Page 76 of Cruel Revenge
“Okay, we’re ready now.”
“Okay.” I got up and rubbed my hands together, feeling somewhat clammy at my duplicitous actions. I wasn’t the one who was good at these sorts of things. I didn’t think what I did was wrong, but it was a violation of the trust the BSA had in me.
Not that it means much tonight. Not with Carey gone. Not with them refusing to give me the information I need to find her.
That thought made me feel better about my actions.
I followed her to somewhere in the center of the building, still on the third floor, and she knocked once.
“Come in,” someone called out, a voice I recognized. Director Rhodes was waiting at a large conference table, and I decided to come back to thinking about that once I cleared the room. I recognized no one else. There were so many agents coming and going from the area, being rotated to different places around the country, that I really only knew Beth. Sometimes, I saw someone I recognized, but Beth was the only person I normally cared about.
I came back to Director Rhodes, my eyes narrowing on him as I walked to the far end of the table from him. I remembered how we met, the murders that a werecat tried to frame Arlo for.It had been a challenging period, but I was able to manage a werewolf pack, a group of spitting werecats, and the BSA into working together so we got the real killer and could save Arlo, while protecting the identities and lives of as many werecats as possible.
Heath had railroaded me when dealing with the Director. They hated each other for many good reasons. He’d warned me that the Director was the man who would help me and spy on me, that everything that happened in the Dallas office was his choice. Every decision their agents were making was directed by him.
And the last time I had to work directly with him, I had forced him and his BSA agents to work under the surveillance of two of Heath’s werewolves. Heath had picked Teagan and Kody.
I should have fucking known. Should have thought about him and talked to Heath about the potential that the Director was behind it, when it came to light they were keeping things from us. Of course it’s him.
“Miss Leon. It’s good to see you again, though the circumstances are once again bad,” the Director said as he stood up and smiled. “I’ve been told you want to finally speak to us about the recent events.”
“Why are you smiling like this is a game?” I snapped, ending all the pleasantries he was trying to use. There would be no friendly banter or camaraderie today. “Because my daughter being kidnapped isn’t agame.”
Agents all froze with my first question, and a couple paled as they looked at me when I said ‘daughter’. My temper snapped to its limit once again. That thin thread of control I had was already frayed. It would be so easy to lose it now.
Rhodes lost the smile and sat back down.
“Your future stepdaughter,” Rhodes snapped.
“Mydaughter,” I snarled, hitting the table hard enough that it cracked. “Do not fuck with me right now, Rhodes.”
“You killed a man. You’re lucky we’re entertaining a conversation and not trying to ask the werewolves to capture you to put you down for what happened.”
“You wouldn’t be able to convince them,” I said, shrugging. “Because the man I killed was a witch, kidnapping not only Carey, a human girl and daughter of a werewolf Alpha, but also three young werewolves. They would be on my side, not in the mood for the posturing and pleasantries from you.”
“Are you certain of that? I can call Callahan.”
“Oh? Can you?” I leaned on the table. “Go ahead. It’s been a few months since Callahan and I saw or spoke to each other. It would be a fun reunion.”
“Let’s lower the temperature, please,” Beth said, looking between us from mid-table. “There’s no reason for all the hostility right now. We’re all just trying to find Carey and the young werewolves, Kody, Arlo, and Benjamin. Good kids. I’m sorry Stacy was killed yesterday. We’re all sorry Stacy was killed. We don’t need to be fighting.”
“You’re right,” Rhodes said with a thin mouth, looking at Beth, then back at me. “You were asked why you believed they were witches and why they would go after you, bold enough to kidnap four young people in broad daylight. You told Special Agent Kirk that it would require a meeting to explain.”
“Well, there’s always something going on in the supernatural world,” I said, knowing I had to wait to hear from Davor before I could just leave. I didn’t want to give the BSA anything—not that there were problems with the witches, not that Heath was now in charge of the werewolves.
But my angry declaration and the reality were two different things.
“Obviously. Are you going to tell us? Carey, a human girl, is missing, as you so reminded us, but now you’re dancing around and playing a game,” Rhodes said, throwing my words back at me. “And humans, regardless of who their parents are, remain under the authority of the United States as citizens of our nation.”
“Well… I need to correct something. Perhaps it will change some things in this meeting…” That was something I was going to have to correct before the end of this, anyway. “Careyisn’ta human anymore.”
There was normal silence, but this wasn’t it. Jaws dropped. Eyes narrowed. A couple of agents had heated glares.
“Did Heath Change a minor?” Rhodes asked softly. “His own daughter?”
“No. When she threw herself out of a moving vehicle yesterday, I did,” I answered, raising my chin defiantly. “She was terribly injured, barely conscious. No one was coming to help us, and the witches were coming back to take her from me again. To save her life, and after she directly told me to, with what little strength she had… I bit her.”
Since no one was interrupting me, all of them looking more and more wide-eyed at my explanation, I continued.
