66
Peter
I turned slowly and turned on the bank of screens that showed the recordings of all the rooms during the conference. I rewound the tapes to when Matt and Tony had first arrived before they went sprinting off the first time. Their luggage hadn’t been spectacular. They had spent so little time in the room and hadn’t said anything. Instead, Matt had spent a lot of his time texting someone on his phone. Tony sat across the room, facing the door with his phone in his hand.
It had been obvious that they had known they were being watched, still, I scanned the room, searching for a laptop of some sort, but there hadn’t been one, which meant there was no way I could hack into their files using their IP address.
A shame, though I suppose it would have been too easy. The same had been true of David and all of his direct subordinates. Any alpha who had come with a laptop was too low in my pack and David’s pack to have anything worthwhile on their laptop.
I drank slowly, running my fingers over Lucy’s hairpin in my pocket. Her scent had already faded from it, but every time I touched it, I could imagine that I was touching her.
I smiled as I changed the view to another room and fast forward the feed of Matt and Tony’s room. If all went to plan, I would have a luna of my own by the Crescent Moon Festival, and Matt, David, and Tony would be dead.
Tony appeared on the screen again, and I paused it. The fact that he had returned alone had given me pause, but if I had to guess, Matt had remained behind because there had been something going on in Blue Moon. It had to do with Lucy, and I was sure of that.
Poison was the first thing that came to mind when I heard whomever Matt was speaking to talking about Lucy. It was truly the only thing that would make sense, as any werewolf within the house would have heard a gunshot and smelled freshly spilled blood. Slow-acting perhaps, maybe not. Effective. Ruthless. And oddly personal. Whoever did it wanted Lucy to suffer until the last breath had left her. Maybe it was one of the twins’ old lovers.
Perhaps it had been one of their old pack members. I’d heard several of them had left though they had not resurfaced to join Black or Blood Moon yet. My lips almost twitched into a smile as I ran my thumb over the smooth surface of Lucy’s hairpin in my pocket. I wasn’t worried, exactly. Poison, for the most part, tended to cause some discomfort, but unless they had used wolfsbane, it was unlikely to kill her, even if she was a half-breed.
Whoever was behind this had been within the Blue Moon Pack. As I had not given the order, I supposed it was someone who was working for the Blood Moon Pack. Little David had more spies and traitors around him than he seemed to realize, even if he never seemed to share enough information with any of them to be of use to me.
Lucy wasn’t safe there. If she were in my pack, she would be safe, as everyone in my pack knows I would kill them without a moment’s hesitation. That was the problem with Matt and Tony. They had distanced themselves so much from their father that no one feared them.
My phone rang. It was my contact in the human world.
“The Chance brothers rushed out of the Plackard luncheon,” he said. “No one knows why, but their companion had gone missing.”
I clenched my hand around Lucy’s hairpin. “Missing?”
“Yes. I’m not entirely sure what happened after that. Someone saw them run out of the house, but their car is being towed from the house.”
That had to be the work of the SCF. I hung up and called my contact with the SCF.
She answered with a wry tone. “You must have heard about the Blue Moon lock-up.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Lock up?”
“Alpha Matt and Alpha Tony not only shifted within sight of a human residence but attacked Raven Hargrave, who just so happened to be at the event.”
I threw my head back and laughed. “Go on. You have made my day.”
Hearing that Lucy had been removed from their custody was one thing, but hearing that there was a full investigation being launched around how Lucy came to be in their custody was something else.
“An auction?” I asked. “You’re certain?”
“As a heart attack. Chief Operative Dagon Bluescale is handling her case. The reports say that right before she vanished from the venue, he received the go-ahead to remove her from the Blue Moon Estate at her will.”
I chuckled. “After so much pomp and circumstance, only to have it come out so embarrassingly. Thank you. Have you any word about where she is now?”
“No, but there hasn’t been an escalation in her file, so Dagon must know. Her records will be updated soon enough.”
“Good, keep me informed.”
I hung up and called my beta.
“Move the plans forward,” I smirked. “Keep looking into it. Acquaintances. School records. Work records. Whatever you can find.”
“I will. I think I have a lead that may lead into witch territory.”
I hummed. “Which ones?”
“The Hecate Coven.”
I hummed. “Tricky, but not impossible. See what you can find and report back to me.”
I hung up and picked my drink back up as I turned back to the monitors.
I looked across the other rooms where alphas under David had stayed. They were all as old as his father had been and probably a little upset that they had to listen to his son now that the old man was dead.
Most of them had bought a human for the evening and seemed to be enjoying themselves. I archived everything I would need to use against them to make sure they caved.
The Council’s rules about auctions were ridiculous, but getting around them was easy enough by padding the right pockets and picking those who were certifiably completely human. Still, they were all mated in some fashion and would go to the grave before letting it get out how much they enjoyed sleeping with humans.
I knew David would pitch a fit. Sowing discord in the Blood Moon Pack was much easier than doing so in the Blue Moon Pack, but based on everything that was heading their way, there was plenty of discord in Blue Moon already.
I laughed and pulled the hairpin out of my pocket. As soon as I had Lucy, I’d buy her a much nicer pin. A diadem or something like that. I hated the shoulder-length curls that seemed too perfect.
A shorter haircut would suit her face better.
I headed downstairs to where several members of David’s pack were waiting.
“No word about why Tony and Matt left the first time… or why only Tony came back,” one of them said. “Seems like Blue Moon isn’t as strong as it once was.”
I settled into a seat. “I’m sure that will change as soon as their father is released.”
Their eyes widened, and I smiled.
“Now, what information do you have worth that little tidbit?”
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