Wolf Watch (The Madison Wolves Book 8) (21 page)

It was a GreEN shopping bag.

"Someone has a sense of humor," I said.

"Scarlett."

"I hope she's not trying to give it back. She paid good money for it."

Elisabeth stepped forward and set the shopping bag on the floor in front of me. "Go ahead. I'm sorry. I have to watch."

I dressed slowly. I found my own undies but everything else was new. There was a wraparound skirt. It would be short on Scarlett, but it came
below my knees. The blouse was far too large, but it was short sleeve, so I didn't completely drown. No socks, but there were a pair of flip-flops.

No bra.

"Do you like your girls braless?" I asked. "Mine are kind of small."

"Yours are fine. Finish dressing."

I finished then turned to the mirror. I washed quickly then turned to her. "Ready."

"I'm sorry about all this, Zoe."

"Don't worry about that. You need to do what's necessary now."

She nodded. I picked up the empty shopping bag, and she took my arm.

* * * *

Once we were back in the conference room, she released my arm. Gia was gone, but the room seemed awfully full. Karen and Portia were back in human form; I had expected them as wolves, but I supposed they couldn't offer much opinion that way. I turned to Portia.

"Thank you for earlier."

She nodded.

"Head Enforcer," said Michaela. "Report."

"You already know the answer, Alpha. Clean. I don't know about her clothing. She suggested we x-ray her."

"Later," Michaela said after a moment. "Zoe, we have various refreshments in the refrigerator there." She pointed. "I do not recommend you drink alcohol at this time. Help yourself."

"I am fine right now, but perhaps later," I said. "Thank you."

Have I mentioned the surreal nature of this conversation?

"All right. I want you here at the end of the table. For now, you will stand. We may later offer a chair."

Elisabeth took my arm and moved me where they wanted me, and then all of them took seats, watching me carefully.

"Elisabeth," said Lara. "Report."

"We all know most of this story," Elisabeth said. "Beginning early on Monday morning, two and a half weeks ago, Zoe Young began clumsy surveillance of Lycaon. She was noticed immediately, and I was informed approximately thirty minutes after her arrival. I had her vehicle identified then we began a dossier. We verified the driver of Ms. Young's car was Ms. Young herself. We retrieved her driver's license information then began a background check. We discovered a rather colorful arrest record for a variety of charges, none of which anyone in this room will fault."

I saw a few nods. I thought this was review for them, and perhaps was all meant to let me know how thorough they had been.

"She continued to post herself outside Lycaon for most of that week, photographing every car, coming and going. We have extensive photos of her, but I don't believe we need them. They don't show us anything we don't all know."

"That's fine," said Lara.

"Lara and I allowed ourselves to be photographed on Wednesday, and then we lingered until late after hours. Ms. Young stayed much later that night than she did the other nights, and she left her post only shortly after we finally left. At this point, we felt sure she was after Lara. We were mistaken. She was looking for me."

I stared at her. "I'm sorry. I didn't think about the trouble I was causing you."

"Don't interrupt," Lara said.

I nodded.

"It was only chance that provided an easy introduction. We knew of Ms. Young's association with GreEN, and from their web site, we knew where she would be on Friday and Saturday. And so we sent Angel and Scarlett to check on her. We'll hear from them later, if it becomes necessary. They reported to us Friday afternoon, and we made the decision to see what Ms. Young would do if she came face to face with our alpha." Elisabeth paused. "You can imagine my surprise when she couldn't take her eyes off me, and my even greater surprise when she attempted to ask me on, of all things, a date."

"You were stunning," I said quietly.

No one chastised me.

"Ms. Young displayed herself as a passionate environmentalist, exactly in keeping with what we expected. What wasn't clear was what she wanted. But as her interest in me became, well, beyond obvious, we decided to make use of that."

I hung my head. It had been an act.

"What I hadn't counted on was my own fascination. Alphas, I will not be objective. I am sorry."

I looked up. Elisabeth was looking at me, and we nodded to each other.

"We understand, Sister," Lara said. "Go on."

"I used the date on Saturday to scope out the situation as best I could without being obvious. I was expecting her to pump me for information, but she acted like someone on a first date. She wanted to know about me, and she seemed more fascinated with me than others I've gone out with, but if I hadn't known of her surveillance outside Lycaon, I wouldn't have been remotely suspicious of her."

I didn't interrupt this time.

"However, she did mention the full moon, which I found was interesting. And then she agreed to a date for the night of the full moon. At that point, absolutely no one would have thought she knew my true nature."

"I did
know, more or less," I said quietly. "I decided to trust you when you said I was safe."

"Foolish," Michaela said. "If what everyone thinks they know about werewolves was true, you'd be dead."

I shrugged. "I'm not dead. Yet."

"On Tuesday, I took her to an isolated location. My goal was not to test or intimidate her, but simply to get her far from her apartment so she wouldn't catch my team."

"What?" I said. "You broke in?"

"We used your keys, which you left in my car," Elisabeth said.

"Oh. Will you tell me who it was?"

"A team run by me," Karen said. "You don't need to know the rest. We found photos of Elisabeth, confirming Ms. Young's interest was in her and not Lara as originally suspected. In the time we had, we were unable to bypass her computer security, but we placed monitoring devices on the network and bugged the crap out of the apartment."

"I told you my apartment was bugged."

That generated some feeble laughter.

I turned to Karen. "Did you find bugs by anyone else?"

"No, and we did a sweep."

"I guess I haven't been pissing them off enough lately."

