Chapter Ten
Philip led me far back on Liam’s property to what I thought was a guesthouse, but the windows were fake. If he hadn’t shown me the way, I’d never have seen it. He typed a code into the keypad beside the door. A loud scraping sound and a click sounded as it unlocked.
“Mr. Fraser will not be happy I showed you this,” he said. You’d think he’d be worried about his boss being angry with him. Instead, he seemed amused by the thought.
I chuckled and shook my head. “You know Phil, you’re quite the odd duck.”
He shot me an ear-to-ear grin as he opened the door. “Annoying my Alpha brings me pleasure.”
I thought about Liam’s annoyed expression. “I get that. I like annoying him too.”
“Good for you.” He unlocked another door and held it open for me. “Welcome to the dungeon.”
In the middle of the bland, empty room was a man tied to a folding chair. His head hung forward as though he were asleep or passed out. I handed my catch off to Philip and moved toward the other man. With a hand under his chin, I lifted his face.
“Charles.”
He opened his eyes at the sound of his name and flinched when he saw me.
“Hey there, Chuck,” I said. “I brought you some company.” I gestured to the man with Philip. “I’m sure you know each other well, even if he is from the Spring pack.”
Philip left me alone with the men while he ducked into a closet for another chair. He tied the second man to it, and I stood studying them. Both had their eyes trained on me waiting to see what I would do.
Philip held out his hand, palm up, and in the center was what looked like a mint. “Open,” he said holding the thing up to the new guy’s lips. He opened and Philip dropped it onto his tongue. I watched in amazement as it dissolved on contact. “Swallow. Good boy.”
“Bane?” I asked and Philip nodded.
Wolf’s Bane is a tricky substance. You have to measure it exactly right, or it can cause serious issues. A little gets us high. A little more than that and it paralyzes us. Too much and it kills us. But there is a perfect amount, the Goldilocks zone, somewhere in between getting us high and paralyzing us, that stops the shift.
And that was what Philip had given these guys. Just enough to stop their wolves from taking over, but not enough to prevent them from answering our questions.
“So, Phil, what has Chuck here told you and Mr. Fraser so far?”
He put his hands on his hips as he looked Charles over. “The only thing we got out of him was the location of your computer. Though, to be honest, it was in his vehicle which we had towed here from your house.”
I’d had a feeling Charles was the one who had hit me with the bat. “So, he didn’t give you anything you wouldn’t have found out on your own.”
“Correct.”
“Got another chair for me?”
A few moments later I took the chair from him and sat straddling it so I could lean my arms on the back of it.
“Oh, Mr. Fraser will not like this at all,” Philip said. He was practically jumping for joy.
I glanced over to him. “Wow,” I said as he sent a text which I knew had to be to Liam.
I didn’t know how long I had until he showed up, so I turned back to the douchebags. “What’s your name?”
“Ivan.”
“Alright, Ivan, were you the one who burned down my house?” He gave Charles a sidelong glance as if he were afraid to speak in front of him. “Don’t look at your buddy, he’s just as fucked as you. Just answer me.”
“No, it wasn’t me.”
“Okay, who did burn it down?” Charles made a small sound pulling my attention to him. “You got something to say, Chuck?” He shook his head and averted his eyes. “Ivan, who was it?”
Neither of them made a peep. They wouldn’t even make eye contact with me or Philip. Charles seemed especially afraid of Philip making me wonder what the hell happened in this room. A chill ran through me when I glanced up at the pristinely dressed, seemingly priggish man. The look in his eyes was a thing from nightmares.