Gunmetal Magic(17)

“Andrea?”

I tilted my head and looked at him. He’d brought another woman into my office. Whatever made him think I would stand for that?

I opened my mouth and showed him my sharp teeth. Most shapeshifters couldn’t speak in a half form, but then I wasn’t most shapeshifters.

“You meant every word. I told you I was sorry. I took responsibility for my actions. It is over now.”

My voice was deeper, permeated with the rough notes of a growl.

“This office is my territory. If you bring your woman here again, I’ll consider it a challenge.”

He leaned forward, inhaling my scent. His upper lip trembled, betraying a flash of his teeth. “Been studying the Pack’s Law?”

I laughed and heard an eerie hyena cackle in my voice. “I don’t have to study. I know all the laws.”

“Then you know you can’t attack a human.”

“Who said anything about attacking a human? If you bring her here again, it will be your fault. I’ll beat your ass and not even your mommy will be able to stop me.”

Raphael leaned closer, his eyes glowing. “Promises, promises, honey.”

I snapped my teeth at him. “I’m not your honey. Your honey is out in the parking lot.”

The beginnings of a snarl reverberated in his throat, but his eyes were puzzled. He wasn’t sure what to make of me.

I wanted to bite something. I wanted to rend and carve things with my claws and get rid of my hurt. I wanted him to leave. But if he left, we would have to do it again. I still had a job to do. This sonovabitch would not keep me from it. I would get the information I needed and I would not let him bother me any further.

I picked up the pen with my clawed hand. “I find your scent disturbing. Let’s finish this up so I can air the place out and get you and your girl candy out of my life. The Blue Heron building. How did you buy it?”

He stared at me.

“We have four dead people. Your people. Do try to keep up.”

Raphael leaned back, studying me. “It was a sealed bid auction.”

“Were there any other buyers?”

“Yes. It was a very valuable building.”

“Do you know who they were?” A sealed bid auction meant that each of the participants submitted a confidential bid for the building, but Raphael would’ve done his homework and researched other buyers to know how much to bid against them.

“I can give you the top three,” he said.

“I’m all ears.”

“Bell Recovery. Kyle Bell has been in the business for a long time. He does decent work, but he’s expensive and slow. I can usually underbid him.”

I wrote it down. “What’s your relationship with him?”

Raphael shrugged. “We don’t like each other.”

“Was he bitter that you outbid him?”

“Kyle exists in a state of bitter.”

“In your opinion, would he stoop to murder?”

Raphael shook his head. “No. Kyle makes a lot of noise and stomps around. He might get his people to rough someone up, but he wouldn’t get into anything that required outside help, like magic snakes. He doesn’t trust anyone.”

So Stefan had already told him about my visit. “Got it. Next.”

“Then there is Jack Anapa of Input Enterprises.” Raphael leaned forward, resting his forearm on the table. His scent was scraping against me like fine-grain sandpaper. “Anapa is an ass. He has mountains of money and he plays with it.”

I squinted at him. “Don’t like him much?”

Raphael grimaced. “He dabbles. He dabbled in construction, he dabbled in shipping, now he’s dabbling in reclamation. He’ll get bored and move on; for him it’s a game. For us it’s business.”

“Was he upset at losing the bid?”

“Initially he won it, but his permits weren’t filed properly, so they went to me as the second-highest bidder. A skyscraper has a lot of mercury. It’s in the thermostats. When a building crashes, mercury drips to the bottom. Before you can reclaim a building, you have to prove to the city—”

“That you’re qualified to safely remove it,” I finished. “I remember.” I was with Raphael once when he filed for permits. “Would you say Anapa is capable of murder?”

“Yes. But I don’t think he’d murder my people. He doesn’t seem to have the motivation. I was there when he lost the bid. He was looking over some papers his assistant shoved under his nose. He waved his hand and said, ‘Yes, yes. C’est la vie.’ Oh, and he invited me to his birthday bash before he left.”

Interesting. “The third bidder?”

“Garcia Construction. I’ve known the Garcias for a long time. They were in business for about ten years before I started. It’s a family-operated business. They mostly took medium-sized reclamation jobs and didn’t get very ambitious until about two years ago, when Ellis took over the company from his father. They went big real fast, too fast, and bought rights to a huge apartment complex.” Raphael grimaced again. “It was a monster of a building. I wouldn’t have taken it.”