by RJ Blain
Evelyn laughed. “She’s already added ‘bite hard’ to the list. That’s why Elliot’s on the floor. Spent a little too long watching her.”
“I see. Do you need me for anything?”
“I need you to feed my puppies the one horse each you promised they’d need. It takes a long time to hunt down two horses.”
“I’ll make certain everyone is adequately fed. How does moose stew grab you?”
“Will it take you a long time to cook?”
“Now you’re just being mean, Vicky.”
Were all men so needy in the comfort of their own home? “You whine more than my puppies do.”
“They’re such delightful little demons. They landed a few good hits on me, too. I’m going to have bruises.”
I sighed. “Amber, can you remove this male so I can get back to work?”
Laughing, the fire witch shooed Richard away. “Go make moose stew, and when you’re finished with that, make us cookies. Better do several batches.”
Evelyn waved her hand. “Two for me!”
“What type?”
“Oatmeal, chocolate chip, and gingersnap,” Evelyn replied.
“We’ve been over this before. I’m not making you Frankencookie, Evelyn.”
“No, Richard. I want all three types.”
“But you only asked for two batches.”
“I’m going to share some of my cookies with Vicky. She’s my favorite today.”
Richard sighed, shook his head, and headed for the hallway. “I’m holding you to your word, Vicky. Those puppies are mine tonight.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m the judge of that, Murphy.”
Snarling curses, the Alpha retreated.
I turned my attention back to my work, doing a final check of the data I imported before condensing it into a spreadsheet I could filter. Once done, I double checked the totals of all categories, and once satisfied there wasn’t any large expenditures in his regular spending, I focused on his work earnings.
According to the Inquisition database, they had paid out over ten million to Markus over eight years.
According to my records of his earnings, Markus had earned fifty million in the same period of time. Whistling, I isolated the Inquisition bank accounts and filtered them out of the results.
The earnings report dropped to less than ten million, and I felt the blood drain out of my face.
Pulling the information directly from the database yielded the same results.
Uncertain if I had made a mistake somewhere along the way, I started back from the very beginning, checking over my original list of accounts transferring money into Markus’s accounts. When I compared against the master list of Inquisition accounts, they matched.
Someone within the Inquisition had been paying Markus a great deal of money—money that wasn’t registered as operation funding. But who?
My first guess was Amelia; it’d be trivial for a shadow witch to manipulate someone into depositing funds. If she had been the one responsible, there would have been a disruption of funds—or at least a delay in his payments.
The death of an interloper tended to put kinks in plans.
Sure enough, most of the transactions ended with Amelia’s death, leaving a handful of unknown transactions. I set my laptop on the coffee table and worked my foot under Elliot, prodding him until he groaned and rolled over to escape me. “I need more information.”
“You bite hard,” he complained, lifting his hand to rub his throat. Instead of getting up, he rolled onto my feet. “I’m tingly.”
“Tingle while you work. I have forty million dollars to track, and I need you to track it for me.”
“Forty what?” my mate blurted.
“Forty million dollars. Dollars are a currency used in a variety of countries, most notably the United States of America. Million is a quantitative value.”
“Why am I tracking forty million dollars?”
“That’s the discrepancy between what the Inquisition thinks it paid to Markus versus what he actually received.”
“There’s a forty-million-dollar discrepancy?”
“Indeed.”
Elliot grabbed hold of my knee, hauled himself upright, and with a little help of the chair, wobbled his way to his feet. For a long moment, he stared at me, then he turned to my laptop, bent over, and picked it up.
While I expected him to sit somewhere and review the numbers, his choice of my lap startled me enough I let him get away with him.
“Forty million dollars is unaccounted for?” Elliot’s tone deepened, and his scent developed a sharp, bitter edge. “Where’s Richard?”
“Kitchen, cooking for the puppies.” Amber eased her way towards the hallway. “I’ll tell him he has forty million reasons to get his ass to his laptop.”
