by RJ Blain
Prowling around the hotel room, I tried to work out the worst of my nerves so I could sleep. Hell waited for both of us in the morning. After some ten minutes of pacing holes into the carpeting, I plopped down on the squeaky office chair, booted up my laptop, and went to work.
Someone had framed me for murder, and I didn’t even know who I’d supposedly killed, so I started there.
Alan Oleran was easy to find on the internet. News of his death had spread like wildfire. I whistled. No wonder I’d been framed. Allison Ferdinan would’ve had ample reasons to hate any one of the high-profile attorneys associated with Marrodin’s branch company Smith & Sons, at least on the outside. Oleran hadn’t been someone I’d dealt with, either as Ferdinan or as Hanover.
While Allison Victoria Mayfield Hanover tended to meddle in all things relating to Marrodin, the corporation was larger than any one employee. I hadn’t been directly involved in bringing Oleran into the firm. In either case, I remembered the accounts I had worked on, and Oleran’s hadn’t been one of them.
I had worked with prosecutors.
Drumming my fingers on the desk in a steady rhythm, I stared at the news report, and at the face of the middle-aged man with graying hair. If the article hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have believed the trim, somewhat muscular Oleran had only been forty-seven. I searched for more news on his death and paused at a news site with an article including a photograph of Oleran after his death.
His murder had taken him by surprise, I guess. Did anyone really expect to die? His eyes were wide in horror and shock, mouth opened in a scream I doubted he had managed to voice.
I would’ve been shocked and horrified too if my throat had been ripped out. Whoever—whatever—had done it was strong. Strong enough I doubted it was human. Four jagged slices ran across Oleran’s jugular, each tear not quite enough to decapitate him. Another inch, and his spine would’ve been cut clear through.
Even if I had real motivation to kill Oleran, even if I had fallen under the moon’s sway on Halloween, I doubted I could’ve pulled it off. A regular werewolf might have been able to, but scrawny was the first word I applied to myself. Raw power and lethal force had never been one of my strengths. Why would anyone accuse me of being the killer?
Muttering curses, I kept searching.
Almost an hour later, I found my answer. The photograph wasn’t on one of the standard news feeds. To my disgust, it was on one of the least-reputable paranormal activity sites out there. The image was so blurred it didn’t surprise me the police had decided against pursuing it.The woman might have been me if I were far, far prettier. We were about the same build, but her long, dark hair fell in perfect, controlled curls. She was dressed as though born to high society, not realizing her high-heeled shoes and suit weren’t ideal night-walking attire.
Her dog was a different story. I recognized the breed. Who kept a grey wolf as a pet? Its leash was connected to what I guessed was a breakaway collar. While it was too small to be a werewolf—unless it was a runt like me—it was plenty large enough to make people believe it was capable of clawing out a lawyer’s throat.
I wrinkled my nose. Detective games weren’t up my alley, but it wasn’t difficult to understand why the murderers had chosen Halloween. It was the one night in the year where no one would have blinked twice about a wolf on the streets.
Still, whoever had done it knew enough about me to exploit my work and peg a murder on me, but not enough to estimate the severity of reaction to all things canine.
Allergies: 1, Culprit: 0.
But why me? I’d dodged a very uncomfortable accusation by the virtue of my over-enthusiastic immune system. The last thing I needed was someone looking too closely at Allison Ferdinan. While I’d gone out of my way to make her identity as flawless as possible without spending decades cultivating her, she wasn’t perfect. If anyone looked too closely at her, they might find a discrepancy. It was possible I had somehow made a mistake when creating her.
That sort of revelation could prove very, very lethal to a werewolf like me.
I shivered. At least Allison Victoria Mayfield Hanover was as bulletproof as I could make her. The owner of Marrodin had to be.
~*~
I picked Samantha up at her hotel twenty minutes after the conclusion of the board meeting. The average prison convict looked friendlier. She leveled a narrow-eyed glare at me, one graying brow arched high. There was something majestic about her as she opened the passenger side door of the Mustang and slipped inside. The beauty of her youth was there, but I got the sense she no longer noticed it. Her age showed in her eyes, a dulling no magic could heal or reverse.
“Guess who was with the cop,” she said after she buckled in and closed the door.
“Uh oh. Who?”
“Markus Dupree.”
I frowned. What was Mark doing in Atlanta? “What was he doing?”
“Looking confused, mostly. When Amelia announced you—Ms. Ferdinan, that is—was missing, his face was priceless. It looked like he’d been kicked in the nuts by a horse.”
“Samantha!” I laughed at the mental image of Mark’s face.
“Well, it’s true. I don’t know what happened on Halloween, girl, but the boy looked spooked. For a moment, I think he was downright terrified by something.” Samantha crossed her arms over her chest. “So? Spill it. What happened?”
“I did kind of spite his proposal to his mother—step, adoptive, or whatever type of mother she is.” I put the car into gear and headed towards downtown. “He’s way too young for me, Sammy.”
“Who isn’t? Aren’t you one of the oldest living things on Earth? Most trees don’t even have anything on you.”
“That’s harsh.”
“True, though.”
