Page 96 of Truthfinder’s Promise

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She stepped into the basement, the door clanging shut behind her. Dim electric lighting followed her down the stairs, growing stronger when she reached the bottom. The basement itself occupied a rectangular space, cages lining both sides of the walls. Soft, rhythmic breathing filled the air.

The Shifters that occupied the cages, from the great tiger nearest her to the bear at the opposite end, were asleep. Muzzles covered their faces and blood stained the fur between their paws.

She remembered Analisa saying she’d ripped Natalie’s claws out. Had she done that to all of them?

Dread filled her and she hurried down the cage row until she found Jensen. Like the others, he was asleep.

“Jensen?” His paw twitched. Hopeful, she reached through the bars and shook him. He gave a loud, wolf snore. Perfect. Her big, bad werewolf was off in dreamland.

Magically induced sleep or medical? And how was she going to wake him up? How was she going to wake all of them up?

If Analisa had sedatives to knock them out, maybe she had stimulants to wake them up. She looked around and found the basement had another door at this end of the room. A try of the handle found it unlocked. In the small room on the other side, four refrigerators lined the walls. The first three were stuffed full of ground hamburger meat. The fourth one held vial upon vial of clear liquid. She looked at the label but the name didn’t mean anything to her. She was reaching for the phone in her clutch to look up the name when she remembered she didn’t have cell reception here. But the vials were all the same, so it was likely the sedative, with no stimulant in sight.

Still, signs pointed to medical sedation, which was...good. If it was medical then their super Shifter metabolisms could kick through it quickly, right? Except they weren’t. Maybe they just needed a little incentive.

She took a hamburger package, ripped it open and placed it by Jensen’s nose. His paws twitched. A low growl started in his throat and he woke without warning, snapping and snarling until his eyes lit on her with recognition.

“Hey, handsome.”

He shook himself, downed the hamburger meat, and shifted. He’d barely regained human form before he was talking. “Are you okay?”

“What? You don’t like my grunge look?” She pulled the lock picks from her hair, looking over the lock before making her selection. Before she could set to work, Jensen’s hands slid through the bars, closing over her wrists. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.”

He didn’t let go. “Where is Julian? Did he touch you?”

Apparently she wasn’t allowed to rescue her husband until after she talked to him. “Look, it wasn’t exactly fun but nothing happened. He thought I was going to suck his dick, I nearly tore his balls off, punched him in the nose, and tossed him off a balcony.”

Jensen blinked.

“Unfortunately I nearly went off the balcony with him. But I didn’t, so everything’s fine. May I please pick the lock on your cage now?” He let go of her wrists, but his hand came up to cup her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he said roughly. “I shouldn’t have let you go without me.”

“I’m the one who told you to go. If you hadn’t, we’d both be dead.” She focused her attention on the lock. After a minute, she said, “It matters. That you trusted I could handle it. Thank you.”

She didn’t look up, but she could feel his attention on her. “I do trust you, but Meredith? Please don’t ever ask me to leave you like that again.”

She let out a shaky laugh. “Deal.”

He crouched down, watching her work. “Are those your hair pins?”

“Technically, they are lock picks disguised as hair pins.”

“And you…know how to use them?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Why do you know how to use them? And why did you conveniently have diamond-encrusted lock picks?”

She worked the pins, feeling out the tumblers. “When I was younger, my mother used to waltz me through parties having me lie detect for public amusement. I’m still not sure if it was because she wanted to humiliate me, because she actually wanted the information I got for her, or if she just wanted to exhaust all my Aspect.

“Once I was tapped out, she’d lock me in my room. The thing about Aspecters is they tend to forget there are mundane solutions to anything. They’re so used to relying on Aspect to solve all their problems, they think that if someone runs out of it for the time being, that person is helpless. I didn’t want to be helpless.”

She felt the lock click and relief flooded her. Still got it.