Page 30 of Branding the Bat

He walked faster anyway.

KK was four blocks. He made it in six minutes, and when the elevator doors closed behind him and the lobby light gave way to the amber glow below, he let himself breathe for the first time since the phone had rung.

Chapter Nine

Breathing hard, Trevor arrived at Kinky Kritters twenty minutes after Amani's call.

He erupted from the elevator like a man who'd been dismantled and reassembled incorrectly, shirt untucked, hair wild, his eyes scanning the club with the desperate focus of someone looking for one specific thing. He found it: Sero, sitting at the bar in his usual spot, alive and untouched and not looking at him.

"He's fine," Amani said from behind the counter. His voice carried a warning. "Don't touch him. Sit."

Trevor sat. Not on the stool next to Sero. Three stools down. He understood, instinctively, that proximity was not his to claim.

"Tell us," Amani said.

Trevor told them. Everything he'd held back from the confession: the Grizzly's full operation, the sharks, the parking-lot confrontation, the envelope of cash, the demand for gold-quality serum, the escalating threats. He told them about the Playground, the warehouse in the desert, the cages, the chains, the absolute absence of consent. He told them how the Grizzly wanted the source, and the source was Sero, and the sharks had already identified him.

Sero listened without moving. His hands were wrapped around a Shirley Temple that Amani had placed in front of him. The cherry bobbed against the ice. He hadn't drunk any of it.

"How long before they come for me?" Sero asked. He addressed the question to the bar surface, not to Trevor.

"Days," Trevor said. It pained him to say the words. "Maybe less. The Grizzly doesn't wait when he wants something. Andthe sharks already know where you come. They described you to Amani tonight. That means they've been watching the building."

"Can they get to me at my apartment?"

"If they've been watching KK, they've probably followed you home at least once. Sharks are patient. They surveil before they move."

The cold precision of Trevor's analysis, the clinical knowledge of how predators operated, sat in the air between them. He knew how the sharks worked because he'd been part of their supply chain. He'd fed the machine that was now turning toward the man he'd fed into it.

Amani set his phone on the bar. "I called my mother. She's calling in a contact at shifter enforcement. There's a task force that's been investigating the Playground for months. They know about the Grizzly. They know about the operation. What they haven't had is a witness willing to testify about the inside."

Everyone looked at Trevor.

"I'll do it," Trevor said. No hesitation. A door out of the mess had finally opened up for him. "I'll give them everything. The alchemy, the serum, the client list, the delivery chain. I'll testify. Whatever they need."

"You'll also be confessing to three years of extraction without consent," Amani said. His voice was level but his eyes were hard. "You understand that."

"I understand." There was no way he couldn’t.

"You could go to prison,” Amani continued. “Shifter law doesn't have the same sentencing as human law, but non-consensual extraction is a serious offense. You'd be admitting to dozens of counts."

"I know what I'd be admitting to." Trevor looked at Sero for the first time since sitting down. Sero didn't look back. "It's the right thing to do. It should’ve been done three years ago."

Amani picked up his phone. "I'm making the call. Trevor, you're going to talk to enforcement tonight. They'll want you at their offices for a formal statement. Sero," he turned to the bat with the gentleness he reserved for people he actually cared about, which was a shorter list than most people assumed, "you're staying here. My mother's security will be outside your apartment by morning. The sharks won't get near you."

"And the Grizzly?" Sero’s voice cracked.

"If Trevor gives enforcement what they need, they'll have enough for a raid. The task force has been building this case for months. They just needed someone on the inside to break it open." Amani looked at Trevor. "Congratulations. You're the inside."

Trevor nodded. He wasn’t relieved. He felt like a man walking toward a cliff who'd decided the fall was preferable to standing still.

Amani made the call in the back office. The club was silent, no music, no patrons, just the hum of the refrigeration unit and the amber light and two men sitting at a bar who couldn't look at each other.

Sero drank his Shirley Temple. He grimaced slightly, like he didn’t like the taste of it.

"You should go." Sero still wouldn’t look at Trevor. "When Amani comes back with the enforcement contact. You should go do what you need to do."

"I will."