Patricia Briggs Mercy Thompson: Hopcross Jilly

by Patricia Briggs

  Adam nodded. “I’d say pleasure to meet you, but I don’t like lying. What is it I’m supposed to have done?”

  The younger cop strolled back from his car, shaking his head.

  Kelly looked at the cop, then sighed. “What a cluster. I take it you haven’t been killing young women and leaving their half-eaten bodies in the desert?”

  Adam was ticked. I could tell it even if he was looking like a reasonably calm businessman. Adam’s temper was the reason he wasn’t one of Bran’s werewolf poster boys. When angered, he often gave in to impulses he wouldn’t otherwise have given in to.

  “Sorry to disappoint you,” Adam told Kelly in silky tones. “But I prefer rabbits. Humans taste like pork.” And then he smiled. Kelly took an involuntary step backward.

  Tony gave Adam a sharp look. “Let’s not make things worse, if we can help it, gentlemen.” He pulled out his cell phone and, looking at the card, dialed the number. It rang until the voice mail picked up. Tony didn’t leave a message.

  “Okay,” Tony said. “I’d like to get a statement from you about this warrant. If we’ve got someone falsifying warrants, we need to know about it. We can do that here, or down at the station.”

  I left Tony and the police to deal with the fallout, and went back into my office, letting the door shut behind me. I left Sam outside, too. If he hadn’t killed anyone yet this morning, he wasn’t going to.

  I had other matters to deal with.

  Gabriel had his youngest sister on his hip, her wet face on his shoulder. The other girls were sitting on the chairs I had for customers, and his mother had her back to me.

  She was the only one talking—in Spanish, so I had no idea what she was saying. Gabriel gave me a desperate look, and she turned. Sylvia Sandoval’s eyes were glittering with rage as hot as any I’d ever seen on a werewolf.

  “You,” she said, her accent thick. “I do not like the company you keep, Mercedes Thompson.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “We are going home now. And my family will have nothing further to do with you. Because of you, because of your werewolf, my daughter will have nightmares of a man pointing a gun at her. She could have been shot—any of my children could have been shot. I will have a tow truck come to pick up my car.”

  “No need,” I told her. “Zee has it almost up and running.” I assumed. No telling how much he’d done with his magic.

  “It is running,” Zee said. I hadn’t realized he’d come into the office, but he must have come in through the garage. He stood by the inner door, looking grim.

  “You will tell me how much I owe you over and above my son’s last check.”

  Gabriel made a protesting sound.

  She glanced at him, and he bit back whatever he intended to say, his eyes suspiciously bright.

  “My son thinks that because he is almost a man, he can make his own decisions. As long as he lives in my house, that is not true.”

  I was pretty sure that Gabriel could go off and do all right on his own—but that without his extra income, Sylvia would be hard-pressed to feed their family. Gabriel knew it, too.

  “Gabriel,” I told him, “I have to let you go. Your mother is right. My office isn’t a safe place to work. If your mother were not involved, you still wouldn’t have a job here anymore. I’ll mail you your last check. When you are looking for work, you can tell them to call me for a recommendation.”

  “Mercy,” he said, his face white and stark.

  “I couldn’t have lived with myself if something had happened to you or one of your sisters today,” I told him.

  “Oh, poor Mercy,” said Sylvia with false sympathy, her English getting worse. “Poor Mercy, her life it is too dangerous, and she would feel bad if my son were hurt.” She pointed her finger at me. “It is not just this. If it were only the gunman, then I would say—no, Gabriel you cannot work here anymore—but we are friends, still. But you lied to me. I say, What is this great big dog? You tell me, Perhaps some mixed breed. You made this decision, to let my daughter play with a werewolf. You did not tell me what he was. You made such a choice about my children’s welfare. Do not call at my house. Do not talk to my children on the street, or I will call the police.”

  “Mamá,” said Gabriel. “You’re over the top.”

  “No,” I told him wearily. “She’s right.” I’d known that I made the wrong choice the moment I heard Maia’s first cry. It hadn’t been Sam—but it might have been. That I’d been sure it was him right up until the moment I saw Kelly Heart with his gun told me that I’d made the wrong choice. I’d endangered Sylvia’s children.

