The Alpha's Mate (8 Sexy, Powerful Shifters and Their Fated Mates) Page 9

  Erik slammed his hand on the table.

  Duggan quickly balled up, terrified by the noise, and momentarily grew a number of spikes on his back. As soon as Erik calmed down, he resumed his human for and dabbed at his upper lip with a handkerchief.

  “I always did like Atlas. It bothered me what people said, but... I don’t know. This is all a little crazy. I mean, how could he have gotten to the bank? Can zombies drive?”

  “Crazy?” I said. “Crazy? Erik, you live in a town full of shape shifters and a witchdoctor who stole money from a bank using the zombie of the former alpha and you’re saying the only part of this that’s crazy isn’t the zombie. It’s not even that the zombie helped a Goddamn witchdoctor steal money, it’s that the zombie needed to drive a car.”

  “Well...” Erik trailed off with a shrug. “I don’t know how else he’d withdraw the money. Unless you think a zombie could just walk into a bank and take out a quarter million dollars.”

  “Around here?” I asked, smirking despite myself. “I’m pretty sure no one would bat an eye. Send him in with a signed withdrawal slip.”

  “No,” Duggan cut in. “She’s right. It wouldn’t be the first time someone used a golem to go about town doing their business. And remember, as much as Atlas was our alpha, he was also a werebear, so he mostly kept to himself. I doubt many townspeople would recognize him outside of when he was all made up for television appearances.”

  “Sure,” Erik said, as understanding dawned on him. “And it’s not like anyone watches those public access meeting broadcasts.”

  “It’s a shame what’s happened to public television,” Duggan said, frowning for a moment. “First everyone stops reading, and now public broadcasting is going down the tubes.”

  He didn’t stop until he realized everyone was staring at him. To say he was embarrassed doesn’t do it justice. One minute there was a pot-bellied, bald-headed professor type standing in front of me, and the next there was a five foot hedgehog balled up and puffing.

  Erik pursed his lips into a frown. “Well,” he said. “I wonder if they make toilet paper tubes big enough for that size of a hedgehog? You do like doing that, right? Head in the tube, rubbing it on things?”

  “Enough!” Duggan squeaked. “Why do you insist on embarrassing me as much as possible? You all know what will happen!”

  A round of snickers and stifled laughs went through the room, but after everyone assured Duggan they didn’t mean anything by it, he resumed his normal anxious handwringing. “If this is all true,” he said, “and I don’t doubt it is – Isabel here has a superb mind for a human – then we’ve still got to deal with Jenga somehow. If he’s done this before, and is trying now, he’ll certainly not stop until he’s drained the coffers.”

  Jamie put her stiletto-clad claws on the desk, rocking backward in her chair. “And as the town treasurer, it’s probably my duty to inform you all, since you never listen when I give the monthly budget reports; we’ve been running on empty for a few months.”

  “Empty?” Erik said, turning to her. “I thought you said there was plenty of money for the rest of the year.”

  She nodded. “There is, but there’s no surplus. When the last round of theft happened, we were in the middle of a boom time. Remember – back then, Clay’s boy Sedge, along with those two werebears, they were in the NFL.”

  “Oh, right,” Erik said. “How much did that bring in?”

  Somehow stopping himself from licking his lips for a second, Clay spoke up. “My boy, you know, he was just, you know, the kicker for the Giants. But he still made a couple million a year, you know, and even though we have a very reasonable local tax rate, it was still a great deal – couple hundred thousand, just from him or so.”

  “Right,” Jamie said before anyone could continue talking about football or the local taxation rates. “And now, we’ve got no NFL players, so we’re running on a much tighter budget. If we get drained, it’ll be a long, long time before we can recover.”

  Another silence fell on the room, and everyone spent a few moments looking back and forth at each other.

  “What’s this about a mate, again?” Clay asked. “Can we talk about that again? Mating is much more interesting than budgets.”

  I was almost relieved to have the tension break.

  Except that the next second, everyone’s attention turned to me.

