Frost Burned

shrugged. “Something needs to be done.”
    The other man nodded, took a deep breath. “That’s right. Okay. Folks pay us—we work for them all the way. We don’t take better money, we don’t talk. But our employers broke the rules. If they’re afraid of something getting out—well, maybe I think that might be a start on teaching them not to betray the soldiers who work for them. The folks giving us the orders—they’re regular government—Cantrip Agency. You know, the ones who are running around screaming that the fae and werewolves and all the rest are dangerous and need to be exterminated when their job was supposed to be learning about the supernatural world and acting as intermediaries between you and the government. The rhetoric they’re spouting is that they want the power to go wolf hunting before some other agency gets it. They’re tired of having to call the cavalry because they can’t have their own army.”
    The mercenary frowned at Adam. “But you probably guessed that.”
    “Most of the competent people end up elsewhere,” agreed Adam. “FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, National Security Administration, Secret Service, or one of a few other agencies. Cantrip has been a dumping ground for the screwups for years, and this has the same sort of FUBAR painted all over it that I’ve seen whenever desks try to run real operations.”
    The other man grinned at him. “What you said. I’m going to repeat that to my superiors.”
    “Okay,” Adam said. “But where is the money coming from? I know what Cantrip’s budget is; they don’t have enough of a black-ops slush fund to work this. Maybe if they all gave up their salaries, they’d be able to hire something like your operation without alerting someone. You guys are more likely to be out protecting some drug lord in South America or fighting the war when the Geneva Convention is too restrictive for the home troops.”
    The other man put a finger along his nose and pointed it at Adam. “I could like you if you weren’t a hell spawn, you know? No. Cantrip doesn’t have that kind of money, though they would if a werewolf killed the Billionaire Senator, right? If his party didn’t see to it, his very rich and very, very powerful family would. Word is that the head of this operation is cooperating with some money man, a rich son of a bitch anonymous puppet master who seems to have it in for you, Hauptman. He funded this operation, and the only stipulation was that it was your pack that got elected for assassination duty. Don’t know who he is, but people are afraid of him.”
    And that was
very
interesting. Adam found himself settling in, ready to hunt. That it was personal made his enemy specific. Not people who hate werewolves, which was a very large group, but a man who hated him.
    “Your intelligence was very good,” Adam said. He needed to know where the information came from. “Traced cell phones for where the pack members who weren’t at my house for Thanksgiving would be—that would have been Cantrip. But how did you find all the pack members?”
    The other man nodded. “Right track. It’s where I would have looked first. The list of pack members was provided to us—came from a different source. Same folks who provided the tranq. If I were to guess, I’d say it was someone high up in the military who doesn’t like werewolves. But he wasn’t the man funding this—just an interested bystander.”
    The tranq and information both could have come from Gerry Wallace before he’d been killed. Adam’s pack hadn’t changed since Gerry’s death. Gerry’s job had been to keep track of the lone wolves—and to do that he had a pretty extensive list of who was in which pack as well. Adam would have to warn Bran that someone had that information and was making it available.
    “Did you ever see him?”
    “Which him?”
    “The money man or the information man.”
    The other man tilted his head. “Just the money man, once, I think. Said he was a flunky, guys with lots of money always have flunkies. He was soft-looking, looked like a civilian through and through. Dressed in a suit and looked like butter wouldn’t melt. But he made the hair on the back of my neck crawl—and I always trust my gut. He looked soft, but he didn’t move like a civilian, get me? Moved on the balls of his feet, and when he pulled a chair up, it didn’t take him as much effort as it would have taken a civilian. He was stronger than a man who looked