The car ride back with Beau was almost painfully tense. Titus sat in the passenger seat in miserable silence, plagued by guilt. His thoughts spiraled out of control into the darkest recesses of self loathing. God, he felt so stupid and ineffective! He’d risked Danni’s life for nothing. Ky was in the hospital. Three officers were dead. Another two captured, though if there were any salvation to be found in this horrific situation, it was that whatever happened to them wasn’t entirely Titus’ fault any more. The ransom note sent with their body cams had said they’d be released provided the police did nothing else, and that demand hadn’t been complied with. But still, they wouldn’t have been put in that situation in the first place if not for his own hubris and overconfidence in handling the situation. 

And his initial case had gone abruptly cold. He’d had a lead on the missing girl and he’d blown that, too. The likelihood that Titus would be let go from his position was looking more and more probable by the fuck up. 

It wasn’t until Beau turned off the highway well before the exit to his own house that Titus realized they weren’t headed to where he’d expected. 

Titus looked hesitantly over to the other man. Beau’s jaw was set in a hard line, eyes focused intently upon the road in front of him. Oh God, he looks pissed. There was a slight tremor in Beau’s muscles that Titus realized was from gripping the steering wheel with near crushing strength. He still wasn’t going even a single mile per hour over the speed limit. But for Beau, that was speeding, and Titus understood that it was taking the Garmr everything in his power to hold onto his temper. 

Titus couldn’t help himself; he shrunk back into the farthest corner of the passenger seat away from Beau that his seatbelt would allow.

The motion seemed to be just enough to garner Beau’s attention, though. Titus caught a twitch of ears before Beau heaved a tight sigh. “For the record, I ain’t mad at you,” he rumbled, his voice sounding a lot like the engine of his car. “I mean, I’m pissed as a cornered rattler right now. Ain’t gonna lie. But I ain’t mad at you, Titus.”

“I hope you’ll understand if I say I don’t believe that for a second.” Titus knew his voice sounded small and broken. But he didn’t know how else to sound when that was exactly how he felt in the moment. 

For the briefest second, Beau took his eyes off the road. It felt like he looked straight into Titus’ soul and stole away all the air in his lungs. Titus saw surprise flash across the canvas of hazel before Beau returned to staring at the asphalt ahead of him. Then Beau was putting on his blinker and easing off the side of the road. It was enough to have Titus wonder for an instant if he should be looking for ways to escape the confines of the car.

But no. Beau merely pulled off to the shoulder, methodically put the car in park, and set the parking brake before unfastening his seatbelt. He half turned in the driver’s seat, fixing that intense stare onto Titus, who felt himself shrinking back even further. A sense of dread took up residence in the pit of his stomach.

“Titus.” Beau’s voice turned soft, like he was trying to comfort a frightened puppy. Hell, Titus sure felt like one right now. “I am not mad at you.” Each word was said with clear enunciation, free of the usual drawl, though it came back in force as he continued. “Lord knows I could be. But I ain’t. I could also be mad at Danni, fer goin’ inside that buildin’ when I told them not to, but that ain’t it either. I’m puttin’ the blame firmly where it belongs: on the assholes that are lurin’ in Lycos to deal Simp and instead kidnappin’ ‘em. Those shitbags are takin’ advantage of a desperate population with promises of money and jobs. They’re killin’ cops and traffickin’ minorites. An’ you had no way a knowin’ that without Danni goin’ in there. You also had no way a knowin’ they were packin’ enough heat t’turn what shoulda been a clean operation into a bloodbath.”

Titus sighed, a fraction of the tension coiled in his body releasing. “But it was my operation,” he argued, though without much heat in his voice. “It was my bad decisions that snowballed out of control and led to your sibling being abducted and three officers being murdered. It was my shitty choices that put Ky in the hospital and gave the perps the window they needed to clear all those Nostu and Lycos out of there. If we’d just waited a little, planned a little better…”

“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Beau interrupted, though not unkindly. “You can blame yerself all ya want, but I won’t be convinced t’do it, too. So just stop with all the ‘what ifs’ and whiny shit. Lemme ask you somethin’: how long you been a cop?”

