I dug my badge out of my purse and showed it to the cops on duty as we headed toward the elevators. Our footsteps echoed on the marble floors, and the sound seemed to be amplified by the high ceilings. It had to be hell on the ears when there was a full complement of office staff going through here.
"But if it was just a heart attack, we wouldn't have been called in."
Kade snorted softly and hit the elevator button. "Yeah, we would have. Anytime a politician dies in suspicious circumstances, there's an investigation. But in this case, they'd want to be doubly sure there was no foul play. Him being the first nonhuman politician and all."
"All the while cheering that the political threat he represented has very neatly been taken care of, no doubt."
"No doubt. Gerard James wasn't about making friends, and I really doubt he had many of them, either in the political field or out of it. Not that it mattered - not to those who cared what his party was about."
I raised an eyebrow. "Are you a supporter of the Nonhuman Rights League?"
"Hell, yeah." The elevator doors slid open. He pressed an arm against the door and ushered me inside. "I liked what they were trying to achieve."
"Which was?"
"Getting us nonhumans into state and parliamentary offices so that we might actually have a voice in the things that are decided for us."
"Yeah, like the humans are ever going to want that." I punched the fifth-floor button, which was the top floor, then glanced at Kade. "So if he didn't have many friends, why was he so popular with the public?"
"Because it was all about image, and he was good at that. He might have been an obnoxious bastard behind the scenes, but in the political arena - and on the social circuit - it was all smooth sophistication and friendliness."
"So if he was obnoxious and a playboy, why didn't the human politicians make political hay out of that?"
"Oh, they tried, but Gerard had a very good publicity machine behind him. They were able to twist derisive comments to his advantage."
I glanced at the floor indicator, seeing we'd barely reached three. This had to be the slowest elevator ever made. "How?"
Kade shrugged. "In the case of the ladies, by focusing on the fact that many of the women he went out with were human, and making the attacks feel race-related."
"Clever."
"But still an asshole. Wouldn't have stopped me from voting for him, though. I want a fairer world for my kids to live in, and I think he could have helped achieve that."
Well, there was no law saying you had to like politicians to vote for them. If there was, there'd be no one in parliament. But could one lone politician make that much of a difference? Somehow, I doubted it.
I looked up at the floor indicator, saw we were almost there, then asked, "How's Sable doing, by the way?"
Sable was his lead mare, the one mare he'd managed to keep from the herd he'd gathered before he'd been captured and slung into a madman's breeding labs. Which was how I'd actually met him - I'd been slung into the same lab. We'd escaped together, and it was only after that I'd discovered he wasn't an innocent bystander snatched up into the scheme, but rather part of a military investigation into an arms theft who had somehow stumbled onto the breeding labs.
Like Kade, Sable was a horse-shifter - a stunning, leggy black mare whose every movement spoke of class and sophistication. I'd met her only once, but I'd seen her enough on TV. The woman was a phenomenon, with her show rating through the roof and five of her eight books on herbs and healing still amongst the country's best sellers.
Of course, she wasn't the only mare he now had. He'd collected at least seven others that I knew of, and was constantly on the lookout for more to add to his herd. The more the merrier was a stallion's creed, apparently. Why the hell we werewolves got branded as sex-mad lunatics and horse-shifters didn't was beyond me. I knew for a fact that Kade was sexually insatiable, and he didn't have the moon as an excuse like we werewolves did. Not that we used it as an excuse, of course. Sex was something wolves enjoyed indulging in, whether or not the moon was blooming full.
When their hearts weren't broken, anyway.
"Sable is very pregnant, very fat, and grousing about being forced to leave her leafy Toorak house to live with me." His sudden grin was all proud male. "Another mare confirmed she was pregnant yesterday, too."
"So that makes five of them now? Damn, nothing wrong with your little swimmers."
"With us, a sign of virility and strength is not only the size of the herd, but the number of foals. I fully intend to have the biggest herd in Melbourne."
"Show-off." The old elevator came to a jumpy halt, and I grabbed the railing to steady myself. "Your Directorate salary is not going to stretch to feeding that many mouths."
"Doesn't have to. Herds work as a complete support system. Everyone contributes to support each other."
"What happens if you die?"
He shrugged. "My personal insurance will take care of them. And the Directorate insurance policy is quite generous."