“It’s not his fault, but he might be able to help me identify the incoming source of the money. Evelyn, mind calling Danielle and telling her I need accounting to pull up every transaction to Markus’s accounts? I want the full files on all related funds.”
“You’ll need to email her the account numbers.” Reaching around Elliot, I pointed at the appropriate column. “Why are you on my lap?”
“Shh, I’m working.” Elliot scowled at my laptop, copied the entire account number column, and sent it to Danielle in an email. “Email with the information is sent, Evelyn.”
Dante’s mate nodded, held her phone to her ear, and stroked Snowflake with her free hand. “Danielle? It’s Evelyn. Elliot’s pretty princess found something in Dupree’s financials. Elliot wants a complete auditing done of all transactions from the accounts he just emailed you. In addition to that, he wants all funds routed to those accounts identified and audited. No, I really don’t care if most of accounting is at home because of the weather. There’s this cool contraption called the internet. Have them use it!” Evelyn hung up, snarled at her phone, and stuffed it down her shirt.
I blinked. “Did you just put your phone in your bra?”
“Where else am I going to put it? Have you seen the size of my gut? What is the point of pockets anymore? I can’t reach them,” Dante’s mate wailed.
Elliot leaned back, pinning me to the chair with his back. “I really must compliment Richard on how comfortable his chairs are.”
The Alpha made his appearance moments later with Amber hot on his heels. “What happened?”
“I’ve been informed I have a forty-million-dollar discrepancy in the Inquisition accounts, Murphy.”
“Forty million? How the fuck does someone hide a forty-million-dollar discrepancy? I promise you there’s no forty-million-dollar discrepancy in any account I have ever managed. When I run an account, all the files are prepared accordingly, linked to the transaction, and registered in the appropriate places.”
“Amelia likely had something to do with it. She was a shadow witch,” I explained, sighing at the unwanted memory of the woman’s betrayal. “She was in upper management in my company, too.”
Elliot set my laptop down and got to his feet to pace around the spacious sitting room, weaving between the couches, arm chairs, and side tables. “It really does look like Markus killed Amelia to hide their activities rather than as justice for Samantha’s death.”
Flinching at the mention of my lost witch and friend, I leaned forward so I could reclaim my laptop. Amelia’s betrayal had cut deep, and after learning Elliot Anderson, my right-hand man, was actually the Shadow Pope of the Inquisition, my entire life had been turned upside down.
I missed Samantha, but I had doubts even she would know what to do.
Elliot returned to my chair and sat on the arm. “Vicky?”
“Do you think they were the only two?” I scrolled through the transactions, staring at the few records without a matching Inquisition case file. “Six records that don’t match after Amelia’s death. They could’ve been scheduled.”
“It’s possible. We do schedule payments with some agents. Desmond is one of them.”
&
nbsp; “So am I,” Amber said, sprawling on the couch beside Evelyn. “You pay me to keep Richard and Nicole from taking over the world.”
“It’s true, I do.”
I growled, shifting my gaze to Elliot’s throat. Before I could succumb to the temptation, Richard wrapped one arm across my shoulders and covered my eyes with his other hand. “No, Vicky. We need your mate conscious for this work. Biting him because you’re anxious isn’t going to help. Let them have their amusements. It keeps the stress down and the atmosphere relaxed. The more anxious everyone acts, the harder it will be for us to think, discuss, and come up with plans. If you get too anxious, Evelyn will get anxious. If Evelyn gets anxious, I lose furniture and glassware.”
“It was one glass,” the pregnant bitch complained. “Just one!”
“You smashed it on top of my head.”
“You deserved it.”
“I gave you a chocolate chip cookie.”
“But I wanted a gingersnap garnished with coconut.”
“I draw the line at baking Frankencookies.”
“See? You deserved it.”
“It took me hours to pick the glass out of my scalp,” the Alpha complained, easing his hold on me. “Have mercy. Vicky, you’re her favorite. Tell her to have some mercy on me.”
