Page 8 of Kidnapped By The Messy Dragon

She comes out later with her friend, and they split at the corner, and my mate turns up the dark end of the street on foot. She’s walking home alone at this hour, and I have opinions about it. Unhinged is a word for what I’m doing. I keep doing it anyway, roof to roof, while she walks below with her flats slapping the sidewalk.

She crosses into a small neighborhood where the trees close over the street. I drop from the last roof and land without a sound, and I follow from far enough back that even her shadow keeps its privacy.

How did I stand right in front of her this afternoon and not know? The answer is bottled in the building she works in. Stillwater makes something that erases scent, and my mate spent her day wearing it. What I can’t figure is the why. What is that company hiding that needs its own people smelling like nothing?

Her building is small, two floors over a basement, four units. I post up behind an oak across the street and track her through the front door. A light comes on behind a first-floor window. She kicks off her flats, crosses the room, and pulls the curtains shut on me.

I close my eyes and breathe her in from across the street. Burnt caramel, faint now, threading through the trees.

My dragon wants across that street tonight. Being one soul means the wanting is mine, and so is the no.

My mate works inside the company I came to tear open. Either she’s part of what they’re hiding, or she’s an innocent woman trying to make it in this economy. I’ll find out tomorrow.

I catalog the block on my way out of it: the oak, the dead streetlight two doors down, the blue house with the loud dog, the numbers on her building. Cold crawls in where the heat was, and I have to make myself keep walking toward the square.

“See you tomorrow, Zuri,” I tell the dark, and go find the bed and breakfast Malachi texted me.

4

ZURI

Renee kept me out past my bedtime, and I dragged into work this morning on too little sleep. I’m on my second coffee before I notice the floor isn’t making its usual noise. The phones are silent and the copy room sits empty.

A box lands on my desk with CONFIDENTIAL stamped across the lid in red.

Huh?

Confidential crosses my desk all the time. Wanting to open one is new. I check the room.

Two security guards stand by the shredder bank. In a year on this floor, I have never seen security set foot in records. They’re just standing there, hands folded, watching us work.

Renee comes around the shelving with a cart of matching boxes. Her face is doing its work face.

“Top priority project,” she says, parking the cart between our desks. “These get destroyed today. All of it, straight from upstairs.”

I stand and lift the box, and it’s heavier than it looks. It occurs to me that my work phone hasn’t rung all morning. Whitney has gone quiet, and I don’t trust it.

I pop the lid to load the first stack, and the folder on top is labeled SHADOW WOLF CREEK.

The shifter town?That raises an eyebrow.

Millbrook hates the shifter town the quiet way: stickers in shop windows, barstool talk, nothing anyone signs their name to. The town can’t afford louder. Millbrook is dying, and the paychecks holding it up come from Stillwater and whatever money crosses the valley to do deals here. So people hate carefully. None of it was ever my business.

But I process records for a living, and records get destroyed on a schedule, with sign-offs, with a manifest I type myself. This is a cart, two guards, and no paperwork.

I’ve watched a company clean house before. I know what it looks like when paper starts disappearing.

I want to open that folder so bad my fingers itch. One of the guards clears his throat, and I feed the first stack into the shredder instead.

The machine chews through Shadow Wolf Creek one folder at a time. I keep my face bored and my hands moving, and the wrong feeling sits in my stomach.

Then the bigger guard mutters something about his lunch and pushes through the door toward the break room. The other one turns to walk the far shelving row. Renee is deep in her own cart, reading glasses down on her nose for once.

I slide one folder off the stack and into my tote under my desk, between my cardigan and my wallet. I’m quick about it.

I feed the next stack into the shredder and don’t look at my tote again.

The rest of my shift crawls. The guards stay until the last cart is empty, and by late afternoon the whole room carries the burnt-dust smell of chewed paper. When the big one finally walks the shredder bins out, I sign off my queue and gather my things.