by C. T. Adams
Sue’s eyes were tearing up at hearing such a heartfelt apology. It was giving me a new dimension on Asri—not so cold-blooded, after all. While I knew the great and powerful crap was just that, it was intended as a compliment to Sue, not to me. I was fully aware that Asri wasn’t crawling next to my shoes.
“I owe you a debt of honor. Our Alpha would not allow me to offer you damages, because you have no way to claim them, and the error was not mine—but his.”
Really? Nikoli admitted a mistake? That seemed a little out of character. It made me wonder what Lelya said to him.
“But regardless, I feel deep regret, and ask for your forgiveness.” She remained kneeling, not moving.
Sue looked down at the woman at her feet, huddled miserably, her shiny black hair brushing the floor. The tears were still in Sue’s eyes, sparkling and rolling down her cheeks. She looked to me for guidance, but I had none to give. I shrugged and looked at Bobby. Apparently, he hadn’t known quite what Asri was going to say, just that she was going to apologize.
He reached over and put his mouth close to my ear and cupped his hand to block the sound. “If you can reach Sue, just tell her to say tidak apa-apa. It’s Indonesian for ‘nothing,’ or ‘it’s okay.’” He was speaking so quietly that his words were just barely audible to me.
Did you catch that? I thought to Sue. She nodded and wiped the tears from her left eye with the back of her hand. She squatted down and touched Asri’s shoulder. Wide brown eyes raised to meet Sue’s.
“It’s okay, Asri. Tidak apa-apa. You didn’t know.” Then she added something new. She wasn’t too bad at psychology herself. “I know now that you are a woman of honor, as well as a proud enforcer. I will not think less of you.”
Very nicely rolled around to a compliment. Attagirl.
The surprise in Asri’s face at Sue’s use of her native tongue turned into an expressionless mask, but she closed her eyes and dropped her head briefly before she stood in a fluid movement.
“You are gracious and kind, Mrs. Giambrocco. It is too much after my actions, but I am grateful and, please—if I may ever serve you in a task within my power, you need only ask.”
Sue was spared coming up with a reply because Bobby took that moment to clap his hands together sharply and then rub them briskly. “So, now that we’re all friends again, can we please get our tails in gear and get moving?”
Asri regarded him as though he was a fly that had landed on her food. She glanced at her watch and continued to take off her jacket. “We are not due for another hour yet. We will be very conspicuous if we leave now and are forced to wait. The authorities have come to look ill upon anyone of obvious foreign birth wandering the hallways. It is a small airport.”
I pursed my lips briefly. Both O’Hare and Midway are pretty large and even a trio of Asian, African and Italian wouldn’t stand out. “Where exactly are we going?”
Bobby glanced at me and likewise raised his brows. “I had assumed we were going to O’Hare.” He turned to Asri.
Asri didn’t answer. She finished removing her coat without even glancing his way. Sue started to reach for it and then realized that she didn’t know where to hang it up. The layout was still too new to her. She pulled back her hand before Asri saw and moved over to stand by me. Asri carefully folded the jacket and put it on the couch cushion and sat down next to it. Bobby shook his head in annoyance at her deliberate casual motions and took off his coat in a huff.
We stood there in a growing well of silence. Sue cleared her throat uneasily. “It’s going to be night soon. You’re going to need some meat if you’re going to be able to go hunting for another few hours. A woman named Pamela—I guess she’s the wife of one of the other pack members—brought over some homemade bread and a small smoked turkey as a welcoming gift. Would you like some sandwiches?”
Asri raised her painted brows a touch. “I have never tried smoked turkey. If it is no trouble, I think it would benefit us all to eat.”
Bobby threw up his hands, plopped down in the recliner and snarled sarcastically. “Sure Why not? Let’s have a four course meal while we’re at it.”
I bit my lip to keep from making a smart-ass remark, but Asri stared him down cooly. “I don’t think we have that much time, Agent. But if you would prefer to go hungry, you are welcome to.”
Sue hid a smile by turning and going into the kitchen. I figured I might as well help, rather than sit and listen to the pair of them bicker.
