Movement caught his eye.
"What are you doing?" he asked, giving Caia a funny look as she looked around the elevator. "It's an elevator. Brown wood paneling on the walls, buttons here, doors there. What could you be looking for?"
"Stand over here. No, like this," she said, maneuvering him until his back was against the side wall. "The doors are set more to this side. If you stand here, they won't see you right away. Give me ten seconds then come out. It'll give me a chance to see their relaxed attitude, and the change when you come around the corner."
He tried to respond but the elevator shuddered to a halt, making several screeching creaking noises that did nothing to help with his confidence of its stability.
"Stay quiet," she whispered, standing in front of the door.
The elevator chimed and the doors opened. Caia walked out, full of confidence, no trace of the doubt she had expressed earlier in her body language.
"Hi. Are you Ben?" he heard her ask. Obviously the Sapphires had realized someone was coming up. Gabriel wondered if the sentry had warned him anyway. If he had, he promised to ensure he regretted it.
"Yes," came the growled reply. "Who are you and why are you here?"
"Now now, is that any way to address a lady?" she chided, not giving any ground.
Ben made a sound like a surprised grunt before he replied. "Depends on who the lady is, and why she's in my home."
"She's with me," Gabriel said, stepping around the corner.
There was no shock in Ben's eyes. He must have been warned.
"Hello Gabriel. What brings you by today?"
"Just having a look around," he said lightly, giving Ben his best predatory smile.
"Why? Did we do something wrong?"
"Always Ben. Always," he said as if the other shifter should have known better. Gabriel pushed forward, shouldering the smaller shifter out of the way rather more roughly than was necessary.
"Okay, okay," the Sapphire Alpha protested. "What do you want to see?"
"Your digs. I haven't been here in a while. I'm sure you're hiding all sorts of things in here that you shouldn't be."
"Like what?" Ben snorted. "I didn't realize you were the police."
"Actually that's exactly what I am," Gabriel told him. "And there's been a lot of complaints about foul odors coming from here. So I'm here to ensure you're flushing the toilets and not living in your own filth any more than usual."
Ben made a noise that sounded very much like he didn't believe a word Gabriel had just said, then turned and eased around Gabriel. "So, left or right?" he said, pointing down the halls.
Gabriel turned to face Caia. "Well, which do you prefer?"
He hoped she understood why he was asking her to decide. If she had seen anything in Ben's body language that suggested he wanted to go one way instead of the other, she would go with the less-than-preferred one.
"I'm left-handed," she said, "so let's go left."
Gabriel tried to keep a straight face. She was most definitely right-handed from what he had seen. He wondered if that meant she had seen something in Ben's body language to indicate he would prefer they go right, to give his shifters time to hide evidence of something.
"Follow me," Ben said, leading the way.
There were only four rooms on either side of the elevator. The first three were unoccupied and the trio made their way through them quickly. The fourth had an occupant who answered the door swiftly, and showed them through without hesitation.
Gabriel took one last look around that room and frowned. Perhaps Caia had been wrong in her reading of Ben after all. He wanted to ask her, but knew that Ben would overhear anything they had to say. It would have to wait until they were back in the elevator.
"Satisfied yet?" Ben asked.
"Not even close. Take us through the rest of the rooms," Caia replied before Gabriel could say anything.
Gabriel just smiled at Ben's raised eyebrows. He really liked her. She was strong and didn't take anybody's shit.
The trio worked their way between all eight rooms on the top three floors, and even scoured the second floor, but they found nothing.
"Okay, you've seen it all and wasted my day. It's time you got out," Ben said, gesturing at the elevator.
"Don't miss us too much," Gabriel told him as the doors closed between them.
"Anything?" he asked quickly once the elevator started moving. They only had one floor to go, so they wouldn't be alone for long.
"At first, yes. But he seemed to calm down rather quickly. I don't understand. He is hiding something. I just don't know what."
The elevator banged to a halt at the ground floor.
"Wait here," Gabriel said, striding out the doors and toward the reception area.
"You!" he yelled, pointing at the shifter behind the desk.
The other man looked panicked and tried to turn and run away. Gabriel caught him before he'd gone a step, using his and the other man's momentum to hurl him forward off balance.
"Gabriel!" he heard Caia's shocked voice behind him as the lookout went crashing through a pane of glass into an empty room.
"I told you not to warn anybody," he admonished his victim, who was just starting to get to his feet.
"Don't do... ah shit," Gabriel said, jumping back out of the way as a big brown-and-gray mottled bear lunged at him from where the man had been just a moment before.
"Get outside!" he yelled at Caia, not turning away from the oncoming bear at all. "You're a big fella, aren't you?" he said lightly.
The bear launched itself at him, the ridge of its spine just inches below the ceiling.
Gabriel waited, arms spread wide and above his head. Once the bear was in full flight and committed, he slid to his left, just out of its reach. Then he brought his fist down as hard as he could on the other shifter's nose as it went by. The bear squealed and curled into ball as it slid across the tiled floor and crashed through another wall.
A massive paw swatted at him as he stalked up to his prey. Once again using the momentum, Gabriel waited until it was almost at the apex of its swing and lunged in, wrapping his powerful hands around the paw and wrenching it sideways with bone-shattering force.
The hurt shifter trumpeted in pain once more, his jaws snapping at Gabriel as it labored to get its other paw at him. Calmly Gabriel sidestepped the biting teeth and drove his fist into the shifter's head as hard as he could.
The bear collapsed, its head hitting the ground almost as hard as his fist had hit it. The eyes rolled back into its head and the bear stayed still.
"I told you not to warn him. But you had to go ahead and do so anyway, didn't you?" he said, shaking his head in disgust.
"Ow," he complained to himself, holding his left hand gingerly.
"Are you okay?" Caia asked as he walked toward her.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just forgot how hard their damn skulls are. It'll heal. Just fracture I think."
"Do we need to get you to the hospital or something?" Caia looked far more worried about him than she should have.
"Did nobody tell you?"
"Tell me what?"
"About a shifter's healing abilities?"
Caia blushed. "Right. No, I knew that. It's just that I've never seen one get into a fight before. Especially not where a shifter in human form takes on a bear. That was intense."
"I thought I told you to go outside?" he asked, looking around.
"I was going to, but he didn't seem to be a threat."
"That could have been a good way to get hurt," he told her.
"You fought him without changing. I needed to see if you were either competent or an idiot," she fired back.
"And?"
"Both."
Gabriel snorted. Then his eyes spied something going on out in front of the building.
"Listen, it won't be long before the others come down to investigate. Go out the back, and take a cab home. Call it right now. See if you're tailed, and if so, how far. I want to know if they're worried about what we're up to."
"I thought I was going to canvass the area, see what I can pick up on the feelings of the non-shifters here?"
"Change of plans," he told her. "Just go with it."
"I don't like plans changing," she protested. "This is why we're supposed to work together."
"We are," he said somewhat more vehemently than he meant to. "I trusted you in there; you trust me now." The situation out in front of the building that he could see was developing quickly. He had to move. "Just do it."
He left her standing there and headed out the doors. She would be fine, he thought, glancing back to ensure she was headed for the back doors. She was already moving, though he could tell by her body language she wasn't overly happy about it. The street on the other side was arguably busier than the front, so she would be safe.
Gwen, on the other hand, was in a bit of trouble.