around my forearm and the shock of recognition of Felix's touch and heat that came with it did more to pull me back from the edge of rage than my deep breathing had.

"Sorry. I didn't mean to upset you." Felix's voice went even further to cut through the haze.

"You didn't." My words were ground out through clenched teeth.

"No, I should have known bringing up my asshole ex would piss you off."

I pulled my shoulders up to my ears, then relaxed them, feeling just a little bit calmer. When I was more or less sure I wasn't going to crack a molar, I asked, "So what did the fuckwad do?"

Felix squeezed my arm again, then let go. "He told me he forgot his password for the company server while we were away for a long weekend and the offices were closed, and I hacked the system to reset it for him. I also helped him find some client files he'd misplaced. Turns out I was helping him move money around to fund a Ponzi scheme."

I was seeing red again.

"Just to be clear, he's serving fifty years in federal prison."

"I could still pay him a visit."

Felix laughed. "It's not worth it."

"When did this happen?"

"Five years ago. I was eighteen, had just graduated from Cal Poly. He'd been the TA for one of my classes while he was finishing his MBA. My parents encouraged me to date him despite the fact he was six years older because he was a sea otter shifter, and they knew his family."

That didn't make me feel any better. "And what are they going to say when they find out your fated mate is a?—"

"A sea panda?" The way he stole my line from earlier made me smile for the first time since he started telling me his story.

"Right."

I felt Felix shift and glanced over to see he was looking out the window. "They won't care."

"Really? They wanted you to date a criminal because he was a sea otter."

"To be fair, they didn't know he was a criminal, and I'm one hundred percent sure they won't care because they're dead."

Shit. "Felix, I'm sorry."

He waved me away. "It's fine. Things between us weren't good after the trial anyway. They died in a plane crash two years ago. My dad was an amateur pilot. There was something wrong with the plane, and they didn't find out until it was too late."

I pulled into the parking lot behind Felix's apartment building and cut the engine, then reached across the seat and put my hand on his thigh, ignoring the pulse of heat that sparked from my fingertips and up my arm. "That's still terrible."

Felix shrugged. "It is what it is. Nothing I can do to bring them back."

"I sometimes forget not all shifters think like we do." I gave his leg another squeeze.

"What do you mean?"

"We think that when people die, their spirits stay behind and guide us when we need it."

Felix looked up at me, interest in what I was saying in his eyes but shockingly very little sadness. "Sea otters believe our spirits return to the ocean." He looked away, up at the red brick building, and things got quiet.

A few minutes later, he unfastened his seat belt. "Let's go get my stuff."

"Uh, maybe you should wait here."

"I thought you couldn't let me out of your sight?"

He was right. And McMahon would have my ass if anything happened to him. If his apartment wasn't on the way out to my place, I would have dropped him off there or taken him to Quin's art gallery, where my brother could keep an eye on him. But it was too late now. "Fine, but stay behind me." He nodded, and I grabbed his hand when he reached for the door handle. "I've got it."

Felix raised a brow but said nothing as I opened his door and walked beside him to the building, where I held out my hand for his keys.

He dropped them into my palm, a Darth Vader Funko Pop key chain swinging. "Second floor. Apartment 2C."

Something felt off, but I slid the key into the lock and turned, then crossed the threshold and climbed the stairs, stopping in front of 2C. When I went to put the key into the lock, the door swung open, the doorframe cracked.

"Fuck." I pushed Felix back. "Wait here." Kicking the door open, I slid my Taser from my pocket. I didn't carry a real gun, so the Taser would have to do. I held it in front of me as I looked around the room.

I had no idea how Felix usually kept his house, but what I was looking at was nothing short of carnage. The couch had been slashed, white fluff floating over the room and springs sticking up through the center of the overturned frame. Books with ripped-out pages littered the floor, and broken glass reflected the light coming in from the naked window, the curtains torn from the rod that hung broken from one bracket.

"What the… Oh my God!" Felix stood in the doorway, his hand over his mouth and his eyes wide. He started to come into the room, but I caught him before he made it more than a step.

"We need to call McMahon."

Felix fought my hold. "I need to see the rest."

