by RJ Blain
Dalton held his hand out for Dad’s phone. Once Gavin handed it over, he went through the calendar. “You must have had quite the time raising her. Interesting; Harthel’s booking of the corporate jet was cancelled an hour before your commercial flight was scheduled to leave. Do you know why?”
“No. Laura didn’t know anything about the California trip. Annamarie handled the booking since it involved the corporate jet; she’s the one who handles all issues dealing with the jet and sends authorization for its usage to me. Annamarie said the other party cancelled.”
“Any chance we can find out the identity of the other party? A reason for cancellation might help, too.”
Dad straightened. “Do you think Harthel had something to do with La Guardia? Isn’t that a rather large stretch?”
Maybe Dad had always been blind to Harthel’s darkness, but I had seen it.
The man had over a billion reasons to want to be rid of us; with us out of the way, Harthel would be in position to inherit a great deal of the company’s primary operations. While my grandparents would inherit our liquid assets, someone needed to run Pallodia—Harthel.
At the helm, Harthel would be in a position to gain the company’s future wealth, a substantial sum.
I sighed. “He would do it.”
Turning to me, Dad frowned. “Matia?”
“Maybe I’m colorblind, but I’m not blind,” I snapped.
“No one said you were.”
I waved my hand. “That doubtful tone. The one you were using. Look, just trust me when I say the man’s filth. He’d do it. If he thought he could inherit Pallodia by having us both killed, he would.”
Furrows creased Dad’s forehead, and he remained silent.
Dalton cleared his throat. “Do you mind explaining your confidence, Miss Evans? I don’t doubt you; we’ve seen exactly what he’s capable of—Ryan, especially.”
Grimacing, Ryan nodded his agreement. “I look forward to the day I kill him.”
I could turn into a wolf, however small and unthreatening; I was no longer human. Was it so far a leap to tell them the truth about what my eyes could see? Swallowing, I stared down at the counter. “I see things.”
Dalton leaned towards me. “What sorts of things?”
“Shadows.”
“How long have you been able to see these shadows?”
I bit my lip and glanced at Dad out of the corner of my eye.
“I’m not going to be upset with you, Matia,” he said, answering my unspoken worries.
Once I spoke, I wouldn’t be able to take back the truth; I’d never been like other people. “I’ve seen them for as long as I can remember; for a long time, you were cloaked in them. Whenever I did something that upset you, they got darker, deeper, and clung to you. When I did well, they faded, then they disappeared altogether. I was ten or twelve or so when they went away. Maybe a little older. Harthel’s shadow reaches for people. He’s always after you with those dark tentacles.”
Dad’s eyes widened. “Dark tentacles?”
“There’s no doubt about it, Ralph. I’ll eat my own tail if she isn’t a fire witch, and probably a strong one, at that.” Dalton chuckled, slapping his hand against the table. “I’m amazed the scent isn’t stronger.”
“Scent?” I demanded, sniffing in my effort to discover what he meant.
The Alpha chuckled for a few more moments before grinning at me. “It’s really faint, but fire witches smell like wood smoke. Your scent is pretty weak, so I’m not surprised you can’t smell it, especially with so many of us in the room. You’ll learn to identify smells better with experience.”
Ryan slid off his stool, came up behind me, and rested his chin on my shoulder, his hands sliding around my waist. “You smell delicious. Hickory smoke, a little sweet, a lot spicy, and all for me.”
Contentment radiated from my wolf, and I leaned back against him. “Should I be worried you’re comparing me to barbecue?”
Dalton rolled up a sheet of paper, leaned across the counter, and smacked Ryan upside the head with it. “Stop that. There’s no need to defend your claim, Ryan. Sorry, Matia. He might be clingy for a while. Even submissive Fenerec feel a need to stake public claim when they’re comfortable in the company they’re keeping. As Ryan and his wolf are confident no one is going to challenge him, he’s taking the time to establish his position as your mate.”
“Pack politics?”
