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 youcantell usthat 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 haveotherclients 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.”
Thatexplained 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 shehadn’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 onthe 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 norescuing.
“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.”
