Chapter Four #2
“We’re not here to have fun,” Moore snapped.
Alan glared at him, even though Nysys didn’t seem to care about Moore’s tone. The problem was that Moore turned toward him at that moment and caught him in the act. Alan pressed his lips together and quickly looked away. He didn’t want to make an enemy out of Matthew’s boss.
He didn’t want to make an enemy out of Matthew’s friend. In the end, that was what they all were. More than coworkers, they’d become a family, and these people meant something to Matthew. If Alan was going to be in Matthew’s life, he had to stay on everyone’s good side. That included Moore.
When Alan turned back to him, he saw that Moore looked a little hurt. He didn’t understand why, but the expression vanished when he smiled at the man.
Maybe Moore wanted Alan to like him as much as Alan wanted Moore to like him. They were both in Matthew’s life to stay, after all.
“Did you find anything, then?” Rikar asked, as always the voice of reason.
While everyone else in the room was bickering, Alan could count on Rikar to keep the focus on what was important. He was a great tribal leader and a kind man. Alan was lucky he’d ended up here of all places. It would’ve been much worse if he hadn’t met Rikar and his mate.
Morin nodded and sat in the closest empty chair. “We did. Someone’s been funneling money to the labs. They’re not supposed to exist anymore. I closed that division of the company as soon as I took the company over. The labs were supposed to be a thing of the past.”
“We all thought they were.”
“But I should have known they weren’t. This is my company, and after what my father did, I thought I’d cleaned out all of his supporters.
Clearly, I was wrong.” He glanced around the room.
“My goal is still to make the world a safer place for shifters and supernatural beings. I might be human, but my family isn’t.
My mate isn’t. I won’t let anyone who might possibly hurt him get away with it.
I’ll find whoever’s behind all of this, and I’ll stop them. ”
Moore cleared his throat. Alan half expected him to start bickering with Morin, but instead, he nodded at Morin when the man turned toward him. “You won’t be doing this alone,” he declared. “Us mutants are in this for the long term. We won’t rest until all the labs have been closed.”
“What about the hunters?” Nysys asked.
“We were never in this for the hunters,” Moore told him without snapping at him, which was a minor miracle. “Our main goal has always been to close the labs.”
“Because of what happened to you and your people in those labs.”
“Yes. We’ve been hurt enough to know we don’t want anyone else to have to go through that. I don’t know what the council will do about the hunters, and we’re willing to help if you need us to, but our main priority is the labs.”
“Unfortunately, I think they go hand-in-hand,” Morin said.
“If the hunters have been providing the labs with people, they’re involved with my company, too.
You won’t be able to stop the hunters if you don’t get rid of the labs, and the opposite is true, too.
The labs aren’t going anywhere until the hunters are stopped. ”
Alan frowned. “But during that conversation, I heard that the hunters aren’t providing the labs with what they need anymore.
That’s what the man with Victor said, anyway.
I don’t know how true that is, but why would that man lie?
Considering how much money Victor was asking for, I doubt he’d want anything to do with him if he had any other choice. ”
Rikar stared at Alan for a moment. Alan wondered if he should’ve kept his mouth shut, but when Rikar nodded, he knew he’d done the right thing by speaking up.
“That’s true, too,” Rikar said. “It’s clear we don’t know enough about the relationship between the hunters and the labs.”
“I think we should divide and conquer,” Moore offered. “The enforcers can take care of the hunters, and we’ll focus on the labs.”
“That’s not how this works,” Dante interjected.
“I don’t care how it works. You can tell your bosses to stick their rules where the sun doesn’t shine.”
“I like you,” Nysys declared, causing the bickering to come to a halt.
Moore stared at him as if he didn’t understand what Nysys had just said. Alan didn’t blame him. Considering the way Moore had been talking to Nysys, he would have expected Nysys to hate the guy.
Hate didn’t seem to be something Nysys did, though. Alan had no idea how Nysys always managed to be happy and upbeat, but he wanted to ask because he needed more of that in his life.
A lot more of it.
“Thank you,” Moore said, still staring at Nysys as if he was about to grow a second head. “I wasn’t joking, though. My mutants and I know what we’re doing when it comes to raiding the labs. We’ve been doing it for years.”
Dante crossed his arms over his chest. “So have we.”
