Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
On the other side of the door stood someone I would not have pegged as the type to visit me at nearly ten o’clock at night.
Chelsea Kinney was wearing a short pea coat over a hunter-green blouse, the ensemble wrapped up with skinny jeans and high heels.
Her smile had the bland banality of someone about to make a public comment in front of the city council.
She clutched her oversized handbag, swinging it in front of her knees.
“Chelsea.” I frowned. “Hey, come in.”
“Thanks,” she said, stepping past me. She glanced around the apartment, eyes noting the overflowing paperwork and laundry still visible in the bedroom. I moved to shut the bedroom door and gestured to one of the folding chairs in front of my desk.
The last time she’d been over, the place had been cleaner. I always attempted to make sure things looked nice when people came for a consultation. Just because I was working out of my living room, didn’t mean I couldn’t have some pride.
“What’s going on? Did you want an update?”
Taking the offered seat, she perched on the edge, arms wrapped around her bag. Licking her lips, she said, “I’m here to pay you.”
“I still have some of your deposit left.” I shoved the pile of paperwork to a more stable angle before flipping through, looking for my notes on the hours for her case. “I think you’re good.”
“No, you don’t understand. I’m here to call off the hunt…” Shaking her head, she winced a smile. “I mean, you don’t need to keep looking into it. It’s fine.”
“It’s fine,” I said, one of my eyebrows creeping up.
She looked around the apartment, her eyes catching on a dirty plate I’d left on the couch. The microwave beeped again to remind me about my dinner and she jumped.
“I got photos of him. There’s no way he can pass it off as anything other than cheating.” I stood and grabbed my bag. Pulling out my camera, I turned it on and looked at the viewfinder as I searched for the right pictures.
When I had them, I passed it over to her, and she released her bag to take the camera. For a few moments, she stared at it. I watched her toggle to the next picture and the one after. Her lips pinched together and then she shook her head.
“It doesn’t matter. Now that he knows you were there, I can’t take the pictures to the alpha,” she said, handing back the camera.
I huffed a breath. Turning off the camera, I pulled out one of the two SIM cards and turned it between my fingers.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You were so sure a few days ago. What changed?”
Her spine straightened, and she glared at me.
“He saw you. He saw you and when he got home, he called a whole council meeting and made a big stink about it. Dieter thinks it was some other pack, but if he—if they find out it was me, it’ll look like I betrayed the pack by letting someone into our business. ”
She leaned back in the chair and winced. I narrowed my eyes, scanning her. “What’s wrong with your back?”
“Nothing,” she blurted.
In my gut, I knew it wasn’t nothing. There was no bruising visible, but she was a werewolf, she’d heal fast. Probably fast enough she even convinced herself it wasn’t really abuse because it wasn’t like he did any permanent damage.
I tapped the SIM card on the desk. “Anyone else know?”
“Know what?” she bit out.
“About your back,” I said. Looking her over, my eyes caught on her out-of-season jacket. “And your arm.”
Drawing herself up, she gave me the haughty look I remembered from our first meeting. The icy glance was enough to make me reconsider my first impression of her. Her bad day was a lot worse than her favorite nail place being closed.
“How much money to make you forget about this?” she asked, pulling out a checkbook.
I almost said one thousand eight hundred. But I could feel what Marco would have said to that. He would have called it blackmail. It would have been blackmail.
“I can forget it, free of charge,” I said. I leaned forward and placed the primary SIM card on the edge of the desk. Usually, I wiped the backup SIM card after a case was done, but this time I decided I’d keep it. “In case you decide to use the pictures.”
She picked it up and tucked it into her bag. For a moment, she glanced back at the dirty plate and then her eyes cut to me.
“Dieter got a whiff of your scent when he was chasing you,” she said. “I don’t know how you got away from him, but now that he has your scent, he’s going to try to track you.”
Shrugging, I said, “I can take care of myself.”
“Can you?” She looked around the apartment at my stacks of paper, the door closed to cover up piles of laundry, and the dishes left out. “Dieter’s planning to kill you.”
“I’m sure I’ll be fine.” It wasn’t really an answer, but I wasn’t about to get into a fist fight with the guy. I’d lose for certain.
“He called the entire council together,” she said. “He even got the alpha involved.”
“Yeah?” My brows drew together. “You’re worried.”
“I know exactly what Dieter’s capable of,” she spat. Her knuckles went white where she’d wrapped her hand around the strap of her bag. “Do you?”
“I mean, he’s a big guy,” I said. “I can imagine he’d mess me up.”
“Malik agreed you should be questioned and dealt with,” Chelsea said. “That’s how Dieter spun this.”
“Malik is the alpha?” I asked. “No, he’s second, isn’t he?”
Huffing, Chelsea rolled her eyes. “How would you know what our power structure is?”
“I try to keep on top of things.” I shrugged, crossing my arms over my chest. “And last I checked, Malik was second. What happened to Nate?”
“He retired.” Her tone was flat.
I tried to relax my eyebrows, but I saw the problem. “Nate got killed, didn’t he?”
She pursed her lips and stared at me.
“Okay, so he got killed by another pack. Recently?” I drummed my fingers on my bicep.
“In May,” she said. “The cops said it wasn’t suspicious. Because why would they look into the death of some pack alpha?”
I could imagine what the police would have said. Something along the lines of, “just let them work it out, they’re only killing each other” and “you know how dogs are.”
