“It makes a change that we’re face to face. You’ve done so much other shit remotely. Sending online messages. Hacking into my social media accounts. Doctoring photos.”
“I wanted to play. It was pretty fun.”
“Your idea of ‘fun’ is kind of strange.”
One side of Wayland’s mouth curved. “Still smarting over dear Jerome? I don’t blame you.”
“How did you copy my key and get the security code?”
He bristled, affronted. “Don’t insult me. That sort of thing isn’t half as difficult as people like to think. But I’ll bet it made you suspect your pride mates, didn’t it?”
“And you wanted that, did you?”
“Like I said, I wanted to play.”
“And, what, you’re bored of the game?”
He snorted. “Oh no, not at all. In fact, I considered toying with you a little longer. But when I realized you and Camden were mated, it certainly spurred me into moving the final pieces on my chessboard. I’ve spent years waiting for him to find and bond with his mate. How sad that neither of you realized who you are to each other until now. You spent so much time together and never knew. That’s gotta burn.”
She licked the front of her teeth. “So what happens now?”
“Now? Well, I would love to torture you until Camden returns. But he’ll feel any pain you feel. He’ll guess I’m here. He’ll bring backup. I can’t have that. So I’ll wait until he joins us. And, let’s face it, torture won’t really be necessary. You’ll be tortured enough knowing he’ll watch you die, and he’ll suffer just as much when you do die.
“As a bonus, the breaking of the true-mate bond will put him through pain I could never match, no matter what I did to him. So I’ll happily settle for that.”
Standing in Vinnie’s kitchen, Camden stayed quiet as Vinnie explained the situation to one of the pride’s enforcers via phone. The old Alpha was pissed. He hadn’t found it difficult to believe that Grant might be Wayland’s right-hand man, since the enforcer had been unstable and angry of late.
Camden cricked his neck, on edge thanks to the emotions humming down the mating bond. Aspen was working herself up all over again, and he hated that he wasn’t there to comfort her. Not that he was much good at it.
“I want the entire complex surrounded in case Grant tries to make a run for it,” Vinnie told the pallas cat on the other end of the line. “If he’s at his apartment, bring him to my place. If he resists, knock him out.” With that, Vinnie hung up and turned to Camden. “How do you think Wayland and Grant came to work together?”
Camden leaned back against the counter. “I’m not so sure they did. Julius is a chronic liar. You can’t trust a word he says. He’d get a kick out of sending us on a wild goose chase. It’d make him feel all superior to know he managed to turn us against one of our own.” Which was why Camden had asked that his uncle be kept here until his story could be verified.
Vinnie rubbed at his jaw. “Maybe. But it is possible that he’s telling the truth. I would have said that Grant would go to Tate for help if someone attempted to blackmail him. But you were an obstacle between Aspen and Grant—he knew that from the start. It was an obstacle he really didn’t need, considering she wasn’t responsive to his advances. That might have been enough to make him decide not to seek help from Tate.”
“People keep telling me Grant’s not a bad guy, just hurting,” said Camden.
“But even decent people can do bad shit. He’s proven that lately. I only hope he’s honest with me when I question him; that he chooses to redeem himself. But he might not out of pure spite. He’ll have heard that you and Aspen are now mated. Maybe he’d already accepted he was wrong about her being his. Maybe he hadn’t. But it won’t be an easy pill for him to swallow either way, so he might just choose not to swallow it at all.”
“I still think you should go easy on Grant when you question him. I’m truly not convinced he’s guilty of anything other than being a royal pain in the ass.”
“And you could be right. I’ll keep an open mind.” Vinnie sighed. “Come on, let’s get one of the other spare bedrooms ready for him, shall we?”
Half-listening to Wayland smugly waffle on about how he’d outsmarted everyone, Aspen refrained from glancing at the gun, not wanting him to realize just how much she was intent on wrestling it from him. She’d gone over a dozen scenarios in her head. Pictured the many ways in which she could launch at the polar bear to retrieve the weapon. Each of those scenarios ended with her shot and possibly dead.