Justin snorted. “It’s a lot easier to impress my new partners. They don’t know me.”
There it was, the reason they’d never worked long term as friends. That hollow thing in their gut they tried to hide under success and nice suits. It was hard to like someone when you suspected they could see right through you.
“Can you get him off?” Cade asked. “Piper. I know you cloned the files off the computer already.”
“My client. My files,” Justin said. “Do you want me to get him off?”
“Does it matter?”
“No,” Justin said. “Not more than my reputation. As a congressman, I want to be able to boast that I never let a wealthy client face the consequences of his actions.”
“Piper isn’t rich.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows, I’m sure he can pay me back somehow.”
“Tell him if he comes back to San Diego, I’ll make him miss prison,” Cade said. “He wants his life back, he’d be advised to start it somewhere else.”
Justin finally pushed himself off the rail and turned to look at Cade. “Are youactuallydoing all this for him?” He waved his hand vaguely, a thin trail of smoke tangled through his fingers. “Didn’t you get your crush on the school jock out of your system when you were a teenager?”
He had not. The various humiliating scenarios that he’d played out in his head had been too vivid to even think about taking that risk. Even in the unlikely event the feelings had been mutual, he would have had to introduce someone with a normal family to his dad. Back then, Cade would have picked public humiliation and mockery over pity.
Still would.
“I’m doing this for me,” Cade said. “And maybe I think what’s best for me includes keeping Marlow around. But it’s not the only reason. Franklin’s a problem that I’ll need to deal with eventually, and it’s a lot easier with a Night Shift officer at my back than… Lem.”
Justin pursed his lips and snorted. “Fair.”
“Threatening Piper, though, that’s all for Marlow,” Cade said.
“At that point, it’s not my problem,” Justin said. “My interest in him ends the day I have an impressive legal victory in court. Oh, and it starts tomorrow. I’ve already set up a press conference.”
“You spoke to Piper.”
“Not yet, but he shouldn’t have to say much,” Justin said. “I want to establish myself as a passionate crusader for the truth before I have to try and rewrite Piper’s history to sell him to the masses. He’s not a palatable man.”
“He’s a charismatic one,” Cade said. “That’s the other reason I picked you and not Beth. She’d have liked him.”
“And I won’t.”
“You will,” Cade said. “It just won’t matter to you.”
Justin put his hand to his chest. “I’m hurt,” he said. “And, not to be a bad host, but if we’re down to insults, I assume we don’t have any actual business left to discuss? So you should probably go. We still aren’t friends, and wolves aren’t pragmatic about that sort of thing.”
It was a good point. Most wolf fights ended up with chunks of fur on the road and bloodshed, but the wolves involved all still alive. Hate complicated things. Along with love, it was one of the things that carried over during the shift.
“Stop trying to poach my brother,” Cade said as he headed back inside.
“No,” Justin said.
Bastard.
At the side of the play park, a group led by an elderly Asian lady did Tai Chi naked. Cade watched them with idle interest as he waited for the moonlight to reach critical mass. He assumed the Tai Chi practitioners were early shifters too. Otherwise, they were shortly going to get a rude interruption to their practice.
People claimed that the slow, measured movements worked to keep the wolf in a more relaxed state after the shift. Cade doubted it was true; he’d tried yoga last time it was in and got nothing out of it. But he supposed it didn’t matter if they believed it.
It wasn’t like they’d ever know.
Cade stretched and felt his spine loosen as the tension seeped out of him. He made an effort not to think about Marlow—alone in the city on a blue moon, his only possible allies out to get him—and focused on the acrid film of smoke left on his tongue.
