Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-five
TOM
“She’s expecting you,” Maria said as soon as Tom entered the office. Which was code for “where the hell have you been?” He glanced at his watch to find it was almost ten minutes before he was due, which meant Councilor Steadman must be very anxious to get his news.
And she was. His ass had barely touched the seat she’d offered him before she demanded to know just how he’d left things in Elk Ridge.
“Both Urban and Turner agree there’s nothing to be gained and potentially a lot of harm to be done by coming forward at this time with news of Turner’s bloodline,” he said, because that would gain time for him to start the ball rolling on the matter of the murders.
And if Bennett really was the guilty party, the last thing they wanted was for him to have Jesse’s support.
“They’re open to further discussions before making any moves. ”
“Good,” she said. “Good. Nice work, Tom.” Her mouth stretched in a smile that wasn’t reflected in her eyes. “I’m wondering why you wanted to see me, the subject that was so sensitive you couldn’t tell me on the phone?”
“Yeah.” He hesitated. No matter how many times he’d gone over this on the flight, he still hadn’t come up with a good way to tell her that one of her fellow councilors was a criminal and that the security detail they all relied on, the one he’d briefly belonged to, was that person’s private murder squad.
He licked his lips and knew she marked it. She sat back slightly, her hands coming to rest on the arms of her chair, her body language open and encouraging him to continue.
“They told me something else when I was there,” he said. “I didn’t want to believe it, it seems so far-fetched, but the evidence—”
Before he got any further, her fingers spasmed. The fingernails that were painted the same delicate color as her lips dug into the padded leather beneath her hands. It was only for an instant, but it was enough for him to break off and close his mouth with an almost audible click.
“Go on,” she prompted.
He tried not to stare, but something in her eyes made him feel like a rabbit in front of a snake. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, and his wolf snarled, scenting danger.
“I—uh,” he said, his brain spinning like a hamster wheel and getting absolutely nowhere. He ran his hand over the back of his neck, the brief warmth of his fingers replacing the goose bumps that had risen, and his mind started to work again.
The sense of danger in the room was palpable. He didn’t know why. What he did know was that he had to get out of here without breathing a word about what he’d come in here to tell her.
“We’re mates,” he said, with an attempt at a self-conscious smile. “Me and the Elk Ridge pack beta. I thought you should know ASAP, because it’s going to be useful for negotiations.”
Her eyes were sharp and hard on him, and the sense of danger from her didn’t diminish in the least.
“I just wanted to tell you, so we can work it into future negotiations,” he said weakly.
“I don’t know why the hell you thought that was worth rearranging my diary so you could have a private meeting. You just cost the taxpayers several thousand dollars, Barrington, not to mention inconvenienced several high-ranking government officials.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he muttered, rising to his feet.
“I want a breakdown of Cheung’s latest statistics on my desk in two hours,” she said. “They’re misleading, and I need to know why.”
“Ma’am,” he said again, and moved to the door. He was almost certain her eyes were on him as he closed it quietly behind him.
Once he was past Maria’s all-seeing gaze and out into the corridor, he leaned back against the marble wall and swallowed.
He had no idea what had just happened, because there was no way she could have known what he’d been going to say.
Not unless she was the one responsible, which was patently ridiculous.
But nothing else he could think of explained her response.
He also couldn’t understand how easily the words about Bryce had spilled from his mouth.
He’d been desperate, sure, so had grabbed at something that might sound convincing.
Even so, the words had felt oddly natural.
Dangerous, too, as if his heart had spoken before his brain could stop it.
He had no idea how he’d explain why his so-called mate wouldn’t even look at him when the Council came calling, but it still felt better than blundering on to tell her about the massacres.
He stopped to pick up a coffee from the bustling cafeteria. He knew he should eat, but his stomach turned over at the smell of food, the way it had done since Bryce’s rejection. Which he was not going to think about.
Clutching his coffee, he made his way downstairs to his cubbyhole of an office in the old bookstacks.
Not many people worked down there—the lack of natural light and the sheer spookiness of the maze of tunnels that used to house part of Congress’s extensive library made it highly unpopular.
Most of the aides and administrators who’d originally been put there had struck deals to share offices elsewhere.
Tom was one of the few who liked it. The quiet, the solitude, even the strange creaks that came late at night. As a wolf-shifter, there was very little he needed to be afraid of.
That thought reminded him that he needed to look at Cheung’s analysis. Cheung was arguing that more needed to be done to bring all shifters together, which meant encouraging cat-shifters to participate in the forms of government that the wolf-shifters had so painstakingly set up.
Well, Cheung might have a point, but if he were one of the rare cat-shifters, Tom wouldn’t want to go near a bunch of wolves either. The cats seemed to do just fine out on their own, away from shifter bureaucracy.
Tom settled at his desk with his coffee, switched off his office phone so he wouldn’t be disturbed during the hour and fifty minutes that were all he had left in which to deconstruct Cheung’s analysis, and brought up the figures on his screen.
He’d have time later to figure out why something in that room had made his hackles rise, why his wolf had been on edge when all she’d done was smile. For now, if he wanted to keep his job, he needed to pull this data apart.