“You’re asking me to have mercy on you when you’re covering my eyes and holding me in place?”
“I didn’t really think this through very well, did I?”
“No, you didn’t. And anyway, I’m pretty sure when it comes to cookies and a pregnant lady, there is no room for mercy.”
Evelyn laughed. “Listen to her, Richard. She’s right.”
“You could let her go, too,” Elliot grumbled.
“Relax, Elliot. I’m not going to do anything to your mate. Vicky, no biting,” Richard ordered before releasing me and taking a seat on the end of the couch. Snowflake crawled closer to Evelyn, turned his red-tipped ears back, and barked once at the Alpha.
“Earlier you said if I wasn’t biting him he wasn’t trying to annoy me hard enough,” I reminded him.
“That was then. This is now.”
I scowled, but my wolf wasn’t willing to challenge our Alpha, so I turned my attention back to my laptop. “It could take them days to find every record.”
“We’ll have a full list back in an hour, just you wait and see.” Elliot leaned back, draping his arm across the back of the chair. “In the meantime, we should discuss the puppies. Richard, how were they?”
“Better than I thought,” was the grudging reply.
Talking about the puppies would serve as a productive distraction until I had more information to work with. “Would you care to elaborate?”
“We played hunting games in the pool. Alex tired easily, but Emily picked up the slack and kept me busy. I did just what you asked, and I made sure to challenge them. I’ll have bruises, just you wait and see. They had fun, I made certain of it.”
“And if I permit you to bring them into the pack tonight, you’ll solemnly swear to give them a fair allotment of chores?”
“You’re a dictator. You really are. They’re still sick. They should be resting. Instead, you made me run them around for almost four hours until they could barely stand.”
“When I took a hit with a grenade, I didn’t start healing properly until I started exercising again. It works. It hurts, it’s uncomfortable, but it works. If you force them to rest, you’ll slow their recovery. You should know this.” If I wanted to respect my wolf’s wishes and avoid challenging our Alpha, I needed to keep my head ducked and my eyes lowered. “They’re most comfortable when they’re being helpful.”
Elliot chuckled. “Give it up, Richard. Vicky worked too hard getting her precious puppies to stand up for themselves even a little. Don’t undermine her efforts. They’re submissive enough they need the stability. Their contribution of chores is how they feel a part of the home.”
“I don’t like it.”
I inhaled to snarl a few choice curses at Richard, but Elliot placed his hand over my mouth. “You don’t have to like it. You have to respect her parenting choices—right choices. Let them help. It restores order for them, and it gives Vicky the stability she needs, too. Don’t forget she’s an Alpha-traited rogue. Her way of coping without a pack is to bring order to chaos. That applies to work and home.”
“We’re her pack,” Richard snapped.
“I know that, you know that, everyone else here knows that, but she’s still learning. You had to learn, too—and don’t you even think I haven’t forgotten how hard it was for you to adapt, and you were a hell of a lot younger than her when you were tossed into the deep end. Leave her alone. Her puppies, her rules.”
I reached up and pulled Elliot’s hand away from my mouth. In too many ways, Richard was right about a lot of things.
All it took to form a mating bond was commitment, but it took work to maintain a relationship. My true mistake had been trying to do too much alone. If I had trusted in Elliot more, if I had had the courage to cut things off with Markus, if I had taken a more aggressive stance caring for the puppies, a lot would have been different.
The first step would be acknowledging the truth. The second would be letting my puppies go, allowing Richard to step in and offer them the support and safety I alone couldn’t provide.
The third step would be accepting those around me who held me at arm’s length because I held them back.
“Our puppies, our rules,” I corrected.
Elliot twisted around to stare at me, his mouth gaping open and his eyes wide. “Vicky?”
“Our puppies, our rules,” I repeated. “When we hunt Basin down, our puppies will need a safe place to stay. Can Yellowknife provide them with that, Richard?”