  “Zee, would you back her car out of the garage, please?” He bowed his head and turned on his heel. I couldn’t tell if he was angry with me, too, or not. Of course, I was pretty sure he had no idea how much of a risk I’d taken. He wasn’t a wolf, hadn’t lived with the wolves; he wouldn’t know what Sam was.

  “Mercy,” said Gabriel, helplessly.

  “Go,” I told him. I’d have hugged him, but I thought we’d both cry. I could deal, but Gabriel was seventeen and the man of his family. “Vaya con Dios.” See, I do know a little Spanish.

  “And you also,” he said formally.

  And his sister started wailing again. “I want my puppy,” she cried.

  “Go,” said his mother.

  They left, the girls subdued, following Gabriel, with Sylvia bringing up the rear.

  5

  WITH SAM AT HIS HEEL, ADAM CAME INTO THE OFFICE while Sylvia and her family were still in the garage, waiting for Zee to get the Buick out. From Adam’s face I could tell he’d heard every word Sylvia and I had said. He put a hand on my shoulder and kissed my forehead.

  “Don’t be nice to me,” I told him. “I screwed up.”

  “Not your fault that overeager boy out there came in with guns blazing,” Adam said. “Someone sold him a whole pack of lies. Tony and he are trying to get in touch with his producer, but she’s not answering her phone. I suppose she wanted a big fight on TV. Man versus werewolf.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe he wasn’t my fault. But if it hadn’t been Kelly Heart, it could just as easily have been a vampire or a fae. Neither of which would hesitate to kill Gabriel or one of the girls if they thought they were in the way.”

  The hand on my shoulder slipped down and pulled me into a hug. I leaned into it, knowing I was receiving it under false pretenses—I could tell from the way he was acting that he hadn’t realized the full extent of my transgressions yet. Doubtless he’d been too busy to take a good look at Sam—and Sam, miraculously, hadn’t done anything to attract anyone’s attention. Yet. The day was still young.

  I breathed in Adam’s scent and took comfort I wasn’t entitled to. Sylvia was right. I was feeling far too sorry for myself, and I wasn’t entitled to that either.

  I pulled away and hopped up to sit on the counter next to the gun before I enlightened him—I couldn’t bear it if he were touching me when he decided he didn’t want anything more to do with me. As Sylvia just had.

  The sticky black stuff left from where someone in the Dark Ages had taped a piece of paper to the edge of the counter was gone, and I ran my finger over the newly clean spot. She’d left the cookies.

  “Mercy?”

  I’d betrayed him. For all the good reasons in the world, but I was his mate—and I’d chosen Samuel. I suppose I could have hoped he wouldn’t notice, but that seemed wrong in light of this morning. What if Heart hadn’t come here first? What if he’d run into Adam and shot him? What if he’d gone to Adam’s work or had a photo of him . . . Come to think of it, wasn’t that odd? Adam was out to the public, and his face photographed very well.

  Someone hadn’t wanted Heart to know who Adam was.

  “Mercy?”

  “Sorry,” I told him. “I’m trying to distract myself. You need to look at Samuel.” I picked at a mucky spot on my overalls because I couldn’t meet his eyes.

  If Bran wanted Samuel dead, he’d h
ave to go through me to do it, which he could. But I was through lying to Adam, even if only by omission, merely to keep Bran from finding out.

  Sam had trotted past both of us and gone to stand in the doorway, looking through the garage. I could hear Maia still crying for her puppy.

  “Puppy?” said Adam, sounding amused. Sam turned and looked at him—and Adam froze.

  I was well on my way to passing stupid for idiotic. It was only when Adam stilled that I had the sudden thought that it might not have been the best idea to show the Columbia Pack Alpha that he had a problem with Sam in the narrow confines of my office.

  It was Sam who growled first. Temper flared in Adam’s face. Sam was more dominant, but he wasn’t Alpha—and Adam was not going to back down in his territory without violence.

  I hopped off the counter in between them.

  “Settle down, Sam,” I snapped, before I remembered what a bad idea that was.