I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed tight. "No, we need to call McMahon, have his guys clear the apartment, and then maybe they'll let you look around." I used my body to push him back out into the hall. Once we were out of the apartment, I released Felix, who slumped against the wall and slid down so he was sitting with his head buried against his knees. My poor lucky otter was absolutely wrecked, and it was almost like I could feel his pain, like it was my space that had been ransacked.

But suddenly, every tiny towel, every too-small pair of sweats didn't matter because McMahon had gotten Felix out, and he'd kept him safe for me. What if Felix had been there when the lowlifes who'd tossed his place had come by? He could have been hurt or worse. And then I never would have known him.

Sliding my phone out of my pocket, I kept my eyes on Felix, who had his hands balled into fists as his shoulders shook, and dialed McMahon.

The detective answered on the third ring. "I just got home. This had better be good."

"You need to get to Felix's apartment. Send a team. The place is trashed."

McMahon let loose another shocking string of expletives, and then a sigh came over the line. "Is the kid okay?"

"Eh."

"He's not hurt?"

"Not a scratch. He's upset, though."

"Yeah. I bet." I heard rustling. "I'm putting my shoes back on, and I'll be there in twenty. Ortega is closer, so I'm gonna send him. He can assess and see if we need CSI. Get that ball rolling."

"Okay. What do you want me to do?"

"Stay there. I'm guessing Felix is with you, so keep him calm. We'll probably need him to look around to see if anything was stolen. Did you touch anything?"

"Only the doorknob."

"Good. Stay out of the apartment until we get there. What a fucking mess." The line went dead, and I put my phone away and sat next to Felix on the worn industrial carpet. He leaned into me, his head hitting my shoulder.

"You think anything survived?" he asked. He sounded hopeless, and the fuckers that did this to him had better pray the law found them before I did. I wanted to give Felix hope, but I also didn't want to start our relationship by lying to him.

From what I'd seen of the apartment, I could guess the rest of his stuff was trashed too. "Probably not."

He swallowed hard and nodded against my arm.

I was kind of shitty at comforting people—as the oldest of four boys, I was better at tough love and telling people to shake it off—so I just let Felix lean against me and turned a little so I could put my arm around him. "McMahon's on his way. He's gonna need you to see if anything was taken." Another nod. "It's gonna be okay. They'll find whoever did this." Or I would. My brothers would help.

"Maybe." Felix's defeated tone told me he wasn't convinced.

There was no maybe in it for me. I'd have to talk to my brother Cal when he got home from whatever job he was currently working. I had a feeling his skills were going to come in handy.

A few minutes later, an attractive Latino guy in a tweed blazer hit the second-floor landing and hurried toward us when he saw us from down the hall.

"Nero? Ortega. McMahon sent me. What've we got?" He flashed his badge, and Felix sat up so I could stand. I offered him a hand, and he took it and got to his feet.

"We came to get some of Felix's stuff. The apartment's been ransacked."

Ortega nodded and pointed to Felix's door. "This apartment?"

"Yes." Felix barely made eye contact with the detective, the hunch in his shoulders sending his words to his feet. "We only saw the living room. I don't know what the rest looks like."

"Okay." Two uniformed officers joined our little group, and Ortega told them what we'd just told him. "We're gonna clear the property and see where we need to go from there. You stay here for now." He unholstered his gun, which I thought was overkill. They wouldn't find anyone inside. If whoever had trashed the apartment was still there, they knew we'd been inside, and they'd probably cut and run the second they heard the sirens… if they even waited around that long. If they were still on the premises, my gut told me they would have made a grab for Felix.

Ortega shouldered open the door and entered, gun first, the officers, guns similarly drawn, following. They moved through Felix's place, and from where we stood, we heard them calling to each other.

The detective's face appeared around the doorframe as he tried to sidestep a broken lamp. "All clear. I'm gonna have one of the officers walk around with you. Tell her if you notice anything missing." Ortega called over his shoulder to a tall Black woman with short hair who was standing near the kitchen. "Johnson, walk Felix here through the unit and note anything that's gone."

She nodded and hustled over as best she could, picking through the debris and trying not to disturb anything. Officer Johnson held her hand out to Felix. "Officer Maxine Johnson. Sorry to be meeting like this." I liked her. She was nice. And Felix gave her a flicker of a smile as he followed her into the living room.

