by Lisa Oliver
“Only once before.” Karl added a hefty tip and signed the bill offered him. “That’s why I mentioned the rats. The week I moved here, a rat had built a nest in the wall behind my main security server and the damn thing kept tugging on the wires, causing the alarms to go off for no apparent reason. Sean, my head of security who was calling me just now, was pulling his hair out. I was getting calls about it two or three times a night. We had people in checking the server, and the sensors and none of them found anything.”
“So, how did you find out about the rat?” Tanner got out of his chair and buttoned his jacket.
Karl chuckled and tapped his nose. “I told the guys to lock the place down and take the night off. Gave them a handful of cash to go and drown their sorrows, then shifted once they were gone and sniffed the little bugger out. I had to punch a hole in the wall to get to him, but I haven’t had a rat problem since.”
“Until now.” Tanner indicated for Karl to lead the way, but Karl wasn’t having any of that. Taking Tanner’s hand, he escorted him through the restaurant, nodding at Juno, the hostess and a couple of faces he recognized, taking note of the few widened eyes and dropped mouths. Yep, that will be all over town by lunchtime, Karl thought smugly. I won’t have my omega thinking I’m going to hide him away. He had the urge to whistle happy tunes as they walked to where he’d parked his car.
Chapter Fourteen
Tanner was still lightly rubbing over the palm Karl held when his mate parked his car in his designated spot at his company. His body tingled all over, as if anticipating that touch in other places, and the contented smirk Karl was wearing wasn’t helping. Tanner already knew how the evening was going to end – Karl had been quite specific about that during the course of the afternoon. The excitement and arousal had basically never gone away, despite Karl seemingly happy to wait. But Tanner was quietly relieved about the reprieve visiting the office brought him. Sex had always been something other people did, and Tanner had fifty years’ worth of nerves about the upcoming event to package away neatly and stow away before he took his clothes off.
Assessing a possible building breach was more in his comfort zone, and Tanner got out of the car, his nose already hunting for anything out of the usual. “How many shifters do you have working for you?” he asked as the two men strode across the parking lot.
“Only me and Allan.” Karl leaned forward and entered a code allowing them access to the front door. “Why? Do you scent something?”
“Could be coincidence. But non-Allan wolves have been through here recently when there shouldn’t have been any. Allan was sent home and you’ve been with me.”
“Then we’ll have to be doubly careful, won’t we.” Karl’s grin could only be described as wolfish, but he was all seriousness as he stepped through into the reception area of his building, closing and locking the door behind him. A worried looking older man in a rumpled beige button-down shirt and pants, his tie askew, hurried out of a side room behind the reception desk.
“Mr. Jacobs, thank goodness. I swear it’s that rat problem all over again. Lights going, alerts pinging. Me and the boys have been running around like idiots chasing them down, and we can’t find a bloody thing.”
“I’m glad you called me. This is Detective Tanner Corban,” Karl said smoothly. “He’s with Vice, but I’m sure his expertise extends to basic B and E. Where are Jack and Brody at this moment?”
“Detective.” Sean nodded briefly before turning his attention back to Karl. “I sent them out for coffee.” He ran his hand through messy gray hair. “Just after I called you, the system settled down again. If it is bloody rats, they’ve got excellent timing.”
“Or amazing ears,” Tanner said quietly. He didn’t mind that Sean was suspicious of him and basically ignored his presence. His size and the way he was introduced was likely to do that to anyone who valued their security job. “Do you mind if I take a look around? I’m sure you and your men have been very thorough, but sometimes a fresh set of eyes can pick out things others can’t. I promise not to disturb anything.”
“I’ll do a standard walkthrough with you,” Karl added quickly. “I can tell if anything has been disturbed or is missing from the offices. Sean, if you can stay down here, you should be able to monitor our progress through the cameras. Call me if any of the cameras fail to pick up our movements.”
“You think the cameras might have been hacked? Shit. I didn’t even think of that.” Sean hurried back to the office he came out of. “You start walking, I’ll be checking.”
