an audit.”
She smiled at the earnest blond in the Cole Haan jacket. “I think it’s nice that you’re surprised.”
“Oh, me, too,” Edward said, backing her up.
“In a pathetic way. In the way that I no longer think of you as a real man because you could be surprised by this.”
“You understand I can just start writing tickets on your rental right now? While I’m eating brownies?”
“Brown shirt thug.”
“So the guys you saw before you moved out here. They were trying to buy your client’s company.”
“Yes.”
“So they audited the bejeezus out of it. But in order to make the acquisition, their own numbers were gonna get flogged, too.”
“Correct.” Flogged. She’d have to remember that one.
“Which would have exposed all sorts of numbers nastiness. Stealing company funds, stealing from clients, all that good shit.”
“Yes. And because they knew I’d insist on doing the audit . . .” And she would have. Oh, yes. She still remembered their sneaky-nasty looks, their greasy smiles. “I would have audited the shit out of them.”
“Oh my God.” Edward clutched her hand. “I just fell in love with you all over again. That was so hot. Say audited the shit out of them again, but this time do it topless. Beriberi, get lost.”
“So they reached out,” he continued, doing his best to ignore Edward (which he knew from experience was nigh impossible), “to their cousin, right here in St. Paul: Mrs. Cain. And she came up with the people to kill, and how to implicate you and, even better, how to stir up more anti-vampire/Pack crap. One of them flew in from the Cape for the murders. And she was in a pretty good position to know how the investigation was going as well as how things were going between you and the vampires.”
“Yes.”
“But . . .” The detective chewed for a while and said nothing.
Edward, who’d had his head in Rachael’s lap, sat up. “It doesn’t seem like enough, does it, dude?” he asked, kindly enough.
“Yeah. I get why they were killed, but I’m not seeing Mrs. Cain’s metamorphosis from office manager to contractkiller-by-proxy.”
No, he wouldn’t; he wasn’t Pack. But for her love, she would try to explain as she had to Edward.
“If it helps, Mrs. Cain was what I consider to be clinically insane. It . . . it probably didn’t seem like it to you. It wouldn’t seem like it to a lot of people. But she’d been out here for so long . . .
“Sometimes, if we’re separated from our Pack for too long, it exacerbates a condition that can form over time . . . there’s something wrong with us. At the fundamental level. Your people are much, much better suited to survival than we are. You vastly outnumber us.”
Though he’d heard most of this before, she knew Edward was paying close attention. It sounded odd to her, using words like your people. She had so rarely thought about Pack vs. non-Pack in her old life. That was a habit she must change, and she was glad of it, even as she was a little intimidated.
Edward will help me. We’ll help each other.
“I think . . . I think part of the reason your kind thrive is because you’re missing that fundamental thing. The distance . . . the loneliness . . . it’s something that gets worse if we’re alone. Mrs. Cain basically came down with the Pack version of cabin fever. Except ours is based almost entirely on being homesick, or even just lonely. Not for nothing is our strongest urge to mate for life and have as many cubs as we can!”
“Wow, mate for life, huh?” Berry said, straight-faced. “Score.”
“Tell me.” Edward held out his knuckle for a bump from the detective.
“Hilarious, you two. But back to Mrs. Cain . . . she got more and more lonesome out here, more and more isolated. When that happens, our judgment goes right into the toilet. After that, it gets much harder to tell right from wrong. The condition . . . it feeds on itself, do you understand? It’s like a Michael Crichton novel . . . one little thing goes wrong and suddenly the dinosaurs can open doors. People have . . .” She spread her hands, a helpless expression on her face. “Well. People have died.”
“Jesus.” Edward was horrified and didn’t trouble himself to hide it. “That’s awful. That poor woman.”
“Don’t feel too sorry for her. She had options.”
“I wasn’t going to throw her a parade, don’t worry.