Читать книгу Alpha - Rachel Vincent - Страница 12

“What?” Alex Malone popped up from his seat like a jack-in-the-box, and his surprised, angry gesture came within inches of smashing my nose. But at a single glance from his Alpha, he dropped into his chair, fuming in silence. His gaze was glued to the table, where my dad now stared down at his, both Alphas impeccably composed, while the level of tension in the room rose quickly enough to make the rest of us sweat. Literally.

Malone leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest. “Now, Greg, I hardly think that my questioning of your authority qualifies as treason.”

“No. But inciting war with another Shifter species does. Especially when that war is intended to hide your Pride’s guilt and cripple my Pride’s resources.”

“Greg, these are very serious charges,” Milo Mitchell said, from his seat next to Malone. Like we were unaware.

“Accompanied by very few details,” Nick Davidson added. “I assume you can provide both specifics and evidence?”

“Of course.” My father nodded, and this time, Malone’s slow blink was the only indication of his surprise. He didn’t know about the feathers. “I believe you all know that, last week, my Pride was attacked by a Flight of thunderbirds from a nest in New Mexico. Evidently they winter in the werecat free zone just to the west of my territory. We were hosting several guests at the time—” no need to mention that our “guests” were helping us plot an attack against Malone’s Pride in retaliation for my brother’s murder “—and between us, we lost two enforcers and sustained multiple serious injuries. But we also captured a prisoner, who told us that his Flight was attacking to avenge the death of one of their own—whom they believed we murdered.”

“And how exactly does this make Calvin Malone guilty of treason?” Mitchell demanded, while Malone sat silently beside him, apparently unfazed by our allegations.

“We have evidence that the thunderbird in question was killed not by one of my enforcers, but by one of his. But Calvin blamed the murder on us, inciting the thunderbirds to attack and cripple my Pride, while sparing his own.”

“The thunderbirds told you this?” Nick Davidson leaned forward, propping both elbows on the table. He looked considerably older than forty-two, but then, he’d had a rough few years. He’d lost his wife to cancer and was left to raise their seven children—including one small daughter—alone.

“Not initially.” My father frowned and his focus returned to Malone, who stared back as if none of this bothered him. “Brett Malone told us. Right after he asked for sanctuary. Less than an hour before he died.”

The room went completely silent. I think most of us stopped breathing. Even Paul Blackwell looked shocked, his wrinkled hands clutching the arms of his chair like he might fall over without it. He’d known we would accuse Malone of treason, but evidently hadn’t foreseen the blatant implication of murder.

Calvin Malone rose, brown eyes blazing. He leaned with both palms flat on the table, glaring at my father as if bold eye contact would be enough to intimidate him. “Are you saying there was something suspicious about my son’s death?”

My father stood firm, unruffled. “I’m stating facts. The conclusions you draw are your own.”

“Brett died during a training accident.” Milo Mitchell leaned forward in his chair, but was obviously unwilling to draw any more attention to himself by standing. “His death has been very hard on his family, and it is reprehensible of you to slander the dead, Greg.”

“I’m not slandering him, Milo.” My father returned his gaze boldly, and Mitchell looked away. “I have immense respect for Brett Malone. It takes a great deal of courage to stand up for what’s right, especially when that means standing against one’s own father.”

“Brett had nothing to fear from me!” Malone roared from across the table, and I couldn’t resist a tiny grin of satisfaction at seeing him lose his temper. Especially when Alex flinched on my right. He sat so stiff and tense that I was half convinced he’d explode if I poked him.

“And he had no plans to defect,” the Appalachian Alpha continued, softer now, but with no less vehemence. “Unless you have some evidence suggesting otherwise, I strongly suggest that you let my son rest in peace and move on with the more relevant parts of this discussion. Assuming there are any.”

Malone started to sit, then froze when my father turned toward the far end of the room, where Marc, Jace, and I sat interspersed with the Appalachian enforcers. “In fact, I do have some rather suggestive evidence.” My father smiled at me briefly, then nodded at Marc.

Marc stood and reached into the inside pocket of his coat as he crossed the room. All eyes were on him—more than half the gazes openly hostile—as he handed several folded sheets of paper to my dad.

“What’s that?” Milo Mitchell demanded, without acknowledging Marc. We’d been expecting some static over his unofficial reinstatement into the Pride, but so far no one had said a word. Neither had Malone even mentioned the covert ops we’d unleashed on his Pride, in spite of the fact that several of his men had been seriously injured.

My theory on his silence was that Malone was planning to throw consequences at us full force, once he had the power to overrule any objections. Which was one of the more critical reasons we had to keep him from being voted in as council chair.

“Calvin, when did Brett die?” my dad said, without answering Mitchell’s question or unfolding the papers. “Time and date, please.”

