“The Breed mother died from wounds sustained when they were nearly captured, just hours after giving birth to their son. The father disappeared, and the grandfather spent thousands trying to find him. Ten years later he was killed by a Coyote team that tracked him to Washington State. According to what I learned, they spent several weeks attempting to learn if he’d been seen with a child but found no evidence to support it.”
Jonas closed the folder slowly over the pictures.
“Anyone else know your suspicions?” he asked.
“No one,” he answered. “He’s slick. He’s on the Breed Ruling Cabinet, plays the Breed benefactor and manages to get information he should never have access to.”
“What proof do you have he’s one of the twelve?” Jonas pinned him with those eerie eyes again.
“The father.” Rhyzan gestured to the file with one hand. “He had a sister. When he disappeared, she managed to wire him a couple hundred thousand when he contacted her. About a year after his death, as the Breed rescues were at their height, she received a letter he’d had arranged to be sent if something happened to him. She was killed several months later, but her daughter recently found that letter and contacted me.”
A fucking stroke of luck. He’d been in shock for weeks after he’d met with her and she’d turned it over to him.
Opening the file, Rhyzan pulled the envelope free and laid it on top of the pictures.
“He knows Dog is his grandson,” he said softly, laying his finger against the envelope and staring at Jonas as the Breed turned his head slowly, their gazes meeting. “He has no heir now. He knows that hybrids can possibly breed a child that can’t be identified as a Breed. And he knows they’ve mated.”
“Cassie hasn’t conceived,” Jonas pointed out softly.
“Yet …”
Reaching out, Jonas once ag
ain closed the file. “Do you have digital copies?”
Rhyzan nodded in a short, tight movement.
“I’ll take this, then.” Picking up the file, he rose to his feet and walked toward the door. “Stay away from Cassie and Dog until I finish this, or I’ll kill you.”
The door closed quietly behind him.
Rhyzan rubbed his hands over his face, shook his head and rose to his feet to collect his briefcase. He’d file the requests to interrogate Dog. The last thing Senator Ryder would want was for his grandson to be convicted under Breed Law. That will draw far too much notice.
He didn’t care much for his granddaughter, according to the girl. He tolerated her, he’d raised her after her mother’s death, but she’d always suspected her mother had been murdered. She’d drowned in the family pool. An excellent swimmer who rarely drank, yet she’d been found facedown in the pool and the autopsy revealed a high level of alcohol in her system.
She’d loved her brother, worried about him. He was her big brother. The fact that he’d disappeared and ordered her not to tell their father he’d contacted her when he’d disappeared had led her to suspect her father was behind her mother’s death.
Senator Ryder. He’d bought his way into politics and used his influence and good ole boy façade to engender a level of trust, even among some Breeds. He played Breed benefactor without even a whiff of his murderous hatred for them. He was the ultimate liar, the ultimate monster.
And Rhyzan was determined to unmask him. With or without Jonas’s help.
• • •
“You want to tell me what the hell happened down there?” Dog closed the door to the suite he and his mate were shown to after the hearing, watching her as she paced across the room, rubbing at her arms as she stared at the floor.
During the time he’d sat and listened to Rhyzan’s bullshit, he’d decided he was going right out and buying a fucking cape and some goddamned blue tights, because when it came to sheer self-control, he was fucking Superman.
“I’m not quite certain.” She shook her head, her confusion genuine as she said the words, her bafflement growing.
Dropping her leather case on the chair next to the bar, he unlocked his jaw, a sound of pure aggravation rasping from his throat. Pouring himself a drink, he considered the liquor for a moment, tossed it back and promised himself he was going to get something stronger real damned soon.
“So we’re just going to stay here and let him serve me up to a few interrogators without so much as a protest?” He snorted at that thought, anticipation rising inside him. “I’ve not had a good fight in a while. Might be fun.”
He’d kill the bastards with his bare hands.
She was silent, not even protesting the threat. She stood next to the balcony doors just behind one side of the curtains and stared out at the sun-drenched landscape.
“Jonas won’t allow it,” she said quietly. “And even if he did, the Cabinet members wouldn’t.”