  Suddenly, I wished I could turn into a hedgehog or a millipede or a squirrel or something and get the hell away, but try as I might, no hair or extra legs came out when I closed my eyes and concentrated.

  “Is this really the time?” Erik said. He stood up, getting irritated, and took a short walk around the conference table. “Do we need to deal with this right now?”

  He took a deep breath.

  No one said a word. The only sound in the room was Jamie sliding a pencil out of her hair, and re-twisting the bun. At least, that was the only sound until Erik let out a sigh. “What do you want me to say? You want all the details?”

  Clay was the first one to speak. “Yes, that would—”

  “No!” Jamie and Duggan both cut in. After a quick look at each other, Jamie nodded and Duggan continued.

  “No, Erik, we don’t need all the details. But considering what we’ve just listened to about Jenga conspiring to drain the town coffers, it’s only fair to consider that the person making the assertions also be scrutinized.”

  “English?” Erik said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Meaning, if you’ve really taken a pureblood as your mate we should probably know why we should trust her.” Duggan rubbed his nose. “After all, this is the first any of us have heard about the money being taken by anyone except Atlas’s last mate, isn’t it? Kind of an uncomfortable coincidence.”

  “That’s enough!” Erik slammed his fists on the table. “This is... she’s... I love this woman, and you’re questioning my judgment?”

  His voice roared off the walls. Everyone stiffened, not wanting to draw any extra attention from Erik.

  “No,” I said. “No, no, it is fair.” I said, standing up, as seemed to be proper.

  Duggan exhaled audibly.

  “I know that you all have been incredibly nice to me, and I know that I feel more at home here, among all of you, than I ever did back in Ohio. But—”

  “What does that have to do with the money, though?” Clay said. “I’ve heard one, you know, thing for the past decade years, and then you show up and say, you know, something different. We all like you, Isabel, you know, I think we agree on that. But it doesn’t much matter how at home you feel if you’re out to get our money. You two fooling around is your own business, but once there’s an official mating involved, then that’s different.”

  “Okay,” I said, putting my hands up defensively. “Look, I know all this. Jamie explained it to me the other day. Erik’s been holding off on marking me as his mate because he didn’t want this exact thing to happen. He loves this town so much, and takes his duty so seriously that he was willing to sacrifice his own happiness – and mine too – to keep the peace.”

  “That’s noble and all, but it still doesn’t answer the question about the money. Isabel, why should we trust you?” Duggan’s eyes told me that he didn’t like what he was asking. Kind old Duggan didn’t want to hurt anyone.

  I swallowed hard. In all of the craziness of the last few days, the one thing I never considered was how to prove that I wasn’t making it all up. Leave it to me to forget the most important part – why should they trust me?

  My eyes fell on the pile of papers, and for a moment, I was lost in thought.

  “You’re a historian,” I said, as an idea suddenly occurred to me.

  “I am, yes,” Duggan replied. “I’m sure you knew that before you asked, but what does that have to do with anything?”

  “Context,” I said. “History is all about context, right? Motivations, feasibility, those sorts of things?”

  He nodded slowly. “Yes, I su
ppose so. I wish my students caught on as quickly as you, but how does that affect anything going on here today?”

  My brain was cranking in overtime. There was one book I had to read, something about the American Revolution, for college, a couple of years ago. I remembered the professor going off on this incredibly long tangent about motivations, complications and feasibility. Things, he said, you always had to have if you were going to make a plan.

  There had to be motivation to do it in the first place, something to gain that you couldn’t get otherwise. Then there had to be sufficient complication that made other, similarly minded plans more difficult and finally, the plan had to be doable.

  Erik was staring at me, obviously not sure what to do if I didn’t come through. Jamie had her normal quizzical, vaguely warm but still perplexing smile on her face. Even Clay wasn’t moving much, just fidgeting with his fingers.

  “If there’s going to be a conspiracy, a plan, then you have to have motivations in the first place. Then there’s gotta be a way to complete the plan, and other plans have to be more difficult, or you’d do those, right?”

