Hunter's Trail (A Scarlett Bernard Novel) (26 page)

Jesse considered Scarlett’s explanation. It made sense. It would have been much easier for Anastasia to just shoot Will with a silver bullet, but even that might not necessarily kill him unless the circumstances were perfect. And then Ana would have had to face the rest of the pack for killing their alpha.

Instead, Ana had managed to arrange for someone else to do all her dirty work, without even paying them. It wasn’t a bad plan, except for the part where the Luparii aren’t anybody’s puppet. “Why go after Will, though?” he asked Scarlett. “Why not go after Eli?”

“For one thing, she couldn’t find him,” she pointed out. “But more importantly, everything that happens in a wolf pack is the alpha’s fault, good or bad. To Ana, part of Will’s job was to keep Eli and Caroline from attacking humans. He failed at that.”

“So she and Terrence found a bigger, badder asshole to go after Will,” Jesse said slowly, shaking his head a little in amazement. “If it’s true, I don’t think Terrence even knew the whole plan. I could see him calling the Luparii, but when I suggested he made the nova, he flipped out on me. I don’t think it was faked.”

“Ana used him,” Scarlett said simply. “I don’t know how much of it was always the plan, or how much of it was her taking advantage of a moment, but Lydia’s change was ripping her apart. It was destroying their relationship. Add that kind of stress to the regular tension and discomfort that the werewolves have to deal with every da
y . . .
” She shrugged helplessly, looking a little sad. “It’s kind of tragic. Ana and Terrence were both miserable, but they were too weak to get what they wanted. They found someone stronger to do it for them, but then they were too weak to survive the help.”

“And now we have to clean up their mess,” Jesse grumbled. “Okay. I think we’re right about what’s happening—”

“Jesse,” Scarlett broke in, fear in her voice. “If we’re right, then the Luparii scout knows who Will is. And tonight’s the full moon. There’s no guarantee that he’ll go after the nova when he could go after the pack.”

That chilled him. “Remember, if we can take away the bargest, the Luparii isn’t going after anybody, not today,” he said to Scarlett. She nodded resolutely, and he went on, “But how do we find the scout?”

“You’re asking
me
?” Scarlett asked, wide-eyed.

“Shh. I’m thinking aloud.”

“Oh.”

Jesse snapped his fingers. “Phone records.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket again and began scrolling numbers.

“Who are you calling?” Scarlett asked.

Listening to the phone ring, Jesse said quickly, “If Terrence called the Luparii in France, maybe he and the scout talked once the scout was here.”

“Unless they set up their meeting before the guy left France,” Scarlett pointed out.

“Shh. Be hopeful,” Jesse told her. She gave him a tiny smile, and motioned that she was going to the downstairs bathroom. He nodded and she hobbled away.

After five rings, Glory finally answered her phone. “Sherman.”

“Glory, it’s me. Has Bine identified the two bodies yet?” he asked. No point in tiptoeing around it.

“Well, hello to you too. Yes, they got the IDs in this morning. Terrence Whittaker and Drew Riddell. But you already knew that,” Glory said angrily.

Jesse blinked. “You know why I couldn’t tell her,” he said, and then winced at his own voice. He sounded just like Scarlett when she talked to him.

“Yeah, but you left Runa and me holding the bag. Bine really tore into us.”

“What’d you say?”

Glory sighed into the phone, a heavy static sound. “I don’t know; Runa made something up.”

“Good, good,” Jesse said distractedly. “Listen, I need to get Terrence Whittaker’s phone records. Just for the last week.”

There was a long, pregnant silence. “I can’t just drop everything to chase some hunch for you, Jesse,” Glory said. “I have my own work to do.”

Jesse pressed on. “I know, Glory, but it’s important. I need to know if he called a number in France, and any calls he made here in the city.”

There was a pause. “Is this coming from you or Dashiell?” she asked icily.

He swallowed. Dashiell was using Glory’s kids as leverage. Jesse would never do tha
t . . .
but at the same time, there was too much at stake to dick around with a distinction that didn’t really matter. He was working for Dashiell now, after all. “Both, I guess.”

“Then I’ll see what I can do,” Glory said shortly, and hung up the phone. Jesse stared at it, feeling about two inches tall. He already regretted lumping himself in with Dashiell. He hoped she wasn’t thinking that he was on Dashiell’s side now instead of hers.

