Inquisitor (Witch & Wolf Book 1) (16 page)

Squeak.

“Is there any reason Allison Ferdinan might want to kill Alan Oleran?”

“No.” I heard the tap of fingers on the thick hardwood of the conference table. “Alan never came to Atlanta. Miss Ferdinan worked exclusively with Georgia and New York clients.”

“So they never met?” There was surprise in the officer’s voice.

“Not to my knowledge. Here is a file of her attorneys. I had HR pull the list of names as soon as we heard about the accusations. Miss Ferdinan is a very hard worker. We were about to force her on mandatory vacation when she requested vacation to go to New York City. D.C. wasn’t on her itinerary.”

There was a long silence. “Miss Ferdinan had an itinerary?”

“Of course. She has access to a lot of financial information about Smith & Sons. We ask all employees with access to such confidential information to submit itineraries when they are leaving town, in case we need to get a hold of them.”

“Is it possible to speak to Miss Ferdinan?”

Another moment of silence, this time broken by the clearing of Donavan’s throat. “I’m afraid we have no idea where Miss Ferdinan is. She didn’t show up for work this morning. No one has heard from her since she spoke with her credit card company on the first,” Amelia said. I heard the thump of drummed fingers. “The card company called Smith & Sons today wanting to speak to her. There was no activity on any of her cards, either. We’ve been asking around, Officer Marten, but I’m afraid we don’t know anything. She wasn’t seen by security at her condo, either.”

I bit my lip. Amelia had been far more thorough than I anticipated.

“I recommend filing a missing person’s report, then. Thank you for your time, ladies and gentlemen.”

Squeak. The door opened and then clicked closed.

“Now that was interesting,” Anderson said. “Amelia? Will you file the report?”

“As soon as the meeting is over.”

I reached over and unmuted my phone. “Good work, Pet.”

“But I didn’t say anything, ma’am,” Samantha replied.

“Exactly. You could have. Good judgment. Now, I will be quiet, and you’ll finish business so we can go have dinner. Pet, you will join me as soon as your work is finished.” I imagined all of the board members wincing. I grinned. My wolf liked being Allison Victoria Mayfield Hanover. She was content and pleased with the situation. I couldn’t blame her. We had earned our place at the head of the pack.

~*~

I booked Samantha into a long-stay hotel, which was a ten minute walk from the Marrodin corporate headquarters. Once she was secured, I hopped back in my Mustang and headed off. At the rate I was going, I was going to live at a twenty-four hour Walmart. I bought a cell phone as well as enough clothes to last a week and found a hotel a little farther from work with underground parking. I’d have to get Samantha a state-of-the-art computer from a much better store in the morning, but a six hundred dollar piece of crap was enough to do what I needed.

Prowling around the hotel room, I tried to work out the worst of my nerves so I could sleep. Hell waited for both of us in the morning. After some ten minutes of pacing holes into the carpeting, I plopped down on the squeaky office chair, booted up my laptop, and went to work.

Someone had framed me for murder, and I didn’t even know who I’d supposedly killed, so I started there.

Alan Oleran was easy to find on the internet. News of his death had spread like wildfire. I whistled. No wonder I’d been framed. Allison Ferdinan would’ve had ample reasons to hate any one of the high-profile attorneys associated with Marrodin’s branch company Smith & Sons, at least on the outside. Oleran hadn’t been someone I’d dealt with, either as Ferdinan or as Hanover.

While Allison Victoria Mayfield Hanover tended to meddle in all things relating to Marrodin, the corporation was larger than any one employee. I hadn’t been directly involved in bringing Oleran into the firm. In either case, I remembered the accounts I had worked on, and Oleran’s hadn’t been one of them.

I had worked with prosecutors.

Drumming my fingers on the desk in a steady rhythm, I stared at the news report, and at the face of the middle-aged man with graying hair. If the article hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have believed the trim, somewhat muscular Oleran had only been forty-seven. I searched for more news on his death and paused at a news site with an article including a photograph of Oleran after his death.

His murder had taken him by surprise, I guess. Did anyone really expect to die? His eyes were wide in horror and shock, mouth opened in a scream I doubted he had managed to voice.

I would’ve been shocked and horrified too if my throat had been ripped out. Whoever—whatever—had done it was strong. Strong enough I doubted it was human. Four jagged slices ran across Oleran’s jugular, each tear not quite enough to decapitate him. Another inch, and his spine would’ve been cut clear through.

Even if I had real motivation to kill Oleran, even if I had fallen under the moon’s sway on Halloween, I doubted I could’ve pulled it off. A regular werewolf might have been able to, but scrawny was the first word I applied to myself. Raw power and lethal force had never been one of my strengths. Why would anyone accuse me of being the killer?

Muttering curses, I kept searching.

Almost an hour later, I found my answer. The photograph wasn’t on one of the standard news feeds. To my disgust, it was on one of the least-reputable paranormal activity sites out there. The image was so blurred it didn’t surprise me the police had decided against pursuing it.The woman might have been me if I were far, far prettier. We were about the same build, but her long, dark hair fell in perfect, controlled curls. She was dressed as though born to high society, not realizing her high-heeled shoes and suit weren’t ideal night-walking attire.

Her dog was a different story. I recognized the breed. Who kept a grey wolf as a pet? Its leash was connected to what I guessed was a breakaway collar. While it was too small to be a werewolf—unless it was a runt like me—it was plenty large enough to make people believe it was capable of clawing out a lawyer’s throat.

I wrinkled my nose. Detective games weren’t up my alley, but it wasn’t difficult to understand why the murderers had chosen Halloween. It was the one night in the year where no one would have blinked twice about a wolf on the streets.

Still, whoever had done it knew enough about me to exploit my work and peg a murder on me, but not enough to estimate the severity of reaction to all things canine.

