“Not all of the five made it,” Charles said.
His father might have been able to Change five humans and make them survive, though he’d told Charles he wouldn’t ever do that. Forcing someone to Change was not ethical. Most of the time, a person who couldn’t fight hard enough to survive the Change wouldn’t survive long being a werewolf, either.
“I warned them,” Boyd said, “but Harvey took it further. He told them, in graphic detail, exactly what Changing a human to a werewolf meant. A couple of them looked pretty spooked, but they all chose to go forward.” He paused. “I wonder now what would have happened if they’d objected. If it was hush-hush, maybe they’d have been killed if they tried to get out of it. In any case, Cable was the only one who Changed. Leo and Harvey handed the dead men and Cable over to the people who came for them. Harvey didn’t like the looks of those people. I remember that. He didn’t think they were military. Leo told Harvey something that made him happier—though I couldn’t tell you what it was.”
“You think Leo took a payout for it?”
“I more than think it,” said Boyd. “We’ve spent the last few years going through the old books. Bran asked us to look for the names of people who paid Leo for things that we couldn’t verify were legitimate expenses. Leo took fifty thousand up front and another twenty after we delivered Cable. In his notes, he complained because he’d expected to get another eighty K. Thirty thousand per werewolf we successfully Changed, with one-third up front that we’d keep either way. I sent the financial files and the pack interviews—everything we’ve gathered about what Leo was doing—to Bran when he asked me for them, about a month ago.”
There was a little silence as Charles absorbed something more than just Boyd’s words. His father had asked the Chicago pack to send him their files, and that information had never made it to Charles, who handled all the pack finances and always had—except for a six-month period last year when Leah had taken over.
Leah had lost them a lot of money. Almost 20 percent of their net worth. It had taken him two weeks to replace it. Not that he was competitive or anything.
“When your father asked us to send the information to him,” Boyd said, reading Charles’s silence pretty accurately, “he said he was putting together a puzzle and would bring you in as soon as he had a target to aim you at. I gathered that he thought you were still angry about Leo and what he did to Anna. Bran didn’t want you to go on a search-and-destroy mission until he was certain he had the whole setup.”
“I see,” said Charles. If his da hadn’t given Boyd actual facts, just enough for Boyd to draw his own conclusion, Charles was pretty sure that it was the wrong conclusion. He wondered why his da hadn’t wanted to show him the books.
“I tried Bran’s phone before I called you,” Boyd said in a neutral tone. “He’ll have those files.”
“The Marrok is away,” Charles allowed. “That is need-to-know information that shouldn’t go past you.”
“Got it.” He made a thoughtful sound. “How about I e-mail you the file on this transaction and all the banking information we have on it?” There was a pause. “Then I’ll compile the whole mess that we’ve been amassing and overnight it to you on disk. If you have Cable dead in your territory, Bran has run out of time to organize everything to his pleasure.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Charles said, because Boyd was right. He’d hunt down whoever his father had given those files to anyway, because then he wouldn’t have to spend all his time redoing work someone else had already done. But that might take time and he wanted that information now.
Somewhere in those files was a trail to the man who had paid for Ryan Cable’s Change. Tough to follow a financial trail that old, but if one of the account numbers matched an account Charles had in his “to watch” files, he’d have a name. Someone had been running Cable and his dead friends, and there was a good chance that it was the same person who’d paid for his Change—or some close associate.
“After Cable was Changed,” Boyd continued, “whoever ran him used him as a messenger. He’d show up, meet with Leo, and be gone the next day. Three or four times a year. Often enough that I didn’t have to search my memory for his name but not so often that I knew him more than to nod at. If we had a real conversation, I don’t remember it. I can brainstorm with a few of the other old pack members who survived Leo and see if we can get some sort of general feel for when he came—and maybe someone will remember a bit more about him. At the end, Leo pretty well ignored the more submissive wolves. They witnessed a lot he should probably have kept hidden from them.”
“I’d be grateful for anything you can turn up,” Charles said.
“I didn’t know Hester,” Boyd said. “But I’ve heard stories of her. For her to die like this . . . I’ll do what I can.”
Charles picked up the witchcraft-laden weapon that had dropped him unconscious in the midst of his enemies.
“Did Leo ever work with a witch?”
“Not while I was in the pack,” Boyd answered without hesitation.
“Did he have weapons that were especially effective against other werewolves?”
“No,” Boyd said, though this time his response was slower, his voice raw. “Other than Justin. But I know about the drug someone developed using the wolves Leo had made and sold as guinea pigs.”
Charles took a deep breath and forced Brother Wolf to really examine the situation Boyd had found himself in—a gradual wearing away of all the rules until all anyone in that pack could do was cling to their Alpha because there was nowhere else to go. And Brother Wolf still thought that Boyd should have done more. So did Boyd, obviously.
Charles gave him what comfort he could. “You learned what not to do,” he said. “Teach the others. Move forward. Backward does no one any good.”
“How is Anna?” Boyd asked, and there was hunger in his voice. Not sexual hunger, but the need to know that he had, at the very least, helped Anna out of that mess.
“She wanted to take this call,” Charles said with amusement.
“Shit,” said Boyd. But then he laughed. “Next time maybe I’ll call her on her phone.”
“She’d be glad to hear from you,” Charles said. He looked at the witchcrafted weapon again. “I’m going to send you a photo of a witchcrafted gun that was effective enough on me.” He explained something about how he’d come to have it. “Maybe one of your submissive wolves saw something that you didn’t.” It was possible if, as Boyd said, Leo had not viewed submissive wolves as a threat and did not pay attention to what they witnessed.
“I’ll check,” said Boyd, sounding more like himself. “If they don’t know, they might have some ideas where to look.” There was a pause. “I don’t recall anything about witches in this business, though. But Harvey—he could smell a witch at a hundred yards.” Boyd paused again, then said slowly, “Harvey’s reaction that night—that might be about right if one of them was a witch.”