  Duggan’s eyes just about lit up. “Very true. And I assume you’ve found these in that ledger?”

  “In a way,” I said. My voice was starting to quaver a little, since I’d probably never spoken publicly as much in my entire life than I was right then.

  Erik finished his lap around the table and sat down. I sat too, calming my nerves. He grabbed my hand under the table and squeezed, then put it on top where everyone could see. That one gesture carried so much weight and power that I immediately felt like everything was okay, that I could handle anything in that second.

  “Go on,” Duggan said, leaning forward. “I want to believe you, Isabel, I think we all do.”

  I nodded and gripped Erik’s hand for an anchor. “Well, the reasons I think we can safely assume Jenga did it are pretty simple. It was a lot of money, and he was making fairly large house payments.”

  “I suppose it does take quite a lot of money to run all that cable from town out to his house in the mountains,” Duggan said.

  Clay piped up, “Yeah, and he also had all them, you know, generators to keep repaired.”

  “Right, but also, he knew he could get away with it,” I said. “He had a ready scapegoat that made it all very easy. Obviously, no one even checked out the story. It was just given – Atlas’s mate drove him crazy, stole a bunch of money and then cut town.”

  “But,” Duggan said, “if this is to be believed, it was all taken a week after she left. I suppose it could have been done by proxy or by phone withdrawal, assuming she had the account password, or a friend at the bank.”

  “It’s simple,” I said. “Everyone was so upset they never bothered to check the dates. The ledger doesn’t mention anything about weird withdrawals or the money going into new accounts, which if you look here,” I pointed to several marks in the margins, “shows when withdrawals went into new accounts, there had to be special verification given.”

  I took a long breath, and stood up, disentangling my hand from Erik’s and taking the ledger around to Duggan, who put on his trifocals and followed my finger.

  “I see,” he said. “But still, couldn’t Atlas’s mate have been in control of the whole thing? Perhaps she was pulling the strings from wherever she went?”

  “Too complicated, again,” I said. “If there’s an obvious and plain solution, that’s going to be it. At least it’s enough to have Jenga hauled in and questioned, isn’t it? We can’t possibly prove him guilty without letting him speak for himself, but this is enough evidence for probable cause, right?”

  Erik whistled. “I do believe I picked a good one,” he said with a grin that got my knees shaking. How he managed that in the middle of my nerves falling out of my brain was something I didn’t have time to think about right that second.

  “Any other questions?” He asked, grabbing my hand and pulling. Apparently, he wanted to end this meeting and get back to the marking.

  I blushed just a little and giggled at my own naughty thought, though I’m not entirely sure why. After all, he had just ravished me on the desk in my office while the security guy was outside the door.

  “I... hate to be the one to, you know, say this,” Clay piped up, “but she hasn’t really addressed the rest of it. Sure, you know, there’s some good reasons for Jenga to have done what she says he did, you know, and it does make a certain amount of sense, but there’s still the issue of, you know, her driving you insane, Erik.”

  I knew it was coming, but it still hurt to have it put out there.

  “It comes down to trust, I guess,” I said. “If it’s true that purebloods drive shifters, then... I don’t know what to say.”

  That was, terribly, true.

  “So you admit it might be possible that your theory is hogwash?” Duggan asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “This is getting a little out of hand,” Jamie said, from out of nowhere. “If she were anyone else – any person at all from Jamesburg, even Leon, you wouldn’t have given what she said a second thought. She’s got evidence, Duggan. If anyone else showed you that ledger, you’d have the Cheetah brigade arrest Jenga so fast you’d think they were, well, cheetahs.”

  “What are you saying, Jamie? That I’m xenophobic? That I’m being unfair? I don’t understand this at all. I—”

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  Duggan sat there for a second, his mouth open and his lips moving but no sound was coming out. “I... I didn’t mean it like that at all, but it’s just a bit much all at once.”

  “She’s right,” Erik said. “I had you three come because I thought you two would be the most reasonable. Chet and Danny and all the rest of them, I expect this but...”

