Under the Gun

by Hannah Jayne

  Another cocked eyebrow, another hint of that wry smile. “I disagree. Actually, my sister Xian disagrees.” She leaned over and plucked the bullet from my hand. “And I don’t shoot just to shoot.”

  “So you saw—you saw the perpetrator?”

  Feng didn’t answer, didn’t even look at me. She dropped the bullet on the desk and spun it with a finger. I watched the glistening silver blur as it spun.

  “So, you were at the crime scene . . . because Xian sensed something?” Xian was the tracker, and Feng was the shooter. That much was pretty clear.

  Feng looked at me as if alarmed. “How did you know that?”

  I felt my mouth drop open, felt the words sticking in my throat. “Uh . . . uh . . . I just assumed.”

  Her eyes flashed as if she was considering my answer. “A werewolf was responsible for those deaths.”

  I swallowed hard. “You think?”

  “I know. Xian sensed a new wolf in town and twenty-four hours later, two people are torn apart. It’s not rocket science, Pippi Longstocking.”

  I bristled.

  Feng sighed and crossed her arms. “Why exactly did you come here?”

  “I know you’re hunting werewolves. I know you know there is a new wolf in the city.”

  Feng’s face remained hard, but I could see her façade crack, just a tiny bit. “And?”

  My breath felt short and shallow, and I could feel the damp heat on my palms. “And I need a favor. I need you to call off the hunt.”

  Feng’s lips cracked into an amused smile and she waved her hand around her. “You know what we do here, right?”

  I slowly snaked my arms in front of me, crossing them at my chest while I kept my eyes firm on Feng’s. “I know exactly what it is you do here, Feng. You’re werewolf hunters. That’s not in question. Now I’m asking you for a favor. I need you to lay off this particular wolf, this particular hunt.”

  “Why?” She looked me up and down, her expression making it obvious that she wasn’t all that impressed by what she was seeing. “Does Pippi Werewolf Hunter wanna take a shot?”

  I cocked my head, a lock of my red hair tumbling over my shoulder as if on cue. “I’m not screwing with you, Feng. You need to stop hunting this wolf. He’s not one of them.”

  Feng’s brows went up. “He’s not a wolf?”

  “He is a wolf. . . .”

  She shrugged. “Then he’s one of them.”

  “You don’t understand. He’s not—he’s not bad. He’s one of the good guys.”

  Feng picked up one of her own handmade silver bullets and spun it in her hand. “I think those two women on the trail would beg to differ.”

  I sucked in a breath and clenched my teeth. “He had nothing to do with them.”

  “Cuz he’s one of the good guys, huh? So, what? Werewolf vegetarian? Is that like a vampire with a soul or with a movie deal?”

  “He didn’t do it,” I said again.

  “Then who did?”

  “It could have been anyone. Serial killer. Psycho. Jealous boyfriend, angry Justin Bieber fan, Satanic ritual—”

  Feng’s voice was low, steady, and her eyes were fixed hard on mine. “Did you see those women, Pippi?”

  I opened my mouth to answer Feng, but she shook her head and held up a silencing hand. “Not women,” she said. “There wasn’t enough left of them for anyone to know that they were human, let alone women.”

  My saliva soured and I willed myself to think of something other than the desecrated bodies.

  “Their blood was muddy. There was more of it on the ground—mixed into the dirt, ground into the grass—than there was on the corpses. One of them—it looked like she may have been blond—was missing an eye.”

  My stomach bubbled and I felt myself step back as if trying to get away from Feng’s disturbing description.

  “It had been ripped clean out of her head. Her eye, half her cheek.”

  I bit down hard on my bottom lip, feeling the hot, metallic taste of my own blood filling my mouth.

  “Tell me how something human could do something like that.”

  I shook my head. “People do heinous things.” My voice was a bare, unconvinced whisper and the thought—so brief—flitted through my mind: Who am I trying to convince?

  “Sometimes people do. But people don’t have the kind of strength it took to pull this kind of torture off.”

  “But a gang—”

  Feng’s barking laugh echoed through the room. “Tell yourself whatever you want. I’ve seen firsthand what a werewolf will do.” She looked sad for a fleeting moment, her eyes going glassy and losing their focus on me.