Allergies: 1, Culprit: 0.

But why me? I’d dodged a very uncomfortable accusation by the virtue of my over-enthusiastic immune system. The last thing I needed was someone looking too closely at Allison Ferdinan. While I’d gone out of my way to make her identity as flawless as possible without spending decades cultivating her, she wasn’t perfect. If anyone looked too closely at her, they might find a discrepancy. It was possible I had somehow made a mistake when creating her.

That sort of revelation could prove very, very lethal to a werewolf like me.

I shivered. At least Allison Victoria Mayfield Hanover was as bulletproof as I could make her. The owner of Marrodin had to be.

~*~

I picked Samantha up at her hotel twenty minutes after the conclusion of the board meeting. The average prison convict looked friendlier. She leveled a narrow-eyed glare at me, one graying brow arched high. There was something majestic about her as she opened the passenger side door of the Mustang and slipped inside. The beauty of her youth was there, but I got the sense she no longer noticed it. Her age showed in her eyes, a dulling no magic could heal or reverse.

“Guess who was with the cop,” she said after she buckled in and closed the door.

“Uh oh. Who?”

“Markus Dupree.”

I frowned. What was Mark doing in Atlanta? “What was he doing?”

“Looking confused, mostly. When Amelia announced you—Ms. Ferdinan, that is—was missing, his face was priceless. It looked like he’d been kicked in the nuts by a horse.”

“Samantha!” I laughed at the mental image of Mark’s face.

“Well, it’s true. I don’t know what happened on Halloween, girl, but the boy looked spooked. For a moment, I think he was downright terrified by something.” Samantha crossed her arms over her chest. “So? Spill it. What happened?”

“I did kind of spite his proposal to his mother—step, adoptive, or whatever type of mother she is.” I put the car into gear and headed towards downtown. “He’s way too young for me, Sammy.”

“Who isn’t? Aren’t you one of the oldest living things on Earth? Most trees don’t even have anything on you.”

“That’s harsh.”

“True, though.”

It was, to a point, though there were plenty of trees who had been around far, far longer than me. “I know,” I admitted.

Werewolves—like trees, rocks, and other things too stubborn to die—lived a long time, but we didn’t endure forever. Then again, I didn’t know many other wolves. That was the price of being a packless rogue. With time, old werewolves like me would die, be it from plague, injury, or murder. New
true
wolves, wolf offspring of human parents, would be born, and they would revitalize my cursed race through the rituals that had turned me into a twisted ruin of a human.

The world kept turning, and I remained in the hole I’d dug for myself, unable to claw my way out. I swallowed, and shook my head to drive away the thoughts. “How does sushi sound?”

“I’d rather have McDonald’s.”

“Red Lobster?”

“Now you’re talking serious business.”

“Red Lobster it is. Good work at the meeting, by the way.”

Samantha chuckled. “The board members seemed impressed. But seriously? Pet? No wonder you don’t keep secretaries for long.”

I ignored the comment about my choice of nicknames for my secretaries. “Of course they were impressed.” I laughed long and hard. “I didn’t paint the walls with your blood. For some reason, I tend to lose secretaries during those meetings.”

“It helps that I know you.”

“So it does. Don’t think I’ll go easy on you. I’m taking the liberty of finding you a decent apartment or condo, by the way.”

I felt Samantha’s eyes burrowing into me as a prickling sensation crawling up and down my spine. “I can’t afford a condo.”

“I can. I can’t have you living in a shitty place. I have a car on order for you, too. You’ll have to entertain, run errands, and do all of the things I can’t.”

The anger in my old friend’s gaze eased to a gentler curiosity. “What do you mean?”

“Ms. Hanover is a very, very private person. I haven’t been to an actual board meeting in five or ten years, give or take a few. Those people
might
recognize me on the street. You’re my eyes, my ears, and my hands. I’m a ghost. That’s why I go through so many secretaries. They don’t understand their role in my life. You do.”

“Damn it, Vicky. How do you survive like that? It’s worse than I thought.”

I shrugged. “How else? Using people like Ferdinan. But until I find out who framed me and why, I can’t rebuild. Too many people have seen my face. They know who I once was. I have to lie low and vanish for a while, until people have forgotten the murder of one certain lawyer.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

I gave Samantha some time to think about what I had told her. While my old friend was aware of my need to shift identities, there had been a lot I hadn’t told her.

“The people are really nice at your company.” Samantha said.

“It’s a job requirement.”

“Vicky!”

“I’m being serious. It is.”

“And how did you manage to pull something like that off?”

“Despite common belief, there are a lot of good people in the world, Samantha. I just make it my job to find them. I use evals, past history, references, old flames, anything I can get on every employee with the potential to rise up the ranks. The unsavory get the door. The nice ones are the people I cultivate. We teach them how to do business without backstabbing their partners. I bring in good people who want to make a difference in the world.” The ideal earned me as much scorn as respect among the other high-ranking CEOs from other corporations, but I tried not to care what they think.

My employees were the only ones who mattered.

“You mean people like Donnie, before…” Samantha trailed off, and I caught a glimpse of her shuddering out of the corner of my eye.

“People like Donnie, before he went to Vietnam,” I said.

“Yeah, like him.”

“Idealistic is the word you’re looking for, Samantha. I hire idealistic people.”

“You can’t do things the easy way, can you?”

“Nope.”

“What are you going to do about Mark?”

I drew a deep breath, letting it out in a slow sigh. Mark wasn’t my problem anymore, but I still felt a twinge of guilt. “He’ll move on.”

“He didn’t look ready to move on.”

“He can’t love a corpse forever, Sammy. He’s young. He’ll bounce back. He’ll have to find another accountant, but he’ll recover. He’ll find someone else.”