Mercy Thompson 8: Night Broken (21 page)

“Sweetheart,” Adam said, his voice a sigh as the first official car pulled into my parking lot. “It was clear-cut self-defense.”

I closed my eyes and leaned against him.

“Hands up,” said a shaky voice. “Get your hands up where I can see them.”

Adam let go of me and put his hands up. I turned around, stepping away from Adam so they could tell I wasn’t armed. The man approaching us wasn’t in uniform, but his gun was out. His eyes weren’t on me, all of his attention was for Adam. Of course, it didn’t take a genius to figure out which one of us would be the bigger threat. If I looked like I felt, I looked tired, scared, and hurt—I put my hands up anyway.

“Mr. Hauptman?” said the armed man, stopping just inside the bay door but in the middle of the open space so that the Passat didn’t interfere with his ability to cover both of us. He was younger than me, and he was wearing slacks and a jacket and tie, which only made him look even younger. I noticed almost absently that true night had fallen in the short time between when I’d first thrown open the bay doors and now.

“Adam Hauptman?” he said again. His voice squeaked, and he winced.

“Keep your hands where we can see them,” said another, calmer voice. This one was dressed in a cheap suit and held his gun as though he’d shot people before. His eyes had that look that let you know he’d shoot right now, too, and sleep like a baby that night. “Agent Dan Orton, CNTRP. This is my partner, Agent Cary Kent. You are Adam Hauptman and his wife, Mercedes?”

Feds. I felt my lip curl.

“That’s right,” Adam agreed.

“Can you tell me what happened tonight?”

“You’re here in response to my call?” Adam asked instead of answering him.

“That’s right.”

“Then,” said Adam gently, “you already know some of it. I think we’ll call my lawyer before the rest.”

I’d have spent the night repeating what happened endlessly to a series of people who all would hope for the real story. I’ve done it before. With Adam present, neither of us said anything because they weren’t letting Adam call the lawyer.

Agent Orton of CNTRP, better known as Cantrip, and Agent Kent, the nervous rookie, wanted to arrest us on general principle because Adam was a werewolf, and there was a dead body on the ground. And, possibly, because they weren’t happy with our not talking to them.

Luckily, we were under the local police jurisdiction, barely, because Adam’s initial call had only told them that there was a man who might have been responsible for murder and arson trying to break in to my garage. Human attacking human, even if she was the wife of a werewolf, was not enough to allow Cantrip to take over the case.

We didn’t correct them when they speculated that our intruder was the dead man. We said nothing about a supernatural creature who could turn into a volcanic dog and cause earthquakes because Cantrip was dangerous. There were people in Cantrip who would love to see us just disappear, maybe into Guantanamo Bay—there were rumors, unsubstantiated, that a whole prison block was built to hold shapeshifters and fae. Maybe they would just report that we had escaped before they could question us and hide the bodies. Adam, because he was a monster, and me because I slept with monsters. When I’d shifted to coyote in front of Tony a few months ago, I’d also shifted in front of a Cantrip agent named Armstrong. He’d told me he wouldn’t say anything about it, and apparently, based on these two, he had not.

There were good people in Cantrip, too; Armstrong was a good person, so I knew that it wasn’t just a pretend thing—like Santa Claus. But a growing number of incidents between Cantrip and werewolves or the half fae who’d been left to defend themselves when the full-blooded fae disappeared indicated that the good agents were in a minority.

The fire department arrived on the heels of the Feds, took a good look around for hot spots (none), marveled at the “damned big hole in the floor,” and left with the promise of sending out someone to evaluate the scene in daylight. EMTs arrived while the fire department was still there.

One guy sat me down and looked me over with a flashlight while the younger Cantrip agent took it upon himself to make sure I didn’t make a break for it.

The EMT made a sympathetic sound when he looked at my burns. “I bet those hurt,
chica
,” he said. “I have good news and bad news.”

“Hit me,” I told him.

“Good news is that these all qualify as minor burns no matter how nasty they feel.”

“Bad news?”

“I think your cheek is going to scar. There’s some chance that it will fade, but you’ve got dark skin like me, and dark skin and burns aren’t a happy combination. Also, there’s nothing to do for the burns. If the air bothers them, you can try wrapping them, but that will only be easy to do with the burns on your hands. If you see any sign of infection, take yourself down to your regular doctor.”

