“Did you actually ask him if he was involved?” Vance demanded softly.
Billy sighed, staring at the hands clenched in his lap. “No. I should have. IknowI should have. But the God’s Honest is that I didn’t want to know.”
“Because he was your brother?” I had to admit, I might not want to know something like that about Davey.
“No.” Billy looked up at me, his forehead furrowed, his brows drawn low. “Because I couldn’t change anything. Because I felt guilty, and I knew you’d hate me if you found out, and I couldn’t do agoddamnthing to undo it.”
EIGHTEEN
“Seriously?” Tucker demanded as he pushed my office door closed, shutting my two enforcers and me off from the rest of the bar, where the day’s first customers had just arrived. “Silas thought he was doing some kind ofgood deed?”
“According to Denny,” I said.
“As related to us by Billy, anyway,” Vance added.
“Hey,” Bishop snapped from the hallway, as the doorknob turned. “Let us in.”
With a sigh, I nodded, and Tucker let Bishop and Austin into the room, then closed the door behind them. My office suddenly felt crowded, but that was less about the number of bodies packed into the small space than about the fact that there were parts of this debrief that weren’t going to be easy for the grieving brother and widower to hear. Or for me to say.
But they had just as much right to that information as I had.
“So, he admitted it?” Austin said as he sank into one of my guest chairs. He looked exhausted.
“Not exactly. He admitted that he found out, after the fact, that Denny was at least aware of Silas’s plan for me, as it was…happening.”
“And that Denny and Silas thought it was justified,” Vance added, filling them in. “Silas felt ‘driven’ to start providing the shifter community with women of their own species. As if he were doing us all some great service.”
“What?” Austin twisted in his seat, his gaze following Vance as he circled my desk.
“It’s fucked up,” I said as I sank into my own chair. “That wasn’t so much an interrogation as the verbal equivalent of projectile vomit. Billy seemed eager to get the guilt of what he knew off his chest. But he couldn’t verify for us that Denny was actually involved with my infection, beyond ‘probably’ giving my name to Silas. Which Denny got from Billy—inadvertently, Billy claims.”
“And what did he know about Yvette?” Austin asked.
“Nothing that he admitted to. He seems to have no idea there were any victims between me and Yvette, though he admits that Denny seems a likely suspect in her case, based solely on the fact that he knew about the genetic factor and about Silas’s ‘mission.’”
Vince huffed. “And the fact that he’s been going by a fake name—or at least a strategic nickname—since he inserted himself into the community.”
“You’ve got to befucking kiddingme,” Bishop growled, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees, his head in both hands. “Are we seriously saying that little shit didn’t do it either?” He pointed at the floor, in the general direction of the basement staircase.
“I’m not prepared to say that Billy played no part in what Silas did,” I said slowly, thinking each word through. “But I also see no indication that he was deliberately providing intelligence. And he doesn’t know you or Austin. As far as any of us know, he didn’t know Yvette either. And once Denny started coming around here as Cam Senet—a regular in his own right—he wouldn’t have needed information from Billy.”
“And you believe Billy’s claim about why he never told us about Cam?” Tucker asked.
I shrugged. “I’m honestly not sure what to believe. Nothing in his physiological response to being questioned indicated a lie. Unless he’s psychotic, and thus exhibits none of the normal physiological reactions to lying.”
“I don’t think that’s the case,” Vance said. “He was definitely nervous, but he seemed more concerned with preserving his position in the Pride—in the only family he has—than in hiding anything he knew, or the fact that he told Denny about Charley.”
“So, you’re saying he just wants tofit in?” Austin demanded softly.
“I’m saying that his biggest fear seemed not to be that we’d find out who he is and what part he did or didn’t play in any of this, but that we’d hate him for it. Which Eamon seems to have led him to believe would be the case, justified or not.”
“What about Denny?” Bishop said. “Why the hell would he carry on Silas’s ‘work?’ Assuming he’s the one we’re actually looking for?”
“That’s difficult to say, since we haven’t spoken to him yet. But it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that he actually bought into Silas’s ‘mission.’” I sighed as I leaned back in my chair. “According to Titus, they’re not the first idiots to suffer that particular delusion of grandeur—a personal mandate to ‘fix’ our species gender imbalance. But based the numbers, I’d guess that Denny now qualifies as the most dedicated to the cause, historically.”
“Is this a Frankenstein’s Bride kind of scenario?” Tucker asked. “Were he and Silas trying to, like, make shifter girlfriends for themselves? Because I’m starting to think that most psychos are straight men. And that maybe that’s their problem.”
I rolled my eyes at him, but I didn’t have the energy at the moment to argue his point.