“This is completely inappropriate,” Malone insisted, as a vein in his temple throbbed visibly. “I’m not going to let you turn my son’s tragic death into the center ring of whatever circus you’re directing. We’re here to vote.”

“I don’t think we can afford to gloss over such serious accusations. And I would think you’d be eager to defend yourself.”

“There’s nothing to defend. I’ve done nothing wrong.”

My father raised one brow, still eyeing Malone steadily. “Then answer the question. When did Brett die?”

Malone sank stiffly into his chair, still pushed back from the table, and when Blackwell didn’t object to the question, he had no choice but to answer. “Last Monday night.”

“What time of day?” My dad slowly unfolded the first piece of paper, focused on it now, rather than Malone, as if the other Alpha was no longer worthy of his full attention.

“Afternoon. I don’t remember the exact time. It was a very traumatic day.”

“I’m sure your wife was traumatized, as well, but she remembers the time. According to Patricia, Brett died at around 3:45 p.m.”

Malone nodded slowly, eyes narrowed in barely contained fury. “That sounds about right. What’s your point?”

My dad laid the first sheet of paper faceup on the table and pushed it toward Malone. “This is a printout of the recent activity on Jace Hammond’s cell phone. My daughter borrowed it last Monday afternoon, in front of multiple witnesses. The highlighted line shows a call she made at 2:49 p.m. the day your son died. Do you recognize the number she called?”

Malone looked like he wanted to say no. To say he didn’t recognize his own son’s phone number. But he knew we could prove whose number it was, so finally he nodded. “It’s Brett’s. So what? She called him, and he probably hung up as soon as he heard her voice.”

“Look again,” I said, then rushed on before anyone could tell me to shut up. “That call lasted seventeen minutes, and I’m more than willing to testify about what he told me.”

“You don’t have the floor,” Mitchell snapped, eyes flashing. “And hearsay testimony is inadmissible.”

One of the few parallels to the human legal system. Which we all already knew. But Mitchell was ill informed.

I stood and addressed Paul Blackwell, trying not to be completely creeped out by the fact that I’d just left both Alex Malone and Colin Dean at my back, where I couldn’t watch them. “Councilman, if I may?” I said, in my best, most respectful voice. Who says I never learn?

Blackwell gave me a short, reluctant nod, and I squashed my brief urge to grin in triumph before redirecting both my gaze and my comments to Milo Mitchell, whose son Kevin had broken my arm and tried to kill me, Marc, Jace, and Dr. Carver earlier that same month.

“Hearsay isn’t admissible during a trial, but as Councilman Malone has already pointed out, he’s not on trial. We’re simply offering evidence as a basis for the charge we’re leveling against him. We have every right to present both the charge and the evidence, and I can cite multiple precedents, if you’d like.”

I’d worked with Michael for eight straight hours, memorizing cases and learning how the council’s ruling in each one supported our strategy. And silently I dared Mitchell to challenge my knowledge. To give me a chance to show off and to make a fool of him. That’s the least he deserved after conspiring with Malone to tag strays in the free zone, a plot that had nearly cost Marc his life, and had convinced most of the strays that there could be no peace between them and the Pride cats.

But Mitchell must have seen the truth in my eyes, or in my confident bearing—which I’d also worked on with Michael. Apparently there’s a difference between confident and cocky. Who knew?

Either way, Mitchell only shook his head. “That won’t be necessary.”

That time I resisted a smile in favor of a small nod, the most noncommittal response, and one most Alphas perfected quickly. Then I turned back to Blackwell. “Will the council hear my testimony?”

Blackwell hesitated, but to his credit, he didn’t glance around for input from his fellow Alphas. He only had a matter of minutes left as the council chair, and he wasn’t going to waste it. “Yes. Briefly.”

“Thank you,” I said, and though my father dared not actually smile under such grave circumstances, I saw approval in his brief, encouraging nod. “The day the thunderbirds attacked my Pride, I personally interrogated the prisoner twice, and based on information from him, it became clear to me that Councilman Malone manipulated the Flight into attacking us. He lied to them about who was responsible for the death of their thunderbird.”

Anyone else would have minced words. Called Malone misleading, rather than a liar. But I rarely got the chance to tell the truth when it really mattered, and, like Blackwell, I wasn’t going to waste it.

“That is not—” Malone started, but Di Carlo cut him off with a single, gruff noise from the back of his throat. It wasn’t quite a growl—that would have been considered an open declaration of hostility—but it was enough to shut him up.

“Faythe has the floor. Let her speak.”

I could have kissed Di Carlo.

“I told both my Alpha and Councilman Blackwell what I suspected, but they both said we couldn’t act without evidence. So I called Brett, because he had access to information we needed, and frankly, he owed me a big one.” I’d saved his life only a quarter of a mile from where we sat, when a stray gored him and Colin Dean was too chickenshit to go help him without wasting time Shifting.