I opened the swinging door for Sue and followed her inside. I saw the bread in a basket on the kitchen counter and pulled a bread knife from the wooden block.
Sue opened the refrigerator and pulled out a tray with neatly sliced meat covered in plastic. “I went ahead and stripped the carcass so it would be easy to serve.”
“Good idea,” I commented and started to cut slices from the crusty loaf. My back was to her as she pulled dressings from the refrigerator. As I carried the sliced bread past the kitchen table, a scent caught my nose.
“No mustard for me, Sue. Just mayo on turkey.” I was reaching into the pantry to grab some plastic wrap to cover the rest of the bread when she replied.
“I’m not putting any on,” she said. “You don’t like mustard. I don’t think we even own a jar.”
Odd. I could swear that I smell mustard. I turned around and saw that she was right. Only a jar of sandwich spread and some butter was on the counter.
“Isn’t it cute the way Bobby and Asri are dancing around in there? Not like it’s fooling anyone—it’s pretty obvious they like each other.” she asked in a small whisper with a smile.
I looked at her askance, while still trying to figure out where the mustard was coming from. “Like each other?” I whispered back. “They’re about ready to kill each other.”
She rolled her eyes. “Bobby’s just acting like a first-grader, pulling her pigtails. It’s obvious that he’s attracted to her. He can barely take his eyes off her.”
I moved close to her and helped build sandwiches. Even the thick smoky scent of the turkey couldn’t erase that damn mustard. Where was it? “Well, she doesn’t seem to be amused,” I commented.
“That’s not quite true,” she mulled. “She’s being really careful not to get too close to him. Sort of like the way you were with me at first.”
I chuckled. “Oh, I don’t know about that. I think we got close pretty early on.”
She blushed lightly. “Well, yeah. But it’s more like you were after. Skittish. Watch them yourself if you don’t believe me.”
I nodded, intending to do just that. It only took a few minutes to build some turkey and cheese sandwiches. I walked over to the table and lifted up a bowl of fruit to grab the tray underneath it. There it was again, the strong mustard smell. Something sparked my brain as I saw a small black object on the table behind the fruit bowl.
“Sue, is this your cell phone?” I asked, without touching it. It was face down.
She glanced at where I pointed. “Nope. Mine’s in my purse. I thought it was yours.”
The phone, plus the scent, added up and chilled my blood. We’d had a visitor. I picked up the phone and turned it over. A small sticky note was pasted on the front.
Call me when you’re alone, Mr. G. That Chinese chick makes me nervous. 2410.
How long had he been in the house? Did he just arrive and drop off the phone, or had he been here while Sue and I were sleeping, or even longer? Dammit! I was getting careless. I couldn’t believe that three of us with Sazi noses didn’t notice a human hiding in the kitchen. Calling him would be easy, but it was obvious that whatever he wanted, he didn’t want to talk about it with Bobby and Asri here.
“Are you okay, Tony? You feel like you’ve seen a ghost.” Sue’s face was concerned and she reached out to touch my arm. If she touched me, she’d know what I’d just realized, and I didn’t want to panic her. I moved away from her touch casually and tucked the cell phone in my pocket.
“It is my cell phone. I gue
ss I’d forgotten it in here.”
Her eyes narrowed and her nostrils flared like a Sazi. “You’re lying. What’s going on?”
This wasn’t going to work. I had to tell her. I couldn’t afford to go to the airport and leave her alone. I leaned in her close to her. “When we leave here, I want you to go somewhere with lots of people. Maybe the mall. Take your cell phone and stay there until I call you.” I extracted the phone from my pocket. “This is a little gift from a mutual friend. I don’t know how he found us, or why he’s here, but I don’t want you alone.”
“Mutual friend?” Her eyes widened.
I nodded grimly. “Scotty’s in town and he’s already been inside this house.”
She almost dropped the sandwiches. I caught them in time. “What does he want?”
