“Yes. But I’m digging into the council’s records to see if I can find anything there.”
Surprise rippled across Damon’s features. “How are you accessing the council’s records? The security around them is supposedly watertight.”
“Nothing is watertight where a sea dragon is concerned.” Leith’s voice was amused. “Especially when the security involved is over a year old. Your council needs a serious update.”
“I’ll tell them.” Damon’s voice was grim.
“Please do,” Leith commented cheerfully. “And if you want a recommendation, I can give you several names.”
“No doubt friends of yours who can be pressured for passwords.”
“I don’t need passwords, my friend.”
Damon snorted softly, but it was an amused sound. “You think you’re good enough to find, and then get into, Hannish’s bank accounts?”
“Yes. Although it might take a little while unless you can give me the bank and account number.”
“If I start asking for that sort of information, I might just stir up interest in the wrong places. I’d rather not warn anyone we’re suspicious at the moment.”
“Why do you want to investigate his bank records?” I asked, a little confused by the sudden request.
“Because,” Damon said, “Marcus cut his son off financially when they argued ten years ago, and Hannish was left with little more than the clothes on his back and a few thousand dollars in the bank. It’ll be interesting to see where he got the money to buy Deca Dent.”
“Maybe he has investment partners,” I said.
“He owns the club directly,” Leith commented. “And if his dad did cut him off, then tracking down the source of his wealth just might expose a clue or two.”
I frowned. “Dragons are notorious thieves, so sudden influxes of wealth come with the territory.”
Damon was shaking his head even before I’d finished. “Most dragons are very judicious with their thieving these days. They have to be—not only because human security techniques are getting better, but because stealing too much in their own territory could bring the wrong sort of attention.”
Meaning the council as well as the humans. “Yeah, but Hannish has been overseas, and I doubt he would give a crap about his clique anyway.” And anyone involved in the slaughter of two whole towns wasn’t ever likely to care about that sort of stuff. “And it still doesn’t explain the destruction of the draman towns.”
“Maybe the draman were in the way,” Leith said.
“How?” I asked. “The towns weren’t on dragon land and were in the middle of goddamn nowhere. How on earth could they be a threat to whomever is behind the destruction?”
“Maybe they weren’t a threat,” Damon said slowly. “Maybe they were simply, as Leith said, in the way.”
“What?” I said, frowning at him. Why did it suddenly feel that these two men had gone to a whole other place from me? “What do you mean?”
“I mean, aside from the town that was destroyed when Angus was young, the two towns were in the same state, and both were close to the borders of the Nevada clique.”
“And it would be interesting,” Leith mused, “to see what happened to the land those towns were sitting on, wouldn’t it?”
“Most definitely,” Damon agreed. “And it might also be worth checking whether the land between the clique and the towns has recently been sold—and to whom. You think you can get that information without setting off any alarms?”
“If the council hasn’t caught me yet, I doubt the real estate people will,” Leith said, voice dry. “I’ll get back to you as soon as I find anything. In the meantime, play it safe, you two.”
He hung up. I pushed up from the chair and walked across to the bench, grabbing my bag and dragging out the netbook. “Maybe I’m a little thick, but why would the land the towns are sitting on be so important that they’d kill for it?”
“It’s not just land, its territory. Unclaimed territory, technically.”
I frowned as the computer fired up. “But it’s not. As you said yourself, Nevada belongs to Hannish’s dad.”
“As a territory, yes. But the clique itself owns only a few thousand acres.”
“So you think Hannish might be buying up the land around his dad’s clique? To what end?”