  I kept forgetting—not that Samuel was in trouble; I had no trouble remembering that—but that his wolf was not Samuel. Just because he hadn’t turned into the ravening beast that the only werewolves I’d seen who lost control to their wolf became, did not mean he was safe. My head knew that—but I kept acting as if he were just Samuel. Because he acted just like Samuel would have. Mostly.

  Sam sneezed and turned his back to us—and I started breathing again.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologized to both of them. “That was a dumb way of doing things.”

  I didn’t want to look at Adam. I didn’t want to see if he was angry or hurt or whatever. I’d had just about enough already that day.

  And that was a coward’s way out.

  So I turned and looked up at him, keeping my gaze on his chin—where I could see his reaction without challenging him by meeting his eyes.

  “You are so screwed,” he said thoughtfully.

  “I’m sorry I let you think . . .”

  “What?” he asked. “That you needed some time away from the pack, from me? When you really wanted to keep any of us from seeing Samuel?”

  He sounded reasonable, but I could see the white line along his jaw where he was gritting his teeth and the tension in his neck.

  “Yes,” I told him.

  Ben boiled into the room—saw our little tableau, and came to an abrupt halt. Adam glanced over his shoulder at him, and Ben flinched and bowed his head.

  “I didn’t catch it,” he said. “Her. The fae thing. But she was armed, and she dropped her weapon when she bolted.” He’d been carrying a jacket, and from under it he pulled a rifle that had very little metal on it. If it had been a little prettier, it might have looked like a toy because it was mostly made of plastic.

  “Kel-Tec rifle,” said Adam, visibly dragging himself into a businesslike manner. “Built to fire pistol cartridges out of pistol magazines.”

  Ben handed it over, and Adam pulled the magazine. Jerking his hand back with a hiss, he dropped it on my counter. “Nine millimeter,” he said. “Silver ammunition.” He looked at me. “I’m pretty sure that was a nine millimeter or a thirty-eight you were holding on Heart.”

  The topic of my transgression was not dropped, just set aside for business. I wished we could just get it over with.

  “Nine millimeter,” I agreed. “She could have shot someone, and they’d have blamed it on the bounty hunter. How likely is it that someone would have done a ballistics test and noticed one of the bullets didn’t come from the same gun?”

  “Someone was supposed to die,” said Ben. “That’s what I think.”

  “Agreed,” said Zee from the garage doorway. Samuel moved—a little stiff-legged, but he moved—so Zee could come into the office.

  “Ballistics wouldn’t have mattered,” said Zee. “Making one bullet match another is cake if the fae is dealing with silver. Even a few with little magic could handle it. Iron is impossible for most fae to work, lead isn’t much better, but silver . . . Silver accepts magic easily and keeps it.”

  My walking stick had silver on it.

  Zee continued speaking. “The bullet would take on the appearance of the others. A little more glamour, and the extra bullet disappears. And whoever that was, they weren’t minor fae—they had a fair touch of The Hunt—The Wild Hunt.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” But our fae assassin had been out to kill werewolves. To kill Adam. I needed to find out as much as I could.

  “In this case, mindless violence,” Zee told me. “The kind that leaves a man looking at the bodies and wondering why he decided to pull the trigger when he only intended to make a point. If I hadn’t been here to counter it . . .” He shrugged and looked at Adam. “Someone wanted you dead with the blame easily placed, so no one would look too closely.”

  Adam put the gun down on the counter next to the magazine, grabbed Ben’s coat, and tossed it on top of them. “I haven’t ticked off the fae recently. Have I?”

  Zee shook his head. “If anything, it goes the other way. It must be an individual.” He frowned, and said reluctantly, “Someone could have hired her, I suppose.”

  Ben said, “I’ve never seen a fae who used modern weaponry.” He turned to Adam. “I know she was fae and all—but could she be one of the trophy hunters?”

  “Trophy hunters?” Zee asked before I could.

  “David has captured two people and killed a third hunting him this year,” Adam said. “One was a big-game hunter; one turned out to be a serial killer who’d been preying upon marines from the local base and decided to take on bigger prey. And one was a bounty hunter—though there’s no bounty on David’s head any more than there is on mine. It looked like he just wanted to try his hand at hunting a werewolf.”

