He gave me a half smile because we both knew that it was a lot more likely that we’d have to kill the man. I should have felt worse about it, but I’d been raised by werewolves, and the bastard had burned down a building full of innocent bystanders—four people hadn’t gotten out of the apartment building before it collapsed.
“I talked to Da last night about your trouble with Beauclaire and Coyote,” Tad said unexpectedly. “The mirror still isn’t a good idea, but the old fae has a few tricks up his sleeve that none of the Gray Lords know about yet. I told him that you haven’t had much luck finding Coyote.”
“Did he have any advice?” I asked. It was unlikely that Zee would know how to contact Coyote, but I was ready for any help I could get. Today was Friday. I had two days left.
“He did,” Tad told me. “He said that if you hadn’t managed anything better by tonight, I was to tell you that you’ve been overlooking any number of avenues open to you in a way that is very un-Mercy-like.” He smiled. “His words.”
“What am I overlooking?” I’d called in all my markers. I’d even called Charles this morning, who had unhelpfully suggested I try a vision quest. Vision quests require fasting, which I could manage, but also a centered focus that I was never going to achieve with Christy in my home. He’d promised to call some shaman priests he knew, but warned me that, as I already knew, Coyote was elusive and mischievous. Searching and calling for Coyote was likely to result in exactly the opposite outcome.
Charles had been my last hope.
“You’ve been concentrating on Coyote when you should have been also looking at Beauclaire.” Tad held up a finger. “Without you, it is unlikely that Beauclaire will ever see the walking stick again—and he knows it.” Two fingers up. “Two: That means that you have a bargaining chip, and it also means that Beauclaire loses if something happens to you. Da also said you’ve been making Beauclaire the villain when he is more comfortably the hero. Beauclaire is honorable, as fae understand the word, and he has spent a human lifetime as a lawyer; he’ll understand compromise. If you can convince Beauclaire that you will sincerely return the walking stick to him when and if you see Coyote, he will probably grant you time to do so. Time, Da also asked me to remind you, is less precious to a Gray Lord like Beauclaire than it is to you.”
My jaw didn’t drop because I had it locked tight.
Tad grinned at me. “He said you’d probably figure it out on your own if you got desperate enough. Then I told him about Christy, and he gave me permission to talk to you tonight if you hadn’t worked it out already.”
I don’t know what expression was on my face, but Tad’s gentled. “Don’t feel too bad. Da knows Beauclaire, and it gives him an advantage. You’ll still have to bargain hard and fast—and be diplomatic. And, Da said, whatever you do, don’t mention his name, or all bets are off. Beauclaire knew that someone was going to have to take out Lugh. He was, apparently, girding up his loins to do just that when Da took care of it. That didn’t mean he didn’t swear vengeance.”
I shook off my chagrin and gave Tad a fist bump. “Thank you. I feel like a lead weight is off my back. I’ll keep looking for Coyote, but more time means that I might not be responsible for the Columbia rising up and out of its banks and wiping the Tri-Cities from the face of the earth.”
“Anytime,” he said. “My duties dispatched, I am off to home. Good luck with Christy and remind her that we work tomorrow, even though it is Saturday, so we’ll need something tasty to get us through the day. And you need to start eating, or your plan to pretend she doesn’t bother you will be revealed to anyone who looks at your ribs.”
I locked up after Tad and set Adam’s security system, Tad’s last words ringing in my ears. I started to get my purse out of the safe when I stopped and went back into the bathroom and peered into the mirror.
I looked just like me. Native American coloring, mostly Caucasian features inherited from my mother. Except, now that I knew to look at them, the shape of my eyes was like Gary Laughingdog’s. I tried to visualize Coyote’s face, but I didn’t know if I was imagining that his eyes were the same or not.
My hair was in the braids I usually wore to work in order to keep it out of the way so it didn’t get covered in grease when I pushed it out of my face. And Tad was right. My features were sharper.
There was no question that not eating the food Christy made was making me lose weight.
