“Yeah, okay, if that’s your excuse for having Nago hack into Ola’s biosystem while her dads are going crazy trying to find her, that’s your excuse,” Knud answered, his voice full of skepticism.
Rafes growled low in his throat, his wolf threatening to rise. His middle triplet had always had a way of pushing his buttons. Months of therapy and training, but a few words from Knud and his disordered wolf came right back to the surface, fur and all.
“Down, boy,” Myrna murmured, sensing his distress over their mate bond, and flooding him with calm.
That worked. His wolf stepped back at their mate’s command and allowed Rafes to calmly point out. “We wouldn’t have made this breakthrough in the case if I hadn’t put the safety of all the wolves in North America above the privacy rights of one queen.”
Knud let out a disbelieving snort. “Okay, keep telling yourself that.”
“Guys, stop fighting,” Nago said right on cue. “Rafes, just let him think you’re an asshole. And Knud, let him tell you what we found in Ola’s biodata already.”
Rafes nodded, his anger receding. This was why he’d put Nago on this call, even though he technically only needed to speak to Knud. Their youngest triplet had been breaking up their fights since they were all old enough to form words.
“As it turns out, Ola’s not exactly a privacy nun herself,” Nago told Knud. “She inserted a nanite spybot into her boyfriend. Probably via a drink.”
“That is insanely illegal, but I am zero percent surprised,” Knud replied, his voice knowing and dry.
“Me either,” Rafes said, agreeing with Knud for once.
“I found some footage from the night she disappeared. Turn on your mind’s eye for the playback…”
Rafes had already seen the video but switched back on his Mind’s Eye View with a thought command so that he could view it again with his brothers.
Together they all watched Ola enter the club on Akwasi’s arm. She was sparkling from head to toe, in a curve-hugging floor-length gold dress paired with the North Dakota crown. Rafes frowned as he often did at his tacky and needlessly crass cousin. Lupin royals were only supposed to wear their kingdom crowns at official ceremonies, and Ola was the only wolf queen in the world who would have chosen such a form-fitting dress for her coronation.
At least she had been the only queen in the world who would pull such a stunt. His chest panged as he watched his cousin through Akwasi’s eyes. Yes, Ola had been nothing but a pain-in-the-ass since the day she learned to argue. But now Rafes had no idea if he’d ever see her again.
“So she’s going into the club with him, just like Akwasi reported…” Knud said. “Wait was that...?”
“Yes, it’s Damianos Drákon,” Rafes answered.
“I was surprised too when I first saw him on the spybot’s feed,” Nago told Knud. “I went through all the club’s security tapes and he wasn’t on any of them. I’m assuming he disabled them somehow. But let’s fast forward about a couple of minutes past that fight that was all over WolfNet. Here’s Akwasi and Ola talking in the parking lot with Damianos Drákon.”
“Okay…” Knud murmured. Then came a few moments of silence until Knud said, “Holy shit!”
“Exactly,” Rafes agreed, as he rewatched Akwasi collar Ola, then threaten to shoot himself, before Ola gave in and got into the car with Damianos.
“What the hell was that?” Knud asked as they watch the untraceable early-century car drive out of the parking lot and turn left through Akwasi’s eyes. “Why did the boyfriend collar her like that? Then threaten to shoot himself?”
Yet another reason he’d made this call over the heavily encrypted presidential biolink. Rafes told Knud the highly classified state secret that he’d found out the hard way when his compromised personal security guard tried to hurt Myrna.
“We believe Damianos Drákon has some kind of strange mental power. One that allows him to brainwash his victims and make them do whatever he commands, even when he’s far away. A further investigation by my team revealed that Drákon was the primary investor in Akwasi’s club.”
“Why would a trillionaire give two shits about a club in Fargo?” Knud asked.
“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking, too,” Nago said. “But given what Rafes told me about these mental powers of his, I can only assume that’s when he was compromised...and maybe why he approached Ola in the first place.”
“I knew that hookup was too good to be true!” Knud said. “He’s one of the nicest guys in basketball. Always giving back. Building orphanages in Africa, No drinking. No swearing. From the first time I heard he asked Ola out, I was like, but why though?”
“Hey, opposites attract,” Rafes smiled at his wife in her sexy wrestling leotard.
“Yeah, you know I believe that,” Knud conceded, most likely thinking about his own wife. “But there’s opposite, then there’s Ola. Even my lucky ass figured that relationship would end with her grabbing his heart out of his chest and eating it while he watched.”