Chapter 18: No More Lending

The Kestrel pack house had a red gate and a long gravel drive.

Three Blackfang trucks were parked across the drive with their lights on.

Bram sat on the porch steps in a borrowed coat.

He looked up when my truck pulled in, and something awful lit his face.

Hope.

"Morwen," he said. "You came."

"I came to watch," I said.

The Blackfang collector was a short, wide man with a ledger under his arm and four big wolves at his back.

He tipped his hat to Rowan, then to me.

"Ma'am," he said. "I am here for a debt of six years' standing."

"Eight hundred thousand in principal, plus interest. The signer is Bram Kestrel."

He turned the ledger around so I could read the page.

"This was paid," I said.

"Not in our books."

"I paid it myself, with my mother's cuff, through a Silverthorn pawn house."

"Show me a receipt."

Rowan took the folded page out of his coat again.

"The broker's ledger," he said. "Page three. The cuff money went out the same day to a Wexley agent, in the amount of the principal."

"The agent never passed it on to you, because the Wexleys had bought your note and wanted it kept open."

"Your debt was cleared the day it was called in. Somebody else pocketed it."

The collector read the page twice.

His mouth went flat.

"Wexley kept our money for six years," he said, mostly to himself.

"That's between you and them," Rowan said. "Not this house."

"Fair enough." The collector shut the ledger. "The original note is dead."

Bram sagged against the porch rail.

"Thank the Moon," he said.