“Exactly. It’d be a lot easier on him if you two did belong to my pack; my word is law, and no one would challenge him for you while I have anything to do with it.”
“Challenge him for me?” I felt both my brows rise. “Please.”
“Please?”
“You have it backwards, Mr. Sinclair.” I narrowed my eyes to slits, watching the Alpha’s every move. He sat still, his attention focused fully on me. “Do you really think I’m going to let some pathetic man I don’t want touch either one of us? You say I’m a fire witch.”
“You are. I’ve no doubts of it.”
While I had no memory of doing it, the possibility I had set Harthel’s cabin on fire made me wonder. “I’m a wolf. I will bite them. If that’s not enough to drive them away, I will light them on fire. Am I understood?”
Anger would’ve been an appropriate reaction to my threat, but Dalton smiled. “I don’t think you’ll have any problems at all. However, I strongly recommend you avoid trying to deliberately light anything—or anyone—on fire. Fire magic can be very dangerous. Most fire witches manifest as seers of auras. In your case, the shadows you were describing. Once your eyes heal, those shadows will probably take on different colors.”
“Harthel’s shadows are black. It’s an absolute, Mr. Sinclair—an absolute I can see without fail. Black is black. White is white. It’s the grays in between I struggle with. There’s nothing gray about Harthel’s shadow. It’s the deepest black.” The words spilled out of me, and I felt my wolf’s encouragement to keep speaking. I hesitated, taking in a breath. “Harthel’s shadow reaches for people. I always thought he would contaminate Dad if I let those shadows touch him. I always stepped in the way, whenever I could.”
Dalton sucked in a breath. “Those shadows. Did they feel like anything when they touched you?”
Shivering, I lowered my hands to Ryan’s, weaving my fingers with his. “Cold.”
“I wish you had told me sooner, Matia,” Dad confessed. “Had you, I would have had grounds to investigate him.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t think you’d believe me.”
Dalton patted the table loud enough to draw our attention. “She made the right choice, even if it would have changed a lot of things. Normals would have thought she had lost her mind. She had no way of knowing you would have been able to identify what she is. You had no idea she was a fire witch?”
“I always knew she was different; always a little smarter, always had a good feel for people, always was confident about who to trust and who to avoid, but I didn’t think she was a witch. There were no other manifestations. I thought she had learned to judge people by watching me.” Dad smiled at me before turning to Ryan. “Do yourself a favor. Don’t underestimate her. She’ll always find a way to surprise you.”
Ryan relaxed against me. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Despite the suspicious timing of the calendar changes and reservations, I had trouble believing Harthel would stoop so low as to involve himself in a terrorism attack to kill me and Dad. There were lots of ways to kill people—ways that didn’t leave hundreds upon hundreds of victims. “Do you really think there’s a connection between Harthel and La Guardia?”
“There are a lot of factors we have to consider, Miss Evans.” Dalton flipped through the pages and pulled out a single sheet. “First, financing a large-scale attack like the one at La Guardia is expensive—really expensive. It’s risky for all parties, which means the mercenaries were being really well paid. Then there’s the matter of getting explosives into the airport and past secu
rity.”
I sucked in a breath. “The explosions after security. Does that mean it was an inside job?”
Dalton nodded. “This has been planned for a long, long time. One of the Fenerec involved in the attack was an airport employee, one with a moderate amount of influence. He could have easily gotten the devices past security, and his position made it possible for him to go to all the terminals while carrying luggage. It would have been trivial for him to meet someone after the security checkpoints to plant the explosives.”
“So Harthel’s activities are probably a coincidence?” I drummed my fingers on the counters, narrowing my eyes as I considered the board meeting I had infiltrated and crashed, resulting in Harthel’s firing. “He was trying to take over the company; that’s why I was at the dinner meeting. He had lied to the board in order to shunt Dad out of his position.”