With an acidic burn in his stomach, Jesse tried to ignore the thought that if she was, she might be right.

Chapter 40

While we waited for Jesse’s friend to call back, I sat back down on the couch, stretching both legs out on the carpet in front of me. After a few minutes of uncomfortable silence, Jesse said uneasily, “How are you doing over there?’

I had been half dozing, but I jerked awake at his voice. “I’m okay,” I said automatically.

Jesse came over and sat down next to me, our elbows touching. His legs were stretched out next to mine. “Listen, while we’re waitin
g . . .
I think maybe we should talk.” He turned his head to look at me, direct and frank. “About us.”

“Is this really the best time?” I said tentatively. Because I am a coward.

He gave me wry smile. “I don’t think you and I are going to get a best time.”

That was fair. When I didn’t say anything more, Jesse began, “Scarlett, listen.” I was expecting the “let’s just be friends” talk, considering the way things had been between us for the last couple of days. But to my surprise, he said firmly, “I want us to be together.”

My astonishment must have shown on my face because he added, “I know things have been weird lately. I agreed to take this position because you were hurt and you needed help. But we’ve been arguing a lot, and I know I haven’t been much use.”

“You
left
me,” I reminded him, the hurt like an itch in my chest. “You left me with two bodies to move by myself.”

He nodded. “And I’m sorry I left you after I promised to help. But this whole thin
g . . .
it’s just really made me see how toxic your life is right now.”

I blinked, taken aback.
“What?”

He leaned forward. “Hear me out, Scar,” he continued. “Everything you do—hiding bodies, erasing all the violence and bloodshed—it all has ripples. It affects people, and eventually that’s gonna catch up with you. I know Dashiell and those guys want to keep things quiet, and I don’t necessarily disagree. But it doesn’t have to be
you
.”

Blanching, I said quietly, “Someone has to do it. And I have a unique skill set. Because it’s me, there’s a lot less risk, less violence.”

Jesse waved a hand. “That doesn’t mean it’s not corrupting. I worry that every time you do this stuff, you’re giving up a piece of yourself. This isn’t good for your soul, Scarlett.”

I winced. “You might be right, Jesse,” I said, keeping my voice very calm, “but then again, it’s
my
soul. What makes you think you can tell me what to do with it?”

“Grow up, Scarlett,” he said, not unkindly. “You know this isn’t some misogynistic dominance thing. That’s not who I am, or who we are. I love you, and I don’t want to watch you giving up yourself.”

I shook my head. “I can’t just quit,” I said weakly. “Even if I wanted to, there are other factor
s . . .
”

“I know Dashiell is holding your brother over your head,” he interrupted. “To keep you in line.”

That surprised me. “How did yo
u . . .
”

Jesse rolled his eyes. “I’m a trained detective, remember?”

I smiled. “Right, sorry.”

“Anyway. I know you can’t just quit without Jack getting blowback from Dashiell. But maybe we could work something out with him, or get Jack out of town. Or we could just leave—you could make a deal with the Old World somewhere else; offer your null services in exchange for getting Dashiell to back down. You said that LA wasn’t very notable in the supernatural world. There have to be a lot bigger fish than Dashiell.”

I thought about that. I do make a little money from freelance jobs doing the kind of stuff Jesse was talking about—escorting vampires to daytime meetings, guiding werewolves through stressful occasions, that kind of thing. Certainly nothing that involved throwing murdered women into furnaces. But it had never occurred to me to try to start over with that stuff somewhere else. I felt dread sloshing in the bottom of my stomach. True, I had always kind of viewed my job as a temporary thing, something I’d do out of necessity for a few years and then get out. But when I did, it wouldn’t be to jump right back into bed with the supernatural. “I don’t want to work for the Old World somewhere else,” I said quietly. “I just want a normal life, like I used to have.”

Jesse snorted, which took me by surprise again. He was just full of surprises today. “No, you don’t.”

“There you go again,” I said irritably, “telling me about my feelings.”

“You
think
you want normalcy,” Jesse retorted. “But you’ve been special for too long. What you
want
is control over your life.” He spread out his hands. “I’m saying, let’s find a way to make that happen, together.”

I stared at him. Was he expecting an answer right this second?

Did I have one?

“You don’t have to answer right now,” Jesse said, grinning. He’d read my mind. “I know you have to sort some stuff out. But after we catch this guy, I
am
going to ask you again.”