“I can deal with scars,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Who knew I was vain about my face? I wasn’t beautiful by any stretch of the imagination, so I certainly hadn’t expected the pang I felt knowing I’d bear Guayota’s mark the rest of my life.

“It should look dashing,” he told me. “Just a pale streak, and you can make up all sorts of stories about how you got it. Frostbite on your third polar expedition. Dueling scar. Knife fight in the ghetto.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” His matter-of-fact tomfoolery settled me. Impossible to believe in volcanic dogs when this EMT was so calmly cracking jokes as he got over the heavy ground as lightly as he could.

“I do have some advice, before I let you go,” he told me.

“What’s that?”

“
Chica
,” he said seriously, “next time some firebug starts throwing burning things at you, run away.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” I promised him solemnly.

The second EMT came back from looking for other victims. “There is a finger in the backseat of the car in there,” he said. “Does anyone know who it belongs to and if I should get it in ice? It might need to be reattached. Or is it evidence, and I need to leave it alone?”

I just shook my head, unwilling to talk in front of the Cantrip agent, and left the two EMTs to their debate. I wandered back over toward Adam. I don’t know what the EMTs decided, but they left before the police cars started showing up.

The Kennewick police arrived while the fire department was still having a look-see, though the big red trucks toddled off soon thereafter. The local police interrupted the stalemate of our not talking and the Cantrip agents’ not letting us call our lawyer. Not that we talked to the local police, either, but their presence put a damper on the Feds. Tony wasn’t with the police who came, but Willis was.

“Word is that this was your husband’s ex-wife’s stalker,” Willis told me after he’d gone inside to see the hole for himself. His suit was muddy, and so were his hands, so he must have gone down and followed the tunnel like Adam had. He sounded grumpy. “He cause this?” He glanced around the remains of my shop. “With some kind of a bomb, maybe?”

Dan Orton and his sidekick were trying to work on Adam without antagonizing the police. They were ignoring me because I wasn’t a werewolf. Adam had subtly eased them farther away from me while I talked to Willis.

I looked at the Cantrip agents thoughtfully, then at Willis. “You know that site we both looked at yesterday?” I kept my voice down.

He grunted, but his eyes were sharp.

“I think this incident has a lot to do with that other. You and Tony should show up at tomorrow’s deposition when Adam and I talk in the presence of our lawyer. The one we still need to call.”

He looked at me, a long, cool look. “The crime you are referring to is officially a Cantrip case. And neither I nor Detective Montenegro are your puppets to call.” Despite the hostile words, he sounded less grumpy than he had been.

It was my turn to grunt. “Fine by me.” He couldn’t fool me. Now that he knew the two were connected, you couldn’t keep him away with a legion of superheroes. He’d tell Tony, and they’d both be there tomorrow.

“Does the dead body with the bullet in his forehead belong to the stalker?” he asked.

“Tomorrow, Adam and I will be happy to talk,” I said, firmly keeping myself from explaining. “You mind if I call our lawyer?”

He glanced at the Cantrip agents and smiled grimly. “You aren’t under arrest. Without the assurance that there was magic afoot here, Cantrip doesn’t have the authority. And I am not inclined to arrest anyone without more information. Without an arrest, I don’t see that I have any say over what you do.”

My phone was intact, which was something of a miracle in and of itself. Willis put himself between me and the Cantrip agents while I called the pack’s lawyers. Their phone system forwarded me to the lawyer on call, and the woman who answered sounded harried. I could hear kids screaming in the background, but since the screams were interspaced with wild laughter, I wasn’t too concerned.

“Trevellyan,” she said in a breathless voice. She cleared her throat and continued in a much more lawyerly fashion, though her voice was still very Marilyn Monroe. “Good evening, Ms. Hauptman. How can I help?”

I gave her a brief explanation—stalker, break-in, dead body. Not telling her anything Willis, who was watching me with grim amusement, didn’t already know. I told her Adam wanted to get out of here tonight and give a statement tomorrow.

“Don’t say anything,” she said. “Don’t let Adam say anything. I’ll be right there.”

