“Hi, Daphne.” Emma leaned over the phone.
“Have a seat.” Carter gestured to the chair in front of the ostentatious desk.
Emma’s jaw twitched.
Flint tilted his head to the silly leather chair next to him, and she flopped into it and bounced back and forth.
Flint growled. He tried to stop it. But he and his wolf agreed. The low rumble continued, and all heads turned to him. Flint didn’t apologize. Why would he? They were treating her like a child. He would treat them like a wolf would. Emma’s braid, a thick red rope, hung down her back. She was the put-together seer they wanted. They needed to treat her like she was.
“I feel rather like I’m in the principal’s office.” Emma leaned forward, clasping her hands together.
“Nope, I knew that room well,” said Flint. “It’s down by Jack’s shop. I spent way too many hours in Mr. Cunningham’s office.”
Emma laughed.
Fuck, it traveled straight to his cock. Flint was having all kinds of new thoughts about the leather chair Emma sat on. He was damn well glad that none of them could pick up on scents like a shifter. Because he smelled like a bull looking at his favorite heifer. Shit, not a metaphor he’d be sharing with Emma. One doesn’t call one’s girlfriend a cow.
He swallowed hard. Girlfriend. Was that what Emma was? She wasn’t his normal hookup, which was sex with a shifter female in the back of a construction storage barn on the pack lands. Sweat formed on the back of his neck, and it had nothing to do with the old school heating.
He pushed it down, all of it. “What Carter and Shiori are trying to tell you is they’ve hired a friend of mine to figure out who was behind the fireball.”
Shiori cleared her throat. She’d mentioned several times that he shouldn’t talk to Emma about it by name. Like she wasn’t there. Emma was the one who’d been hit by the damn thing.
“Like I said, my friend Oak North works for a darn good security and investigation firm in New York. He’s doing this on his own time. He’s already started, actually. Satellite feed located a car at the building the night before, and he’s digging into that.” Carter had liked the idea a lot this morning and had given Flint a phone number for Oak to arrange for travel to Hundsburg.
“Wow, that’s great.” Emma looked up at him. “Isn’t that great?” She turned to Carter and then back to Shiori.
“Actually, it is. The firm I hired last week hasn’t found anything at all yet. And they’ve been on the case for over a week. I’m expecting a lot more from Mr. North.” Carter scowled.
Flint laughed. “Oak is as far from a Mr. North as you can get. Sorry, go ahead.” Flint stood behind Emma’s chair.
“Oak.” Carter motioned to Flint. “Oak should make headway. Flint says he caught a scent on Saturday night, one he didn’t recognize, so if Oak can find someone, Flint can help pinpoint it better with his nose.” Carter smiled. “It really is impressive what y’all can do.”
Flint nodded. The guy was giving him lip service, but he’d take it. Whatever.
A knock came on the door in the newly painted wall.
“Come in.” Carter held his hand up for them to stop talking. Flint knew Mia stood on the other side of the door, but the rest of the room weren’t shifters.
“Coffee and napkins for your lunch.” Mia handed them over to Emma, smiled, and retreated to her desk in the front room.
“Thank you,” Emma said to the closing door. She opened her lunch box and closed it. Cold casserole didn’t sound so great to Flint either now. “What’s the purpose of setting the building on fire? Or me. It was against me. Which is even odder yet. Right?” She turned to Shiori. “I mean, I don’t have any enemies. I let my ex-fiancé keep all the money I had in that stupid house he wanted. I’ve never had a job where anyone has cared or not when I left. My parents don’t have any money or any reason to bump me off. The only thing I have is the job I’m doing now. Which got me to think about who we’re in competition with, even if we’re not. What about the captain of the cruise ship where we met you, Carter? I mean, how strange would that be, because he’s the one who really set this whole thing up. Because you wanted it, Carter. So really, why would he do that?”
Shiori, Carter, and Mia were all gawking at Emma like she’d grown another head and might sprout wings any minute.
“The captain doesn’t see us as a threat.” Carter tented his fingers, tapping them together over his desk. “The male is a shrewd businessman. From what I’ve read, dragons don’t give up gold. Ever.”
“But you’re right, Emma. As much as I didn’t want to say it before, I do think that it has something to do with the business.” Shiori cocked her head at Emma’s boss. “Carter, unlike you, has probably made more than one deal that has upset other people.”
“What sort of people have you upset, Carter?” Flint glared at the man.
“Too many. That’s one thing I do have my security team making a list of. I plan to share it with Oak once he gets here.”
Flint locked eyes with Carter. “Good. Maybe you should share it with Emma and Shiori now. They might be able to pick something out of the list, put their seer talents to use.”
“Flint,” Emma touched his arm, but he didn’t look away from Carter. “It doesn’t work that way. We’d be too close to the issue.”
“It’s worth a try.” Carter pursed his lips. He pulled up a file on his laptop and handed it to Shiori first.
“I don’t get anything from these names,” she said. “Most of them I recognize from being in business in the city. Is this a client list or a list of people who are scorned?”
“So far, it’s mostly a complete list. That’s how business works. The reality is there is no such thing as a win-win. It’s more of a win-you don’t hate it too much, most of the time.” Carter tented his fingers again.
Shiori wobbled her head in agreement and passed the list to Emma.
Flint glanced at it over her shoulder. He read the names one by one. Allegheny Mechanics, Avon Tech, Boulder Sources, Caroline Catering, Corner Films . . . until he got to Waterhouse Social. “What’s the deal with Waterhouse Social?” Flint stared at the laptop. The name oscillated on the screen, wiggling back and forth, the letters more blue-black than black. “Why is the font different?”
“Waterhouse Social? It’s the same as the others.” Carter let out a slow breath. “We tried to buy them last year, but their owner wouldn’t let it go through. They own twenty-five percent of ShifterChat. I thought, with this new venture of ours here, it would be a great fit. They weren’t happy about it.”
“Hostile buyout?” Shiori asked.
Carter didn’t answer, a slight tilt to his head and his eyebrows raised up a twitch.
“Right.” Flint didn’t know much about business, but he didn’t approve of someone moving in and trying to take what someone else had built with their own hard work.
“It’s a publicly held company, Flint.” Carter leaned back.
Flint gave a quick nod. “Sure.”