“I’m pretty sure we had better results than you had.”
“Only because you usually get there before we can.”
“Again, that points to us being better than you.”
Rikar pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked like he was about to reach the end of his patience, which was surprising considering the man seemed to have an infinite amount of it.
“I don’t think that dividing our forces is going to help anyone,” he said.
“But we want to stop everyone, from whoever is responsible for the labs to the hunters and Victor. It’s clear now that this is one big operation. ”
“That’s not how the hunters usually work,” Matthew pointed out.
Alan was glad for his presence. He was pretty sure he’d have already run out of the room screaming if it wasn’t for his mate’s steadiness.
“They might not like working with the labs, but they want supernatural beings to be eliminated, and I’m sure that the money they’re paid to kidnap people and drag them to the labs is enough for most of them to close an eye.”
“I just think that Moore might not have been wrong when he separated the two. There’s no way we can get to all of the hunters through the labs. There are too many different groups and families, and I don’t think every single one of them is working for the labs.”
“I agree,” Dante said. “The hunters are going to be difficult to eliminate. That’s why I believe we should focus on the labs, at least initially.
Once we’ve closed all of them, we can move on to the hunters.
Hopefully, we’ll capture some of them through the labs first, but considering how they work, I doubt any of them would give us the names of other families or tell us where to find them. ”
“What about Victor?” Alan asked.
Dante’s expression was serious. “Victor is another problem entirely, a much more complicated one.”
That wasn’t what Alan had wanted to hear, dammit.
* * * *
MATTHEW COULD SEE FROM his mate’s expression that Alan wasn’t happy. He wasn’t surprised. Alan was angry at Victor and wanted the man to pay. They all did, but for Alan, it was personal.
“It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to do everything we can to stop him,” Dante continued.
“In fact, it’s a good thing that the council got involved.
We can prosecute him for crimes against shifters, maybe even work with the human justice system.
The labs haven’t only been experimenting on shifters and other supernatural beings.
The hunters have also kidnapped humans, and we know of several of them who ended up in the labs. ”
Matthew nodded. “One of our friends has.”
Dante frowned. “One of the mutants?”
“Hayes was human before he ended up in a cage.”
“So the human government will definitely want to get involved. The council can deal with them and the paperwork. They’re used to it.”
“How are you going to stop Victor, though?” Alan asked.
“The problem in this situation is that we don’t have proof of what he’s doing. We’ve already started poking into his personal accounts and business, but so far, we don’t see anything odd. As far as everyone’s concerned, he’s exactly who he says he is.”
“That’s not true.”
“You and I know that, but the general public doesn’t, and until we have something concrete, we can’t do anything about it because of his position in the public eye.”
“What does something concrete mean to you?”
“The easiest thing to work with would be a confession.”
Matthew was starting to get a bad feeling about this. He disliked the expression on Alan’s face. He didn’t think he was going to like whatever was about to come out of Alan’s mouth, but he could do nothing to stop it. He doubted his mate would be happy with him if he tried.
“And how would you get a confession?” Alan asked slowly.
“He’d have to tell someone what he’s been up to. The more details we can get, the better.”
“But he won’t tell anyone.”
“We don’t think he will, no. Considering everything, we know the man is too smart to blab his mouth. He’s probably been doing this for years, yet we’ve never heard about it.”
“But he’d talk to someone he was close to, maybe someone he worked with.” Alan didn’t look at Matthew. “Maybe he’d talk to someone who already knows what he’s been up to.”
Dante did glance at Matthew, but only for a second. His full attention returned to Alan.
Matthew knew what the man was thinking. If he was good at his job, he had to know what Alan was suggesting and that it was a good idea. The only reason Matthew thought it wasn’t was that it would put his mate in danger, and that wasn’t something he wanted to happen.
Unfortunately, he didn’t think he’d have a choice.
“I heard him with that guy,” Alan said. “So I know what’s happening, and he knows I know. I could talk to him.”
“To say what?” Matthew asked. He might not be able to stop his mate, but he was still going to try. He wasn’t going to risk losing Alan. “That you want to join him? He won’t believe that.”
“I don’t think he would, no. But he might believe me if I ask him for money to keep his secret.”
“You want to blackmail him?” That sounded like a very bad idea.