Chapter Fourteen
Pierre caught the narrowing of Melinda’s eyes from behind dark frames as she plugged her laptop in.
Did she suspect? Did she know? Had he tripped another of her trigger alarms?
She was good at that. Hiding IDS alerts in her work.
If he’d found her password, if he’d logged on, he would have destroyed any evidence he’d been there, but he hadn’t got that far.
Though he knew as much as anyone about Melinda as could be gleaned from her digital footprint, and from watching her for three weeks, he’d not bothered to try cracking her encryption on his own.
No, Melinda was good a hacker. She would have a strong password, void of anything personal.
So he’d connected his laptop with hers, and set running a clever program Louis had developed for instances such as this.
As it churned away, he’d sent a neat little virus to the server hosting the security feed for their apartment.
Any evidence, any footage of either his or Louis’ presence there, gone with the press of a key.
He’d corrupted the entire security system, and anything else using that server.
Then he’d wiped any stored footage in the cameras. The ones in Melinda’s apartment, too.
He’d searched the police database for early reports on the callout to her apartment.
A call from Laurent earlier had let them know he’d taken care of the Faucherian.
How he’d managed that when the police had already been on the scene, he hadn’t asked.
All that mattered was the body was unlikely to ever see the light of day again.
But that wasn’t their only problem. The crime scene techs had gathered and bagged a lot of evidence before Laurent had arrived.
Taking and disposing of the body was the best he could manage. The rest was up to them.
Pierre needed to know what evidence the police had collected and logged.
If there was anything significant, or that implicated either him or Louis.
If there was any way he could keep Melinda’s name out of it, and stop the police from following her here.
That her passport was in her name and her apartment bought under a false identity with no easy-to-find links to her was helpful.
He’d made headway on her laptop encryption, his program crunching its way through a trillion possible password combinations as he’d worked, when his acute hearing had picked up the sounds of stirring in the bedroom.
He’d cursed, removed the connection between her laptop and his, shoved it aside, and closed all the tabs he’d had open relating to Melinda as she’d stepped out. But their mate was clever. Observant.
Pierre held his breath while Melinda tapped away at her keyboard. What she found seemed to satisfy her, the lines on her forehead smoothing out and the acrid scent of suspicion in the air dissipating.
He released his breath in silent relief. Thank fuck.
“Talk to us, Melinda,” he said. “Give us something to work with so we know what we’re up against here.”
With each lie they told, whether direct or of omission, they dug themselves in a deeper hole they may never climb out of.
Louis leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Chouquette, we can’t help you if you don’t tell us what’s going on.”
It hardly seemed fair, the two of them against her. Pierre reached across the table and linked his fingers through hers. “I understand your need to protect your client’s privacy, but is there anything you can tell us that might help us know what to expect?”
She looked at him then, over her glasses. He hadn’t known he had a thing for glasses, but on Melinda they were as sexy as fuck.
Melinda puffed out a breath and pushed her frames back up her nose.
“I create new identities for people, okay? One of my clients…” She shook her head.
“I have clients I do work for from a women’s refuge, helping them hide from their abusive husbands.
It’s something I do because…” A haunted look flashed across her face.
“Because I can. I have other clients who pay a lot of money for my skills.”
“There’s a lot of reasons people need a new identity,” said Louis. “Many of them not good.”
“Of course, but this one—and believe me, she’s paying like all the rest of them—she’s more like the women I help from the refuge.”
Cordelia? A battered wife? Non, non, non. Never. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve been doing this for a lot of years, so yeah, I’m sure.”
Pierre rubbed his hand across the stubble on his chin. Melinda thinking Cordelia was a victim wasn’t good. Not for them, for any chance they had with their mate and not for Melinda.
“And her husband has a lot of money and resources. I’ve created six identities for her, coded with alarms should someone try to trace her through them.
Five times someone’s cracked them. Her husband has engaged his own hacker, and he’s good.
” She flipped the lid down on her laptop.
“The last time, the son of a bitch hit me with malware. That’s how he found me, the guy with the tattoo, I guess. ”
Pierre didn’t dare take his gaze off Melinda to look at his twin, but he didn’t have to, to know his brother was experiencing the same conflicting emotions—guilt, and a sense of relief they may never have to tell Melinda what they’d done.