It was, to a point, though there were plenty of trees who had been around far, far longer than me. “I know,” I admitted.
Werewolves—like trees, rocks, and other things too stubborn to die—lived a long time, but we didn’t endure forever. Then again, I didn’t know many other wolves. That was the price of being a packless rogue. With time, old werewolves like me would die, be it from plague, injury, or murder. New true wolves, wolf offspring of human parents, would be born, and they would revitalize my cursed race through the rituals that had turned me into a twisted ruin of a human.
The world kept turning, and I remained in the hole I’d dug for myself, unable to claw my way out. I swallowed, and shook my head to drive away the thoughts. “How does sushi sound?”
“I’d rather have McDonald’s.”
“Red Lobster?”
“Now you’re talking serious business.”
“Red Lobster it is. Good work at the meeting, by the way.”
Samantha chuckled. “The board members seemed impressed. But seriously? Pet? No wonder you don’t keep secretaries for long.”
I ignored the comment about my choice of nicknames for my secretaries. “Of course they were impressed.” I laughed long and hard. “I didn’t paint the walls with your blood. For some reason, I tend to lose secretaries during those meetings.”
“It helps that I know you.”
“So it does. Don’t think I’ll go easy on you. I’m taking the liberty of finding you a decent apartment or condo, by the way.”
I felt Samantha’s eyes burrowing into me as a prickling sensation crawling up and down my spine. “I can’t afford a condo.”
“I can. I can’t have you living in a shitty place. I have a car on order for you, too. You’ll have to entertain, run errands, and do all of the things I can’t.”
The anger in my old friend’s gaze eased to a gentler curiosity. “What do you mean?”
“Ms. Hanover is a very, very private person. I haven’t been to an actual board meeting in five or ten years, give or take a few. Those people might recognize me on the street. You’re my eyes, my ears, and my hands. I’m a ghost. That’s why I go through so many secretaries. They don’t understand their role in my life. You do.”
<
br /> “Damn it, Vicky. How do you survive like that? It’s worse than I thought.”
I shrugged. “How else? Using people like Ferdinan. But until I find out who framed me and why, I can’t rebuild. Too many people have seen my face. They know who I once was. I have to lie low and vanish for a while, until people have forgotten the murder of one certain lawyer.”
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”
I gave Samantha some time to think about what I had told her. While my old friend was aware of my need to shift identities, there had been a lot I hadn’t told her.
“The people are really nice at your company.” Samantha said.
“It’s a job requirement.”
“Vicky!”
“I’m being serious. It is.”
“And how did you manage to pull something like that off?”
“Despite common belief, there are a lot of good people in the world, Samantha. I just make it my job to find them. I use evals, past history, references, old flames, anything I can get on every employee with the potential to rise up the ranks. The unsavory get the door. The nice ones are the people I cultivate. We teach them how to do business without backstabbing their partners. I bring in good people who want to make a difference in the world.” The ideal earned me as much scorn as respect among the other high-ranking CEOs from other corporations, but I tried not to care what they think.
My employees were the only ones who mattered.
“You mean people like Donnie, before…” Samantha trailed off, and I caught a glimpse of her shuddering out of the corner of my eye.
“People like Donnie, before he went to Vietnam,” I said.
“Yeah, like him.”
“Idealistic is the word you’re looking for, Samantha. I hire idealistic people.”
“You can’t do things the easy way, can you?”
“Nope.”
“What are you going to do about Mark?”
I drew a deep breath, letting it out in a slow sigh. Mark wasn’t my problem anymore, but I still felt a twinge of guilt. “He’ll move on.”
“He didn’t look ready to move on.”
“He can’t love a corpse forever, Sammy. He’s young. He’ll bounce back. He’ll have to find another accountant, but he’ll recover. He’ll find someone else.”
Samantha’s smile was sly, and I shivered. “I would be careful if I were you, Allison Victoria Mayfield Hanover. I think he loves you.”
Laughing, I pulled the car into the lot at the Red Lobster. After I parked, I twisted in my seat to face Samantha. “Look, you. He proposed to me to get his mother to change her mind about a betrothal. That’s not love. He loved the fact I didn’t cheat him out of his money when I easily could have. He didn’t love me.”
“I know what I saw,” my friend replied with a dainty sniff.
I wrinkled my nose at her. “And what do you think you saw?”
“I saw a man terrified that he lost something he couldn’t replace.” Samantha opened the door of the Mustang, got out, and leaned down to face me. “I think he’s right, too. You’re one of a kind, and any smart man would be frightened of losing you.”
There wasn’t a whole lot I could say to that, so I kept my mouth shut, and got out of the car. While I couldn’t tell Samantha the truth, I was too old and worn out for love.
Love was for those who didn’t carry the weight of so many years on their shoulders.
Chapter Eleven
I found Samantha a nice condo in one of the best neighborhoods in the city. The apartment I picked for myself was on the top floor of a rickety building in dire need of demolition. I left My Mustang on the street. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was stolen or vandalized by the end of the week.