  “But not all of them.”

  “I’m not about to take any chances finding out. They’re all capable of this kind of violence. It’s what a werewolf was bred for. Sooner or later, they’ll all come to this.”

  “No.” I shook my head, a sudden burst of strange confidence surging through me. “No, not this one. Maybe others but not this one. The werewolf you’re looking for has been like a father to me. His name is—”

  “His name is Pete Sampson. Six foot two inches tall. Turned in 1989 by Addison Brown of San Francisco, California.” Feng licked her lips. “Since deceased. Interested in learning anything else?” Feng flashed the paper toward me and I was able to catch a few snippets of the information printed there: home address, driver’s license and license plate numbers, car and make.

  I shuddered to think what else was contained on that paper.

  I wet my lips. “Can I see that?”

  Feng cocked her head but didn’t hand it over.

  I was astonished, but did my best to keep my focus. “If you know so much about him, then you know he’s not a threat.”

  Feng stood up and leaned across the table. “Look, Pippi, I don’t know if you noticed—and frankly, I don’t care whether or not you did—but we’re not in the business here of threat estimation. We do the threatening. So I don’t really care if your canine buddy there is a flesh-eating werewolf or a tutu-wearing lap dog when he’s changed. I have a contract. I have a wolf. I will finish both off.” She blinked. “And I don’t fail.”

  I felt my stomach churning, the bile rising in the back of my throat, but I worked hard to keep my stance. “What do you mean, a contract?”

  Feng looked at me on a sigh, doing nothing to hide her obvious annoyance. “We hunt dogs. All of them. And sometimes, someone hires us to put a certain pup on the top of our list.”

  “Someone hired you to get Sampson? Who? Who would do that?”

  Feng stared at me for one second longer than was comfortable before sitting back in her chair and pulling a ledger and a pencil toward her. “We’re done here,” she said without looking up. “Go away. And I’m sorry in advance for the loss of your friend.”

  I opened my mouth to respond to Feng, but my head was in such a fog that all I could do was close my mouth dumbly, then let myself out of her office. I stumbled into the alley where the heat had gone oppressive and sticky in the short time I had been inside. It pressed against my chest and stole my breath, and the stench of sun-rotted vegetables was everywhere; I felt it on my skin, in my hair.

  When I walked into the delicatessen, each of the anime-clad clientele whipped their heads to look at me. Alex’s eyes were narrowed and angry at first, but upon seeing mine, they went wide and concerned.

  “I’ve got to go,” I heard him say, his voice sounding a million miles away. “This has been . . . fun.”

  I watched Xian get up and grasp his hand. She batted her eyelashes and kicked the stacked toes of her enormous Mary Jane shoes against the scuffed linoleum. “Can’t you stay just a little bit longer?” she asked, cherry red bottom lip pushed out.

  “We have to go now.” My voice cut out through the din of anime conversation, broke over the whining hum of an overworked air conditioner.

  Alex shrugged his shoulders and broke away from Xian, following me out the door.

  “You couldn’t have
done that, like, twenty minutes ago?”

  I pressed my index fingers against my temples and rubbed tiny circles.

  “I was just kidding, Lawson. It wasn’t that bad. If I go LARP with them this weekend, Xian said I could be the Pirate Prince of Pettigrew. Whoever that is.” He pressed his lips together in a sweet smile, then cocked his head, his blue eyes clouding.

  I was blinking furiously.

  “Lawson?”

  I wasn’t going to cry. I hated crying.

  It was one of the things I was known best for.

  “I take it Feng wasn’t amenable to giving you any intel?”

  I sniffled. “No. Not at all.”

  Alex didn’t look totally shocked and that annoyed me.

  I crossed my arms in front of my chest and Alex fell in step beside me. “You didn’t think she would?”

  “First if all, it’s not that I don’t trust your powers of investigation. But Lawson, they’re werewolf hunters. Generations old or whatever. Did you really think she was just going to let you in on her plan? No offense, but you and your job? Kind of diametrically opposed to her and her job. She probably doesn’t think you’re on her side with this one.”

  “On her side?” I spat. “I’ll never be on her side.”

