Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “When I got cut up on the job, I went to the hospital for stitches,” I said.

  “I was there for one of those,” he said.

  I smiled a little, though he probably couldn’t see it in the dark. “Yeah, you saw me get hurt. I remember. This job doesn’t just mess us up physically, Newman. It messes up our heads and our hearts. Some of this shit feels like it stains the soul. If you got a broken leg, you’d go to an orthopedist, right?”

  “I guess so,” he said.

  “So why don’t we look at a counselor or a therapist as just another specialist like an orthopedist or a dentist?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, when you say it that way, it sounds so logical.”

  “Maybe it is logical, and all the rest is just illogical, emotional bullshit.”

  He laughed then, and it was almost shocking after the heavy topic.

  “I didn’t think I was that funny,” I said.

  “You aren’t funny. You’re honest, and you go straight at a topic like a shark or something.”

  It was my turn to chuckle. “I’ve been described as a lot of things, but never a shark. I think they circle more than I do before taking a bite.”

  He just laughed and then, with the sound of it still in his voice, asked, “How far can we trust Duke with him this emotionally invested?”

  “He’s your friend, not mine, so shouldn’t I be asking you that?”

  “Yeah, but I figured I’d save you the trouble. I called you in on this. If you had gotten shot in the cell like that”—he shook his head—“it would have been my fault.”

  “No, Newman, it would not have been your fault. It would have been the fault of the person who shot me, and that wouldn’t have been you.”

  “Duke has always been professional, kind of down-home and country like he’d read what a small-town sheriff should be like and wanted to play the part right, but always a good cop.”

  “Even good cops get confused when their family is impacted by a crime,” I said.

  “That’s a kind way of looking at someone that nearly shot you.”

  “His daughter is dying. That’s going to mess with anyone.”

  “You have this reputation for being a hard-ass, unpleasant person, but you’re not like that. You get the job done, and you don’t let bullshit stand in your way. And if someone is shoveling the bullshit, you’re pretty merciless. But if they do their job, if they aren’t part of the problem, you’re kind.”

  “I’m as kind as people let me be,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Newman said.

  “Sheriff Leduc has used up my milk of human kindness for him. You understand that, right? I won’t be an asshole about his daughter and the deceased paying for her treatment, but I won’t let pity endanger me again.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to give him another pass, Blake. I honestly thought he was going to kill you both for a minute.”

  “I know you would have shot him to save us, Newman.”

  “I would have. I really would have, but damn, I would not have wanted to explain to his wife and daughter how it happened.”

  “You didn’t have to shoot him, so there’s nothing to explain.”

  “No, but you know how I worried that I was compromised because I knew everyone involved?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’m not, but Duke is compromised six ways to Sunday.”

  “Six ways to Sunday. I haven’t heard that expression in years.”

  He gave the small laugh that I was hoping for and said, “How would you say it?”

  “Sheriff Leduc is fucking emotionally compromised.”

  “My grandmother would kick a fit at how much you cuss.”

  “Mine would, too,” I said.

  “I can’t break my early training. How do you do it?” he asked.

  “I’m still rebelling against my family.”

  “By saying the f-word so much?”

  “By doing a lot of fucking things,” I said.

  “What are we going to do about Duke?” he asked.

  “I think I’ll start by calling another marshal,” I said.

  “Do you think we need more backup?”

  “No, but I’d like someone besides us to know what happened tonight.”

  “You going to call Ted Forrester?” he asked.

  “How did you know?” I asked, but I was already getting my cell phone out of the pocket it lived in when I was wearing work clothes.

  “He and you are partners, or as much partners as this lone-wolf crap lets us have.” And again, there was that note of discontent about how the preternatural branch was run.

  I didn’t argue or debate it. I just went to my favorites list on my phone. Ted’s name was near the top of my list. His cell phone number was the one attached to his contact in favorites, because when you’re calling for backup, you don’t want to talk to the kids or the wife. One, it was business, not social, but two, just like Newman didn’t want to have “the talk” with Leduc’s family, I didn’t want to have it with Edward’s family either. It was easier not to think about the finalities of the grave when we just talked to each other.

  8

  MY CALL WENT to Ted’s voice mail. I left a very vague message, because I didn’t know if he’d play it where one of his kids could hear it. Okay, where his stepson, Peter, would hear it. The two of them didn’t seem to have any secrets from each other, which should have been a good thing, but I didn’t want Peter joining the family business or feeling that he needed to ride to my rescue if Edward was unavailable. Peter had nearly died saving me from a weretiger when he was only sixteen. He was about to turn twenty. I did not need more heroics from him. If I didn’t want to tell Donna, Edward’s wife, that he had died in the line of duty, I sure as hell didn’t want to tell her that her son had gotten himself killed.

  Newman parked behind the sheriff’s car on a wide gravel area beside the main road. The only streetlight I’d seen for miles shone down on a gate and a wall that peeked out from the trees on either side, as if the wall had been there long enough for the forest to grow up around it.