"Nero?" Ortega called. "You stay with me."

Felix looked back at me, eyes wide. I couldn't let him out of my sight.

"I go where he goes. Nonnegotiable."

Ortega held up his hands. "Okay, okay. We can talk when you're done."

We left Ortega and the other officer in the living room, scratching his head, probably wondering where to even start.

"Gotta warn you"—Officer Johnson shook her head—"the rest is just as bad. What do you want to see first?"

"Office." I couldn't help but notice the urgency in his tone.

"Okay."

If the living room was carnage, Felix's office had been decimated, the skeletons of a few wide-screen monitors all that was easily identifiable, their screens shattered and the interiors exposed. Colorful boxes had been ripped apart, the contents smashed and broken and littering the room.

What was left of a laptop was in the center of the disaster, the hard drive ripped from the back and the whole thing in pieces. The tower of another computer had been destroyed too, the hard drive ripped out like that one guy's heart from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Felix started to sway, and I caught him before his knees gave out. "You're okay."

He bent his head to rest on my chest, and I felt tears soak my shirt. I wanted to pull him away, to get him out of there, to take him home, wrap him in bubble wrap, and keep him safe while I found the assholes who'd done this. But we had to know if anything had been taken.

"Felix, I know this is difficult, but can you tell if anything is missing?" Officer Johnson was still being kind, which I appreciated because between the obvious death threat and the wreckage that was everything Felix had owned, this had to be right up there with one of the worst days of his life.

Felix pulled away and wiped his eyes, and I dropped a kiss on the top of his head just for luck and because there wasn't a damn thing else I could do at the moment.

"Sorry." He cleared his throat and looked around again. "The hard drives are gone. Which means it wasn't a hacker who did this. They would have known I wouldn't have anything saved locally. The hard drives they have are useless."

Officer Johnson made a note. "Anything else?"

The wall behind Felix's computer station had been shelves full of action figures and collectibles. Now all the boxes were smashed, the inhabitants destroyed. He bent to move a few things aside, but Officer Johnson put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, but I can't let you touch anything until we fully process the scene. This is just a quick look around to see if anything obvious is missing."

Felix nodded and stood. "Just the hard drives. From what I can tell."

"Okay. You'll get to give it a better look later. For now, I'm going to let Ortega know the hard drives are gone. Might give us a better idea on motive." She gave Felix a sympathetic look he didn't see because he was looking at the mess, then walked back into the hall.

The second she cleared the doorway, Felix's head shot up, and he moved as quickly as he could toward the closet at the far end of the room. The door was open, but it didn't look like there had been much inside.

He kicked a box on the floor in front of the door and swore. "This was a mint-in-box attack armor Batman. I really hate these fuckers. I paid three hundred and fifty bucks for him."

I had no idea what that meant or why he'd spend so much on an action figure he wasn't going to take out of the box, but it meant something to Felix, so it meant something to me.

When he reached the closet, he looked over his shoulder. "Let me know if you see her coming back."

"Okay. What are you doing?"

"Gotta see if whoever trashed my place got the real drives."

From where I was standing, I could see into the hall and into the closet, and I watched Felix kneel and pry loose a piece of the baseboard, then the flooring to reveal a safe with an electronic pad in the floor. He punched in seven digits, and the lock beeped.

"Excellent." He scooped the contents out of the safe. "We should probably not tell Officer Johnson or Detective Ortega about this."

I mimed zipping my lips as Felix closed the safe and put the floorboards back into place. He stood and tucked whatever he'd taken into his pants and hoodie pockets.

"Perfect timing." The words were for Felix's ears only as Officer Johnson's face appeared around the doorframe.

"Did you find anything else missing?" She had held her pen poised over her notepad ready to add anything Felix had to report to her list.

Felix shook his head. "No, almost everything that was in here is accounted for, just ruined."

She gave him another sad smile. "I'm sorry, Felix. I really am. And I wish I could tell you the bedroom was better, but…"

"You can't. I get it."

Officer Johnson grimaced. "No. Ready to take a look?"

"I don't have a choice, do I?" But he was already following Officer Johnson back into the hallway.

In a move that shocked us both, I grabbed his hand and laced our fingers together. He looked at our hands for a second, then squeezed my fingers and pulled me along down the hall.

