“Who? Last I checked, wargs don’t have gills.” I crossed to Dell and touched her shoulder. She peered up at me through fringe bangs. “We have to call Vause.” We had no choice. “It would take days to assemble a dive team capable of handling the kelpie without asking the conclave for assistance. This victim doesn’t have that kind of time.”

“There’s another option, a safer choice.”

On reflex, my hand clamped over the pearl bracelet on my opposite wrist as though protecting it might shield Harlow too. “Harlow isn’t well enough to go up against a kelpie.”

A mermaid would have made me hesitate, but a human? She didn’t stand a chance.

He didn’t miss a beat. “Medics cleared her this morning.”

“How do you—?” With sinking certainty I knew. “You’ve been keeping tabs on her in case you needed her.”

The announcement shouldn’t have surprised me. Graeson was all about protecting his resources.

Maybe I had done wrong by going along with his plan. It seemed he and Vause were surfing the same wavelength after all.

“Harlow is facing suspension. She’ll be sidelined until an internal affairs investigation finishes with her, and we both know it’s a formality. She lied on her application. They aren’t going to forgive or forget that. She’ll be lucky if they don’t press charges.” His gaze dipped in a rare show of deference. “I offered to hire her, and she accepted. I didn’t push her into this.”

“You didn’t have to,” I stated the obvious. “What options does she have?”

All those clothes and hair products didn’t come cheap. I might not be a girly girl, but as often as I traveled, I had gotten lost in my share of superstore aisles and gaped at the seven dollar tubes of lipstick and ten dollar tubes of foundation. It cost a fortune to wear enough cosmetics that it appeared you wore none. Faced with a crimp in her income, of course Harlow would jump at the chance to earn fast cash.

“I put her up at a hotel in town.” He chose to regard my question as rhetorical. “I’ll send someone to pick her up when we’re ready.”

Disappointment sapped the fight out of me. “You think of everything, don’t you?”

His jaw flexed. “Someone has to.”

Graeson set off toward the shack at a clipped pace, and I watched him go. Dell shrank into herself, and it frayed my last nerve.

“He doesn’t care what it costs the rest of us as long as he gets what he wants.” The kelpie had to be brought down, but I was afraid Harlow would take the fall. “Does he have a conscience at all?”

“That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier,” she said softly. “He gave his grief to the pack.”