“You don’t think it was another pack.” I made it a statement.
She rubbed at her arm and winced a little. It might have healed on the surface, but the pain of whatever Dieter did when he was mad hadn’t faded.
“Dieter thinks it was another pack,” I said, guessing. “And you think it wasn’t.”
Her lip curled, and I saw some wolfishness in her display of teeth. “Why would another pack start with our alpha and then do nothing else? I even had most of the others agreeing with me.”
“Until Dieter saw a photographer who was trailing him. And he spun it that I’d been photographing him doing pack activities.” I leaned back and rotated my chair a bit. “So, now he has evidence it was some other pack, trying to move in on SoPa territory.”
“You said you were going to forget about it.” She raised here eyebrow imperiously. “Why does it matter?”
“Hey, if I’m going to be kidnapped, tortured, and murdered by someone, I want to know why.” I tilted my head and smirked at her. “Call it my nosy nature.”
Chelsea snorted, and I saw a hint of a smile on her face.
“And you don’t think Malik would listen to you if you tried to explain why you were having Dieter followed? He’s a reasonable guy. More than Nate ever was.”
Nate was the one who’d pulled SoPa from the lower level to one of the most powerful packs in the city.
If he had them selling drugs and weaponry to do it, well, as far as he saw it, that was just the cost of doing business.
Malik had been a loyal right hand as they cut a swath through their competition, but I was curious to see what kind of alpha he’d make.
Curious from a distance, mind you. I had no interest in getting personally involved in pack politics. Not that I had much choice at the moment, because it seemed like I was going to be getting a front-row seat to how the new alpha managed his territory.
She shook her head. “He’s not going to have a choice.”
“Because he needs to prove he’s strong enough to lead the pack?” I scoffed. “Didn’t he have any challengers? Didn’t Dieter challenge him?”
She shook her head. “No. No challenges.”
Most alphas got the title through bloodshed. It was how they proved they had the strength to lead the pack. It was rare to see someone take power through politics alone, though if anyone could, it would be Malik. He was always too smart for his own good.
“He’s going to prove he’s worthy by cutting off my head, isn’t he?” I groaned.
“Dieter will do the actual decapitation,” Chelsea said.
“Great. So much better.” Rubbing my eyes, I banged my head on the back of my office chair. “How likely is he to forget my scent?”
For a moment, Chelsea was quiet, and I opened my eyes to see her thoughtful. “You could try that angle.”
“Saying they got the wrong guy, meaning he lost my scent?” I said. “That’d put a black mark on his rep, right?”
“Yeah.” She tapped one of her fingers on her bag. “It might work.”
“What about taking pictures makes this a death sentence?” I groaned again and answered my own question. “Because Dieter’s convinced them I was involved in the old alpha’s death. Because if I was photographing Dieter, then I was obviously going to kill him next.”
I wanted to swear, but cut it off at the first sound, because Chelsea looked like a person who would get a taste-of-lemon face at foul language. “I’ll stay out of his way. He can’t kill what he can’t find.”
“I just thought you should know,” she said, standing. “He seemed serious about it.”
She started towards the door and stopped with her hand on the door handle. “Who was the girl?”
“Dieter’s wolf on the side?” I shrugged. “No idea. I thought you might know her, since she looks like she’d be in a pack.”
“We don’t all know each other.” She rolled her eyes. “And I thought the cops were bad.”
“I didn’t say you all know each other, but I’ll be honest, you seem like a person who has a binder for each of the other packs in the area with biographical data for every member you know about.”
She snorted again, but didn’t correct me. After a pause, she said, “I’d be careful with the Five Dragons, then, too.”
“Noooooo,” I whined the word, and banged my head on the chair again. “The Five Dragons?”
“I was hoping you were going to say she was just a wolf bunny or someone hoping to join the pack. I don’t know for certain.”
Offering her a tight smile, I said, “Are you going to be okay?”
With her hand wrapped protectively around her left arm, she nodded. “I know how to take care of myself.”
Wetting my lips, I said, “You know where I live if you ever need anything.”
She jerked her chin and pulled her shoulders back, as though putting on a layer of armor. When she looked back at me, she was a senior member of the SoPa pack. There wasn’t any evidence of the soccer mom her outfit painted her as.
“See you around,” she said, opening the door and stalking out.
I rose to lock the door behind her and slid the chain home as I thought about the past few hours. Between the Summer Queen and losing my apartment, Dieter Rossi wasn’t even at the top of my list of problems. Still, it would be bad if I got caught by the SoPas.
The microwave beeped and my stomach didn’t rumble so much as turn over like a tractor engine in the dead of winter.
I swore my intestines twisted in hunger.
Grabbing the mac and cheese, I picked a clean fork out of the drying rack and plopped down on the couch.
I watched my blank tv screen as I ate, thoughts chasing each other around my brain until I flipped on the tv, just to have the noise.
Marco never would have gotten into this mess.
Or if he did, he would have been able to get out of it with some story starting with, “You know...” He’d never have owed the Summer Queen anything, and he’d never paid a bill late, either.
Hell, he’d have just sat Dieter down and convinced him cheating was wrong and he should leave Chelsea and think about his life choices.
I fell asleep like that, slumped on the couch, until I woke up to infomercials at three a.m. and dragged myself to bed.