Liquidating the Invisible Millions

Garrick slams both fists onto the teller counter, and every human in the lobby flinches.

        "The omega is in this building!" His voice bounces off the marble. "I can smell her piss-scared sweat from here. Hand her over, or I'll take this place apart brick by brick."

Behind the thick glass of Alder's office, I stand very still. The manager's hand trembles over a red button under his desk. Out in the lobby, two armed guards edge forward with their palms spread, staring at six wolves who could rip their arms off before they cleared leather.

      "Mr. Alder," I say, without turning my head. "I need a lawyer. A human one. Someone who hates shifters."

He blinks at me. "Desmond Hale. He sued a pack out of three properties last spring." Alder stabs a number into his phone with one finger. "Eleven minutes, he says."

      "That is a long time to wait."

"This glass stops armor piercing rounds." Alder swallows. "I never thought about claws."

        Eleven minutes feel like eleven years. Garrick circles the lobby, sniffing at potted plants, and a little girl waiting beside her mother starts to cry. The old man with the silver cane has taken a seat on a leather bench near the door, ankles crossed, watching me through the glass with his hands folded over the cane's silver head. He does not look at Garrick once.

Something about that frightens me more than the claws.

        At minute ten, the revolving door spins, and a tall bald man in a charcoal suit walks into the lobby carrying a single leather folio. His face gives away nothing, and his stride says he has buried more clients than he has lost.

"Desmond Hale," he announces to nobody and everybody. "I represent Miss Vane. Which of you is the Alpha's errand pup?"

    Garrick turns, lips peeling back. "Human trash does not speak until an Alpha's beta speaks to it."

      "Charming." Hale opens his folio and lifts out a sheet of paper between two fingers, like something he found under a shoe. "I have read your Pack Marital Asset Claim. It is fan fiction. This is a federally chartered bank, and you are standing inside it with unsheathed claws and a stated intent to commit assault. I called the marshals from my car."

"You called nobody."

    "Three blocks, Mr. Garrick. They are on foot, because parking downtown is a nightmare." Hale tilts his head toward the ceiling. "Also, every camera in this lobby streams to a server in Seattle that does not care about your feelings."

        Garrick's claws extend another inch. Hale does not move, and his heartbeat, which I can hear through the glass, does not even skip.

The old man on the bench clears his throat. One dry cough.

        Garrick flinches like he was slapped. His claws retract. "This is not over," he snarls at the glass, at me. "When Alpha Cross is done with you, you will beg to scrub toilets in the servant wing. I will personally rip that pretty mouth open and..."

"Threatening a client," Hale says pleasantly, "is a felony. Do continue."

    Garrick spits on the marble and storms out, the pack trailing behind him like beaten dogs.

The lobby relaxes, and the little girl hiccups into silence. Hale shuts the folio and walks into Alder's office as if he owns it.

        "Miss Vane." He does not offer a hand. "I need the keys, the ledger, and about twelve minutes of silence. Then you can tell me what you want."

I give him the ledger. My mother's handwriting fills the margins, and I almost reach out to touch the ink. He reads it standing up, flipping pages with the speed of a man counting cards. His expression does not change. Only his eyebrows move, once, then again.

        "Your mother," he says at last, "bought into four software companies in the nineteen nineties. Two of them became the backbone of the internet. She never sold a share." He taps a column of figures. "At today's prices, this is worth roughly ninety million dollars."

My knees almost buckle but I managed to lock them in place.

        "Liquidate the publicly traded holdings today," I say. "Every share we can sell without triggering a legal fight. Leave Cross Meridian untouched until we know what that certificate gives me."

        "If we rush, we'll take a five percent discount for immediate settlement. You would be leaving four million on the table."

"Then I'll leave it. I need liquid cash more than a perfect price."

         His eyebrow lifts. "May I ask why the hurry?"

"Because in sixty days money stops meaning anything," I say. "And I would rather own the things that do."

        Hale studies me for a long moment. Then something odd happens to his face, and it almost smiles.

"My brother mopped floors at a Cross warehouse eight years ago," he says. "He is still listed as missing. I would be delighted to take your money, Miss Vane, and a great deal of theirs."

He says it flatly with his knuckles white on the folio. I recognized that kind of grief. 

        "The liquid holdings should settle by midnight, subject to market execution and transfer checks," he says. "The preliminary estimate is eighty-five million, two hundred and fourteen thousand, give or take pennies. It is not spendable until the transfers clear. What is the next move?"

"A valley, a fortress, and so much steel that Brandon Cross dreams about it."

         "Understood." He is already dialing. He slides a prepaid phone across the desk. "Your old phone is gone. This one is clean; my number is the only contact saved." I pocket it. Then a small shadow crosses the glass, and a card slides under the office door.

The old man stands in the hallway, politely tipping his head. Never once does he try the door. He lets the card say what he will not.

       I pick up the card. Thick cream stock, a gold crescent pressed into one corner. Harlan Voss. Office of the Regional Envoy. Beneath it, handwritten in a neat, old fashioned script:

When the Cross boy's leash slips, and it will, call me. The Coalition looks after its own.

By the time I look up, he is gone.

      I stare at the card until the gold blurs. Hale watches my face, a smart man, saying nothing.

"One more thing before I leave," he says at last, closing his phone. "A certificate in the ledger is not like the others. I left it out of the sale."

"Why not?"

      He turns the ledger toward me and points at the last page. A single certificate, yellowed with age, the ink faded to brown.

CROSS MERIDIAN HOLDINGS. 31% OF ISSUED SHARES.

      The floor seems to drop an inch.

"Cross Meridian is the parent company of every human business your former pack owns," Hale says. "The land, the trucks, the payroll accounts. Every wolf in that lobby draws a paycheck from it." His mouth finally twitches into something close to a smile. "Your mother owned almost a third of it for twenty years, Miss Vane, and not one Cross ever noticed."

        I pick up the certificate. A paper this old should feel fragile, yet It feels like a loaded weapon. *Mama, you left me a gun and a map, and you never got to tell me where to aim.* i thought.

       "The board of directors meets on Friday," Hale says. "The certificate appears genuine, but we still need to verify the transfer history and the company’s shareholder register. If the stake holds, you will get a vote. I will make sure of it."