“Demre and Hill brokered a deal with her to be a surrogate,” he said as he held the contract out to Lucas. “Except the deal was with the Winter’s wolf dressed as her boyfriend. Right?”
Lucas licked his lips and shrugged. “It’s nothing to do with me,” he said. “I just deal with money, Mr. Paramedic, not babies.”
Somerset grabbed a chair and turned it around to sit down. “You can call him Santa.”
A gray cast spread under Lucas’s face at that correction, but Dylan ignored it as he shuffled the papers.
“That’s right,” he said. “This is your name right here, isn’t it? On the breakdown of the payment schedule. Lucas Collins.”
This time Lucas just shut his mouth. He visibly chewed on his lower lip as Dylan waited a heartbeat before hepressed on.
“She changed her mind, and legally you couldn’t do anything about that.”
“Legally? You think the Winter Court cares about that?” Lucas scoffed. He glanced toward Jars and Somerset and then shifted forward so he could make eye contact with Dylan. “Look, I didn’t know who she was. I’d never met her. All I do is money, OK? If someone tells me to make money happen for them, that’s what I do. It’s not my job to try and decide if it’s a moral purchase or not. I work for the Winter fucking Court. Sometimes you buy a baby. Sometimes two. You know what you don’t do? Ask about it.”
He sagged back against the bent pole, his head tilted back to rest against it. It felt like the truth. Dylan couldfeelthe balance on Lucas’s account shift from…naughty to nice. Not a lot, the man wouldn’t be getting a visit from Dylan anytime soon, but just a hair.
“You didn’t send the wolves to take her?” he asked. “Make sure your people got what you paid for?”
Lucas just shook his head. “No,” he gritted out. Then he lifted his head to look at them. “And what thefuckdoes that have to do with a plot against Yule anyhow? The old man, the last one, knew all about it.”
Chapter Twelve
Enid rubbed hand sanitizeronto her hands with nervous efficiency. Her cuticles were chapped and red, but clean. Once she was done, she set the bottle back down next to the laptop.
“This is not…this isn’t legal,” she muttered. “I…I think it might be industrial espionage.”
Stúfur leaned over her shoulder.
“We won’t tell if you don’t,” he said with a wink.
Enid shied away from him, the chair rolling to the side. She braced her hands against the desk and half-started to her feet.
“This isn’t a good idea,” she said. “I have to go—”
Somerset reached over and put his hand on her shoulder to push her back down. “Bit late for that,” he said. “You already have your fingerprints all over this.”
Enid checked her hands, front and back, with what was obviously a nervous tic. “I washedthem—”
“Digitally,” Somerset corrected her. “This isn’tLaw and Order, Enid. We won’t need to testify to what you found. We just need you to find it.”
He pushed the chair back over until she was squarely in front of the computer. She stared at it, her sallow complexion sickly in the glow from the screen, and then her shoulders slumped in defeat.
“Babies?” she said.
Somerset nodded. “Anything baby related that ties back to Lucas…or Yule.”
Her hands were halfway to the keys when he said that. She paused, took a deep breath, and started to type. As she worked, she leaned closer to the screen, occasionally grabbing a pen to scrawl down a note on a bit of paper.
Somerset watched briefly and then glanced over at Stúfur. The look, and a nod from Stúfur, was enough to convey the request to make sure their accountant didn’t become a flight risk. While Stúfur made himself comfortable in the corner of the room, Somerset left them to it and headed out to find Dylan.
It took him a few false starts, but he finally tracked the wayward Santa down in the stables. He leaned on the half-door, arms crossed, as he watched his pet reindeer eat.
Somerset paused in the doorway to watch for a moment.
“Shift change?” Ket asked. He was in a chair on the other side of the door, tilted onto the back legs to rest against the wall. “Or are we dropping that now everyone knows you’re doing something other thanguardinghis body.”
“I just like to work up close,” Somerset told him. “Go. Get something to eat. If you’re looking for Stúfur, he’s keeping an eye on the accountant.”