“I’ve already contacted my client, warning her I might have been compromised. I did it before I came to your apartment last night. There’s been no response. I’m worried.”
That explained Melinda’s late-night visit from a Faucherian.
“Your client’s in San Francisco, I take it,” said Louis.
Pierre forced himself to lean back in his chair, as if they were discussing nothing more important than Louis’ morning gateau selection. They couldn’t appear to be too eager.
Melinda nodded. “Yes. I believe she is.”
Pierre kept a lid on his jubilation. All this time Cordelia had been right under Gabriel’s nose.
Not in Russia, China, or Switzerland. She’d never left the United States.
She’d never left the damn city. Gabriel and the coven had turned over every rock, used every spell and resource they had to find her.
He and Louis had spent weeks trolling through every database they could think of, searching for any information that might lead to her whereabouts—tax records, land records, digitized records of old newspapers. They’d found nothing.
Then identities had started popping up in different countries.
So many they’d suspected it was a way to hide her real movements, Cordelia fleeing to another country.
A time-traveling witch could turn up anywhere and start a new life, but in the modern world she’d need identification.
One of the many they’d found had to be the real one.
But none of them were, because she hadn’t gone anywhere.
They were nothing but a distraction. He wanted to punch his fist through the jet’s paneling.
How could he and Louis have been so stupid?
But where in San Francisco was she hiding?
They’d found her cabin in the woods. The one where Cordelia’s henchmen had taken Annabelle when they’d kidnapped her.
All the King family members and their homes had been under surveillance for months.
The dilapidated apartment building in the Tenderloin district had yielded nothing but an abandoned luxury suite on the top floor.
The two other properties, linked not to Cordelia, but to dummy corporations and fake charities, had also proved fruitless.
Where the fuck is she?
“That settles it then.” He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table, keeping his expression neutral. “We go to San Francisco and rescue your client.”
There would be no rescuing.
“No.” Melinda’s voice was sharp. “No,” she said, softening her tone. “While I’m grateful for all your help, I won’t compromise your safety any further. This is my problem, not yours.”
Compromise their safety? They were werewolves, for fuck’s sake.
Melinda was but a fragile human. For now.
But she didn’t know any of that, and she had no clue how ruthless Cordelia was.
Or the powers the woman had at her disposal.
That she wasn’t some beaten-down, terrified woman running from her husband in desperate need of salvation.
Like hell Melinda would go anywhere without them by her side. Not to the grocery store, a café and especially not after Cordelia. “What about your safety, Melinda? You can’t help anybody if you’re dead.”
Melinda flinched. Harsh, but true, and it drove his point home.
Louis was out of his seat and kneeling before her. He cupped her face. “Chouquette, a man tried to shoot you last night.”
Fear flickered in her eyes and tainted her scent, but the determined set of her jaw remained.
Pierre clasped both hands around hers. “This is the type of thing Wolf Enterprises does. What we do. Let us help you. Think of us as your personal bodyguards.”
“Oui. Very sexy bodyguards, non?” teased Louis.
Melinda cracked a hesitant smile.
“Everyone will be jealous.” Louis side-eyed him. “Mostly because of me. I’m the better-looking twin. Pierre’s the oldest. That’s how you tell us apart.”
There were as many differences between them as there were similarities. Would she notice? With time, he hoped so.
Melinda’s gaze bounced between the two of them. “Bodyguards?”
Pierre gave her hands another gentle squeeze. “Oui.”
A relaxing of her shoulders, a brief nod and the unmistakable change in the air, from fear to relief. “Okay. But I pay you for your services.”
Pierre snarled. Fuck, no.
“I pay you,” she said, her voice firm. “That makes me your boss, and you have to back off when I tell you to.”
This time it was Louis who snarled.
Chin jutted out, she stared them down. “It’s this way or not at all. I pay you, or we part ways as soon as we’re through customs in San Francisco.”
“Fine,” he growled. Let her think what she liked. He’d create a damn invoice for her if that’s what made her happy, made her think she had some control, but she wouldn’t be paying them a single euro. And he and Louis were never going to leave her side. No matter what.