Richard sat straight, met my gaze, and nodded. “My home is their home, and Basin would need some serious firepower to breach my home. Your puppies will be safe. I’ll do even more than give them a safe place to stay. With Amber and Lisa’s help, I’ll teach them how to protect themselves.”
There was no greater gift than teaching someone to keep themselves safe. “Tonight, then.”
By then, I hoped we would be able to isolate who had paid Markus. At the end of the money trail I’d find Basin. In one fell swoop, the war would end.
With my puppies safe, I could dedicate everything to rescuing Dante and Nicole and destroying Basin. If we wanted to win, there was no room for mercy, for Basin wouldn’t have mercy on us.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Thirty minutes after sending Danielle the files, Evelyn’s phone rang.
“What do you have for me?” Dante’s mate demanded. While she listened in silence, I worried.
“I’m going to bite you if you don’t relax,” Elliot warned in a whisper.
My wolf savored the thought of him trying. “You wouldn’t dare,” I challenged to appease my wolf—and find out for myself what he’d do.
Elliot took hold of my laptop, pulled it off my lap, and set it on the coffee table. Leaning over my chair, he braced his hands on the arms, staring at my throat. “I wouldn’t?”
“I’m already onto your tactics,” I hissed at him. “When you want me to shut up, you—”
Elliot pressed his lips to mine, and had my wolf had been a cat, she would’ve started purring. Pulling away, my mate smirked at me. “Guilty as charged.”
“See, you—”
He bit the side of my throat, and a jolt zapped down my spine. I yipped. Every muscle in my body tensed before I slumped in my chair. Chuckling, Elliot kissed the spot he’d bitten before lifting me so he could slide beneath me, cradling me against his chest with my legs draped over the chair’s arm. “Richard’s right. Biting back is great. I should bite more often. Look, she’s putty in my hands. Nice, calm, and quiet putty.”
Evelyn sighed. “No, the yip wasn’t anything to worry about. Elliot bit Vicky. It seems she was too anxious for his liking. Yes, I’m being serious. No, I’m pretty sure she i
sn’t going to die from embarrassment. Yes, she earned it. No, you don’t need to call the police or find your way through a blizzard to rescue her from him. I’m sure. Send the data over. Yes, I promise. Bye, Danielle.”
Shifting beneath me, Elliot secured his hold on me, resting his chin on my head. “Amber, mind trying to make sense of the data Danielle is sending over? My hands are full.”
“So I see,” the fire witch replied, rising from her seat to retrieve my laptop. “Did she find anything out, Evelyn?”
“She did. It didn’t take them very long since they had already pulled out every single file dealing with Dupree’s activities. All they had to do was plug in the account numbers into the financial databases. They’ve located the discrepancies and have already pinpointed some of the transactions. She’s sending over five cases she cherry picked with a complete money trail. She also went ahead and contacted the Feds to obtain a warrant for more financials. She’s hoping to hear back from them within the hour. Turns out when everyone gets snowed in, they get bored. When people get bored, work seems so much better than doing nothing.”
“I’m amazed they still have electricity,” Elliot muttered.
“A lot of places don’t. Your buildings have an impressive battery of generators, Vicky—Danielle says there’s been an infestation of Inquisitors over at your headquarters.”
It took me several tries to make my tongue cooperate with me. “No air conditioning during the summer in Atlanta should classify as a crime.”
Elliot laughed. “How is she hiding them in the office?”
“They’re pretending to be Federal investigators. The FBI even gave them legitimate badges. Gives them easy access to just about anything they want.” Evelyn balanced her laptop on her stomach and tapped at the keyboard. “I have email records of what she’s done while you’ve been off duty. I’ll forward them to you.”
“I need to give her a raise,” I mumbled.
“How about me? I need a raise. And a discussion of my other benefits.”
“You don’t get a raise or benefits. You bit me.”
“But I like holding you. The only way I get to hold you is if I bite you.”