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“I thought your teeth fell out?”
“They did.” Desandra bared a new sharp set at me. “I found out I was coming to this meeting and they grew all on their own.”
Someone was pissed off.
I walked to the head of the table and sat in my chair, trying to valiantly ignore the fact that Curran’s chair stood empty next to me. If I let even a tiny bit of anxiety show, I would lose the Pack Council. They would begin to bicker and we wouldn’t come to a decision.
“Bring her in, please,” I said.
The door opened and Barabas led Dorie Davis inside. She didn’t look like a bombshell. She didn’t look like a streetwalker either. She looked perfectly ordinary. A woman in her early thirties, with a rounded face, blue eyes, and a shoulder-length blond bob. Not too athletic, not too curvy. Soft. The kind of woman who probably lived in the suburbs, made school lunches for her kids, and indulged in a glass of wine in the afternoon.
Barabas cleared his throat.
“Go ahead,” I told him.
He turned to Dorie. “Before we start, you need to know your rights. Everyone here is either an alpha, an acting alpha, or a member of the legal department. According to state law, no alpha can be compelled to testify against a member of their pack. The State of Georgia has no jurisdiction in this room. Nothing disclosed here can be used against you in a court of law.”
But it could be used against her in ours.
“Tell me what happened last night,” I said.
Dorie sighed, her face defeated. “I met Mulradin at the Fox Den.”
“Was he a regular client?” Robert asked.
“Yes, for the last ten months. He paid well. We had sex. He was getting ready for round two when someone busted through the door. There were six of them and they had shotguns. I was in my wolf form with a collar on and chained to the wall. One of them fired into the wall and showed the rest of the bullets to me. They were silver. The big one with dark hair told me that they would take turns shooting me. He said that I wouldn’t die right away. He said they would keep shooting me until I did what they wanted me to do.”
“Did you try to escape?” I asked.
“They were pointing shotguns at me.”
I took that as a no. “Describe the ‘big one’ to me.”
“In his thirties, over six feet tall. Very good shape. Muscular. Dark hair. Blue eyes.”
Hugh. “What happened then?”
“He told me that I had to kill Mulradin. If I tore him up, they would let me go.”
She stopped.
“So?”
“So I did.” Her voice was flat. “He screamed a lot. It was horrible. Then they took off my collar and I ran.”
So simple. No big mystery. Hugh had held her at gunpoint so he could manufacture this whole incident.
“Where did you go?” I asked.
“To my cousin’s house. She owed me some money, and I knew she’d hide me.”
“You didn’t notify your clan or your alpha?” the beta of Clan Nimble asked.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Dorie sighed again. “Why not, why not? Because I didn’t want to be arrested. I didn’t want to go to jail. I just wanted it all to go away. I wanted my life back.”
“I’m sure Mulradin did, too,” I said. “Did anybody see you leave the crime scene?”
“No.”
I looked at Jim. “We have no witnesses and Hugh moved the body from the original scene.” A good defense attorney could do wonders arguing that any evidence found on the body was contaminated.
“You’re thinking surrender?” Jim’s eyebrows rose an eighth of an inch.
I was thinking I wanted to avoid killing Dorie and sending her head out on a pike.
“They filmed it,” Dorie said.
I turned to her. “What?”
“They filmed it,” she said. “While I killed him.”
Hugh had made a snuff film. Why was I not surprised?
“This alters things,” Thomas Lonesco said.
I nodded to Juan, one of Jim’s people standing by the door. “Put her under guard, please. Make sure she’s watched.”
He took her by the arm.
“What will happen to me?” Dorie asked.
“Come on.” Juan pulled her.
She came to life suddenly, flailing in his arms. “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! Don’t kill me!”
He picked her up and carried her out of the room.
I waited until her sobs receded and stared down the Pack Council. My memory replayed Curran’s advice for dealing with the Council in my head. I never go into the Council room without a plan. You have to give them a range of possibilities, but if they discuss them too much, they’ll never make a decision. Steer them toward the right choice and don’t let them derail the train.
Steer them toward the right choice. Sure. Easy as pie. “As you know, the People intend to start a war. They are likely moving toward the Keep now. We have several courses of action opened to us. We can surrender Dorie to the People. Opinions?”
I waited.
“No,” Jim said.
“We’d lose too much influence,” Martha said. “Pass.”
“No,” Andrea said.
“No,” Thomas Lonesco said.
That gave me a majority. Surrendering to the People was off the table. “Option two, we can execute Dorie and show proof of it to the People.”
The pause was longer this time. They were thinking it over.
“No,” Robert said.
“No,” Martha agreed. “We don’t kill our own without a trial.”
A trial would take time. We all knew it.
Nobody else volunteered anything, so I kept going.
“Option three, we keep Dorie and tell the People to screw themselves.”
“The casualties would be staggering,” Thomas Lonesco said.
“If they want a fight, we can give them a fight,” Desandra said. “But we’re at reduced strength and it will be bloody.”
“This isn’t an option for me,” Jim said.
“So, we don’t want to execute Dorie or turn her over to the People, and we don’t want to go to war,” I said. “That leaves us with only one option. We can surrender her to state law enforcement.”
The silence dropped on the table like a heavy brick.
Desandra frowned. “So like what, here’s Dorie, here’s her confession, take her off our hands?”
“Yes,” I said. “Technically the murder was committed in Atlanta, which makes it the business of Atlanta’s finest. If they take her into custody, the People can deal with them. Our hands would be clean. We’d remove their pretext for the war.”
