Eric didn’t like hearing that. “Goddess go with them.”
“Yeah, it sucked. They’re being fostered. The foster mom made it to Shiftertown, and is about crazy with worry.”
“Are all the missing here?” Eric asked.
Kyle or Matt—the one on his shoulder—busily licked Graham’s ear. “All twenty,” Graham said. “The question is, why?”
“Let’s go ask someone who might know.”
Graham agreed. He steadied the cubs with his big hands as Eric led the way back down the aisle.
Nell was speaking to the driver. Her voice was pitched too low for Eric to hear the words, but whatever she was saying, the driver looked terrified.
When Eric and Graham stopped to tower over him, the guy said, “Please, don’t let her touch me.”
Nell sat back, an innocent look on her face. Then her expression changed, and she reached for one of the wolf cubs. “Aw, now, who’s a sweetie-pie?”
The cub held back a little, smelling bear, but when Nell’s strong hands closed around him, the cub recognized the maternal touch and relaxed against her. The second cub clung to Graham’s head and made little growling noises.
Xavier leaned back in the jump seat and looked at the driver. “Now how could you do bad things to these adorable little guys?” he asked.
“I didn’t do anything to them.” The driver had reddish curly hair cut short at his neck, reddish razor stubble, and wide blue eyes lined with pale lashes. “I swear to God. I was told to drive them to Shiftertown in Las Vegas. That’s it.”
“Who told you?” Eric crouched next to the driver’s seat, which put his head lower than the driver’s. There was something about looking up with full confidence at a person you wanted to interrogate. Height wasn’t always an advantage.
“My boss. He called me early this morning, told me to come in, get my bus, pick up a bunch of Shifters, and take them to the Shiftertown.”
“Where did you pick up these Shifters?”
“At a place out in the middle of the desert. I don’t know what it was—a military outpost or temporary housing, or something. I drove out, the people there loaded the Shifters on, and I drove away.”
“Early this morning.” Graham grunted, choosing to tower over his victim. “It’s after ten now. What took you so long?”
“Finding the place, first,” the driver said. “It took for-fucking-ever to drive out there—there’s no good roads, and this bus isn’t high clearance. I thought I was going to get stuck lots of times. Then it took a long time for them to get the Shifters in here, because they were all like that.” He jabbed his thumb at the back, where most of the wolves were still slumped in sleep.
“Tranqed,” Eric said. “Then what?”
“I drove back out. I finally made it to the highway, thank God, but then I was surrounded by bikers. I see some of them wearing Collars, and I know they’re Shifters. I thought they were going to kill me.” He looked at Xavier. “You’re human.”
Xavier showed white teeth in a smile. “Yep. But these Shifters are my friends.”
“Are you going to kill me?” the driver asked, looking fearfully up at Graham. “I have a wife, and two little girls…”
Nell patted his shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll go home to them.”
“Maybe,” Graham rumbled.
“Who’s your boss?” Eric asked. The driver’s attention swiveled back to him.
“I work for Sun Valley Transportation. It says so on the side of the bus.”
“Yes, but who hired your company? These aren’t the buses that brought the rest of the Shifters in this morning, are they, McNeil?”
“Nope,” Graham said. “Those were government crap-mobiles.”
“Find out,” Eric said to the driver.
“What?”
“Find out who hired the bus. Tell me, and no one else, and life will be good for you.”
The driver stared. “Find out? I won’t be able to, will I? I’ll lose my job over this.”
“No, you won’t.” Eric laid a strong hand on the man’s trembling shoulder. “You’ll deliver the Shifters to Shiftertown as requested, and then you’ll go turn in your bus, wash it off, whatever you do. As soon as you can, find out who asked for this special service, and call me. Where’s your cell phone?”
Xavier was the one who took a phone out of his own pocket and handed it over. Of course, Xavier would have relieved the man of any kind of communication ability first thing. The bus’s radio was dead as well.
Eric punched his phone number into the driver’s top-of-the-line smartphone. He was willing to bet that the phone had been a gift from one of the driver’s kids, and that the driver probably had never figured out how to use all its functions.
“That’s me, E. W.,” Eric said, handing the phone back. “Now we’ll get you out of this little ditch and on your way. I’ll ride with you to make sure nothing else goes wrong.”
“And me,” Graham said. Little Matt or Kyle must have understood that Graham was staying with them, because his tail wagged faster, and he leaned down to start working on Graham’s ear with his tongue.
“And me,” Nell said. “We can have a nice chat on the way back, and I’ll look after these little guys.”
“You’re not a wolf,” Graham said.