Dad shook his head. “It wouldn’t have worked, Matia; even if he got the votes to pass his motion—which he wouldn’t have—he would have had almost no power as CEO. The position is designed to be crippled substantially for a period of six months following any changes to either of our positions. He would have been a glorified paper shuffler. The real power would have been in the hands of the board, and Harthel wouldn’t have had a majority, not like you do.”
“That might be relevant information, Mr. Evans.” Dalton flipped over one of the sheets, reached over, and grabbed a pen from a briefcase. “What scenario would have given Harthel full operational rights over Pallodia?”
“Our deaths,” Dad replied, sitting straighter. “The six month freeze still applies, but after that period is over, he would have taken over full powers as CEO. He would still have the issue of shares; there are quite a few people in the company with more shares, but his positional ranking would put him in the role of CEO.”
“Is Harthel aware of the freeze?”
Dad chuckled. “I doubt it. It’s buried in the dullest part of the legal paperwork the company lawyer could find. Annamarie knows about it, Human Resources knows, and Legal knows. Harthel would have had many a night of reading legalese to locate it.”
“Clever. Where did you come up with that idea?”
When Dad pointed at me, I shrugged. “Don’t put the blame on me. I’m not the one who took the advice of a toddler for operating a business.”
Ryan snickered, and his breath warmed my throat. “Started early bossing people around, did you?”
“When you have a daughter who might speak a handful of words in a day, you learn to listen when she decides to say something. May you two have one just like her.”
Sighing, I shook my head. While my wolf liked the idea of children, especially with Ryan, I ignored her interest. “The reason for the freeze isn’t important. I think it’s safe to say Harthel had the motivation, but did he have the resources to make the arrangements?”
“That’s a good question. I don’t have Harthel’s financials, but I should be able to get them.” Dalton pulled out his phone, dialed a number, and held it to his ear. “I need someone to check Harthel’s financials for suspicious activity. Call it within the past two years. Pull everything you can get and send me a copy.” Hanging up, he set his phone down and picked up Dad’s, scrolling through the calendar. “Without something tying him to the Fenerec pack, it’s only speculation. There are a lot of ways to kill a family without wiping out an entire airport. Terrorism is easy to understand; the motive is fear mongering and controlling a populace. Why kill so many to kill you?”
Dad snorted. “That’s easy. If he has the resources to make it happen, can get rid of both of us at the same time, and cover his trail so no one can link the attack to him, he’s in position to inherit a company worth a substantial amount. After six months, he’d have the power to sell the business for a ridiculously large amount of money. If he’s the type of person I think he is now that I’ve seen what he’s willing to do, what’s a few hundred lives for that much profit? A hundred million per life, Mr. Sinclair. How’s that for motive?”
I grimaced at the casual way Dad put numbers to the deaths of so many people. “Even if Harthel is involved, wouldn’t it take a lot longer than two weeks to plan such a thing?”
Shaking his head, Dalton replied, “Two days.”
“What?”
“With access to the right materials and someone inside, it’d only take two days to put together an operation like that. The hardest part would be having someone inside to get explosives past the security gates, but if I had someone in position, I could throw together something in two days—hell, two hours if I had the people and the supplies on hand. That’s what’s so frightening about something like this. It’s not hard for a home-grown terrorist to get into position. It’s even easier for a Fenerec. We move fast. Ryan, how far do you think you were from the detonation point?”
Ryan tensed against me, and he freed his hands from mine so he could pull me closer to him. “Twenty feet. I saw him drop the bag and run before it detonated. I don’t know what happened after that. He probably survived; he made no effort to hide the fact he was on the run. He easily was thirty or more feet away before it blew.”
Nodding, Dalton held his hands up in a helpless gesture. “At twenty feet, Ryan had his clock cleaned and had to dig his way out of the rubble, but emerged relatively unscathed. Humans would have died instantly at that range. Do you have any idea how far away Matia was from the epicenter, Ryan?”
“Maybe fifty to sixty feet,” he replied, his grip on me tightening. I wiggled in his hold to ease the pressure on my ribs.