  Sheriff Leduc was punching a keypad, but nothing was happening. He pushed a larger button and yelled into an intercom.

  “We have the code to the gate,” Newman said.

  “Who could have changed it?” I asked.

  Newman shook his head. “No one but one of the other deputies is supposed to be at the house.”

  We both started to get out of the car, but my phone rang, and it was Edward’s ringtone, “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood.

  I answered with “Hey, Ted.”

  “You talk to Forrester,” Newman said. “I’ll find out what’s going on at the gate.”

  I gave him a thumbs-up as Edward said, “Anita, I take it you’re not alone.” He sounded slightly out of breath, which was unusual.

  The car door closed, and I was suddenly alone in the quiet, night-dark car. “I am now.”

  “Social or business?” He still sounded out of breath.

  “Business. Did I catch you working out?” I said.

  “Yes, but if it’s business, I’ll get some water while you talk.” I could hear sounds in the background and debated if they were from weight machines or something else.

  While I gave him a thumbnail sketch of the case, especially what had just happened in the jail, he found a quieter place to listen. So when I was done, it was truly silent on his end.

  Edward’s first question was “Do you believe the sheriff would have shot you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You need more than just Newman for backup,” he said.

  “The kid did good,” I said.

  “Would he really have pulled the trigger on the sheriff?”

  “Yeah, I think he would have.”

 
“I trust your judgment like I trust my own. You know that,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  “But I don’t want to trust your life to Newman.”

  “Me either, but he had his gun aimed at Leduc’s head. I think he would have pulled the trigger, Edward. I really do.”

  “And yet you’re calling me.”

  “Newman is doing a good job, but there’s no other marshal I trust as much as I trust you.”

  “I think just having more preternatural marshals on-site would protect you from the sheriff.”

  “Are you ass deep in alligators and not able to come out and play?” I asked.

  I could almost hear the smile in his voice as he said, “No, but it will take me nearly five hours to fly to you, or almost twenty-four hours driving. What I need to know from you is how fast you need backup.”

  “And if I said sooner than five hours?”

  “Put out a general call through official channels, and they’ll send the closest marshal from our section to your location.”

  “You’re talking round your ass to get to your elbow. It’s not like you, Edward. Newman said I was direct like a shark, but you’re part of what taught me to be direct. What are you trying to say or not say?”

  “The nearest marshal to you is Olaf.”

  “No. Just no. I’ll go without backup before I invite that psycho here.”

  “I figured you’d say that, but I had to be sure.”

  “How do you even instantly know where he is? I don’t know.”

  “I make it my business to keep track of him.”

  “Do you keep track of me like that?”

  “No.”

  “Do you keep track of anyone else like that?”

  “No.”

  “You want to know where he is in case you decide to kill him,” I said.

  “No, I want to know where he is in case I have to kill him.”

  There was a time in our friendship when I wouldn’t have understood that distinction, but that had been a while ago. Olaf, aka Marshal Otto Jeffries, was a serial killer. Edward and I both knew that, but neither of us could prove it, and Olaf had never committed that particular crime on American soil to our knowledge. I’d never even caught him in the act. Edward had once. If Edward caught him at it again, he would kill Olaf. They both knew the rules of the game. So far Olaf hadn’t done anything illegal that Edward could use as an excuse, but he kept tabs on him, waiting. Olaf had fallen off the radar when he first contracted lycanthropy, even from Edward’s resources. When Olaf reappeared, he had a level of control of his inner beast that most shapeshifters would have envied. Olaf was a scary, sociopathic suspected serial killer, but no one had ever accused him of slacking when it came to training.

  “So, if I put out a general call for aid, he’s the nearest help,” I said.

  “I’m afraid so,” Edward said.

  “Fuck,” I said.

  “Agreed,” he said.

  “I don’t need backup that badly, Edward. Newman is good enough.”

  “Good to know,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, but I was mentally cursing. “I thought Olaf was out west somewhere at his home base. What the fuck is he doing in the upper Midwest?”

  “He’s hunting a rogue shapeshifter.”

  “How close to me is he?” I asked.

  “Close.”

  “How close?”

  “Very close.”

  “Just tell me, Edward.”

  “If he dropped his hunt, he could be there in an hour, maybe less.”

  “Flying or driving?” I asked.

  “Driving.”

  “Well, fuck.”

  “You said that.”

  “I’ll probably be saying it a lot more if I have to deal with tall, dark, and psycho.”

  “You won’t have to deal with him, Anita. You and Newman can hold the fort, and I’ll be there in six hours or sooner.”

  “I think having you come in as backup for this may be overkill,” I said.

  “If you really believed that, you wouldn’t have called me.”

  “I don’t think Leduc is dangerous enough to need you here.”

  “Then why did you call?”

  I thought about that for a few heartbeats and finally said, “If Newman hadn’t had a gun to his head, I think Leduc would have shot into the cell. I’d given up all my guns before I stepped inside.”