His phone buzzed loudly, but he didn’t so much as look at it. Instead, he held my eyes, quirking one eyebrow up, waiting for my response. “Okay?” he said, still smiling devilishly.

“Okay, okay!” I answered hurriedly, smiling back despite myself. That face was impossible to resist. “Answer the phone!”

Jesse answered the phone without looking. “This is Cruz,” he said, eyes never leaving mine. “Yea
h . . .
oka
y . . .
sure.” He glanced around the room and crossed quickly to my abandoned pen and notepad, scribbling something in a margin. “Go ahea
d . . .
okay, got it. Thanks, Glo—” He stopped and held the phone away from his ear, peering at the screen. “She hung up,” he said to himself.

“What’d you find out?” I asked impatiently.

He grinned. “We got an address.”

Chapter 41

The Luparii scout, Jesse told me, was staying at a rental condo in Huntington Park, not far from Evergreen Cemetery. According to Jesse’s friend Glory, Terrence Whittaker hadn’t made many phone calls. Shortly after the run-in with Molly and me at Will’s house, however, he had called a handful of numbers in Europe. The last had an area code for Versailles, France, when he must have gotten in touch with the Luparii. After that conversation, all of Terrence’s subsequent calls were to one of three phone numbers. Since there were so few, and she figured Jesse would ask, Glory had tracked down addresses for all three numbers. One was Anastasia’s cell phone, one was Drew Riddell’s cell phone, and the last was a rental property in Huntington Park.

Now that the LAPD had the number it wouldn’t be long before they pursued the lead too, so Jesse spent a few minutes on the phone with someone named Bine, explaining that he was going to check out Terrence Whittaker’s cell phone info himself. The conversation went on for a while, and when he hung up Jesse was shaking his head a little. “She said I’ve got twenty-four hours before she puts someone else on it,” he told me. “I got the sense that she wants to kick me off the case, but whatever Dashiell did to make me a floater is apparently working.”

Next Jesse tried calling the property’s owner to find out who was renting the condo, but the guy didn’t answer his phone. We still had the address, though. I was ready to pretty much get my jacket and go kick in the guy’s door—well, okay, supervise Jesse as he kicked in the door—but Jesse pointed out that we needed, you know, a
plan
. He went upstairs to retrieve my laptop from my bedroom and sat down next to me on the couch. I entered my password, and he opened a browser and typed in the address for something called Google Maps.

“You’ve never heard of this?” Jesse said disbelievingly, fingers flying on my computer’s keyboard. “What do you even use this thing for?”

“Oh, you know. E-mail. Wikipedia. Looking up movie times.”

Jesse snorted and pulled up a satellite image of the address in question. The rental condo was one of four rectangular buildings clustered around a few green blotches. “Cooooool,” I breathed. “What’s with the giant spears of broccoli?”

“Those are trees, dummy,” Jesse said good-naturedly. Then he frowned. “They’re blocking the satellite from really seeing what the space looks like, but I’m guessing it’s a yard. Or a really big garden.”

I nodded. It made sense that the Luparii scout wanted more space and privacy, especially if the bargest was so big or terrifying that it actually couldn’t pass for a dog. It also kept both of them from being seen by a bunch of hotel employees who might gossip.

“You can’t really see all the entrances and exits, which is a problem,” Jesse observed. “We’ll be going in blind.”

“So what do we do?” I said, sitting back on the sofa.

Jesse looked disconcerted. “I have no idea,” he answered. “I’m not usually on the criminal end of this kind of thing. How does one go about dognapping?”

I thought about it for a moment. We could stake out the guy’s place and hope he’d go out for food or something so we could steal the dog. But if I had a magical creature that my family had perfected after centuries of trial and error, not to mention made using a human sacrifice, I probably wouldn’t let it out of my sight on the day of the full moon, not even for In-N-Out Burger.

Then I grinned. “Jesse,” I said sweetly, “would you be a lamb and run upstairs for my Taser?”

There were still a few more things to take care of. First we went by Jesse’s place so he could get his police uniform. Then we stopped at a pet supply store for an extra large muzzle, a leash and collar, and some dog food. I had no idea what bargests ate—it could be exclusively squirrel livers, for all we knew—but Noring
had
said the thing was at least part dog. We got the expensive canned stuff that promised to be the most meatlike.

I thought we were done by then, but Jesse insisted on stopping at Home Depot.