  “Weren’t we trying to make sure that if a wolf was the perpetrator of the homicides, he gets taken care of?” Alex asked. He paused for a beat, then licked his bottom lip and shifted his weight. “We’re on the same side, right?” He had the gall to look apologetic and that burned an angry hole in my gut. I seethed silently until Alex sighed.

  “Did she at least let you know if she was working that day at Sutro? Is she actually tracking a werewolf ?”

  I gritted my teeth and fisted my hands. “Not anymore,” I said, shooting down the sidewalk.

  I situated myself in the car while Alex got himself inside and fiddled with the radio until he found a Giants game. He cheered when the fans cheered and then looked at me quizzically.

  “Really? You take me to my first game and you don’t even care that we’re creaming the Rockies?”

  “Huh? Oh.” I shook my head. “Is there any new information?”

  Alex’s eyebrows raised and pinched together. “It’s a live game, Lawson.”

  I blew out a larger than necessary huff and clicked the radio off. “Not the game. The crime scene. Anything new?”

  Alex flicked on his blinker and hung a sharp right, his black SUV veering toward the police department. “We can check. Can I ask you something, though?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why are you so interested in this case?”

  I put on my super-cool-Sophie face. “What are you talking about? I care about all of our cases.”

  Alex didn’t hide his amusement, but he didn’t look at me either. “Our cases?”

  I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Your cases. Cases that affect the city in which I live. Cases that involve rabid maniacs tearing unsuspecting women apart limb from limb. But they are your cases. Happy now?”

  I felt the car lurch forward as Alex leaned on the gas. “It was just a question.”

  I was still unnerved and uncomfortable by the time I got into my car. Feng was going after Sampson and she wouldn’t let up. If I could at least find out who sponsored the contract, maybe I could buy Sampson some time, I thought.

  But time for what?

  I wanted to help Sampson. I didn’t want him to run anymore. But with Feng and Xian and the entire Anime Army, did he even have a chance? Did we?

  I clicked on my earpiece and dialed Sampson’s cell phone, listening to ring after ring until it went to voice mail. I groaned and clicked off the phone, then cranked up the radio, hoping the latest pop star du jour would take my mind off the images seared into my brain, the images that Feng recalled so readily.

  My heart was doing a spastic I’ve ruined everything pump by the time I pulled into my underground parking space, pop princess cooing about young love and butterflies notwithstanding. My eyes were wet and I took the stairs two at a time, huffing by the time I got to the third-floor landing, my heart threatening to bulge through my eyes, my blouse sticking to my sweat-damp bra.

  I rapped on Will’s door, crossed myself, swore that I would lay off the pinwheels and lay on the treadmill, and tried to chase away the I’m-responsible-for-almost-killing-everyone-I-know vibe. By the time I was able to talk myself off the proverbial ledge and out of my pity party hat, I realized that I was standing in front of Will’s door, still knocking, door still tightly closed.

  I dropped my arm, flexing my now-bruised knuckles and pressed my ear to the cool wood, holding my breath, listening.

  Nothing.

  “Sampson?” I hissed against the door hinge, hoping my throaty whisper would sail through the miniscule crack and directly to Sampson’s canine ears. “Sampson, are you in there?”

  I glanced at my watch and told myself that Sampson was obviously just out grabbing a before-the-moon-rose bite, but something—a tiny, niggling bit of doubt—inched at my periphery.

  “No,” I scolded myself. “He’s innocent.”

  If I were a true private eye—one of those gun toting, leather wearing rebel chicks—I would have spun on my heel and jumped on to my Harley, then beaten some answers out of a low-life in a bar somewhere to locate Sampson and our unsub.

  But I wasn’t that girl.

  I might have better aim now, but my wardrobe was full of synthetic materials and my head was a cavernous hollow in the “prove Sampson innocent” department. And motorcycle rides made my privates hurt.

  Instead, I gave a dejected sigh, turned on my heel, and sunk my key into my own lock. I expected the usually loose-hinged door to pop open, but it stuck. I pushed it and it moved—slowly. I felt the small stirrings of panic starting in my limbs.