"And you're going to stop pissing them off," Lara said. "Do I make myself clear?"

"You can't-"

"Yes," she said. "I can. If you walk away from this, you may continue to do what you are doing, but no more arrests. Nothing that's likely to draw attention to you and, in turn, us."

I thought about it and wasn't ready to concede the point.

"You can do more working with us, anyway," Michaela said. "And this is non-negotiable, Zoe."

"I'm sorry. Of course."

I thought it was a good sign they were talking about my living through the day.

"We still weren't sure of her interest," explained Elisabeth, "so we invited her away for the weekend, and then I made sure she kept her computer behind."

"And got me to tell you my password."

"That was a bonus," Elisabeth said. "Thank you for that. It made the rest so much easier. We found absolutely no evidence that she has attempted to tell anyone else, but we found a video I wish she didn't have. We've all seen it."

"All right. And what about today?"

"A few things," said Elisabeth. "She has vowed to maintain my secrets and by extension, pack secrets. She's been growing increasingly distraught all week until finally today she called me. We have video of her actions prior to that call."

"What?"

"What part of 'bugged the crap out of' wasn't clear?" Elisabeth asked.

Portia had a computer. While Elisabeth had been talking, she'd been using it. Finally she did something. Behind me, I heard my own voice. I turned around, and there was video of my apartment.

"Move aside," Michaela ordered, and I moved towards Elisabeth.

We watched for about ten minutes, which ended with me leaving the apartment to meet Elisabeth.

"We have a great deal more, but it's more of the same," said Portia after ending the video. "We have no evidence she has made any attempt to forward anything she knows to anyone else. She doesn't even mention her dates to anyone."

"During her drive here," Karen added, "she made no phone calls except to Elisabeth. She made no stops and drove straight here." Karen then gave a review of my state when she drove me to Elisabeth's.

Elisabeth relayed our conversation.

"That is what we know. I will have more to say before we reach a final decision."

"Of course, Elisabeth," said Lara. "Thank you." She turned to me. "Tell us everything about the videos. We've seen the content. Tell us what we don't know. Take your time and be thorough."

I moved back to the end of the table and explained everything I'd already said to Elisabeth. It took perhaps five minutes to relay everything.

Portia stood up and began setting cameras on the table. "These cameras?" Lara asked.

I stared at them. "The same model," I said. "That's the kind I use. But there are only five. I had seven." And Portia put one more on the table.

"Do you have another one in that bag?"

"No?"

"They look like mine," I said. "If you have a map, I'll show you where mine were."

"Portia, can you bring up a map?" Lara asked.

A moment later, there was a Google Maps view on the screen on the wall behind me. I turned to it. "Someone help me. Where is the eagle's nest?"

The map shifted, and then there was a mouse pointer. "This tree, I think," Portia said.

"Got it. You're in too far. Zoom out. Again. Okay." I looked closely. "These are the two nearest roads, right? One along the west, the other along the north."

"Correct."

I looked carefully then shook my head. "This doesn't look right. Are there two eagle nests?"

"What's wrong with it?" Elisabeth asked.

"There's a curve in the road along the north." I gestured. "It should be here. Maybe I am misremembering, but it was only a few weeks ago. I don't think this is where my cameras were. If this is where you got those cameras, they aren't mine."

I turned around. They were all studying me carefully. Then Michaela said, "Portia, shift the view to the middle of Madison and then let Zoe drive."

I didn't turn around, but a moment later, she slid her laptop down to me, and a moment after that, Angel was offering me a chair. I sat down and then spent a minute or so finding the right spot.

"I think this is it," I said. "Right here. You can't see the nest in the pictures."

"Keep going," said Elisabeth. "Where are your cameras?"

"Four along here," I said, gesturing with the mouse. "Can you see that?"

"Yes. Can you be more exact?"

"Um. Maybe. Here, facing north and a second one facing south. They're supposed to catch cars coming and going, and they are aimed at the road. Then there's one here facing towards the nest, and another one up here. Finally I have one here, watching south again. Then up on the other road, there are two more, in case people approach from that side. I think about here and here. They're not that hard to spot."

I looked up. "Is there a nest there, or am I lost?"

"You're not lost," Elisabeth said. "There's a nest there."

"Two nests?"

"No."

I turned to Portia. "You were testing me?"

She shrugged.

"Which cameras did you use to capture me?" Elisabeth asked.

"You were briefly on this one, just a flash," I said, indicating one of the first. "But it was these two that caught more of you."

"When we're done," said Lara to Portia, "Go find that last camera. If you can't find it, bring her to help."

"If you tell me which ones you found, I can give a better description."

"I got the ones along the west road. Explain the two along the north road."

"They're mounted in trees just like the others. Most of them are only about eight feet off the ground, as high as I like to go with a ladder. But this one..." I gestured with the mouse, "is higher. That tree is easily climbed, and the camera is in a vee between
two branches. It's hard to see, but it's nearly directly across from one of your No Trespassing signs and." I closed my eyes, thinking about it. "There's a dead tree just past it, still standing, but the trunk is bare of bark."

"That's the one I'm missing," she said. "I'll find it from that description."

I closed the computer and sent it back down to her.

After that, they grilled me for two hours, but it wasn't until the end when Michaela said, "Almost anyone, having that footage, would do two things. First, he would try to acquire more, some sort of definitive proof. Then he would tell people, perhaps selling the footage. Perhaps call law enforcement. Someone. Why didn't you do either of those?"