Making the Rent the Hard Way - 29

"Tetrad?" Rocky said.

"Well, there are four of us, if you want to be involved, and The Tetrad sounds better than The Four," I replied.

Rocky nodded emphatically. "If my involvement means bringing down Farnham, I'm in." Orchid agreed she was, as well.

"You're definitely playing into the humans' distrust of shifters," Luca said. "Let's hope it doesn't backfire on us."

"Why isn't Farnham's name on the list?" Orchid asked. "Isn't he on some of the planning commissions? That's what it said in one of the files I copied last night."

"I wanted to keep it to government officials for the time being," I told her. "Yeah, the police chief was appointed by the present mayor, but the rest have been elected. I suspect the mayor had no idea the chief is a shifter."

"Or he didn't care," Luca said. "The guy moved up in the ranks and was the obvious choice. If the mayor had brought someone in from the outside, the police union would have had a hissy fit."

"Next question," Rocky said. "How are we going to distribute these once they're printed up?"

"Send them to all the news outlets, for starters. Then to the public officials who we know aren't shifters. We probably shouldn't give this info to the ones who are shifters. We know from the information Orchid found that some of them are in Farnham's pocket."

"Then send this to the ones who aren't," Luca said. "The more people, human or shifter, we have on our side, the better."

"I agree," Rocky said. "It'll get the ball rolling. I wish it was safe to out Farnham now, rather than waiting."

"That's the next step," I told him. "Once we've delivered these"—I tapped the flyer—"he'll be so angry he'll come after me, knowing I had to be the source of the information."

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" Luca spat out furiously.

I barely smiled. "Probably, but it's the only way I can think of to get him out in the open."

"How do you figure he'll know it was you?" Orchid asked.

"He hired me to find Luca because Luca overheard things that were said at the meeting with his cronies, but Farnham doesn't know how much, so he searched Luca's place."

"And found nothing, since I had the info with me," Luca said, nodding.

"Exactly, but he didn't know if you'd decide you were safe after a couple of weeks and come back to your apartment, so he has someone watching. Then I show up, the same afternoon that he hired me to find you. He might think I found something he missed, since I'm a pro." I chuckled. "At least, I'm supposed to be one. Anyway, he figures if I did, it would be in the files in my office."

"Which explains why someone broke in. But why make it so obvious?" Luca asked.

"Best guess at this point, the guy was in a hurry. Then he heard the elevator, figured it was the building's security guard on his rounds, and got the hell out of there. He could have been human or shifter, but I'm betting on human. Farnham would have given a shifter a visual of the office, so there'd be no reason for him to break in."