18. Lucian
LUCIAN
My study holds more supernatural authority than has stood in one room in thirty years by noon, and every face turned toward me is waiting to hear how badly I've failed to keep our secret, and protect those that needed protecting.
Kian arrived first, on foot again, and took the chair nearest the door out of habit.
Kurtis fills the couch and half the one beside it.
The two neighboring lion Alphas I called in the dark hours drove through the night, one from the coast, one down from the north country, and they sit stiff and unhappy, because Ashcrofts summon other prides only when something has already gone very wrong.
Hector stands at my shoulder. Sophie sits at the head of the map table where I put her, and I see the northern Alpha clock her as human.
"I'll give it to you plain," I say. "Our financial network was compromised from inside. Our own CFO. He's held the position for twenty-five years. Last night he stole the master database, and we have reason to believe he's running it to a buyer."
The coastal Alpha is on her feet before I finish. "Every location. In one file."
"I'm afraid so."
"Ashcroft, that file has my people in it." Her voice climbs. "Forty families I sent to your routes because your family swore they were the safest. You mean to tell me a bookkeeper has been holding the knife to all…"
"Thirteen years. Yes." I don't flinch from it. "You can spend the afternoon telling me what my failure has cost, and you'd be right, but it wouldn't save a single family. Or you can sit down and let the person who found him in five weeks tell you how we get it back."
I gesture to Sophie and every head turns. I feel the temperature of the room drop toward her, all that suspicion aimed like a rifle.
She pulls up the overlay and lets the map do the first minute of talking.
"You're all here because you each lost people and thought you lost them to bad luck," she says.
"You didn't. You lost them to a logistics company funded with Ashcroft money and staffed with drivers paid out of Ashcroft accounts.
It's not regional. Depots in eleven states.
Your families weren't taken by a local predator.
They were taken by a national supply chain, and until two nights ago it was invisible, because everyone here was trained to guard the money coming in, but nobody watched as it left. "
The northern Alpha leans forward, grudging. "And now?"
"Now the man running it has made his first mistake in years.
Clifford isn't the top of it, either. Lincoln Cantu is, he runs the Dominion Syndicate, better known in the trafficking network as the Collector.
He's the one the buyers answer to, and the one behind the market for captured shifters.
" She flags the biometric record and turns the screen.
"He authenticated the theft with his own thumbprint.
He's a proven thief, and the database he stole is encrypted, so it's worthless to a buyer until it's decrypted.
He needs a location, machines, and time to decrypt it. That's our window, and it's closing."
The coastal Alpha sits down, because Sophie gave her something to do with the fear, and fear with somewhere to go stops being panic and starts being an army.
Kurtis catches my eye with a look that says told you so about a woman he met once.
Even the northern Alpha, who came here spoiling to blame me and was entitled to, unbends by a degree, because the human is speaking the one dialect we never learned.
"How do you find a meeting that hasn't happened yet?" Kian asks.
Hector's phone buzzes against the table. He checks it once, and whatever he reads wipes the ease from his face.
"Luke."
Every conversation stops.
He turns the screen toward me. "Three more hits since we started this meeting. Idaho, northern Nevada, and outside Spokane. Two were empty before the crews arrived. One wasn't."
The coastal Alpha pushes forward in her chair. "Mine?"
"No. Wolf family moving west." Hector presses his teeth together. "Three taken."
A second message lands before he's finished. Kian swears under his breath.
"This isn't Clifford selling one address at a time anymore," Sophie says. She's already pulling the locations onto the map. "Look at the spacing. They're testing multiple corridors at once."
"They're clearing the board," I say.
The room goes silent. I stand. "Then we stop waiting for them to choose the next house.
Kian, split your wolves across the northern corridor and get every exposed family moving before dark.
Kurtis, I want your people on the mountain routes and every fallback property checked twice.
Coastal and north prides, take the western houses between you.
Nobody moves alone, and nobody uses a route that's been in the database. "
"What about Blackwood Ridge?" Hector asks.
"We keep it quiet. No public alarms. The town just sees extra patrols and nothing more. Panic puts people on roads we haven't cleared and gives the syndicate exactly what it wants."
Hector nods once. "I'll lock down the pride without making it look like a lockdown."
"Good. Rescue first. Fear later."
"To answer your question. Money, that's how to find a meeting.
" Sophie pulls up a fresh window. "Decryption at this scale needs a secure facility.
Power, cooling, isolated networks, hired specialists who don't ask questions.
That's not free, and is unusually paid in cash.
Cash doesn't move in the amounts a job this size costs.
In the next few days, an account likely connected to the buyer is going to spend money on infrastructure it didn't need last week.
A short-term industrial lease. A spike in power draw.
Specialist contractors book fast and pay well.
I can't watch the whole country. But I can watch spending this specific job requires, and when it appears, it'll point to the location. I need everything you know."
I watch a room with the most powerful predators on the continent line up to hand their grief to an accountant because she's the only one offering to spend it on something.
Hector leans down to my ear. "She turned a blame session into a war council in minutes."
"I know."
"Your father could clear a room like that. Never fill one." He straightens. "Different skill."
We break at dusk, and before they scatter I open with a closing statement.
"One more item, and then you eat before you drive.
" I stand, and the room quiets. "Some of you sat down today ready to hold me responsible, and you had the right.
I lost the secret. It happened under my roof, on my watch, to a man I vouched for with my own name.
" I let that stand a beat. "But understand what you're walking back into your territories with.
Sophie is not a consultant I hired. She's not a human I'm indulging.
She's stayed in the fire when running was the sane choice.
When she asks your people for records, your people answer her the way they'd answer me.
She speaks with my authority. That's not a courtesy. That's an order."
The northern Alpha studies me, then Sophie. "You've never given a human standing in this network. No one has. Two hundred years."
"Yet we still got robbed blind." I hold his gaze. "Maybe the tradition wasn't protecting us as well as we believed. She's the reason we have a chance to fix this. Standing's the least she's earned."
He inclines his head. It costs him, and he does it anyway, and around the room the others follow, and I feel something shift under two centuries of habit.
Later, Sophie stands watching the taillights thread down the mountain.
"You didn't have to do that," she says. "The speech. I don't need four Alphas to like me."
"You have the authority to use them without arguing for anything.
" I stand beside her. "That wasn't for you.
It was for the forty families that coastal Alpha carries in her head.
They need everyone to answer you fast, and people do that when the Alpha's put his name behind you.
" I glance sideways. "Also it was a little for you. "
She almost smiles. "Find Clifford first. Compliment me after."
"Then let's find him." I watch the last car reach the valley floor. "Before that file finds a buyer."