“I have a … situation,” said Zayne. “One I believe you could assist me with.”
“Oh?” was Vinnie’s only response.
“Yes,” said Zayne. “I discovered that we have some mutual friends. I believe you … inform them of certain things regarding shifters.”
A long pause. “Your information is incorrect,” Vinnie told him, his voice tight, his tone wary.
“This isn’t some sort of set up to make you incriminate yourself. Search all three of us for wires, if it will make you feel better.”
Faint sounds of clothes rustling and hands patting reached Blair. Wood then once more scraped tile.
“What is it you want?” asked Vinnie, sounding guarded.
“I hear your son owns a few nearby buildings,” said Zayne. “I suppose it was you who urged him to lease apartments to shifters—it’s a fantastic way for you to keep your pulse on what’s happening in their world so you can adequately report important information to extremists. What brings me here is that one of those tenants has become a problem for me. His name is Camden Priest. He’s a white tiger shifter.”
“I know of him,” said Vinnie, his voice still holding a note of wariness as if he wasn’t quite ready to trust Zayne.
“He has information on me that could blacken my name and ruin my career.”
“What sort of information?”
“Have you heard of shifter poaching?”
“I have, yes,” Vinnie confirmed, sounding admiringly nonjudgmental. In his position, Blair wasn’t sure she’d have been able to keep a growl out of her voice.
“I have purchased the occasional item from poachers via a broker. The same broker attempted to fulfil my most recent order by using body parts from Camden. But it all went wrong. I don’t know exactly what happened. Only that the broker is now dead, her firm burned to the ground, and he must be to blame.”
“Why him?”
“Because one of my housekeepers called me while I was on tour. They informed me that a document had been attached to my wall—a wall that now also sports shifter claw marks. That document turned out to be a record of the orders I placed with the broker. The claw marks were definitely made by a tiger. I had an expert in shifters confirm it.”
Blair silently snorted. Some “expert” he was.
“Sounds to me like he was warning you that he knows of your involvement,” Vinnie told him. “He must hope it will be enough to make you leave him be.”
“Maybe that was all it was, and maybe he’s not interested in taking this further. But then maybe I’m wrong.” Zayne paused. “I can’t trust that he won’t come for me at some point. It could be that he would have killed me if I’d been home. I also can’t chance that he won’t take any information to the press.”
“I still don’t understand why you would come to me.”
“Shifters have no clue that you’re an informant, I’m guessing. The loners of their kind surely wouldn’t otherwise be comfortable with having your son for a landlord.”
“Shifters are unaware of my extracurricular activities, yes.”
In truth, shifters were very aware that Vinnie pretended to be a loyal follower of the extremists so that he could pass on what he learned to the Movement—a group of shifters who retaliated against anti-shifter extremists.
“Do you personally know Camden?” Zayne asked.
“I wouldn’t say I know him. I’ve spoken to him on occasion.”
“If you asked him to go somewhere with you, do you think he would agree?”
A short pause. “You want me to lure him to you?”
“As I said, I don’t trust that he will be content with merely delivering a warning to me. I need to be proactive in dealing with this situation; I need to take him out of the equation before he gets the chance to hurt me. I can’t do that by sending more poachers his way—that will spur him into leaking my part in it to the public, and my career would then be over. Besides, after what happened to him recently, it will be next to impossible for anyone to take him off-guard right now. Except someone he knows. Someone like you.”
Blair exchanged looks with both Luke and Elle. She hadn’t suspected that Zayne would concoct such a plan. Although he sounded calm and casual, there was a distinct note of apprehension in his tone. His world could so very easily fall apart, and he was seemingly prepared to do whatever it took to preserve it. Despite the gravity of his situation, she had the sense that he was more desperate to protect his career than his actual life.
“Would he be at all suspicious if you invited him to go somewhere?” pressed Zayne.
Vinnie puffed out a breath. “I’ve never taken him anywhere before, but I doubt he’d be suspicious. I could probably manage to convince him to head somewhere with me. What’s in it for me?”