She strode onto the scene, a five-foot-nothing warrior with iron gray hair and eyes clear and sharp blue. She took one good long look around and marched up to Clay Willis, having evidently determined he was in charge.

“Are my clients under arrest?” she asked Willis.

Adam, trailing his pair of Feds, approached in time for Willis to answer, “No, ma’am.”

“We still have some questions,” said Agent Orton.

“Which my clients will answer tomorrow in my office.” She gave them her card. “Call that number tomorrow at eight thirty sharp, and someone will tell you when to come.”

She ushered Adam and me to Adam’s car.

“Now run while you can,” she murmured. “I will do the same. The grandmother magic will wear off in a minute, and someone will decide that the dead body means they should arrest someone. Don’t answer your phone unless you know the number and come into my office tomorrow at seven thirty.”

“She’s good,” I said. “Tough, smart, and funny as a bonus. I wonder if there really is grandmother magic.”

“For what we pay her, she’d better be good,” agreed Adam. “She doesn’t need grandmother magic to make people scramble at her command.” He pressed a button on his steering wheel, and said, “Call Warren.”

A woman’s voice from his dash said, “Calling.”

“Boss?” Warren answered. “Everyone okay?”

“Mercy’s singed, but still swinging.”

“Good to hear. I got quite an earful from your security chief, who deleted a lot of interesting material.”

“Then you know most of it. I need you to get everyone out of our house right now. Apparently, Christy’s stalker is some kind of supernatural who can set things on fire.”

“You want me to take them home?” Warren asked.

Adam took in a deep breath. “What do you think?”

“I think that our place got a lot of attention in the press when those rogue agents kidnapped Kyle.”

“Suggestions?”

“How about Honey’s place? It’s big enough to house everyone if we don’t all need bedrooms, and it hasn’t been plastered all over the newspaper.”

Honey’s house was in Finley, too. Another large house like ours, though it wasn’t built to be a pack den, so while there was plenty of room, it was short on beds.

“Sounds good. Call Honey, then get everyone out of the house.”

“You two okay?”

Adam’s eyes traveled to me. “Yes.”

“Kyle called about ten minutes ago and said to tell you that a Gary Laughingdog is at our house and would like to talk to Mercy on a matter of some urgency.”

“Tell him we will be right there.” Adam pulled a U-turn. “We’ll move them on to Honey’s house. Call me if Honey has a problem, and we’ll come up with something else.”

“Right. Is Laughingdog the guy Mercy visited in prison?”

I said, “Yes.”

There was a little pause. “So he broke out of jail?”

I said, “Yes,” again.

“Kyle doesn’t know that,” Warren said. “If the wrong things happen, Kyle could lose his license to practice law for having him in the house.”

“You get everyone safe,” said Adam, “and I’ll take care of Kyle.”

“Movin’ on it, boss.” Warren hung up the phone.

“Do you think he’ll go after our house?” I asked. “Guayota, I mean.”

“I don’t know enough about him to be making predictions,” Adam said.

“Why do you think that he believes she—” I stopped speaking.

“What?”

“I almost saw it then,” I sat up straighter and turned toward Adam. “I’m stupid. When Tony took me to look at the crime scene in the hayfield, I thought for an instant that one of the bodies he’d left was Christy’s.” The ghost could have been her sister. “She was the right age, right hair color, and right body type. All of the women were, I think—though it wouldn’t hurt to double-check.”

“We need to find out who this guy is,” said Adam grimly. “And we need to find the walking stick, so that Beauclaire doesn’t kill us before Flores does.”

“We have his name,” I said. “Guayota. That might help. And Zee gave Tad some insight he shared with me about Beauclaire and why not running Coyote down before Sunday might not mean disaster.”

He glanced my way and back at the road, inviting me to keep talking. So I explained Zee’s reasoning. When I was finished, Adam gave me a short nod. “Might work. It would be better to have the walking stick, but beggars can’t be choosers.”

“Zee’s insights into the problem with Beauclaire and the walking stick have showed me I need to start thinking outside the box more,” I said.

“Oh?” Adam glanced at me, then back at the road.

“I thought we should apply that kind of thinking to the matter of Christy’s stalker.”

He gave me a skeptical look.