Sucker Punch

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Today I’ll vote stupid,” I said. “Now, help me bandage my hand.” When my hand was bandaged, I went out to Newman’s Jeep for more of my gear. This was an active warrant and I needed to start treating it like one.

  22

  I CALLED MICAH from inside Newman’s Jeep, because it was the closest privacy I could find. It seemed weird that it was still black night outside, so much had happened, and the sun was still hours from rising. Shit, it felt like more time had passed than that. I wasn’t calling Micah for reassurance as my sweetheart. I was calling him because he was the head of the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Lycanthrope and Human Communities, which was now the Coalition for Better Understanding Between Therianthrope and Human Communities. I needed backup with Bobby and not the kind of backup that Edward would give me in a few hours. I needed someone who was better with shapeshifter energy than I was, and there was almost no one better at it than Micah Callahan. He’d become a wereleopard by surviving an attack; his uncle and cousin hadn’t been so lucky. One of the things the Coalition did was help survivors and their families cope with the aftermath of attacks. It wasn’t until his voice answered thick with sleep that I thought about the time difference. “Anita, what’s wrong?”

  “I’m sorry I woke you,” I said.

  “That’s fine. What’s wrong?” His voice was climbing into normal range, the sleep slipping away from him as he started to focus on the perceived emergency.

  “Why do you think anything’s wrong?”

  “Because you just left to fly out on marshal business. When you’re hunting monsters, we’re lucky if you remember to text. A call means something’s wrong.”

  I’d have liked to argue with him that I was more considerate than that, but he was right. I try not to pick fights with the people in my life when they’re right and I’m not. “I need help keeping our suspect in human form. I thought I was good at this, but he’s not like you and Nathaniel. He’s low level, only one form. I’d forgotten how different that could be.”

  “Tell me what happened.” Micah’s voice was serious, thoughtful, a voice you’d trust your secrets to, and I had almost from the moment I’d met him.

  It had been so unlike me to fall for someone so fast and so hard, but I guess what they say is true sometimes about when it’s the right one. Micah was my one, but he’d come into my life too late to be my only. He and I had been an item for five years, but we’d never been a traditional couple. We’d always been a threesome with Nathaniel, not a twosome. If we could have legally done it, we might have tried a four-way marriage, but legalities and public opinion being what they were, I was marrying Jean-Claude, and Micah was marrying Nathaniel. They would be my intended forever, and I would be theirs. We would intend to marry one another indefinitely while we waited for the law to catch up with our hearts.

  Micah listened to me without interrupting, except to ask for clarification a couple of times. He was a good listener and didn’t waste time on stupid questions or accusations. He didn’t even tell me that I could have been killed or ask me what I had been thinking, slugging it out with a wereleopard without backup from another supernatural. If the tables had been turned, I probably would have said something along those lines to him, but then I never questioned which of us was the better man. Micah was the most reasonable person I’d ever met. He was more logical than I was, and I was very logical as long as I didn’t let my temper get the better of me. We were both calm and cool under pressure and ruthless when it came to survival. He would never accuse me of being a monster for resorting to violence like one of my ex-fiancés had. I would never call him a monster for being a shapeshifter like his ex-fiancé had. We valued each other completely, even the parts that scared other people—maybe especially those parts, because those were the parts that would keep you alive when the real monsters came.

  “I can’t bring the Coalition into this unless local law enforcement invites us in,” he said when I’d finished.

  “This is Newman’s warrant. He’ll invite you in if I ask him to.”

  “Send it through official channels, and I can be there in two hours or less.”

  “Less would mean you were borrowing Jean-Claude’s private jet,” I said.

  “One of the perks of the three of us dating him,” he said like it was a given, when just a few months ago he wouldn’t have said it that casually.

  Micah had been working his therapy hard to come to terms with certain things, and one of those things was our vampire master, who was the kind of man who had been making heterosexual men doubt their sexual orientation for centuries. Micah was lucky that Jean-Claude wasn’t into force, either metaphysically or in any other way, because he had the power to have rolled over my Nimir-Raj, my leopard king, and just about anyone else he wanted to seduce. Jean-Claude didn’t want anyone in his bed who didn’t want to be there. He believed in willing partners and true love, luckily for all of us.

  “How long do official channels take?” I asked.

  “Anywhere from two hours to two days. It depends on how much the other local cops don’t want the Coalition there and how much your friend Newman is willing to rock the boat.”

  I thought about that for a second. “Newman is engaged to a local girl here. He’s hoping to make this his forever home, so I’m not sure on the rocking-the-boat thing.”

  “Then what do you suggest until the boat gets rocked?” he asked.

  “I need help keeping Bobby Marchand alive while the rest of us try to figure out if he did it or if he’s being framed.”

  “A lawyer could try to get an injunction . . .”

  “It won’t help us if Bobby transforms in his cell. I haven’t been around any shapeshifter that uncontrolled during his change in years. If I hadn’t been there, they’d have shot him, and it would have been a clean shoot.”

  “You wouldn’t have blamed them for killing him?”

