Shards of Hope

Chapter 23

BO WAS HAVING a rare night off from his duties as the security chief of the Human Alliance, kicking back with close friends at a trattoria on a Venice sidewalk when his phone buzzed with an incoming call from Riaz. Even though it was after midnight in Venice, Bo didn’t hesitate to answer—the SnowDancer lieutenant never called simply to chew the fat.

He said, “Be a few minutes, guys,” to his friends and, grabbing his beer, answered the call while walking to a bridge that overlooked the sleepy canal next to the outdoor table where he’d been seated. “Riaz.”

“Bo, I got a question for you.”

“Shoot.” Up on the ornate bridge—which led to a half-submerged building that still had people living on the upper floors—he leaned his back against the railing and took a sip from the ice-cold bottle in his hand.

“What the fuck is the Alliance doing buying up isolated patches of land marked for expansion of changeling pack territories?”

Bo paused with the beer bottle halfway down. “Say again?” Frown getting deeper and deeper as Riaz explained, he said, “Look, I’m away from the office. Give me a couple of hours to figure out what the hell is going on and I’ll call you back.”

Once at the office, he brought in his senior people and they dug through the documents Riaz had e-mailed. The general reaction was, “What the fuck?”

“We own these parcels of land,” the lawyer in the group told him. “The titles are all in the Alliance’s official name, complete with our correct real estate identification codes. Those codes aren’t secret, so anyone could use them to make a purchase.” He scratched his head. “That’s never been an issue because the code equals ownership, so people make damn sure they enter their own.”

“Did we pay for these parcels?” Heads would roll if that was the case—Bo knew damn well the Alliance needed that money for other initiatives. “Are we looking at someone acting without authorization?”

The CFO held up a hand and swiped through several of the flat-screen computers laid out in front of her. “There’s definitely no money missing from our accounts.”

“But why?” Bo’s lieutenant asked, confusion in her eyes. “Someone just randomly buys all this land for way beyond market rates and gives it to us?”

“We’ll figure that out later.” Bo turned to the lawyer. “No question it’s ours.”

“Certified and legal.”

“I want you to start proceedings to transfer it across to the changeling packs who were intending to buy it.” He had to repair the Alliance’s relationship with the changelings—it wasn’t yet solid enough to bear this kind of blow, especially since Bo hadn’t exactly been a prince the last time he’d been in SnowDancer and DarkRiver territory.

“They’ll insist on paying fair market value for it, so take the money and put it in a reserve fund in case we do get hit with unexpected bills.” Frowning, he added, “Place the fund under the conservatorship of me, Hawke Snow, and Lucas Hunter.” If no one turned up to claim the money, he and the alphas could hash out what to do with it.

“We’ll get on it.”

Bo knew that would take care of the short-term problem, but it didn’t answer the underlying questions: who the fuck had bought that land and why?