Blackwell nodded. “Go on.”

“Brett didn’t want to do it at first, Councilman Malone.” I shot Malone a wide-eyed, earnest look, knowing it would piss him off for me to address him directly. But there was nothing he could do about it. And I was telling the truth. “He wanted to stay loyal to his birth Pride, but he knew what you were doing was wrong. He asked for sanctuary, and my father offered him not only a place to stay, but a job as an enforcer. Brett agreed. He was a good man, Councilman, and we’ve all lost something with his death.”

Malone tried desperately to hide his rage, but it couldn’t be contained. His face flushed so red I was afraid the capillaries in his nose would burst. He clenched the arms of his chair so tightly the wood groaned, drawing all eyes his way.

In that moment, revenge, even in such a small, brief dose, was sweeter than my mother’s sun tea. And so much more refreshing…

“What did he say?” Nick Davidson asked, when I paused a little too long to enjoy Malone’s reaction.

“He said that he and several of his fellow enforcers were in the free zone in New Mexico…” I paused, and my uncle interrupted with a leading question, as planned.

“Wait, what were they doing in New Mexico?”

I shrugged and gave the entire council a wide-eyed look of confusion. “You’d have to ask Councilman Malone that. All I know is that that particular part of New Mexico is within miles of our western border, and several hundred miles from the Appalachian territory.”

I paused for a few more seconds, to let that sink in. Yes, I was being heavy-handed and obvious, but sometimes that’s the only way to feed information to a group of Alphas. In large numbers, they don’t seem to be able to grasp subtlety.

“Anyway, he said he and his fellow enforcers were in New Mexico, and one of them killed a thunderbird in a dispute over a kill. They called in their Alpha, and when the thunderbirds came looking for their Flightmate, Brett said his father, Councilman Malone, told the birds that one of the south-central Pride cats had made the kill. Brett said his dad worked out a deal. In exchange for information about where to find our ranch, the birds had to promise to bring the tabbies to him—to keep them out of harm’s way, of course—before the real bloodshed began.”

I paused again to let that sink in and to judge the reactions. Our allies had already known what was coming, of course, and Blackwell’d had a good idea.

But Malone’s allies’ reactions ranged from confusion and disbelief—from Nick Davidson—to utter outrage from both Milo Mitchell and Jerald Pierce.

“Who did Brett say really killed the thunderbird?” Di Carlo asked, right on cue. All that rehearsal had paid off.

This time my hesitation was real. I felt bad for the Pierces—for Parker most of all, even though he wasn’t there—and was far from comfortable with my decision to turn Lance Pierce over to the thunderbirds knowing he’d die. But I’d had no choice. The thunderbirds had been holding Kaci, and they would have killed her without hesitation if I hadn’t come through with what they wanted.

I would have traded almost anyone’s life for Kaci’s. Even my own. And Lance was guilty.

“It was Lance Pierce,” I said finally, watching Councilman Pierce in my peripheral vision.

Sure enough, he leaped to his feet, eyes red and damp, face flaming with fury. “You have no proof of that! None!”

That part was unscripted, obviously, but not unanticipated, and it played right into our hands.

“Councilman Pierce, I’m truly sorry to have to tell you this, but we do have proof.” With that, I pulled the clear plastic bag from my inner jacket pocket and stepped forward to set it on the table, where Pierce stared at it like it was a grenade I’d just pulled the pin from. “This is the evidence Brett offered in exchange for sanctuary. Unfortunately, he died less than an hour after we spoke to him, before he had a chance to retrieve it or leave the territory. So we had to go in and get it ourselves.”

There. I’d just admitted to trespassing, but that was a calculated risk we’d already decided on. There was no way around admitting where we got the feather, and if our plan worked, Malone would never be in the position to do anything about it.

Pierce stared at the bag and reached out for it twice. Yet both times, he pulled his hand back as if the plastic had shocked him. He couldn’t do it. But Nick Davidson could. He picked up the bag and opened it, then sniffed carefully at the contents.

His eyes widened, and he glanced solemnly at Pierce. Then he nodded, and Pierce’s face crumbled. “No…”

Having presented my testimony and evidence, I went back to my seat, sparing a single raised eyebrow at Colin Dean, who looked like he wanted to rip my head from my shoulders.

Davidson passed the bag down, and one by one, the Alphas smelled the feather. All of them, including Malone, who already knew what he’d find, and my father and Di Carlo, who’d already smelled it.

