“Good afternoon, beautiful.”

She rolled her eyes at his flattery and smiled as it won her over despite herself. “Flatterer.”

He laughed. “Does it get me laid?”

She snorted. “I bet it always did before me, too. Now, to business you pervert.” She leaned over his desk and pointed at a column of numbers. “Your boy had quite a problem in Vegas. The left-hand column there is what he lost, the right-hand column is what he owed and that far tally is what was coming in. From what I can tell, those numbers from the Swiss accounts were payments he received and from what I can tell, he gambled them away.”

“Okay. Tell me how you know it was gambling.”

She shuffled through the papers until she found what she was looking for and put it in front of him. “He kept pretty good records, actually. The dates he stayed in Vegas at these three hotels coincide with the huge amounts of money debiting his accounts. I took the liberty of, uh, nosing around a bit in some databases and verified the times he was there and the payouts when he did win. They have to keep records of that sort of thing you know, for the IRS.”

“How did you…never mind, I don’t want to know. Okay. So we have a situation where he was in need of money. How did he jump from that to involvement with the Rogues and the mob?”

“Well, I don’t know the hows and whys of it. What I did find were notations of deposits from a J. R. and a W. P. The numbers got bigger and bigger, Lex. Carter was in deep. From what I could find, he was in the process of losing his home. He was so far behind on his car payments he was going to get it repossessed.”

“He made quite a handsome salary. And, wait, did he have all of this financial stuff in his computer?”

Nina looked at him and sighed, waving his question away. “I saw what you paid him. He went through that in the first ten days of every month. When he wasn’t in Vegas—and he used your private jet to fly out, by the way—he played video poker and used some of the tribal casinos around here. He hadn’t made a payment on his mortgage in five months.”

Nina pulled out another sheet of paper. “Here is where your Pack funds began to siphon off. It was small amounts at first, but just before you pulled his access he stole seventeen grand. All in all, it appears that he embezzled roughly forty thousand dollars from the Pack coffers.”

Lex sat back in disbelief. “My god, Nina. I can’t believe he’d do this. You don’t have any idea how strong the compulsion to serve the Pack is when you’re this high up.”

“Oh I don’t? Because I’m not a wolf?” Hurt arced through her at his blasé dismissal of what she was dealing with.

“You’re right, I’m sorry. So you do see. I don’t get it.”

“Come on, Lex. You have Rogues, they appear to live in the same basic configuration that you all do, with an Alpha and upper ranks. If they’re so bad, they must have resisted the compulsion. Your problem is that you don’t think like you’re bent. That’s why you’re lucky to have me, because I do.”

She pulled out another sheet. “Now, these are the records from your labs and it appears that three vials of the virus are missing. The lead researcher there claims he reported that a month ago. This after he’d reported some tampering with their internal records two months back.”

“Reported it to Carter?”

“Yep. But Lex, this system is just flimsy. You’re dealing with what are essentially biowarfare agents here, and I could get in and look around with no problem at all. They gave me all this information over the phone without any real verification of who I was. That’s why you’re in the situation you are now.”

“You’re totally wasted as a florist.” The admiration in his voice salved the hurt feelings she’d had.

“I am a damned good florist. By the way, the plants you have at the Pack house are crap. But you know, I can’t be sniffing around computers very often, at least not the internet. It’s not good for me to expose myself like that.”

Alarmed, he stood up and shot around the desk. “Why are you risking yourself! Nina, stop it now.”

“Lex, it’s okay. Most of the stuff I’m doing is all internal. I’m a good investigator, you know. I can spot a scam miles away and I can talk my way around most anyone. Including grumpy, overprotective werewolves.” She gave him a quick kiss. “But thank you for your concern, it’s very sweet.”

“Sweet? Jesus, Nina, are you trying to push me over the edge? Be careful! Let someone else do the work if it’ll get you in trouble. And for god’s sake, don’t expose the Pack with all of this. The last thing I need are the human cops breathing down my neck.”

“Is that how little you think of me? That this is a lark for me? All fun and games and I don’t care a thing about you or your precious Pack?” She stood and headed for the door but he blocked her way.

“You are not going to run from me again. Why do you take everything the wrong way?”

“Excuse me? Why do I take everything the wrong way? Why do you assume I’d do anything to expose your family? I nearly died for your precious family, Lex. I am being very careful but you need this information.”

Leaning down to put his forehead against hers, he exhaled slowly. “You are my family, Nina. You’re part of us and I didn’t assume that you’d expose us. It was just something I said. I tell my men to be careful all the time, it’s part of my job. I didn’t mean to imply that you would endanger us.”