There was still a brake job I could do tonight. If I stretched it out, I’d miss dinner. That would give me an excuse to pick up some high-calorie fast food on the way home, food that didn’t taste or smell of Christy. I didn’t want Adam to notice I was losing weight because it would hurt him—my husband took care of the people around him. I didn’t want Christy to notice because she’d know she was getting to me.
I put my overalls back on, pulled on the sweat-inducing gloves, and hoisted the ’94 Passat up on the lift, so I could pull the back tires and take a look.
I was working on compressing the caliper and had just got the six-sided-dice (also known as a piston tool, but only at auto parts stores) to engage the caliper when my phone rang. I’d set my phone on a nearby counter, so I didn’t have to let go of anything to check the display.
Adam. Three days ago I’d have answered immediately, but the day before yesterday it had been Christy asking me to pick up a dozen apples and some butter. Real butter, no salt—make sure not to get the salted version because everyone eats too much salt.
Not a big deal at all. Stopping at the grocery store before I came home wasn’t a problem. Having Christy ask me to do it was a different matter.
Pack is all about hierarchy. I understood how it works even if, before marrying Adam, I had been on the outside looking in. Humans have hierarchy, too. What Christy had done was the equivalent of the new-hire office girl calling the CEO and asking him to bring coffee for the break room—and she’d done it in front of Adam and the four attending wolves. If they hadn’t known about it before, they would have known about it afterward. Pack hierarchy was one of those things I’d agreed to deal with when I married Adam, so I paid attention to make his life easier.
I couldn’t do much about Christy’s faux pas without looking like a jealous, arrogant bitch while Christy graciously apologized because she hadn’t realized what it was she had done—though she’d lived with the pack for years. So I’d filled her order, then brought two dozen Spudnut donuts for the pack.
Spudnuts is a Tri-Cities tradition; they make their donuts with potato flour instead of wheat. I might have lost hierarchy points, but Spudnut donuts bought me credit with the wolves who were at home. The wolves doubtless knew I’d done it to buy their favor—that didn’t mean it didn’t work. Even Christy couldn’t help but eat one.
Maybe I should bring them home every day, and that nicely rounded figure would just be rounded …
Dreams of petty revenge aside, she’d succeeded in making me paranoid to the point that Adam’s cell number on my phone’s display made me wary instead of happy. Four rings sounded before I gave in and answered. If it was Christy, I’d just say no to whatever she asked because I had to work late.
“This is Mercy,” I said neutrally, bracing myself.
“Aren’t you supposed to be getting home sometime soon?” It was Adam. I relaxed and felt my expression soften. “You’ve had the security system on for an hour, so I expected you home by now. But I see you are working still.”
I waved at the corner where the tiny camera was watching my every move. The cameras downloaded themselves onto Adam’s laptop as well as a backup at his office. The interior cameras ran all day long, the exterior cameras in the parking lot and around the outside of the building only turned on when I switched on the nighttime security.
“Hey, handsome. Just finishing up a brake job. Don’t wait dinner. I’ll grab something on the way home.”
“Tad’s with you?” he said smoothly. If he was watching his feeds, then he knew the answer, and that I’d broken m
y promise not to work alone and make myself a target to anyone looking to hurt Adam or the pack.
I cleared my throat. “Sorry, I got distracted. I’ll clean up and head home.”
I expected him to be unhappy with me again—as he’d been when Christy had tried to get me in trouble for going off alone. I should have thought about safety when I’d made my sudden decision to stay and work. I knew it wasn’t just me at risk, but the whole pack through me because I could be used as a hostage.
“If you need a night off,” he said, sounding sympathetic instead of angry, “you could go keep Kyle company. Warren is on guard duty over here tonight. Zack does fine as long as Warren is there because Warren isn’t exactly flaming. But he says he can tell from what Zack doesn’t say that when it’s only Kyle and Zack there, it’s pretty awkward.”