“Calvin, this is pretty convincing evidence,” Blackwell said, when the feather landed on the table in front of him after making a complete circuit. “More than enough to warrant a trial. I’m afraid we’re going to have to postpone the vote…”

“No.” Malone stood again, jawline firm, hands steady on the surface of the table. “This is completely circumstantial. It proves nothing. We don’t know how or when Lance’s blood got on this feather, or even whose feather this is. For all we know, the thunderbirds could have dipped it in Lance’s blood after they killed him. We have a responsibility to uphold justice, and this is not justice. My word holds just as much weight as hers.”

Malone paused to shoot me a calm, cold glance. “More, considering that I represent an entire Pride and I’ve never been convicted of a crime, neither of which can be said about Faythe Sanders. And my sworn word is that none of this is true. I never met with a thunderbird, nor did I sell out one of my fellow Alphas and his men. I don’t know where they really got this feather, but I suspect it was soaked in Lance Pierce’s blood when a Flight of thunderbirds slaughtered him for a crime he didn’t commit, which they could never have done if she—” the look he shot at me that time could have burned right through me “—hadn’t handed him over as a scapegoat. But regardless, we can’t in good conscience accuse an upstanding enforcer—a dead enforcer, who can’t be here to defend himself—of murder. I won’t do it, and I’ll be sorely disappointed in any of you who fall for such an obvious attempt to railroad this council and postpone the vote we all came here for.”

Blackwell stood, leaning on his cane. “Calvin, you can’t deny that this evidence carries some weight.”

“Some, yes,” Malone nodded gravely. “But not enough. It’s circumstantial evidence at best, presented by a girl of questionable morals who’s already been convicted of a capital crime. We cannot afford to take her word at face value, and the only way to verify it is with testimony from the thunderbird I supposedly dealt with.”

My temper flared over the “questionable morals” dig, but I couldn’t fight that one without making a fool of myself and further humiliating Marc. And there was a bigger issue at stake.

The thunderbirds could only be contacted in person, and even if we had that kind of time to spare, I had no reason to believe the birds would actually testify. They didn’t give a damn about our political turmoil, or any werecat injustices that didn’t directly affect them.

There had to be someone else who could back me up. Someone whose word the council would have to accept. But my father hadn’t actually heard what Brett said over the phone. The only ones who had were Marc and Jace, and Malone would no more accept their testimony than mine. He’d remind everyone that the council had yet to recognize Marc as a Pride cat since his return, and if I brought Jace before them, Malone would call him biased and have the perfect excuse to call me a whore in front of the entire assemblage.

“If what Ms. Sanders says is true, surely she can present this thunderbird for us to question. Right?” Malone looked at me expectantly, and to my complete outrage, I realized that people were listening to him. A couple of the Alphas—Davidson and Gardner—seemed unsure of what to believe, but Mitchell and Pierce aimed incensed glares my way.

I was at a complete loss for words. If I admitted that the thunderbirds probably wouldn’t testify, we could kiss the case against Malone goodbye. But if I promised them something I couldn’t deliver, I’d be blowing another huge hole in my own credibility. So I said the only thing that felt true beneath so many restrictions. “I can try.”

“Good.” Malone gave a perfunctory nod. “We look forward to that testimony, at the earliest possibly occasion. But in the meantime, I see no reason to put off the vote based on unconfirmed, unsubstantiated, circumstantial evidence against an Alpha who doesn’t have a single blemish on his record.”

“But…” I stammered, my hands already going cold from shock. In all our strategizing, we’d never thought Malone would be able to just ignore our charges and carry on. And our evidence wasn’t uncorroborated. But Marc and Jace weren’t suitable witnesses, and no one else had heard Brett’s phone call, or Lance’s confession.

Except Kaci…

No. I couldn’t drag her into this. She was already terrified of the council in general, and Malone in particular, and there was no way they’d let me sit with her while she testified. They probably wouldn’t even let me be in the same room. And on her own, she was too easy to intimidate.

I couldn’t sacrifice her mental and emotional health, even for this.

I shot a frustrated, helpless glance at my father, wondering if he knew what I was thinking, and he turned to Blackwell.

“Paul, I can personally testify that our prisoner told us that a member of our own species blamed the thunderbird death on our Pride.”

“Yes, but did he actually name this informant?” Blackwell asked, looking both hopeful and grim.

“No, but the Flight later confirmed Malone’s identity to Faythe.”

Blackwell frowned, and his forehead crinkled. And I knew what was coming before his mouth even opened. “I’m sorry, but he’s right. If you’re basing your charges on circumstantial evidence and uncorroborated secondhand information, we need to have this evidence and hearsay authenticated before it can be accepted.” Blackwell’s scowl deepened, as if the words tasted bad in his mouth. However, he would follow the letter of the law. It was his crutch in the face of uncertain moral terrain, but it crippled him in the field of justice. “We have no choice but to proceed with the vote as scheduled.”