  “Erik,” Duggan said. “It’s not that we’re completely distrustful of her, it’s just this has been dropped on our laps all of a sudden, and it’s hard to digest.”

  “We don’t need to do this,” I said. “It’s understandable that they don’t trust me. What reason would they have?”

  “I’m sorry, Isabel,” Duggan began. “I just—”

  “Are you willing to take a chance?” I cut him off. “Just go get him. Just send the police out to pick him up. That’s all I’m asking. If it turns out he didn’t do it, I’ll do whatever I can to make sure Erik won’t go bananas, and then I’ll leave. I don’t want to cause any problems, I just love him and I love this town, and I want to help.”

  Jamie clicked across the floor, flanking Duggan. “Give her a chance. You hold the vote, Duggan,” she said. “We’ve got the alpha and the three senior council members here. If there’s a unanimous decision, the other six couldn’t override the choice.”

  “But if we do that,” Duggan said, clicking his tongue against his teeth, “and we end up wrong? There will be chaos, Jamie. The rest of the council will be in an uproar if we go over their heads.”

  “Do you trust me?” Erik asked.

  “Erik, I—” Duggan started to respond before he was cut short.

  “Answer me. I’m the alpha of this town. You two,” he gestured to Clay and Duggan, “were part of the group that chose me. So do you trust me? Personal things aside, because God knows I’ve got plenty of them. Do you two believe I have this town’s best interest in mind?”

  Duggan looked over at Clay. Slowly, he started nodding.

  “We... we do, Erik. Yes.”

  “Good,” Erik said with a grin. “Then you trust her. She’s my mate, my sworn partner. She’s an extension of me, and me of her.”

  Hearing him say that made all my insides tingle. No one had ever said anything remotely like that about me before. Hell, I don’t think anyone had ever had faith in me before just then.

  “So,” Erik continued, that gorgeous, triumphant smile crawling across his face and those bright yellow eyes sparkling in the mid-morning sun that came through the windows. “I’m calling a vote. The alpha moves
to arrest Jenga on charges of grand theft, conspiracy, and the high-crime of using a lifeless alpha to steal money.”

  “Second,” Jamie said immediately.

  “Motion has been pronounced and seconded. Two more high council votes will pass it. Clay Tomkins, how do you vote?”

  Duggan and Clay exchanged another glance, and then Clay looked in my direction before wiping his moist lips with the back of his hand. “Aye,” he said, and started to nod.

  “Good. Duggan?”

  Without a second’s hesitation, Duggan looked straight at me. “Aye, I trust the girl.”

  Erik smiled and grabbed my hand again. “You three, get the squad mobilized. Jenga won’t put up a fight, but he’ll probably be cranky.”

  “What are you doing?” Duggan asked. “Shouldn’t the alpha be present?”

  Erik shook his head, and pressed his fingers into his temples, staring right at me. “You’re right. I really don’t want to be... no,” Erik said, stiffening up. “No more complaining. I run this town, right?”

  Something that looked like pride, or maybe satisfaction, flashed across Duggan’s face. He opened his mouth to speak, but decided to be satisfied with a smile that said it all. Erik was growing up.

  I was trembling as he pulled me to my feet. “Come on,” he said. “We’ve got a witchdoctor to question and a zombie to confiscate.”

  “Stalwart purpose!” Duggan was almost beaming as he slapped Erik’s shoulder. “I thought you’d gone soft!”

  Erik looked over at me with a half-smile that spoke volumes. All I could do was smile back.

  I love you, he’d say, if we were alone.

  I’d say it too.

  -9-

  “He lives out here?” I said in shock as I threw my leg off of Erik’s bike. The damn thing was so big it hurt a little when I sat on it for very long. “Isn’t this some kind of malarial swamp or something? Ugh.”

  I dodged a toad with a last-second hop. When I looked back at the croaker, he just stared at me. I wondered if maybe it was a Jamesburg citizen I avoided smashing, and giggled softly.