  “Giving up your weapons is standard procedure,” Edward said.

  “I know. That’s why I did it. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again for a different case, but usually the danger is the prisoner, not the other officers.”

  “Leduc spooked you,” he said softly.

  “He would have done it, Edward.”

  “I’ll be there in six hours or less,” he said.

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said.

  “It is, but if things go south while I’m in the air trying to get to you and your choice is dead before I land or calling for more backup, promise me you’ll call for the backup.”

  “No, Edward.”

  “Anita, if you’re in the hospital or dead before I can get to you, I will be pissed.”

  “I’ve never worked with Olaf without you there to help keep the distance or the peace between us.”

  “I know, and it’s not my favorite idea either, but he’s a good man in a fight.”

  “He’s evil.”

  “Sometimes evil will keep you alive.”

  “Being alive isn’t always enough, Edward. You’ve got to live with yourself afterward.”

  “Promise me, Anita.”

  “Damn it, Edward.”

  “If the situations were reversed and you knew Olaf was close enough to save me, what would you want me to do?”

  “That’s not fair. He doesn’t want you to be his serial killer girlfriend.”

  “Just answer my question, Anita.”

  “You told me once if I saw him to just shoot him dead and not to wait for him to hurt me, that you’d rather I be on trial than dead at his hands.”

  “I remember what I said.”

  “Then how can you want me to promise this?”

  “Because I think you can negotiate the emotional baggage that Olaf has with you for six hours, but you can’t outrun a bullet. He acquitted himself well last time both professionally and with you.”

  “I won’t give up my guns again, not to Leduc or his people. I’ll just wait for you.”

  “Anita, just promise me you’ll do it. I don’t want to have to explain to Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel, or any of your people that you died because you were too stubborn to take the closest help.”

  “It’s not stubbornness, Edward, and you know it.”

  “If we let our fear master us, Anita, then we’re already dead.”

  “You’re afraid of the big guy, too.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t, and the thought of him being near you when I’m not there scares the shit out of me.”

  That stopped me. He almost never admitted out loud that he was personally afraid of anything. “Okay, okay, I promise that if things get so dangerous that Newman and I can’t handle them, I’ll put out a general call for help, even if that means Marshal Otto Jeffries is the help.”

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said.

  He got off the phone to check flights, and I finally got out of the car to join my fellow officers. It turned out that some of the family had come home, and the deputy guarding the scene had let them change the gate code. Leduc was yelling at someone over the intercom as the gates swung open. He was breathing heavily as he turned back to get in his car. Something must have shown on my face, because he said, “Looks like your personal phone call didn’t go well.”
r />   “My personal business is none of yours.”

  “No need to snap at me because one of your boyfriends is getting out of hand.”

  I stepped up to him, invading the hell out of his personal space. He was so much bigger than me it probably looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. “Fine, I was trying to be nice, but if you don’t want nice, we can do it the other way. I was calling another marshal for backup, because after having a fucking gun pointed at me by you, I felt we might need more guns on our side.”

  I was sorry I’d said the words as soon as they left my mouth. I didn’t even have to see the pain in Leduc’s eyes to be sorry. The cold, dead stare that replaced the pain was chilling, like someone had walked over my grave. I’d given him a target for all his rage and fear—me. So stupid, so avoidable, so my own damn fault.

  9

  WHEN WE ALL got back in our respective cars, Newman tried not to be angry with me, but he was upset and couldn’t hide it. I finally saved him the struggle and said, “I behaved badly back there, and I’m sorry.”

  Newman’s hands were gripping the steering wheel a little too tight as he tried to keep his voice even. “Aren’t you the one who told me, ‘Don’t be sorry. Do better’?”

  “One of the reasons I’m more patient with other people’s rookie mistakes is that I had my share of them. Having a temper that made my mouth run away with the rest of me was one of them.”

  “We had things calmed down with Duke,” he said as he eased between the now-open gates and followed the sheriff up the driveway.

  “I know, and I am sorry that I lost my temper and made things worse again.” Some sense of movement made me look behind us in time to watch the gates ease shut.

  “I called you in to help make things better, not worse,” he said. The trees were huge on either side of the gravel driveway. Again I got the sense that the estate had been here long enough to become one with the forest around us.

  “I’m aware of that,” I said, and I could already feel myself getting irritated with the fact that he was harping on it.

  My temper is better than it was a few years ago, but I will always have it bubbling close to the surface. One of the things I’d learned in therapy is that fixing your issues isn’t the same thing as getting rid of them. You discard the things that no longer serve you, but some things are so much a part of you that you can’t get rid of them without destroying who you are and how you function as a person. My temper was one of those, but more than that, it was part of my aggression, and aggression was how I did my job and protected the ones I loved, how I succeeded more than I failed. Society views aggressive women as bitches, but sometimes being a bitch is the only way to survive. I’ll take survival over being Miss Congeniality any day.