“Why Home Depot?” I asked dubiously.

Jesse gave me a mysterious smile. “You’ll see.” Then he said, “Hey, if I keep receipts, will Dashiell reimburse me?”

I waited in the car while he went into the store, mostly because Home Depot is the size of a football field and I wasn’t up for the exercise. When Jesse came out, he wasn’t carrying anything—but he was pulling a big utility wagon, the kind serious gardeners use to pull potted plants around. I could see a roll of duct tape rattling around the back. “Oh,” I said. “Well. Good thing we have the van.” I held up my hand for a high five.

Up until then, we had been pretty cheerful about the whole ridiculous plan, but for the last few miles the mood in the van grew subdued. I was havin
g . . .
well, not second thoughts, exactly, but certainly some new reservations, now that some of my initial excitement (and caffeine high) had waned. I didn’t know about Jesse, but I was painfully aware of how tenuous our plan was.

But then again, we were taking a gamble no matter which way we turned. And there was one thing I
was
sure of: if the bad guy has a weapon, you have to take it away. Even if we couldn’t use the bargest, at least keeping it away from the Luparii scout meant that he couldn’t go after Will’s people tonight.

“This is it,” Jesse said finally. We had arrived at the condo building, a three-story, white and pale blue affair with archways everywhere. Like,
everywhere
. I don’t know anything about architecture, but I do know when a building looks like someone drew wavy lines on it with crayon. Its ornateness wasn’t feminine, exactly, but it was too elegant for the neighborhood by half.

“It looks like it belongs on top of a cake,” Jesse observed, leaning over the steering wheel so he could stare at it better.

“It looks like it
is
the top of the cake,” I countered.

He drove past the building to the next block and pulled over to the curb. “Okay. I’m gonna change,” Jesse said. He wasn’t using his “official police business” voice, but he did sound like a cop: in control, serious, trustworthy. The effect was kind of ruined when he added, “No peeking while I’m naked.”

I snorted as he crawled into the back of the van, grabbing the hanger with his old uniform. “I’m a professional,” I said loftily. “Professionals do not
peek
.” He hadn’t wanted to drive around the city in LAPD garb, for some reason. I debated turning my head just a little to peek despite my words, but I figured that would be taken for flirting, and I wasn’t ready for that, exactly.

He ducked back between the two front seats. “Okay,” Jesse said, tension thickening his voice. “Are you ready?”

“Not really,” I admitted. “But let’s do it anyway.” I pulled on my old USC baseball cap. We’d loaded the dog supplies and Jesse’s street clothes into an old backpack, and I put that on as well.

To my surprise, he leaned just a little farther and planted a swift, gentle kiss on my lips, tweaking the brim of my hat as he pulled back. “Good luck,” he told me.

“U
h . . .
right. Yes. And you as well,” I sputtered, and opened the door.

I began walking back toward the condo. There was no security team or anything, and I didn’t spot any obvious cameras, although it was hard to really look and keep my head down at the same time. It would make sense for the Luparii scout to want to stay somewhere that valued privacy over ostentatious security, though.

The building was shaped like a long rectangle, split length-wise by a pretty open-air courtyard that ran the whole length of the building. There was a tasteful fountain burbling dead center in the courtyard, between a modest swimming pool on one side and several sets of café tables and chairs on the other. No one was using either area, and I breathed a sigh a relief—we wouldn’t have to try to do this with witnesses.

A narrow cobblestone path framed the courtyard and provided little walkways to each of the ten or twelve doors that framed the long sides of the rectangle. I started down the path, figuring number 144 was probably on the ground level. Each condo had picture windows on either side of an ornate, Spanish-style wood-and-iron door, but almost every single window had closed blinds. It was a shame—all that fancy landscaping for the courtyard, and nobody was willing to sacrifice their privacy to look at it.

The landscaping suited my purposes, though. There was a waist-high hedge that ran between the cobblestone pathways for each condo, underneath the windows. That would make it a lot easier to sneak up on the Luparii scout. I didn’t want to give him time to see me coming. If he got skittish and tried a spell, he might figure out what I was. And although he couldn’t hex me, he could still send the bargest to eat me. And I had no idea how the Taser would work against a magical dog-monster.