Though Titus couldn’t see what that had to do with any of this, he also couldn’t see any reason to not answer. “I’ve been with my current force for three years. Though I’ve been an officer for about ten.”

Beau nodded. “So ten years,” he repeated, and Titus nodded. “Well guess what? I know cops who’ve been on the job for damn near twenty years and fucked up worse’n this. Met a 35 year veteran once that told me over his fifth shot a bourbon that he’d once gotten his partner killed in a car wreck during a pursuit an’ it’d fucked him up so bad he’d taken a desk position for two years after before he could get back out on the beat. People fuck up, Titus. Cops fuck up. They make bad calls, or circumstances get outta control, or everything goes off the rails from the word ‘go’. And all of ‘em got one thing in common: they’re all people. They’re all people, and people fuck up. We ain’t robots, Titus. Ain’t no programmin’ or code that we can point to and say, ‘oh, here’s the problem’. So beat yerself up for a while and get it outta yer system. Because in the end, you still got a job t’do. You got a kid to find. And I got a sibling t’save, so’s I can beat the hell outta them myself fer bein’ dumber than a box a rocks.”

Titus opened and closed his mouth ineffectually about six times before he found his voice again. “Shit…” He scrubbed the moisture away from his eyes, determined to not cry in front of this man. “Okay. I…thanks, Beau.” Swallowing past the lump in his throat, Titus nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I do feel like shit about this whole mess. But you’re right.”

“‘Course I am.”

Titus chuckled weakly at the rejoinder. “I guess the thing I should be asking is what do I do next about this.”

“We,” Beau corrected firmly. “What do we do next. ‘Cause if you think I’m just gonna sit back an’ let you go harin’ off, think again. That’s my sibling that’s been kidnapped. And I’ve already been thinkin’ on that.” Titus looked expectantly at Beau. “Here’s what I figger: if those bastards really have cleared outta the warehouse, then they did it in a hurry. Which means they may’ve left somethin’ behind in the hustle. That’s where I was takin’ us, by the by, in case y’hadn’t figgered that out yet.”

Titus blinked slowly before looking around through the windows of the car. Sure enough, he vaguely recognized the path they’d taken the other day to get to the ill fated address. “Okay,” Titus allowed hesitantly. “That…makes sense. We can go look for clues.”

“You make it sound like some Scooby-Doo shit when you say it like that.”

A weak chuckle escaped from Titus, and Beau answered with a smirk. “Well, what would you call it, then?” Titus countered, though he was still smiling faintly.

“Gonna go sniff some ass cracks,” Beau replied immediately, earning him a groan from Titus. “Bitch about it all you want. But you already know my nose is gonna tell you where they went and how recently. There ain’t another Garmr this side a the Canadian border, either, so it ain’t like you can just find someone else t’take my place.”

“All right, yes. Your nose is useful.” Titus also really wanted to comment on how good it looked on Beau’s attractive face, but decided against that immediately. “If your nose is this sensitive as a human, does that mean it’s more sensitive when you’re in your other shape?”

“You still tryin’ t’get a look at my naked ass?” Beau teased with a smirk, making Titus blush again and try to splutter out a denial. “Honestly, though, yeah. It is. Mostly because it looks weird as hell for a person t’get down on their hands an’ knees t’sniff the ground. But whatever it is that makes canids so good at smellin’ comes into play with me as well. Y’know how I said a mall is a special kinda hell for Garmr? I wouldn’t go within two blocks a one while shifted. All the folk goin’ in an’ out, day after day, year after year…that leaves a thick trail. And I can smell one kid’s dirty diaper from last week just fine. Imagine smellin’ fifty dirty diapers, a month after they happen, and all at the same time.” Titus grimaced at that concept. “Mind you, the flip side t’that is that if I need t’find a single trail in all that mess, I can. You need the scent a one individual buried beneath the rubble of a collapsed building? I’m your guy. Got a hiker lost on a trail in the middle of a desert on a scorching hot day? No problem. Evidence work ain’t the only thing I do for Ky an’ the department.”

“Well, if you feel like you need to shift while we’re looking around this warehouse, I promise to turn my back and not look at your behind until after it’s completely covered in fur,” Titus assured Beau, only half joking. The sound of Beau laughing as he put the car back in gear was music to Titus’ ears.