I read between the lines that Kyle was giving Zack a hard time without Warren there to make sure he behaved. Like a kid in a candy shop, Kyle really enjoyed making people squirm. It was part of what made him such a good lawyer.
“I have no intention of deserting you for the night,” I told him firmly. “Kyle and Zack will just have to manage—Kyle is good at that sort of social stuff when he wants to be. I’ll be home in a half hour.”
“Get food first,” he said. “You need to eat, and I can see why you might have trouble eating here. I’ll see you home in an hour or an hour and a half.”
“I love you,” I said with feeling.
“Of course you do,” he agreed with a nonchalance that made me grin as he disconnected.
I let the car down and put jack stands under the rear axle. The hoist had a very slow leak that didn’t matter when someone was there to raise it periodically, but overnight it would lower itself until the car was on the ground. I probably ought to get it fixed, but the garage was barely eking along in the black for once, and I was reluctant to dump it back in the red.
A blip on the monitor on the wall between the garage and the office attracted my attention as the outside security cameras switched from daylight-colored to nighttime black-and-white. The monitor sat on a shelf on top of a rectangular computer box big enough to look serious—though it and the monitor were mostly there so that anyone breaking in would think that was the whole of the security system and, after trashing the system, would quit worrying about the cameras.
No, I didn’t need a system that sophisticated to watch over my garage where I repaired cars with sticker prices usually a lot less than the security Adam had installed. But Adam worried, and it cost me less than nothing to let him update the system every few months.
I stripped out of my overalls in the bathroom for a second time that day. I paused by the mirror, sighed, and washed my face because, while the gloves worked fine for hands, they still transferred grease to my cheek and mouth.
I wished I could get rid of the smell of my job as easily as I scrubbed the black smudges off my face. Christy couldn’t smell it, but the werewolves all could. Christy wore some kind of subtle perfume that smelled good to werewolf noses … and mine, too. Apparently, Adam had found it for her while they were still married, and she still wore it—or at least she was wearing it while she was here.
I left the bathroom and reached out to hit the lights when, in the security monitor, I saw a nearly new Chevy Malibu pull into the parking lot in front of the office. I wouldn’t have been alarmed—people can be optimistic about finding mechanics for cars that just have to be ready for a trip at 5:00 A.M. tomorrow—except that there was a big dog in the backseat.
It wouldn’t hurt to err on the side of safety. I reached for my phone.
“Hello,” said Christy cheerily. “Adam’s phone.”
“Get Adam,” I said, watching the lights on the Chevy turn off as he parked the car. There was a bumper sticker advertising a rental car chain on the back of it.
“I’m afraid—”
“You should be,” I told her in a low voice. Hungry and tired from the long hours I’d put in, I was abruptly sick of her stupid games and ready to quit playing. “Get Adam. Now.”
“Don’t snap at me,” Christy said, all cheer gone. “You don’t get to order me around, Mercy. You haven’t earned the right.”
The man who opened the driver’s door didn’t look like someone to be afraid of; he was wearing expensive clothes and slick-soled shoes. But the dog he let out of the backseat more than made up for his owner’s civilized appearance.
The dog looked like the photos I’d seen of the presa Canario, but in my parking lot it seemed bigger and nastier, a male with a broad face and broader chest. Lucia had said that people trimmed their ears to make them look fiercer, but no one needed to make this dog scarier.
The dog was just a dog, though. No matter how big and fierce a dog was, after running around with werewolves, no dog scared me. So there was no reason, really, for me to be afraid of them, a man and his dog. But I was.
The image of the dead bodies on the edge of the hayfield in Finley insisted on making itself present, and I tried to shove it off to the side. The worst of the fear, I thought, was because I’d been raped here in my garage, and I no longer ever really felt safe here, security system or not.
Christy’s ex-boyfriend was no one to be underestimated, but he was human and I had a gun readily available. The chill of fear that slid down my spine was unimpressed by logic.
In my ear, Christy was nattering away about manners and me being jealous for no reason.
