by Riley Storm
She remembered Kincaid mentioning earlier that they might kill him for what he’d done, and that hadn’t seemed to surprise him at all. In fact, he’d acted like it was almost routine.
“Wouldn’t that make you out to be more of a traitor though?” she asked. “If you disagreed with a royal who is now gone, I mean? You wanted him out.”
Kincaid shook his head. “I just wanted to modernize the House some. To bring some of our traditions into the modern age. I didn’t hate him. He was a good King.” Kincaid smiled at some memory or another. “Even his wife wanted to make the changes.”
“Kaelyn,” she said, without even thinking about it.
“Yes. Our new Queen,” he answered.
“Right. Back on track though. All of this, the money and stuff, it went down during the time of the troubles.”
“What exactly were these troubles?” she asked, unable to stay silent about it any longer. “Both you and the Queen told me about them, but all she told me after that, was to shut down the accounts of a list of names and fold them into the main corporate account. Nothing else.”
Kincaid looked away, clearly thinking his words over before he spoke. “A faction tried to take over. It was a…hostile...takeover attempt.” He glanced down. “It didn’t work, but it came close.”
She absorbed that information, carefully not pointing out that it sounded very much like there had been an attempt to kill the people in power. If there was one thing she’d learned about working with House Ursa over the years, though, it was to not ask questions about things she didn’t need to know about. Now she had some idea of what was going on in there, she understood that even more.
“Well, there’s something I don’t understand,” she said, factoring in all this new knowledge, and the way this world seemed to operate.
“What’s that?”
“If they wanted you out of the way, why the hell wouldn’t they just kill you instead? Wouldn’t that be easier, if killing is something you—what did you say, shifters?—if it’s something you shifters are comfortable with.”
“Holy shit.” Kincaid slapped a palm against his forehead. “You’re right!”
“I am? I mean, of course, I am! But why are you acting so surprised about it?”
“Because for one, I didn’t expect you to be right.” Kincaid was running his hand over his head now, messing up his steely gray hair.
“Ass.”
“But the second reason, is I think they already did!”
Haley was thoroughly confused now. “They did what, Kincaid?”
“Kill me. Or try to I mean. Someone did try to kill me. Just before you came to the House. I thought it was just him not liking me or being a little crazy but…” He fell silent, deep in thought.
This time, she let him think without interrupting. Obviously, he was onto something, and she wanted him to figure it out. Maybe they could find another lead out of it.
“We need to look up the bank records of someone else in the House,” he said, looking up suddenly. “You can do that, right?”
“The ones that are tied to the accounts I have access to, yes, of course. Why? And who?”
“You also have a list somewhere, of the companies associated with Canis, right? That you can cross-reference if you need to. For reasons exactly like this?”
“Yes.” She did have such a list, though she didn’t use it often. Despite their stated dislike for one another, the Houses did enough business together that sorting through it all would be a nightmare. But she had it, just in case.
“Okay, I need you to cross reference the records with the list of transactions on the bank account.”
Haley shook her head. “I can’t do that, Kincaid. That’s not what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m supposed to be helping you.”
Kincaid’s face hardened. “You can, and you will if you want to remain neutral in this. You’re not altering anything Haley. Just looking them up, that’s all.”
She wanted to fight, but he was right. “Fine, but why this man?”
“A hunch,” was all he said.
“Okay. What’s his name?” She sat down at her desk and opened her files.
“Krawll. Krawll Ursa.”
14
“It’ll take me a few minutes.”
“Take all the time you need,” he said, watching the screen as she worked.
Haley stopped, turning her body so she could look up at him. She was pretty. He’d known that of course, it had been one of his first thoughts of her when she’d walked into the Throne Room, on a day that felt like ages ago.
Was it really just yesterday?
She had eyes that seemed to catch every detail, big and round, yet filled with a fierce intelligence he knew he was only scratching the surface of. The lips that so often were fixed with irritation toward him were infinitely kissable. Thick, round, tinged with just a little bit of red, a faint lipstick, designed to accentuate, not stand out.
“What I meant was, could you please not stare over my shoulder?” She gestured at the chairs. “Have a seat, I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
He flashed her a smile. A real one, not one of his fakes. This was her area of expertise, and he owed it to her to let her prove it. “Sorry.”
Kincaid had any number of other things he should have been thinking about. Yet he was fixed on her, for all the wrong reasons.
“Krawll,” she said, spelling it out. “That one?”
“Yes. You find him?”
“Pulling up his transactions. Now the real work begins.”
It had to be him. During the fight, Krawll had been far too aggressive. The location and strength behind the attempts to strike Kincaid had been meant to kill. He’d been trying to figure out why the man would want him dead so badly, or if that was just the way Krawll was, and he’d not had an answer.
The appearance of Haley and her bombshell accusation had changed all his thinking, and until she’d suggested that Canis should just kill him, he hadn’t thought of it again.
