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wedding problem? Ha! Who was I kidding?
“You look good,” I told Derek.
“Thanks.”
“You never come to visit me, though. Are you in trouble?”
“No. Is the room secure?”
“You’re in a Chapter house of the Order. You can’t get more secure.”
He reached behind him and pushed the door closed. “I’ve come to extend a petition from the Pack.”
I don’t want to work with Curran, I don’t want to work with Curran, I don’t want to work with Curran.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that right. I thought you said the Pack wanted my help?”
“Yes.” Little tiny sparks danced in his eyes. “We were screwed and he didn’t even kiss us first.”
“How tacky of him. And this ‘he’ would be?”
“We aren’t sure,” Derek said carefully. “But you have his bolt on your desk.”
I leaned forward. “Do tell.”
“Let’s just say that this morning one of our teams was jumped by a man using this specific type of bolt.
He has stolen Pack property and we want it back.”
“Aha. Why me?” The last time I checked, the Pack preferred to take care of their own problems. Hell, they didn’t even admit to having problems most of the time.
“Because you have contacts we don’t.” Derek permitted himself a small smile. “And because if we start turning the city inside out looking for this person, certain parties will wonder why and the rather embarrassing facts of the theft might come to light. We don’t want to air our dirty laundry in public. The Order always helped us without undue publicity.”
Great. The battle was lost. Greg was the only person within the Order who had earned the Pack’s trust.
Now since he was dead and I had earned Friend of the Pack status, that trust naturally extended to me.
The Order wanted to keep an eye on the Pack, I knew that much. Something told me the knights would view this petition as a wonderful opportunity to do just that.
“What did the crossbowman take?”
Derek hesitated.
“Derek, I’m not going to hunt I don’t know whom to retrieve I don’t know what. What did he take?”
“He jumped a survey team and took the maps.”
I almost whistled, except that my Russian father would have risen from his grave and smacked me for whistling indoors. The Pack maps, legendary in quality, precise, up-to-date, with all the new