Dalton clacked his teeth together, blowing air out his nose while his cheek twitched. With what I was certain was deliberate care, he pressed his palms to the counter and splayed his fingers. “At that distance, survival was questionable at best, assuming the intel I have on the explosives is correct. The estimates are seventy to eighty feet minimum for high chance of survival. So far, we believe the exits were deliberately destroyed in order to maximize the number of deaths.”
“The other victims as close to the detonation point died before help arrived. Matia would have, too.” Ryan’s distress soured his scent, and I twisted around in his arms, staring at him, at a loss of what to say to soothe him.
I doubted I could; I shivered at the thought of how close to death I had come while my wolf whined in my head. Her anger over how we were forced to become one being for the sake of survival simmered, and I was aware of how she fought to shelter me from her emotions.
“She’s practicing her non-existent telepathy skills again,” Dad muttered.
I scowled, and a faint smile made an appearance on Ryan’s lips. “I find it charming.”
“About as charming as her taking photographs of your bare chest?” Sam smirked and joined us at the kitchen island, planting his elbows on the granite countertop. “You’re never going to live that one down, Matia. I could have sworn we had taught you the art of subtle objectification.”
My face burned.
“I will cherish the memory of her expression when it dawned on her she had been doing just that. Best luck I’ve had.” Ryan’s amusement washed away his anxiety, and he relaxed, stepping far enough away from me to flash me a smirk. After a moment, he sucked in a breath, and his eyes widened. “Wait. You two were on route to Mirage’s headquarters in London, right?”
I nodded, as did Dad.
“Sinclair, who tipped us off something was going to happen at La Guardia?”
Dalton turned his attention to his phone, tapping at the screen. “I wasn’t told. Why are you asking?”
“My cover was to take a flight to Boston. My assignment was that terminal, to those gates.”
“Boston? Our flight was to Boston.”
“Same flight, then. To my knowledge, there was only one flight to Boston leaving around that time. Can you confirm that, Sinclair?”
After a few taps at his screen, Dalton frowned. “You’re right. The next flight out to Boston was three hours later. Anyone catch
ing a connection would have already dealt with security.”
Ryan scowled. “It’s always the little details that make the most difference. Why was I assigned to their flight?”
“I don’t know, but I want to find out. Gavin, get someone on it. While you’re at it, pull the full list of Inquisition operatives who were at the airport. Get on the horn with headquarters, and see if you can find out the informant’s identity.”
Gavin hopped to his feet, excused himself, and headed down the hallway, dialing a number and holding his phone to ear.
Inside jobs, much like the scheme Harthel attempted to pull off to evict Dad from power, plagued many businesses. Pallodia was no exception, although we had taken steps to avoid the consequences of greed.
I hadn’t ever considered the fact someone would want to kill me and Dad to take over our company. Harthel hadn’t just been willing to kill me; he wanted my death to be as long and painful as possible, documenting it and torturing Dad in the process.
The buzzer announced the arrival of pizza, sparing me from having to answer—or ask—questions. Enough had gone wrong already.
I wasn’t sure how much more I could take.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The arrival of pizza delayed the inevitable by thirty minutes. Dad and Sam watched me with open bemusement.
Of the thirty pizzas to enter the apartment, fifteen of them fell to my appetite, and a sixteenth, unmolested by the male Fenerec, tempted me to discover the limits of my stomach. I glared at the still-closed box, my sensitive nose detecting the mouth-watering aroma of warm meat.
“If you’re still hungry, eat,” Dad ordered, sliding off his stool to retrieve the box. Setting it on the counter, he opened it to reveal a pizza so covered in meat I couldn’t spot any cheese on it. “Well, can’t say they skimp on the toppings.”
“Inquisition-operated pizzeria,” Dalton replied, reaching over and grabbing a slice. “Otherwise, we have to send the entire pack out to get two pizzas each from different joints to keep from looking too suspicious. I may have underestimated Miss Evans’s appetite, though.”