“Great guy,” Karl said quietly. “Doesn’t understand about nose effectiveness though.”
“I imagine yours is working overtime about now and for good reason.” Tanner glanced around, noting doorways and windows. “Do your cameras have audio?”
Karl shook his head as he strode across the lobby to the elevator. Then changing his mind mid stride, he moved towards the back corner of the reception area. “We’ll take the stairs.”
Tanner’s wolf perked up as he followed. The change from dating Karl, to Alpha on the hunt wasn’t helping with Tanner’s arousal levels. Pushing through a set of heavy fire doors, Karl sniffed, and the corner of his lip curled up in a snarl. Following him, Tanner immediately picked up the reason why. “Four fresh scents, maybe five. Is there any reason why a bunch of wolves would be visiting you after hours?”
“Never happened before.” Karl started up the stairs. “But then, I did have a run in with my PA today, who happens to be part of the home pack I cut ties with the night I saw you for the first time. It was always possible Allan would be more loyal to my uncle than he is to his job.”
Tanner followed more slowly, looking for any marks on the lino floor. “What would they be looking for?”
“Beats me.” Karl was on the first landing, the stairs stretching up above his head. “I really want to get to my office, but if we go straight there, then Sean will be suspicious.” He reached out his hand to press the keypad on the door to the first-floor offices, when Tanner noticed something and grabbed his hand to stop him. “Baby,” Karl said with a grin. “Now is not the time.”
“Don’t call me baby.” Tanner nudged at Karl with his shoulder. “That keypad looks as though it’s been tampered with. Look,” he pointed at the tiny scratches on the side of the plastic. “I can’t think of any good reason why someone would want to get into that, can you?”
“No. Changing the codes is all done through the computer, you can’t do it through the keypads.” Karl bent to have a look, and Tanner stepped back so he wasn’t creating a shadow. The overhead light was bright but there was only one of them.
“These are definite wolf claws, or someone has exceptionally sharp nails.” Putting his fingers over the marks, Karl tapped his fingers around the device. “The sort of marks someone would make while they were waiting impatiently for someone to give them the right code.”
“So, we know they were in the stairwell.” Tanner looked back down the stairs. “But why? And how did they get past Sean at reception?”
“The why is easy enough.” Karl punched in a code and the door swung open. He pointed to the elevator doors, just inside them. “From here they can go to any floor and Sean wouldn’t know about it unless he or one of the other two guards happened to notice the lights moving above the elevator on the ground floor.”
Tanner moved up the next six stairs, sniffed hard, and then went back down and joined his mate. “The scent is a lot fainter up there, so you’re right. This was their access point, but how did they get to here?”
“I’m more worried about where they went.” Karl held the door open so Tanner could slip through, pulling out his phone as he let the door lock behind him. “Sean,” he said as soon as the call was answered. “Tanner and I are on the first floor now. What time did you and the boys come in this evening?”
“I came on at four. Brody and Jack came on at six, like they were supposed to.”
“Did anything happen between four an
d six that pulled you away from the monitors?” Karl was moving quickly down the hallway, opening doors, and looking as though he was checking inside, although Tanner knew it was his nose he was relying on. The air had that stale quality office buildings had when the air conditioning was turned off. There weren’t any wolf scents beyond the elevator.
“Not that I can think of,” Sean said slowly. “You know how it is that time of day and Friday nights are the worst, trying to get the staff to sign out when their minds are already on their first drink of the day. Wait, hang on… there was something.”
“I’m waiting.” Reaching the end of the hallway, Karl turned and went back to the elevator, pressing the call button.
“I would’ve thought you would have been told about it. Your PA, Allan. He called down, said he was having trouble with the top floor stairwell code. I said I’d check it out on the system computer, but he said it looked like someone had attacked the keypad itself with a screwdriver or knife and he needed me to bring another keypad up for him.”
“Did it need replacing?” Karl shook his head as he and Tanner entered the elevator.