Instead of a bed, I made a nest of pillows and blankets, burrowing into it while resting my laptop on a large box. It was like college all over again, but worse. My mouth twisted in a rueful grin. I’d lost count of the number of times I had denned in apartments unfit for habitation while repeating college over and over again.
It would have to do. Marrodin could function without me. Samantha would settle in, doing my work until I found out the truth. I had a killer to hunt, and I couldn’t afford distraction. Within Marrodin, Samantha would be as safe as I could make her.
I stared at the login screen of my new laptop. I didn’t even know where to begin. Old age didn’t mystically grant me detective or forensic skills. After logging in, I hunted down Oleran’s work files, pulling up a complete list of the cases he had worked on since being hired at Smith & Sons. Defense lawyers had fewer enemies than prosecutors, but the bitter truth was that any man or woman on his past docket had far more reason to kill him than I did.
So why did they try to frame me for the murder? Why choose a pretty woman who resembled me? It didn’t make any sense. I replayed the events of Halloween in my head. Most everyone had avoided me except for Mark’s mother, the two-faced Wicked Witch of the West.
“No way,” I muttered, tapping my fingers on the laptop’s monitor frame. Then, the contrast in personalities hadn’t meant much to me. It had been Halloween, and Halloween was a night of masks. His mother was a witch. Wearing my face for a while wouldn’t have been much of an issue for her.
Was I such a threat to Mrs. Livingston that she would frame me for murder to get rid of me? If that was the case, why would she have made me so beautiful, when she’d seen me face to face? Had Samantha been right? Had Mark’s feelings for me influenced how his mother perceived me?
If she had murdered Oleran on Halloween during the party, she would’ve had to take a helicopter from New York City to D.C. and fly back again during the party. It could be done, especially by private flight. Mrs. Livingston could have easily killed Caroline and flown to D.C. to continue her grisly work.
My phone rang. “Hanover,” I said, cradling my new cell phone between my ear and shoulder.
“There’s been another one, Ms. Hanover,” Samantha announced.
“Another what, Pet?”
“Murder, ma’am. A secretary from one of banks in Baltimore was sniped this morning.”
“Sniped?” I felt the muscles in my cheek twitch. “Email me with the data,” I ordered.
“It’ll be in your box in five minutes.”
“Good. Transfer me to Anderson.”
Anderson’s secretary put me on hold. While I waited, I checked the news sites. There were a few reports, but all I learned was that the woman had been shot outside of her office.
The killer hadn’t left so much as a single casing, according to most of the outlets. The bullet had also been cut out of her body, too.
Not just a killed by a sniper, then, I decided, staring at the young woman’s face on one of the sites.
“Victoria,” Anderson said, his voice tired. “I don’t suppose you have some magic wisdom to impart, do you?”
“No, but I do have a favor to ask of you,” I replied, wishing to myself I did have some form of useful magic. “Anderson, can you quietly get information on a Mrs. Olivia Livingston? She’s a New York City hotshot, so far as I know.”
“Mrs. Livingston? Yeah, I know of her. She’s been trying to buy up stock for six months, but I was told rather firmly by Eval she wasn’t the type of stockholder we want.”
“Give every member of Eval a raise. How much stock does she have?”
“Give me a second,” he said. I heard him typing away at a keyboard. With every moment I waited, my irritation grew. “Half a percent.”
“I don’t want a single positive increase to her stock figures,” I growled. “Lock down all of our stock if you need to. You’re clever. Find some way to buy her out.”
Anderson made a thoughtful noise in his throat. “That’s not going to be easy. I can try to find out if she’ll sell some of the obscure stocks through a broker, though. Locking down the market would be difficult at best. She has enough money to buy high without worrying about her losses, Vic
toria.”
“Do whatever you need to, but devalue her.”
“That’s risky.”
“Unless you can get her down to a quarter of a percent, I want her devalued.”
“Give me two days to see what I can do,” he said. “It’s dangerous at best, though. I’ll see what Amelia thinks.”
I wrinkled my nose. The man had a point. “Fine, just make certain she can’t get a hold on the boards of Marrodin or any one of our branch companies.”
“She won’t,” Anderson promised.
“Good. Now, I need another favor from you. About that girl who was sniped in Baltimore, pull her file. I want to know how our two employees were connected. Like with Oleran, extend our sympathies and offer to cover the costs of the funeral.”
“She was a single mother, no other immediate family.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“I wish I were, Victoria.”
“Don’t let that child get into the state system,” I whispered. “If you can’t find someone to take her kid—”
“Kids.”
I struggled with the desire to smash my laptop, throw my phone, and scream. “How many?”
“Two. The girl is six, the boy is eight. Their… their father died last month. Hit-and-run.”
“Oh hell. Okay. Find someone who can take them in for three or four days, and get Amelia on their case as soon as possible.”
“Victoria?”
“What?” I snapped.
“What do I do with them after that?”
I closed my eyes and drew several deep breaths until I could speak without losing my temper. “You don’t do anything. They’ll come with me until we can find them good parents.”
“Oh.”
I opened my eyes and stared at my laptop, meeting the relentless gaze of the dead mother of two. “I’ll call you in a few hours.”