“Of course you did,” Zio grumbled. “Haven’t people got anything better to talk about?”
Gale chuckled. “Not around here. Monitoring a human hospital is pretty boring, you know.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. The briefing I got yesterday said nothing unusual had been picked up, but I wanted to hear your take on it.”
“The briefing was my take on it. I wrote it and sent it to you.”
“Uh-huh.” Zio let a speculative silence hang out. Gale was a black and white thinker, but when pushed, he had stronger instincts than even he knew.
Five, four, three, two, one...
“There was something, though,” Gale said.
Bingo. Zio sat up straighter. “Go on?”
“Nah, it’s probably nothing.”
“So? If that’s the case, we can eliminate it and move on.”
“I guess.”
“So?” Patience wasn’t Zio’s strong point.
Gale sighed. “We’ve been monitoring backroom staff—housekeeping, maintenance, the orderlies, all areas it’s easy to sneak people in without proper records, but we’ve seen nothing in those departments. It’s the medical staff. A year ago, the hospital couldn’t keep employees longer than a few months, but recently, that’s stopped.”
“Did the working conditions change?”
“No. If anything, they’ve got worse. This is a failing hospital—cancelled surgeries, massive waitlists, huge queues in the emergency department. There’s a lot of anger in the air, and front-line staff take the brunt of it.”
“Shifters couldn’t infiltrate a hospital like that. Even the humans would notice.”
“I know. And we sweep the building day and night. No shifter has even come close.”
“And no new humans either?”
“Not for a while.”
Zio scrubbed a hand through his hair. It needed a cut, but only Emma had ever taken scissors to his hair. For now, he was content to go wild. “You’re right. It might be nothing, but something about it feelsoff. Do you have any way of accessing the staff database?”
“Of course, but it will take time to do that undetected by anyone who’s got there first.”
“How much time?”
“A couple of days at least. We’d have to do it in stages.”
“Then do it,” Zio said. “And get to work checking out anyone who strikes you as suspicious—actually, check out everyone. We can’t afford to miss anything.”
Gale sighed again. “Okay. I suppose that means I’m not going home again. Vicky is going to kill me.”
“No change there. How does that work anyway?”
“How does what work? Her wanting my balls for a hat because I haven’t had dinner with her for a month?”
“No... your attachment to her. You’re married, but you’re not bonded.”
Silence. Then Gale cleared his throat. “I’m not going to speculate as to why you suddenly give a shit about my private life, so I’ll just say this: Me and Vic love each other, fancy the crap out of each other, and neither of us can imagine ever being with anyone else. It’s been fifteen years. Yeah, we’re not bonded in a shifter sense, but wolves aren’t all we are... we’re human too.”
“But youareshifters. What if you trigger a bond with someone else?”