“No, Allan was just mucking me about, like I don’t have enough to do on a Friday night.” Sean sounded annoyed. “I get up there, and he was by the door, with a rag. Told me it turned out someone had spilled coffee on it or something, and he was worried it wasn’t working. But I checked it, and it was fine.”
“I’ll go up and check that out myself now, thanks.” Karl disconnected the call. “Now we know how. That bloody Allan…”
“He is a low ranked pack wolf,” Tanner reminded gently, although he was having not-so-charitable thoughts about the PA himself. “It’s possible he’s acting under your uncle’s orders.”
“Allan shouldn’t have even been here this afternoon. You were there when I sent him home.”
The elevator arriving at the top floor prevented Tanner from pointing out they’d only seen the PA head to the bathroom. He could’ve hidden out there until he knew Karl was gone and then acted as though he was still on the clock with anyone else he came across.
“That little shit’s scent is fresh,” Karl snarled as he stepped up to Allan’s desk. He started pulling open drawers, rifling through the contents. A brief thirty seconds later, he slammed the last drawer shut. “Rubbish. There’s nothing there that shouldn’t be.”
“He has a tablet,” Tanner reminded him. Staying professional was becoming a real effort. Everything about Karl called to him in that moment, even if now wasn’t the time. “I imagine anything important would be on there.”
“And I don’t know his freaking computer password. I’ll have to get it from Sean.” Karl scratched at his hair.
“What about your office?”
“Allan doesn’t have access unless I’m here. I lock it when I’m not in there.” Karl was still scowling at Allan’s desk.
Moving cautiously around him, because Tanner seriously needed some space to breathe, he went over to Karl’s door and turned the knob. “Are you sure about that?” The door opened.
“Fucking hell.” Pushing past him, Karl dashed into the office, Tanner following more slowly. The only scent he could pick up, apart from Karl’s was Allan’s.
“He’s been in here.” Karl ran his nose about an inch from the desk and then sniffed his chair. “Sat in my bloody chair. What the hell did he think he was playing at?”
Taking a seat by the door, more to hide his erection than anything else, Tanner watched silently as Karl searched his desk drawers. “It’s not like I keep anything important in paper files anyway,” Karl grumbled as he went across to a solid filing cabinet. “I had my own cloud built – all of the important company documents, our new projects and things like that are stored on there, or with my lawyer.” Slamming the last file drawer shut, Karl went behind his desk and flopped on his chair. “I don’t get it.”
“He did seem really upset at lunchtime when you told him who I was,” Tanner said cautiously.
“What do you mean? Shit. Of course!” Karl’s eyebrows lowered and his lips thinned. “I had an omega in my office. Whoop-di-do. That’s probably it. They’ve got such fucked up ideas in that pack. I bet Allan’s gone running to my uncle, claiming I’m about to become completely sex drunk, you’re going to bleed me dry financially, and they can do what…? Take over my company while I’m under your thrall? Are they that stupid?”
“Actually,” Tanner said, thinking over his interaction with Allan, “I don’t think it was the fact I was an omega that upset him more, than when you told him I was a detective. He was very insistent you were straight and couldn’t be taken in by the likes of me before you intervened. But when you mentioned I was the detective you booked as your lunch appointment, his face went white and his scent was definitely tinged with fear.”
“I wouldn’t know. All I could smell was how gorgeous you were.” Karl twirled in his chair, his eyes widening. “Why would he… unless… You think he was already up to no good, and he’s worried I’ve caught wind of whatever he’s up to?”
That made the most sense to Tanner. His omega status annoyed Allan, purely because of the way omegas were often perceived by pack members. But his being a detective was a whole different story. “You said that you’d only recently cut ties with your pack, but that you haven’t lived with them for decades, right?”
“The night of the launch, the first night I saw you. I’d just come from the final meeting with my uncle when I spotted you.”
“And how did he take the news?”