  “No. The only thing that kept him from changing was me knocking him cold.”

  “He doesn’t sound that controlled after ten years,” he said.

  “It surprised me, too.”

  “Did he hurt you?” Micah’s voice was neutral as he asked.

  “I skinned my knuckle when I hit him, but other than that, I’m fine.”

  “If the other marshal invites us in on the case and the local sheriff will allow it, we could put one of our people outside the cell to monitor Bobby’s energy, but what you really need is more time on the warrant until we can get there, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Amanda Brooks, the lawyer we worked with to get people out of the government safe houses, has been wanting to try to throw a kink into the execution-warrant system. Are you willing to have me aim her your way?”

  “You mean, am I willing to risk her fucking up the warrants of execution and basically screwing my job up?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  I thought about it and finally said, “I’d like more options than just killing people if I get on the ground and think they didn’t do it.”

  “How much of the situation can I tell her without getting you in trouble?”

  That was a different question. “I’m not sure. I’d say give her the broad overview. I’ll give her name to Newman and see if he can get Bobby a phone call.”

  “Try it,” he said.

  “I will. I love you.”

  “I love you more.”

  “Our mostest is still at work, I take it,” I said.

  “Yes, Nathaniel was onstage tonight.”

  “Give him a kiss for me when he gets home.”

  “I will.”

  “Love you.”

  “Love you more.”

  “Love you mostest,” we said together.

  That made us both laugh, and we hung up with the echo of it in our voices.

  23

  I WAS STILL smili
ng when an SUV pulled in beside me. I didn’t know the vehicle, and it was still dark enough that I couldn’t see inside the SUV, but the driver was most likely male and tall. Then he opened his door, and the overhead light illuminated him. My stomach fell into my shoes, and my pulse rate soared. I suddenly couldn’t swallow right. It was Olaf. He was perfectly bald, with a mustache and a Vandyke beard framing his lips. When I’d first met him, he’d been clean-shaven. He looked better with the facial hair; it gave his face definition and complemented the thick black of his eyebrows. Before, he’d looked like a henchman in some big-budget action flick. Now he looked like the main villain. I hadn’t understood what other women seemed to see in him until he grew the Vandyke. Then I could finally see that he was handsome in a scary-bad-guy sort of way.

  Olaf, aka Marshal Otto Jeffries, unfolded himself from the SUV and stood all damn near seven feet of him on the other side of the vehicle from me. I had a gun naked in my hand, held against my thigh like I had for Leduc after he’d threatened me. Olaf hadn’t done a damn thing to me; he was even smiling at me as he started to move in my direction. I opened the passenger door and slid out so that I wasn’t sitting there staring at him like a mouse caught in a cobra’s gaze. I even holstered my gun, because he had his badge on a lanyard around his neck. We were both U.S. Marshals in good standing. He hadn’t done anything wrong yet, so I put up the gun that my fear had made me draw, but I did start moving toward the building behind me. I tried to make it casual, like I was just going to stand on the porch with its light and people just inside to chat with him, not so that I wouldn’t be alone with him. He was one of the only people on the planet who could make me feel like a victim waiting for a crime to happen. I hated that I was afraid of him. I fought to quiet my pulse rate, though it was probably too late to hide my physical reactions from him. He was a werelion now, which meant he’d probably tasted my pulse the moment my heart rate spiked.

  “Anita,” he said. He had a deep voice to go with the size of him, and it sounded like the rumble of a Great Dane.

  I almost called him Olaf, but remembered in time that we were on the job, and when other cops were nearby, he used his legal identity. I could hear the murmur of voices just inside the building. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, which meant I probably could have called him anything without being overheard, but it was his secret, not mine.

  My voice was even and neutral when I said, “Otto, what are you doing here? I thought you were on an active warrant somewhere else.”

  He smiled again, and it almost pushed its way into the black depths of his eyes. They were set deep in his face like twin caves. Maybe it was the color of them? If he’d had bright blue eyes, would he have looked less intimidating? Maybe I could have talked him into colored contacts and see. Though any color would have ruined his style of all-black assassin chic. Whether he was out of work clothes or in them, I’d never seen him wear anything but black. There might have been a white T-shirt thrown in there once, but when I thought of him, I thought of black.

  “The warrant is complete.” Which meant he’d killed someone recently, but I really couldn’t throw stones at him about that. We were both executioners with badges.

  “Good for you,” I said. “Ted told me you were chasing down bad guys close to here.” I mentioned Edward on purpose, because he was one of the few people in the world Olaf respected man-to-man. Pretending to be my lover, Edward had helped me keep Olaf from pursuing his crush on me further.

  Olaf smiled as if he knew exactly why I’d dropped Edward’s legal identity into the conversation. “Ted told me you were nearby as well.”

  “No, he didn’t,” I said, and my voice was still neutral; even my pulse and heart rate were even. Good for me.

  “How can you be so certain?” he asked.

  “Because he would have told me that he’d talked to you.”