I shook my head and hefted the tray in one hand while dragging Sue to the farthest corner of the room. “I don’t know. He wants me to call him when I’m alone. That won’t be for awhile, so I need you to stay low. You know him, though, so you don’t have to be too worried. Just keep your distance. It’s me he wants—I think. But I don’t want Bobby and Asri to know. Bobby would have my head for talking to him. I’m supposed to be dead.”
Sue’s scent was a jaw tightening fear that nearly made me attack a sandwich. I shook my head in annoyance and set the platter on the nearest counter and then turned my back on the sandwiches deliberately.
“What’s with the fear, Sue? Scotty didn’t bother you before. Not like this.”
She turned from me and kept spreading mayonnaise on a slice of bread. “C’mon, Sue. Give. We can’t walk into the next room like this. We can’t afford for them to ask questions. You don’t lie worth a damn.” I wasn’t all that worried about Scotty—he was nothing to me. But until I learned his plans, Sue could be in danger. While I had known Scotty for a few years, Sue had met him only six months ago. She’d been trying to find an assassin to perform an unusual task. Out of a deep and bottomless depression came the need to end it all. But she feared she would only have one chance to get away from her family and didn’t think she could kill herself without messing it up. She believed that the money she’d won in the lottery would help with one final purchase, to find a killer to kill her. Scotty was recommended by someone. He had turned down the job—it would be too easy, no fun. I’d turned it down, too, but against my better judgment at the time, I’d agreed to listen to her story. I wound up liking her. A lot. With the help of my psychiatrist friend, John Corbin—John-Boy to me—we’d managed to get her to a point where she wanted to live. I planned to keep her that way.
After a series of bad surprises and worse enemies, I wound up on the dead rolls. Sue is ‘missing and presumed dead.’ While this might have nothing to do with Scotty’s visit, I just didn’t know.
“I can’t help it, Tony,” she whispered frantically. Her hand clutched my arm and I felt her nails in my skin. “He scares me.”
“Since when?” I stared at her wide green eyes. They showed too much white and her nostrils were flared slightly. While a part of me wanted—no, needed—to protect her, I knew that she was better than this.
“I’d thought he was a messed up little kid until you told me he likes to kill. I saw the look in his eyes and all I’ve been able to think of since was that guy in that horror book who made “girl suits” from the skin of his victims.”
I grabbed my fear by the throat and chained it to the floor of my mind. “Nah, Scotty’s not like that. He’s not into torture.” I snapped my fingers. “His marks go down just like that. No pain. Just startled. Aren’t you curious why he’s here?” I asked her.
She nodded. Her whisper made the fear inside my head fight against the chains that bound it. “Do you think someone else has hired him to come after me? Just after I finally decided I want to live?”
I shook my head. “No. He wouldn’t accept the job for the same reason that he turned you down the first time. It wouldn’t be any fun for him. You know him. You’d see him coming and he couldn’t sneak up on you. Otherwise, why wouldn’t he come into the apartment when I was out of town?” Scotty gets a high out of watching people die. He likes to see the lights go out personally.”
Her eyes widened again, but this time in surprise. The hot and sour soup of her fear dissolved. “That’s right. Then why was he here?”
The thick antifreeze scent of curiosity chased away the lingering fear scent. I raised a finger and tapped her nose gently. I smiled at her started expression. “Just hold onto that question when we go into the next room. You should also be curious about why Bobby and Asri are about to drag me to the airport to pick up Bobby’s boss.”
“They haven’t explained why? I missed the first part of the conversation. What possible use could you be?”
I turned away from her and picked up the tray of sandwiches. I could think of a thousand reasons why Nikoli might send me with Asri and Bobby. I was only worried about the one that I might not have thought of.
Chapter 12
NOBODY WAS MORE surprised than me when we exited Asri’s silver Lexus in front of an airport in Gary, Indiana. Bobby stepped out of the car, once again bundled in his thick down coat, hat, gloves and garishly bright muffler.
He saw my small smile as he wound it again and again around his neck so he didn’t trip over it. “Not a word about the scarf, Joe. My niece in Gabon knitted this for me.”