“Christy,” I interrupted her, and let menace color my voice because I refused to let her hear the fear, “if you don’t give Adam the phone right the hell now, so help me, I will put you out with the rest of the trash in the morning.”
From the speaker on my cell phone I could hear some shocked exclamations. Apparently, there were some other werewolves in the room when Christy answered, and they’d overheard me threaten her. I’d probably care about that later.
“I won’t stay where I’m not wanted,” she said tearfully. “Not even in the home that was mine before—” She squeaked, and her voice cut out, replaced by Adam’s.
“Mercy?” His voice was very calm, that “people are going to die” calm only he could do. As soon as he started to speak, silence fell behind him because I wasn’t the only one who knew that voice. “I see him on the camera. You stay right there, don’t make any noise, and hopefully he won’t be sure you are in there. I’m on my way. Sit tight, and don’t let him in. I’m going to hang up right now and call the police and Tad.”
Adam was fifteen minutes out—but Tad was only five. What could happen in five minutes?
7
I didn’t carry at work—with Tad there, there was no reason, and a gun just got in the way while I was squirming around in engine compartments and under cars. My carry gun, the 9mm, was locked in the safe with my purse. I wasn’t going into the office to open the safe because the office had big picture windows, and someone who had burned down a building that housed dozens of innocent people wouldn’t hesitate to break a few windows.
Paranoia meant I had a second gun tucked in a special lockbox attached to the underside of the counter nearest the office. My fingers pressed the code, and a half second later I had the cool and heavy Model 629 Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum in my hand. I wasn’t Dirty Harry, but I’d shot my foster father’s Model 29 since I was big enough to handle it. My foster father’s .44 was in the gun safe at home, but the only difference between it and the 629 was that the 629 was stainless steel. Both of them were too heavy for me to shoot for more than a few rounds, but I could hit a pretty tight pattern on a target at fifty feet with the gun as long as it was in the first twelve shots.
The gun was Adam’s, and he’d suggested I get another Sig Sauer 9mm like my preferred gun instead because it was lighter and, being an automatic, the 9mm was faster to reload. I’d told him it was a waste of money when he already had this one.
I had made the assumption that this guy was Christy’s stalker and not some poor lost traveler who stopped
to use the phone or something. We hadn’t managed to get any kind of photo of him, but how many guys travel in rental cars with a wicked-looking dog?
I looked at the monitor again and tried to evaluate him in the black-and-white screen. He appeared to be tallish, and his hair was light-colored. Without anything that eliminated him from the description Christy had given, I decided I was okay with making the assumption that he was the bad guy. If not, I could apologize to him later.
Why had he come here instead of going after Christy?
Maybe he had, and all the people we had guarding her had made him rethink his plan.
Maybe he thought he could take me to use as leverage to get to Christy. Or, if he was really crazy—and burning down a building was acting crazy in my book—he might be planning on killing me to get back at Adam for keeping Christy from him.
Maybe he just wanted to ask me if I’d seen Christy. My understanding of psycho stalkers was not infallible. It was also very possible that I was overreacting.
My chest hurt, and I felt the stupid light-headedness that told me I was flirting with a full-blown panic attack. Panic attacks were stupid and counterproductive, rendering me helpless to protect myself until they were over. Happily, I didn’t have them as often as I used to, but now was not the time.
I reminded myself firmly that I had prepared for another attempted assault. I had a bolt-hole for the coyote to hide in. At the back of the garage, on the top of the floor-to-ceiling shelves, there was an old wooden box—a fake box. The front and most of one side were all that was left. Those I had wood-glued and screwed to the shelf so it wouldn’t fall off if I bumped it. A narrow opening at the back of the side not against the wall meant I could squeeze into the box, but I wasn’t trapped because the box had no lid. All the way up near the roof of my fourteen-foot-high garage meant it didn’t need a top to keep me hidden, and I had about a foot between the top of the box and the ceiling.
So why wasn’t I doing the smart thing and hiding up there as a coyote? He might know who I was and where I worked, but it was extremely unlikely that he knew what I was.