  “Nina?” I called, imagining the non-look in her vacant eyes as her dead—dead for real this time—body sat slumped against our front door. “Nina!”

  My heart clanged like a fire bell when the door was yanked open and Nina blinked at me, her face set in what I had come to know as her “what the hell is it now?” look.

  “What?”

  I fell into her, wrapping my arms around her, relishing the chill I felt as her skin touched mine. She shook me off her.

  “I thought you were dead.”

  She cocked her head, a waist-length lock of glossy black hair tumbling over her collarbone. “That’s sweet.”

  “I thought your body was crushed against the door, pinning it shut.” I peered around the door. “What was crushed against the door, pinning it shut?”

  Nina pulled me in by my wrist, her eyes lighting up with her grin. “Tah dah!” Her spokes-model arms were gesturing toward a tower of cardboard boxes.

  I pointed. “What’s that?”

  Nina’s grin didn’t falter. “It’s a hibachi. And a barbecue set. And a Kiss the Cook apron. We should have more barbecues.”

  “I don’t cook and you don’t eat. And aren’t you afraid of fire?”

  She shrugged, noncommittal. Her eyes focused on the stack and she plucked a smaller box from the tower. She gave it a curious sniff, then a shake, and finally ripped off a string of packing tape.

  “Yes!” she hissed, dropping the box. “I’ve been waiting for this forever!” Nina slid off three sheets of bubble wrap and pointed some bizarre-looking electronic gun at me.

  I ducked.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a label maker, silly.” She had the thing on now and was furiously tapping the tiny keyboard. She grinned when a glossy strip of white tape pooped out the muzzle end, the name SOPHIE LAWSON in heavy black ink. She slapped me with the tape.

  “Thank you. I always wondered why we never wore name tags at home.”

  Nina continued her tapping on the keyboard. “This is going to make everything so handy. I figured as long as I’m stuck here at home, the least I can do is get organized. Getting organized has been my New Year’s res
olution every year since 1937.”

  “What happened in 1937?”

  She rolled her eyes and slapped a CHACHA name tag on the dog. “Let’s just say I know exactly where Amelia Earhart landed. She was such a troublemaker,” she grunted.

  “And on that incredibly awkward note, what is all this about?” I gestured toward the boxes.

  “I told you, I’m getting organized.”

  I raised my eyebrows and Nina frowned, her lower lip popping out. “It’s either this or sit in this apartment, staring at the walls and going bat-shit crazy. And don’t tell me I can go out at night. You know what goes on at night? Nothing. Nothing! A woman can only slink through Poe’s so many times before all the stupid brooding vamp-men start looking the same.”

  “And a rollicking good day to you, too,” Vlad said, pushing through the front door with a laundry basket on his hip. He shimmied through the two-foot gap Nina’s boxes allowed and I gaped at his threadbare T-shirt, at the baggy cargo shorts that exposed his marble-white legs.

  Then I clapped a hand over my mouth and tried not to laugh.

  “I didn’t know the Vampire Empowerment Movement allowed shorts. Aren’t they distinctly non-vampire?”

  Vlad glared. “Bite me.” He flopped down on the couch with his laundry basket and began plucking out socks. I didn’t know what was more shocking: Vlad without his stupid ascot or Vlad doing laundry.

  “Ooh!” Nina clapped her small hands and snatched up the label maker once again. “I’m going to go label my clothes by decade!”

  She disappeared into her bedroom-slash-clothing showroom and I flopped onto the couch, upsetting Vlad’s laundry basket and blowing out a long sigh.

  He folded a pair of Christmas-print boxer shorts and cut his eyes to me. “Everything all right?”

  “No,” I moaned.

  “Do you burst into flames when you go outside?”

  “No.” I picked at an errant piece of chocolate on my pants. “It’s just that—it’s just that I want to help Sampson, but I feel like such a failure. I tried to get information today and you know what I got?”

  Vlad raised his brows while he rolled his socks.

  “Squat. I got squat. I feel like I can’t do anything right. My crime-fighting career is over before it started.” I was trying to make light of the situation, but what I really want to say weighed in my gut like a fat black stone. What really concerned me is that I had begged Sampson to stay and in doing so, I’d practically signed his death warrant.