The bedroom was more of the same—smashed lamps and overturned nightstands, slashed and torn bedding, the carcasses of a few collectible stuffed animals lying like deflated balloons around the room, their fluff in piles that reminded me of snow. Clothes had been stripped from hangers and pulled from drawers, but most of it looked relatively intact, only a few shirts ripped or pairs of pants shredded. Apparently, whatever these motherfuckers had been looking for, it wasn't Felix's collection of nerdy T-shirts.

He moved around the room, stepping carefully and mentally cataloguing what he saw. Before anyone could stop him, he bent and came up holding a fluffy round ball, clutching the stuffed toy to his chest, the trauma of having his space so brutally invaded finally catching up with him. I could see him starting to crack around the edges.

"We'll need to process that." Officer Johnson held out an evidence bag. The stuffy was maybe the only relatively unharmed item in the apartment, and Felix turned sharply, hiding it against his side and refusing to give it up. He looked so young in that moment, so innocent. And I couldn't really blame him for wanting to keep it.

"Don't you think we could let him hold on to this one thing?" I gave the officer a significant look. "He's been through a lot today."

She frowned, torn between protocol and compassion, but she finally nodded. "The tech might need to look at it, but I'll make sure you get it back."

Felix didn't seem to hear her. He was looking down at the stuffed sea otter like it was the last good thing in his world.

I would make sure it wasn't.

Hours later, we were back in the hall, sitting on the floor again. McMahon had shown up, and he and Ortega had gone through the apartment with the crime scene techs. We'd been allowed to leave for a little while to grab something to eat. Felix had pushed a few fries around his plate, but he hadn't eaten much and kept a death grip on the otter he'd rescued from his room.

I wanted to take Felix home so he could start to put this invasion in his past, but McMahon asked us to come back when we were done eating. He'd already taken our statements and talked to Felix about what could have been on the drives, and he'd made Felix list everything he could remember being in the apartment.

And we'd been sitting in the hall since, getting only the occasional update as people moved in and out.

"Felix. Nero." McMahon poked his head out the apartment door before taking a step into the hall. "I think you can go." He looked dead on his feet, and the small part of me that actually kind of liked McMahon felt a little bad.

Standing, I held out a hand to Felix, and he took it and let me help him up again. "Good. It's about damn time."

McMahon rubbed a hand over his face. "I know, but for fuck's sake, don't give me shit right now. This is a mess."

I nodded.

"Lie low and keep Felix at your place. I'll be in touch if we need anything else." He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and flipped through it until he found a business card that he held out to Felix. "These guys are the best crime scene cleanup crew on the West Coast. I'll let Nero know when we release the scene, and you can give them a call to come in and clean up. See if there is anything left you want."

Felix had both arms wrapped around the damn stuffed otter, and he made no move to take the card, so I plucked it from McMahon's fingers. "I'll take care of it."

"Good. Good. And the department will pay for it." McMahon clapped me on the shoulder.

"You better find these guys." The words came out on a threatening growl.

The detective's eyes widened, but he nodded. "We're doing everything we can."

"It's not enough. But it's good you got Felix out when you did."

Another nod, and then I put my arm around Felix's shoulders and led him down the hall and out of the building.

Back in the car, he was silent as we drove out of his neighborhood, and as someone who'd always been utter shit at this kind of thing, I had nothing to say to make him feel better. I took the exit before the one I needed and pulled into the parking lot of a Target, killing the engine. That seemed to pull Felix out of his head, and he looked around.

"Where are we?"

"I thought you might want to get a couple changes of clothes and whatever else you need."

Felix rubbed his forehead, his glasses sliding to the end of his nose. "Oh, yeah. That's probably a good idea."

I unbuckled my seat belt and met him at his door. "Are you bringing him in with you?" I asked, nodding to the stuffy he was still holding.

"Huh?" He glanced down, then did a double take like he was just realizing he had something in his hands. "Uh, no. That's okay." He slid out of the seat and set the otter down.

"Let's make this quick."

"Yeah." Felix put his hands into his pockets, his eyes lighting up when he felt the drives he'd stashed there earlier. "Hey, do you have a computer?"

I smiled wide. "I think I have something even better. I'll show you when we get home."