Now he knew that he was on the right track. They were going to find something in those files. He could feel it. Feeling jittery and anxious, it was tough to sit still in the chair while Haley worked. He wanted to jump up, to pace back and forth. What was the link between Krawll and House Canis? How did that affect him?
That was the biggest mystery of all. The bank transfer had occurred before he’d even been nominated for the position of Hunter. He’d barely been back in North America when it happened. How could anyone have known to go after him? There was something still missing, a piece of the puzzle, and a critical one. What the hell had he done to warrant such attention from House Canis?
“Kincaid.”
He snapped out of his thoughts. “What did you find? Is it a link? We should go interrogate him, see what he knows.”
Shaking her head, Haley pointed at the screen. “I cross-ran the file against both credits and debit transactions, to see if he’d taken or given money to any of the places on the list.”
“And?”
“It came up empty. This guy is fine.”
“No.” He shook his head. “I refuse to believe that.”
“I know, but I’m telling you, I didn’t mess up. None of the companies on the list are ones he dealt with.”
“Fuck.” Kincaid wanted to throw his chair in frustration. “What about—what about any larger transactions? Ones that might stand out?”
Haley sighed.
“Please?” he asked, putting on his best charming face. “I know this might seem silly to you, but this is my life we’re talking about. I promise I’m not the asshole you think I am. Mostly. Someone did this to me.” He got up and walked to the edge of her desk, staring at her the whole time, not letting her eyes go.
“I need your help, Haley. This is your area of expertise. Not mine.” He smiled as he complimented her, wondering if she’d accept the flattery, or call him out for trying to flirt his way to victory. It didn’t matter, as long as i
t worked.
“Okay,” she said, going back to her screens.
It was in there somewhere, he knew it. They just had to find it. Kincaid just didn’t know what “it” was. He longed to look at the list, but he suspected that was against the rules—rules he needed to follow if he was to keep her on his side for now.
Seconds stretched into minutes, and he started pacing, despite his best efforts not to. Haley didn’t say anything, lost in the numbers. The longer she kept at it, the more hopeless he felt. He was barking up the wrong tree. Maybe Krawll was just a dick. He wasn’t the only one in Ursa who could wear that label.
He was about to tell Haley not to waste any more time, but before he could, she stiffened.
“You found something?” he asked quietly, leaning over the desk. “Didn’t you?”
“I’m not sure.”
Despite her earlier command, he couldn’t help himself. He had to see it with his own eyes. Coming around the desk, he leaned over her shoulder, doing his best to ignore the scent of honey and milk coming from her hair.
“Show me,” he said gruffly, trying to take command of himself once more, keep his persona intact.
“It’s right there on the screen,” she said with just a bit of bite to her words, pointing at three separate boxes all containing the same information, with one difference: the time stamp. All three were dated two days earlier. The day before his trial against Krawll.
“A million dollars.” He tried not to sound disappointed but failed. “You know the scale of the funds we have access to, Haley. A million dollars isn’t exactly much.”
“You told me to look for large sums that might seem unusual. This is three separate transactions, all deposits into his account, for a clean, even, million dollars each. I’m telling you, as the one who runs the books for you guys, this is odd.”
Kincaid looked at the sums again. He’d been hoping for more. Much more. Still, if she said it was weird… “What’s so off about them?”
She sighed, using the mouse icon in circles over the name of the company depositing the money. “A million dollars. Three times. From a restaurant? One that he’s never had contact with before? Never bought food at, or invested in? Nothing?”
“A restaurant?” he echoed. “You’re right, that is odd. We have no record of this place, do we? Nothing on the files?”
“No.”
Kincaid grinned. “We might just have found a new one to add. Which is perfect.”
“How is that perfect?” Haley sounded confused.
“Because I’m starving. Come on, we’re going to get lunch.” He walked back around the desk, smiling eagerly to himself. They were back on the hunt! It was time to go search for clues.
“That’s your plan?” she asked, staring at him in astonishment.
Kincaid waggled a finger at her, putting just a bit of extra flair into it so that she knew he was mocking her. “Hey, there is absolutely nothing rule-breaking about going to get food from a restaurant. That was your condition. I didn’t say breaking in. I said getting food.”
Haley didn’t look overly impressed. He was playing by her rules, even if it probably wasn’t how she’d expected to go about it, and so there was little she could do about it. Either she admitted that, or she would suck it up and come along. Kincaid didn’t care much which one she chose.
A handful of seconds later, she stood up. “Fine. I don’t know why we’re doing this though.”
“Tactics,” he explained as she grabbed her coat and put on her outdoor boots.
“Tactics?”
“Yes. Think about it. This is an entirely different avenue of attack than what we’ve done so far. Whoever is after me, they’re expecting me to go down. The incident at the docks? They probably hoped I wouldn’t be allowed to go searching, but they had to have planned for it. Now they think I’m stuck, and that I’m running out of time.”
“You are running out of time,” she pointed out, leaning back against the elevator wall as they descended to the ground floor.