“He wasn’t happy about it.” Karl half swirled in his chair, back and forth. “Up until that night I was alpha heir -it was my dad’s pack before my uncle took over – and he only has daughters. There was also the financial element to it…”
“What do you mean, financial?” Then Tanner clicked. “Have you been paying pack tithes all this time?”
“It was pack law, and it didn’t bother me.” Karl shrugged. “I’ve paid a percentage of my income to the pack every month since I was twenty-two. Uncle Bevan got angry that would be stopping, going on about how many women and pups he was responsible for, so I paid him a lump sum, basically to shut him up. He told me my pack ties were cut and that was it.”
Tanner winced. “That must have hurt. No wonder you were in a mood when you saw me.”
“I didn’t even feel the break, but then I’ve been on my own for so long…”
“You’ve been living as an independent alpha for that long. Your pack ties probably died off years ago, and you just never noticed.” But something was still bugging Tanner about the money. “You said you paid a percentage of your company earnings as a tithe. Who determined how much you had to pay each month? Did your uncle tell you how much you needed to pay or…?”
“My income changes every month and my uncle never wanted to forgo a cent he thought he was entitled to. I would work out the figures, email my uncle to let him know how much to expect, and then give Allan those figures to pay out.” Karl wheeled himself across to the filing cabinet and pulled out a folder from the middle drawer. Rolling back across the carpet, he tapped a few keys on his computer, slapping the folder on his desk. Opening it up, he flicked through some pieces of paper, before pulling one out, scanning down what appeared to be a row of numbers.
Tanner got up and moved around Karl’s desk. Karl grinned up at him, and then pointed a finger at his screen. “These are the company accounts. I file the pack tithes under donations for tax purposes. Now… let’s see here… On September 30th I instructed Allan to pay out twenty-two thousand dollars to the pack. This number here.” Karl pointed to the relevant entry on the paper.
“And on October 1st… Fuck it all to the hills and back.” Karl pointed at the relevant entry on his screen. “Fifty-two thousand dollars paid to the pack account.”
“Go back a couple of months more,” Tanner suggested. “One mistake could be a keyboard error.”
“A thirty-thousand-dollar mistake? I thought Allan
was better at his job than that.” But Karl did as he asked, checking the number on his piece of paper, and then checking the amount actually paid on the screen. After checking six months’ worth, Karl gripped the arms of his chair, his claws springing out as he growled. “That little shit has been stealing from me, stealing from this company, his fucking employer.”
Karl’s anger seeped through the air, causing something warm to blossom through Tanner’s insides. “Have you changed your banking passwords,” he said, keeping his voice deliberately low and soothing. Reaching over, he rubbed Karl’s rigid shoulder. “Remember, Allan doesn’t know you’ve been in here and found this out. It’s Friday night. He wouldn’t be expecting you to come in over the weekend because you told him you didn’t want to see him until Monday. Even if Sean did call you in because of the disturbances tonight, you wouldn’t think to check the company accounts. You’d be looking for those rats you both mentioned. If Allan wants to allay any suspicions, he’ll be at his desk bright and early Monday morning, just as expected, and you’d be none the wiser.”
“I still don’t see what he achieved here tonight, apart from being a major kink in our plans.” Karl was busy tapping his keyboard. “I’ve changed the password so he can’t get into the accounts anymore, but if he was going to do a runner and steal one last time, then he’d have transferred money while he was here. There’s nothing gone out today at all.”
“Check upcoming payments.” Tanner leaned over Karl’s shoulder, pointing at the relevant link on the screen, trying to keep his bottom half covered by the back of the chair. His pants were losing the battle in keeping his crotch area looking decent. “I’d say Allan was in here making sure there was nothing pointing to any communications he might have with your uncle… assuming he was working with your uncle and not stealing this for himself.”
“The stolen money was going into the pack account.” Karl leaned his head against Tanner’s belly but clicked the link Tanner pointed out. Tanner’s body felt flushed and he clenched his ass as he felt a jolt run right through him.