"Beats me." I shrugged. "Maybe go run surveillance on Nix's office again? Even though I'm pretty sure that was bad intel. It's got to be better than sitting around here and waiting for Fin and Riot to come chew me out again, or discuss feelings with Mik ... or Revel." I shuddered. There was very little I despised more than discussing feelings.
Ziff must have agreed, because he hopped up and scampered to sit on my shoulder while I snatched up my favorite leather Armani bag. Little he might be, but sometimes he could get seriously heavy sitting on my shoulder all day; it was nice to have the bag around, just in case.
Making my way back through my enormous house, I snatched up my keys from the hall table then paused once I got outside on the driveway. There was an envelope on the ground near the gates, a rather conspicuous little thing.
Curious, I placed Ziff down on the ground, so I could pick the envelope up. It had my name scrawled on the front of it in neat, old-fashioned handwriting, and it was sealed with a wax stamp. I couldn't quite make out the monogram in the wax, so slipped my finger underneath it to try and keep the seal intact for later.
"Looks like ... " I murmured, taking the note out and scanning it. "Looks like an anonymous tip on where I can find Nix today. That's awfully convenient." I tried really hard not to roll my eyes then failed. Fuck it. Who doesn’t like a good eye roll every now and again?
I frowned at the note, then opened the front gate to peer down the street. Nothing seemed out of place; the neighborhood was quiet and empty as usual. It had to have been delivered recently, though, or Mik would have seen it when he was leaving. Which meant someone had just been here …
Crap, I seriously fucking did need that new security system. Not that I wasn’t a walking-talking security system all on my own, right?
Tucking the note into my back pocket, I headed back into the house and grabbed a few more weapons. Nothing crazy, just a few boot knives, a second Ruger, and some back-up ammo. One never could be too careful.
"Come on, Ziff." I whistled to my friend and his little nails clicked on the marble floors as he followed me through to the garage. It wasn't totally unheard of to get anonymous tips in my line of business. In fact, it happened all the damn time thanks to people's lack of balls when it came to forking over info about the bad guys. I'd just never had one delivered to my house before, and it made me a little uncomfortable.
Still, the location given in the note was a pretty well-known lunch spot in the business district. There would be hundreds of people around, so it wasn't all that risky to just check it out. Besides, I had nothing else to do today.
Decided, I plugged the address into the Lola’s GPS, and rolled her out of the garage. If nothing else, at least I'd have a nice lunch and charge it to RADOPA as a business expense. Mik would love that.
Chuckling to myself, I turned up the music and rolled down my windows. Today was going to be a good day. I was determined.
It was barely ten o'clock when I pulled into the valet parking for Rioja, so the place was only just opening up for the day. On the one hand, I was unlikely to spot Nix here until lunchtime, assuming he worked in one of the thousands of offices around the restaurant. On the other hand, I should be able to get a table without much hassle.
"Good morning, ma’am," the smartly attired ma?tre d' greeted me as I approached the front desk. "May I ask what name your reservation is under?"
I smiled back as pleasantly as I could manage. "I don't have one," I told him. "Just a table for one, please."
The man's smile turned cold and he slammed his heavy, leather bound book closed. "I'm sorry, we're fully booked for the next three years."
His tone suggested I politely fuck off, and it got my anger heated. Reaching into my bag, I pulled out my wallet and presented him with my RADOPA identification badge.
"How about now?" I asked sweetly, but threw the force of a thousand daggers into my glare. He paled, glancing from my badge to my face and back again before swallowing audibly.
"Y-yes, of course, ma'am," he stuttered. "Right this way."
Despite our organization’s fancy title, everyone knew what we were. Killers. And not just normal ones either, but the best of the supernaturals. Occasionally I felt bad about flashing my credentials around, but not when it was to a snotty asshole like this ma?tre d' and not after the shit week I’d been having. If the man thought I might assassinate him for denying me a caprese salad, well then, that was his problem.
I followed him with my head held high, my tails flowing behind me and my ears perked up on alert. Smart man that he was, he gave me a table toward the back of the restaurant where I could sit with my back to the wall and watch everyone come and go.
"Thank you," I said politely as I took my seat and opened the menu. The man bobbed his head and murmured that someone would be over to help me shortly, then scurried away again.
Unhurried, I browsed the menu, then placed my order with a considerably more friendly waitress who came over to serve me. There was no way of guessing what time Nix might come in here for lunch, if he came in at all, and I really hated to just sit here and take up a table without ordering anything, so I made sure to start small and stagger my courses over a few hours. Expensive wine would help, too.
Good thing this was all being expensed! Not that I couldn't afford it myself, but it was more fun when work paid.
Ziff got comfortable on the bench seat beside me, and I gave him his own plate of chicken strips to keep him going while we waited. Meanwhile, I took out my laptop and started looking at maps of the Vail Valley Pack land.
Bennett had mentioned having several of his wolves affected by the tainted dust, but he also seemed relatively confident they were still on pack property. Perhaps he had some sort of pack bond that told him when they'd left or something, I had no idea. My knowledge of the wolves extended only so far as they're dangerous as fuck, stay the hell away. Even if my mother hadn't been killed by them, the scars on Riot's arms were enough to remind me.
"So if I were a wolf, stuck in human form, and slowly going insane … where would I go?" I was murmuring this aloud to myself, and to Ziff, but it was the waitress pouring my glass of wine who responded.
"You'd hide, that's what you'd do," she snickered. "Everyone knows that shit is a death sentence. If the alpha finds out you can’t shift, well, your days are seriously numbered. He used to let them live; not anymore."
Her answer surprised me. Not the information, I mean that was pretty obvious, but the fact that she'd answered with such certainty.
"You're a wolf?" I asked, frowning up at her. She didn't have that earthy smell that so many wolves had, but then again, I never really mixed with polite wolf company. My run-ins with the lycans were always during tense, fight or flight situations when emotions were running high.
"Shh," she whispered, smiling, "I haven't told my boss." Her eyes flickered over to the asshole ma?tre d'. "He's a bit of a speciesist. They only hire humans here, or those of us who can fake it." She nodded at my tails draped over the seat on either side of me and then gestured at my ears. "Even though I am crazy jealous you can just be you, I need this job."
"Yeah, understandable." I gave her a sympathetic smile. It had been a rough road since supernaturals became integrated into the human world, and there was loads of lingering prejudice. "So you're in the Vail Valley Pack?"
"I sure am," she said with a proud grin, which quickly fell. "Why? No offense, but what does a kitsune have to do with my pack?"
"Uh." I hesitated. "Yeah, but I don't know if you're supposed to know? Then again, your alpha is a total a-hole, so what the hell do I care? He hired me to look into finding some of the diseased members of the pack.” No point in adding that he’d also hired me to kill them. “Can you think of any places to hole up on pack land?"