Chapter 29 #2
“No one except Cale knew who the buyer was,” Colby said at last. He didn’t want to draw attention by asking, but no one else was mentioning the obvious question, and he wanted to know.
He wanted to understand. “Why—” His voice cracked.
He cleared his throat and started again. “Why take out the whole pack?”
“Would you take the chance Cale might have mentioned his name?” Matt asked.
Colby looked down. “I guess not.”
“Nico wasn’t there,” Tristan burst out. “Perhaps he had something to do with it. Perhaps it’s nothing to do with Washington at all. It can’t be a member of the National Council.”
Colby squeezed his arm. He understood his distress, he thought. It was easier to think of it being between rival criminal gangs or packs than someone sitting in an office somewhere and cold-bloodedly ordering an entire pack’s execution.
“How many in Cale’s pack, Colby?” Matt asked.
“Twenty, at last count, including me.” They’d lost some in the attack on this pack, and then there’d been Kowalski, and also Mac, who’d made Cale mad one too many times.
Matt’s clear gaze rested on Tristan. “So that’s every one of them except Nico accounted for. This was no cabal staging a mutiny, and the evidence tells us that’s not what happened anyway.”
Tristan fell silent, his hand tight around Colby’s where it rested on his arm.
Matt looked at Colby. “You have any suggestions about why Nico might have been absent?”
There was no explanation Colby could think of. The only time Nico left the pack was when Cale gave some of them leave. All he wanted to do then was spend money, get drunk, and fuck Colby somewhere new.
Unless… Had Cale been so furious about Nico taking Tristan, only to lose him, that he’d gotten rid of him?
Colby’s stomach turned over at the thought, which he couldn’t understand.
Though as he worked through how effective a beta Nico was, how loyal to Cale he was, he couldn’t credit it.
Cale was volatile, but he wouldn’t get rid of an asset like Nico. There must be another reason.
Oh, God. Colby licked his lips. Something cold and terrified inside him knew the truth before his brain got there. “He may have taken a day or two out, to…”
His throat closed.
“I think maybe he’s looking for me.”
Terror gripped him, deep in his gut. Of course Nico wouldn’t just let him go, not after being made to look like a fool. He’d want to punish him, to prove no one humiliated him and walked away. If he ever caught up with Colby, the consequences would be beyond anything.
He stared down at the battered oak table and tried to breathe. It wasn’t as easy as it had been a minute ago.
Tristan squeezed his hand even tighter. “He won’t touch you again. I won’t let him,” he said, low and fierce.
Matt didn’t respond immediately. His gaze drifted toward the window, thoughtful. “Could be. Or perhaps Cale sent him off on a job. We don’t know enough yet.”
He looked around the table. “Either way, we play it safe. Karl, I want double patrols starting now. Everyone, stay alert—a single wolf’s easier to overlook than a pack.
” Then he turned to Colby. “And you stay away from the perimeter. If Nico is circling, the last thing we need is him catching sight of you and deciding to come onto our territory.”
Colby swallowed, emotion rising in his chest, too tangled to name. He’d brought this threat down on them, yet Matt wasn’t punishing him. He was trying to protect him. And for some reason, that made Colby’s throat ache.
“So we have a strong possibility about who ordered the hit and why, but it doesn’t mean it’s the right answer.
” Matt continued. “Any other thoughts, ideas that come to mind—come and talk to me. And in the meantime, we get on with normal life, and for fuck’s sake, we know nothing about what happened to Cale’s pack. ”
“Because if we do, we become a threat, someone who can point fingers in the right direction,” Karl concluded.
“And just when we find out someone on the Council is a homicidal megalomaniac with their own private army, we’re about to host a crowd of them like a charity brunch. What could possibly go wrong?”
Colby stared, frozen in place. Had Karl seriously just said that to Matt? Out loud? In front of witnesses? He braced, waiting for the fallout.
But Matt just rolled his eyes. “Always a ray of sunshine, Griffin,” he said. “Now clear out, all of you, and get on with what needs doing around here.”
Chairs scraped on the tiled floor as people got to their feet. Not sure what to do next, Colby welcomed Tristan’s hand in his, tugging him toward his room. But then Tristan hesitated in the middle of his room.
“I need to put my clothes from this morning in the washer,” he said apologetically, squeezing Colby’s hand before letting go. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
He picked up the clothes that were still on the bathroom floor, and held them away from him, carrying them as if they were poison.
Colby sat on the edge of the bed and waited for him, trying to ignore the sick pit in his stomach that had opened up at the thought of Nico coming after him.
That fear was more emotion than he’d felt after hearing what had happened to his pack, and he wondered how it could be that Tristan was more upset about their fate than he was.