Page 22 of Mane in Finance

"Thirteen years. Yes." I don't flinch from it. "You can spend the afternoon telling me what my failure has cost, and you'd be right, but it wouldn't save a single family. Or you can sit down and let the person who found him in five weeks tell you how we get it back."

I gesture to Sophie and every head turns. I feel the temperature of the room drop toward her, all that suspicion aimed like a rifle.

She pulls up the overlay and lets the map do the first minute of talking.

"You're all here because you each lost people and thought you lost them to bad luck," she says. "You didn't. You lost them to a logistics company funded with Ashcroft money and staffed with drivers paid out of Ashcroft accounts. It's not regional. Depots in eleven states. Your families weren't taken by a local predator. They were taken by a national supply chain, and until two nights ago it was invisible, because everyone here was trained to guard the money coming in, but nobody watched as it left."

The northern Alpha leans forward, grudging. "And now?"

"Now the man running it has made his first mistake in years. Clifford isn't the top of it, either. Lincoln Cantu is, he runs the Dominion Syndicate, better known in the trafficking network as the Collector. He's the one the buyers answer to, and the one behind the market for captured shifters." She flags the biometric record and turns the screen. "He authenticated the theft with his own thumbprint. He's a proven thief, and the database he stole is encrypted, so it's worthless to a buyer until it's decrypted. He needs a location, machines, and time to decrypt it. That's our window, and it's closing."

The coastal Alpha sits down, because Sophie gave her something to do with the fear, and fear with somewhere to go stops being panic and starts being an army. Kurtis catches my eye with a look that says told you so about a woman he met once. Even the northern Alpha, who came here spoiling to blame me and was entitled to, unbends by a degree, because the human is speaking the one dialect we never learned.

"How do you find a meeting that hasn't happened yet?" Kian asks.

Hector's phone buzzes against the table. He checks it once, and whatever he reads wipes the ease from his face.

"Luke."

Every conversation stops.

He turns the screen toward me. "Three more hits since we started this meeting. Idaho, northern Nevada, and outside Spokane. Two were empty before the crews arrived. One wasn't."

The coastal Alpha pushes forward in her chair. "Mine?"

"No. Wolf family moving west." Hector presses his teeth together. "Three taken."

A second message lands before he's finished. Kian swears under his breath.

"This isn't Clifford selling one address at a time anymore," Sophie says. She's already pulling the locations onto the map. "Look at the spacing. They're testing multiple corridors at once."

"They're clearing the board," I say.

The room goes silent. I stand. "Then we stop waiting for them to choose the next house. Kian, split your wolves across the northern corridor and get every exposed family moving before dark. Kurtis, I want your people on the mountain routes and every fallback property checked twice. Coastal and north prides, take the western houses between you. Nobody moves alone, and nobody uses a route that's been in the database."

"What about Blackwood Ridge?" Hector asks.

"We keep it quiet. No public alarms. The town just sees extra patrols and nothing more. Panic puts people on roads we haven't cleared and gives the syndicate exactly what it wants."

Hector nods once. "I'll lock down the pride without making it look like a lockdown."

"Good. Rescue first. Fear later."

"To answer your question. Money, that's how to find a meeting." Sophie pulls up a fresh window. "Decryption at this scale needs a secure facility. Power, cooling, isolated networks, hired specialists who don't ask questions. That's not free, and is unusually paid in cash. Cash doesn't move in the amounts a job this size costs. In the next few days, an account likely connected to the buyer is going to spend money on infrastructure it didn't need last week. A short-term industrial lease. A spike in power draw. Specialist contractors book fast and pay well. I can't watch the whole country. But I can watch spending this specific job requires, and when it appears, it'll point to the location. I need everything you know."

I watch a room with the most powerful predators on the continent line up to hand their grief to an accountant because she's the only one offering to spend it on something.

Hector leans down to my ear. "She turned a blame session into a war council in minutes."

"I know."

"Your father could clear a room like that. Never fill one." He straightens. "Different skill."

We break at dusk, and before they scatter I open with a closing statement.

"One more item, and then you eat before you drive." I stand, and the room quiets. "Some of you sat down today ready to hold me responsible, and you had the right. I lost the secret. It happened under my roof, on my watch, to a man I vouched for with my own name." I let that stand a beat. "But understand what you're walking back into your territories with. Sophie is not a consultant I hired. She's not a human I'm indulging. She's stayed in the fire when running was the sane choice. When she asks your people for records, your people answer her the way they'd answer me. She speaks with my authority. That's not a courtesy. That's an order."

The northern Alpha studies me, then Sophie. "You've never given a human standing in this network. No one has. Two hundred years."