Kincaid glowered. “Thank you for the unnecessary reminder. Still, the last thing they expect is for me to show up at this restaurant, something they don’t think I even know about. We’re going to throw them off balance. Push them into doing something unexpected, and we’ll see what we flush out by doing that.”
“You’re trying to get them to make a mistake and give you another clue.”
“Exactly!” he said, clapping his hands together, glad she understood his train of thought.
“And what happens if this is just a restaurant and we get food, and nothing happens?”
He smiled. “Then I’m happily full and we go back to searching for more clues.”
Haley sighed, not saying much more as they got into his car and headed off. He was following her directions, having no idea where the restaurant was.
Kincaid was focused on this new bit of information. Someone had paid Krawll off, that much was evident to him now. It was the same people trying to frame him, he knew that. They were tying up all the loose ends they could think of. He played out the scenario in his mind—the scenario if they had won.
Krawll would end up as the Hunter, a pawn of someone in Canis as a Title Holder. Then, while they’d be going through his things, including his bank account, they’d find the “missing” money from the Ursa corporate account. Suddenly he’d be one of the remaining traitors that Kirell, the Queen and everyone else had been looking for all along. They’d announce this, and any real traitors would stay hidden, free to continue their attempts to destroy Ursa from the inside.
It was a tidy little plan. The only thing whoever was behind it hadn’t accounted for, was the trust Kincaid’s Queen had in him, giving him the ability to clear his own name. That, and the fact that Krawll was nowhere near as good a fighter as he boasted about being. He’d managed to fool his handler in Canis, but Kincaid knew better.
Whoever it was behind this, he was going to find them. They would pick up the trail again at the restaurant, and this time, Kincaid wouldn’t stop until he backtracked it all the way to the top. Then he would have evidence he could use.
That’s where things would get complicated. If the man behind it all really was Laurent, the Reaver of High House Canis, he was beyond Kincaid’s ability to go after, at least physically. Attacking—or more satisfying, killing—the sonofabitch would result in open warfare between the Houses. He could hire someone unaffiliated with the Houses to do the job, but that wasn’t guaranteed to work, and could still backfire upon him.
No, if you want to bring this bastard down, you’re going to need to take it to The Court.
The Court was the body that governed shifters. Each of the three High Houses, Canis, Drakos and Ursa had three voting members upon it. The minor Houses, Raptere and Panthera, had one advisory seat each, though they weren’t allowed to vote.
Going to The Court presented another problem to him, however, one that would quite likely kill the charges.
Canis controlled The Court right now. As the most powerful of the Houses, their King currently sat as the final member of the body, the Viceroy—the tenth and deciding seat. It was a new addition to The Court, having been added after all the members of House Drakos retreated from all interaction with the outside world.
Left with three seats apiece, every vote had been deadlocked between Ursa and Canis. At the time, Ursa had been the most powerful, and so they’d exerted their will and introduced the seat of Viceroy. A tiebreaking seat.
Now the tables had turned, and Canis claimed the spot. A simple majority vote of four to three would kill any motion he brought against Laurent.
Still, that is the way the rules dictate it must be done, and if I’m to stay on Haley’s good side, that’s how I’m going to have to do it. At first.
It was odd how appeasing her was starting to work its way up his list of priorities. Why should he care? After all, she was the one who’d accused him of being a traitor, instead of bringing the information
to him first and giving Kincaid a chance to investigate. He needed to focus on what was truly important: proving his innocence, not keeping a House flunky happy. That was the right thing to do.
Wasn’t it?
15
It took him the better part of ten minutes of being lost in his own thoughts before Kincaid came to the realization that Haley hadn’t spoken either. Glancing over while they were stopped at a red light, he noted the tautness of her jaw.
“You have something you want to ask.” It wasn’t really a question.
Haley started to shake her head, then stopped, then continued. “No, it’s fine.”
“Just ask.”
The light turned green and he was forced to pull his eyes away from the smooth, round lines of her face and the—stop it.
“Kincaid, if there’s one thing I’ve learned working with House Ursa over the years, it’s that when things are a little confusing, it’s best if I just don’t ask questions. Do my job and call it a day. I don’t need to know why you guys insist on ordering thousands of ugly brown sweatshirts and sweatpants on a yearly basis, for example.”
One side of his mouth twisted up into a smile. “Baggy, loose clothing is easy to slip in and out of. But we don’t always have time.” He frowned. “Or remember.”
“Remember what?’
“To strip down before shifting. The clothes don’t make the change,” he explained. “So, we tend to ruin a lot of them.”
“Ah,” she said. “That’s why you got naked in the warehouse. Of course. I should have made the connection.”
He took his eyes off the road for a moment, watching the color of her cheeks change slightly. Was she thinking about seeing him naked, he wondered? Kincaid was so used to nudity that he often forgot it sent most normal humans into a tizzy. Especially women who thought he was attractive. He’d not really expected that from Haley though, the considering him attractive part. The getting worked up over nudity didn’t surprise him in the slightest.