I spotted the iron placard for number 144 and kept right on going. The barking began when I was still a good twenty feet away, a low sound that seemed to come from a
very
deep chest. Damn. The thing really did have strong senses. A female voice shouted inside the building, a guttural blur of a word that had to be French, and the barking ceased abruptly. It was well trained, if nothing else. I saw the white blinds shift in one of the condo’s windows as fingers with red nails made a vertical hole between them. I made a special effort to look purposeful and confident, feeling the comforting bump of the Taser in my pocket. I never so much as glanced at the window for 144, and after a few seconds I saw the blinds snap closed again out of the corner of my eye. I kept going, making my slow way to the next footpath.

My thoughts spun. A woman. The Luparii scout was a woman. I felt like an idiot. Of course she was a woman; the vast majority of witches were. Why had we assumed that she’d be male? Because she was evil?

Stupid Scarlett. Ladies can be bad guys too.

I walked right up to the door of number 112, listening closely. If there were people at home, they were being quiet about it. I glanced around—still no people—and dropped down to all fours. The space between the building and the hedge was just wide enough for me to crawl through without brushing against the shrubbery, and almost tall enough to hide me completely. I lifted my cane and set it very gently a few feet in front of me, without making noise. Then I crawled after it on my hands and one knee and repeated the process, making my way under the condo’s picture window and toward number 144. I was agonizingly slow, which I hoped would work in my favor. Who would expect an injured burglar with a cane, who attacked in broad daylight? Hopefully no one, although if any city was going to have a handicapped, crawling daytime burglar, it’d probably be LA.

Focus, Scarlett.
As I reached the bottom of the picture window by 144, I felt the scout in my radius on the other side of the wall. Up close, I could see that the condo’s windows had a latticework of sturdy bars, painted white so as to be almost invisible against the blinds. Huh. Between the security sticker in the window, the bars, and that heavy wood-and-iron door, we’d better hope this plan worked. We weren’t getting into the condo otherwise.

I was under the center of the window when I heard a loud creak right on the other side of the wall, stunningly close to where I was. I froze. A female voice murmured something in French again, and I felt a stab of fear. What if she wasn’t alone? I closed my eyes, concentrated, and extended my radius. No other witches, but there was a muted yelp, and I felt something new in my radius. Emphasis on the
new
.

A witch in my radius felt like a faint buzz of white noise, and this new thing was similar, but th
e . . .
shape
of it, for lack of a better term, was different. Subtler. There was another spark to it too: something
wild
. I might not even have noticed that spark if I wasn’t concentrating so hard, tuned in to Radio Scarlett.

I heard footsteps. Leaning forward, I peered beyond the hedge and into the pathway for 144. Jesse was just rounding the fountain, marching in my general direction, looking handsome and professional in his police uniform. He spotted me—or maybe the condo number—and abruptly altered course to head straight for 144, not trying to hide it. Our eyes met, and I thought I saw him give a little nod.

Still on my hands and knees, I flicked my index finger at the door and mouthed, “
woman
.” Since we’d been expecting a man all along, I didn’t want him to let his guard down when a woman opened the door. Confusion flickered across his face, and he faltered a step. “
Woooman
,” I mouthed again, eyebrows up emphatically. “
Lady
,” I tried. But he wasn’t getting it. He was getting very close now, so I rolled my eyes, leaned back on my heel, and mimed giant breasts in front of my own very average-sized ones. “
Woman
,” I mouthed again, pointing at the door. He nodded, comprehension flooding his face. Finally. I ducked back down below the hedge just in time—I heard the metallic rustle of the blinds right above my head as the Luparii peeked out again.

Jesse arrived at the door, only inches away from me, and rapped three times, causing the dog to bark again. Maybe not
that
well trained.

The door did not open, but she shouted through it. “Who ees zhere?” she asked in heavily accented French.

“LAPD, ma’am,” Jesse said sternly. He held his ID up to the peephole. “We’ve had a complaint from one of your neighbors about a barking dog.”

“I do no
t . . .
my Eenglish ee
s . . .
” She faltered. I frowned. We had not anticipated her being unable to understand us.

But to my very extreme surprise, Jesse jumped in with,
“Je suis avec la police, madame. Ouvrez la porte, s’il vous plaît.”

My eyes bugged out of my head, but I could feel Jesse very pointedly not looking down at me. He didn’t want to give me away, but it was still kind of funny.

I caught the words “
police
” and “
porte
,” which I assumed was “door,” but I totally lost the thread when the woman yelled,
“Le chien ne sera pas aboyer plus. Je te le promets.”