  “David Christiansen?” I asked. Christiansen was a mercenary whose small troop specialized in rescuing hostages—I’d met him once before he’d become famous. When he retrieved some kids from a terrorist camp in South America, a photographer got a series of really terrific shots that made Christiansen look heroic and sweet. The photos made national news—and the Marrok chose David to be the first werewolf to admit what he was to the public—and thus the most famous werewolf around.

  “Yes,” Adam said.

  “ ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ ” I murmured. See? An education wasn’t wasted on me, no matter what my mother says.

  “This doesn’t feel like that, though,” said Adam. “This wasn’t personal. Heart wasn’t hunting me for thrills, or at least not only for thrills. Someone set him up.”

  “And not very well either,” I added. “He didn’t know who you were—and all his producer would have had to do was a simple Internet search for a photo. You’d think someone sending him out after you would make sure he knew who to shoot if you were the target.”

  Adam tapped his foot. “This feels like a professional job. A lot of planning, a lot of work to kill someone in the most public way possible. And, most telling, when it didn’t work according to plan—she withdrew.”

  “Not ‘someone,’ ” I said. “You. It makes sense. She didn’t want Heart killing you; she wanted to do it herself.”

  “No.” It was Ben. “I was wrong to suggest a trophy hunter.

  This didn’t have that feel. It wasn’t personal. A woman out for blood—assuming fae females are like the rest of the cu—”

  “There’s a lady present,” growled Adam. “Watch your language.”

  Ben grinned at me. “Fine. Assuming fae ladies are like other ladies, this one would have been excited, triumphant over the kill. And enraged when I came along and ruined her fun. She didn’t even hesitate when she spotted me. Dropped the gun and ran—no fuss, no bother.”

  “Well trained,” said Adam. “Or just a cool thinker.” He looked at me. “And while I admit it looks as though I was the target, it could as easily have been Zee or you. Heart had silver bullets—so the assassin used them, too. It doesn’t mean she was hunting werewolves, not when we know Heart was.”

  Tony opened the front door. “You okay, Mer
cy?”

  “Fine,” I lied, but I didn’t expect anyone here to believe me anyway.

  Tony frowned at me, then turned his attention to Adam. “You have any enemies we should know about? Sounds like Heart’s producer wanted some more publicity—but we won’t know for certain until we run her down. He had the right paperwork, other than the small fact that it isn’t legitimate. There was a series of victim photos, too. We’ll look into how she got them when we talk to her.”

  “Internet,” said Ben. “There’s a website devoted to pictures of dead bodies.”

  We all looked at him, and he smirked. “Hey. Don’t look at me—it’s the job.” He saw Tony’s blank face and continued. “Information technologies, IT—you know, computers. At work, when we get bored, we issue challenges—like the person who can come up with the worst website gets taken out to lunch. I got the free lunch—the dead-bodies guy was the runner-up. When I chatted up the bounty hunter’s people, they showed me the photos of the bodies in the file. The dead-bodies website has a section devoted to animal kills. I recognized one of the photos from that.”

  “You are a sick, sick man,” I told him.

  “Thank you,” Ben replied, looking modest.

  “Someone’s after you,” Tony told Adam.

  “See,” I said. “Tony thinks you’re the target, too.”

  Adam shrugged. “I’ll be careful.”

  Werewolves are tough, and Adam tougher than most—but I’d seen a lot of them die.

  “Yeah, well, you keep me on speed dial and don’t kill anyone if you can help it.” Tony looked at me again. “Hey, Mercy. Did you talk to Sylvia? She looked pretty upset when she left. Are they all right?” His heart was in his eyes. He was interested in her and had approached her once. She’d told him she didn’t date people she worked with—and that had been that, as far as she was concerned.

  “She wasn’t happy about Heart pointing a gun at Maia,” I told him. “But I think she was madder at me than Heart. He didn’t bring in a werewolf for her kids to play with.”

  His face went police-officer blank. “What?”