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“Twenty minute got you,” the first ogre said. The second one grunted and stepped away from the door, then followed his leader out of Luke’s line of sight.
Once they were gone, Luke took his hands down and grinned at his friend. “It’s not the Plaza, but I’ve had worse accommodations.”
“Goddammit, Luke,” Nick snapped, utterly destroying any illusion that the angel face reflected an angel’s temperament. “Have you completely lost your mind? You want to tell me when the bloody hell you got so damned sloppy? And how the fuck am I supposed to get the goddamn charges dismissed with that kind of evidence peppering the file?”
Tirade over, Nick collapsed next to Luke onto the cement slab that protruded from the wall and served as a bed. “Dammit,” he muttered.
“Good to see you again, too,” Luke said, chuckling when Nick shifted sideways, his expression caustic.
“I talked to Tiberius,” he said. “Braddock wasn’t an authorized kill.”
“No,” Luke acknowledged. “Braddock was mine.”
“This isn’t going to go over well,” Nick said. “You know that, right? Los Angeles is hot right now, and you, my friend, have just added to his problems.”
“The Therians. I know. What’s happened?”
“That’s the trouble,” Nick said. “We don’t know. Intelligence has hit walls. All we know is that Gunnolf’s planning another play for Los Angeles. Bastard’s determined that Los Angeles will be under Therian, not vamp, control. Like he’s got a shot in hell of managing to pull that off.”
“The Therians have been trying to oust Tiberius from the key territories for years,” Luke said. Centuries, really, with the pissing contest played out over different real estate. New York. Constantinople. Prague. Moscow. London. But with the exception of the long-standing Therian control over Paris, Tiberius—and the vampires—had maintained control over the prime territories.
“Talk is this time they’ve got the golden ticket.”
“You believe that?” Luke said. Less than a decade prior, a covert werewolf team had managed to taint the Southern California blood supply. A lot of innocent vamps had died, but the plan hadn’t weakened Tiberius’s hold over the territory. On the contrary, Tiberius’s support within the Alliance had grown, even as Gunnolf’s had fallen, despite the fact that the apprehended team members insisted that the head werewolf had no knowledge of the maneuver.
“Hell no, I don’t believe it,” Nick said. “But as Tiberius’s counsel, I can’t ignore the risk. The Demon and Earthen liaisons to the Alliance have been making pro-Therian noises recently. If Gunnolf manages to make it look like Tiberius’s ironclad control over Los Angeles is slipping, the Alliance members might actually vote to shift the territory away from the vamps and over to the Therians.”
In other words, Luke thought, Gunnolf didn’t have to succeed at whatever he had planned in order to win. He just had to kick up a shitload of dust.
All in all, a fucking nightmare for Tiberius, and a great big glowing opportunity for Luke. Because if he could figure out a way to help Tiberius with the Therian problem, then perhaps Tiberius would reconsider his decision on the pardon. “I need specifics,” he said. “What’s the word on the street?”
“Not much chatter, but whatever it is, it’s going down soon. Hasik rolled into town a few days ago.” An alpha wolf by the light of the full moon and a royal prick all the time, Hasik was one of Gunnolf’s top men. If there was a play to shift control of Los Angeles to the Therian, then Hasik would be at the heart of it.
“And Tiberius doesn’t have any solid intelligence as to what Gunnolf and Hasik have planned?” Luke asked.
“Not a hint, not an inkling.”
“That kind of information would be worth something, don’t you think?”
“A price beyond rubies, my friend. So would making the Hasik problem go away. Too bad you’re a bit indisposed at the moment.” Nick leaned back, looking perfectly at home in the sparse cell despite the tailored Savile Row suit. “Which brings us full circle. And so I ask again,” Nick said, his voice now deadly calm. “What kind of crazy shit are you pulling?”
“I assume it’s safe to talk?”
“I’ve got an asset in Monitoring. For the next hour, the observation discs will have unexplained auditory interference.”
“You trust him?”
“My asset?” Nick asked, his eyes dancing. “Very much.”
A woman, then, Luke thought, and let the subject drop. If Nick said he’d taken care of the problem, Luke believed him. And he should have known Nick’s associate would be female. With Nick, that was practically a given.
“Now quit stalling,” Nick demanded. “You killed Braddock. Why?”
“The man was a son of a bitch.”
“So are you, but you don’t see me pulling out a stake.”
“And for that, you have my gratitude.”