“I thought you didn’t have any relatives—that whole last of my kind stuff. And you still have siblings alive?”
He pulled the scarf down to reveal his mouth for an instant. “I have human relatives, stupid. Just not Sazi relatives. And she’s my…” he counted his fingers. “Great-great-great-grand niece.”
Asri came around to the back of the car, her hood drawn so closely around her face that she reminded me of the kid in the South Park cartoon.
Bobby’s voice struggled through the layers of cloth and icy wind. “I didn’t even know this airport was here.”
“It’s a way to get to Chicago quickly without notice,” came Asri’s likewise muffled voice. “It may be over the state line, but it’s only about twenty-five minutes from downtown.”
“Are you certain that the Wolven jet is scheduled to arrive tonight? I’d just as soon go back and sit on those heated seats in the car. Man, I’ve got to get me some of those.”
Asri’s face took on a sarcastic visage. “You weren’t very interested when I first suggested it, Agent. I nearly had to tie you to it while you were trying to escape to the back seat.”
I turned my face into the icy wind, feeling the fast-moving snow bite at my cheeks. A shiver ran down my spine and blended with the weight of the moon on my back. Both Bobby and Asri were preventing me from changing form. But they couldn’t stop the scent of frost on the wind, or the pulse-pounding rush as power flowed over my skin, raising every hair on my body. It felt incredible to be outside, away from the oven of the car’s interior. “I’m just glad you didn’t stick me in that seat. How can you guys bundle up like that? This weather feels incredible.”
“Damn mammal,” came a chorus of reply. They looked at each other with a startled expression until I laughed. Bobby’s deep chuckle and smile brought color to Asri’s cheeks. They both quickly looked away. Combined with their almost panicked condition in the car, I was realizing that Sue was right about them.
Asri recovered quickest. She turned and walked toward the airport as the sound of jet engines began to fill the air. “Come—we are already late. We must hurry before he has a chance to depart.”
He? I thought Bobby’s boss was a she. I glanced at Bobby with raised brows, to find that he was similarly confused.
He muttered to me under his breath as we followed Asri’s form, disappearing into the brightly lit snow. “I don’t like this, Tony. Fiona should be the only one with access to the company jet. Who are we coming to meet?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t look at me. I still don’t know why I’m here at all.”
> Being the good enforcer, Asri held the door for us so that she could be at the rear of the group. Her voice was a hiss of air as I passed her. “You’re fortunate that the bad weather delayed flights tonight, Tony. I was not pleased to spend the extra time at your house while your wife found a companion to shop with. You must begin to take your duties to the pack more seriously. I know you are lying to me about something. You should hope I do not find out what.”
I stopped to face her. The cold wind and snow poured into the building because my body was blocking open the door and preventing her from entering. “I explained that already. She doesn’t know many people here and I didn’t want her going out alone.” That was the truth. Not while Scotty was on the loose.
Asri shook her head and sniffed haughtily. “The truth—but only barely. Your wife is an adult human in a human world. She has little to fear which shopping with another human would solve. You seem not to credit her with common sense or intellect. You will alienate her affections if you continue on this trend. She will leave you.”
I snorted at the judgmental comment when she knew nothing of our relationship. I lobbed a bow shot of my own. “Big words coming from someone who puts up with Nikoli. Why don’t you leave?”
Her face took on a look that said that she’d heard the same question many times. She leaned in until the scent of moldy lutefisk nearly made me gag. “My relationships—and my reasons for them—are none of your affair, young wolf.” She released the door so that it hit me on the shoulder and slipped around me to enter the building.
Relationships? As in plural? Useful. Very useful. I allowed myself a small smile before I turned to join the reptile duo.
Minutes passed while Bobby and Asri checked with the desk to determine whether a private plane had arrived. We moved over to the Jet Center. After looking over the scene, Bobby decided that we should wait in the Pilot’s Lounge. Asri was stunning in her portrayal of the confused step-daughter of our pilot. But he doesn’t know we’re coming, she had sobbed. What if he doesn’t come into the passenger lounge? Eventually, we were told we could wait in this room.