  He gave a small nod. “There was a second crime attached to Newman’s warrant. As the closest U.S. Marshal, I was notified.”

  I nodded, and some tension I hadn’t realized I was holding eased out. He wasn’t stalking me; he was on the job. “I thought the new protocol only alerted the nearest marshal if there was a second attack connected to a warrant.”

  “As did I, but apparently it alerts for any major crime associated with the warrant.”

  “So the attempted theft at the same crime scene was pushed through channels to you,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “So you knew the second crime was just theft with no violence,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you knew that Newman and I didn’t need any more backup.”

  “We’re supposed to contact the marshal in question and ask if they need help before we leave the area,” he said.

  “I think that means a phone call, not a face-to-face.”

  He smiled, a brief curling of lips in the black beard-mustache frame. There was emotion in the depths of his equally black eyes, but it shouldn’t have gone with the smile. I fought the urge to shiver as he stared down at me.

  “I am following the new protocol, and I get to see you in person, Irene.”

  “I appreciate that . . . Sherlock.”

  I took in a deep breath and let it out slow. I’d made a side comment to him once that I was the Woman for him—well, the only one he actually wanted to date instead of kidnap, torture, rape, and kill. He had never read the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, so he hadn’t understood the comment. I’d explained, and to my surprise, he’d gone off and read the stories, so the next time we met, he’d suggested we have pet names for each other. I’d be his Irene Adler, and he wanted to be my Sherlock Holmes. I’d suggested he should be Moriarty instead of Holmes, but he didn’t think that made sense as terms of endearment since they’d never been a couple in the stories. My opinion had been not only no, but hell no. Edward had persuaded me to go along with it as a way to stave off the day when Olaf finally realized we’d never be a couple, or he just decided to move me from would-be girlfriend to victim.

  “You know, I’m still thinking that Holmes might work better as a term of endearment,” I said.

  “Have you decided that you would prefer Adler to Irene?”

  “Let’s try it that way and see if it rolls off the tongue better.”

  “Very well, Adler.” But he shook his head. “I prefer Irene.”

  “I prefer Moriarty, but you said no.”

  “You do not seem comfortable with our nicknames for each other.” His voice had gone lower, softer, and his face was sliding to something more neutral. I did not want him to look at me coldly; that could go badly for both of us. Damn it.

  “I don’t have cute nicknames for any of the people in my life,” I said, which was absolutely true.

  “Jean-Claude calls you ma petite.”

  I rolled my eyes before I could stop myself. “He has cutesy nicknames for everyone. It’s just the way he is, but I’ve never come up with anything to call him.”

  “You call him master.”

  “Hell no, not unless there are other vampires around we need to impress, and even then, I usually forget.”

  He smiled again, which even with the creepy expression in his eyes was better than him shutting down and going into full-sociopath mode. “I also have never given pet names to anyone.”

  “Maybe we’re just not that kind of people,” I suggested.

  “I enjoy calling you Irene, or Adler.”

  “And I’m good with you using it for me, but I’m just saying that Sherlock Holmes doesn’t quite work on my end for you. That’s all.”

  “And you think Moriarty would be better?” he asked.

  “I’d like to try it if you’re game.” I couldn’t believe that I was standing here discussing pet names with him. He scared the fuck out of me. Under no circumstances did I want to call him anything but far a
way from me.

  “Why Moriarty instead of Holmes? Give me your reasons.” His voice was serious, the smile gone. He studied me with those pitiless eyes of his.

  I took a deep breath and concentrated on keeping my pulse and breathing even. He’d enjoy my fear if he could detect it, and I didn’t want him to enjoy it. “Moriarty is the bad boy, the mystery man. It seems to fit you better than Holmes’s cold logic.”

  “He is addicted to cocaine. That is not cold logic,” Olaf said.

  “True, but I see that as weakness, and you’re not weak.”

  He smiled, and this time it was a real one or the closest his little black heart had to offer. It was good enough that I smiled back at him.

  “Your reasoning is sound,” he said. “I will be Moriarty for you.”

  I wondered if he understood just how true that statement was, but I kept my smile. Maybe it was more relieved than romantic, but it was still a smile. “Moriarty. Yeah, that I can call you and be happy with.”

  “You are right. It does roll off your tongue better than Holmes ever did.” He managed to do that thing that men do sometimes when perfectly harmless statements turn into creepy sexual double entendres. But since we were supposed to be romantic in some weird way, I couldn’t call him on it or say something snarky in return. I lost my battle of will with myself and shivered.

  His smile changed somehow, or maybe it was just the look in his eyes. He was staring at me like he wondered what I’d taste like, and not in a double-entendre kind of way but just straight-up taking a bite out of someone. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  “I am glad that our new closeness has not made you unafraid of me.” He took a step toward me on the tiny porch, sniffing the air above me.

  I backed away from him before I could stop myself. I was so close to him that with his new literally catlike reflexes, I’d never get to a weapon in time. I knew with good reason that he wouldn’t hurt me here and now, that if he decided to do it, it wouldn’t be like this, but damn it.