Fair Game Part 5

Anna shrugged. "That or extremely good planning. It's not just strength-we metabolize very quickly. Drugging or incapacitating one of us for long without killing us is extremely difficult."

"Holy water," said Pat the former FBI and now Cantrip agent.

Anna didn't roll her eyes but she let Charles feel her exasperation. "I could drink it every day for a week-and do it while living in the Sistine Chapel."

"Silver?" That was Heuter, again.

"Are there black marks where they've been restrained?" Anna asked. "Silver burns us like fire or acid."

They didn't answer her question. Charles had noticed that from the 1990s victims on, the photos of the now-dead people were from the neck down, and sometimes there were no crime scene photos at all. He was pretty certain that the lack wasn't an oversight.

"And how," Anna continued, "did he know they were werewolves? Only one of them, the local wolf, had come out publicly."

There was some more discussion, but Charles let Brother Wolf a.s.similate it while he observed the room. Agent Fisher was watching Anna with the same look that Asil got when he found a rose that he wanted for his greenhouse, sort of greedy and satisfied.

We're not going to have to talk our way into helping with this case, he told Anna. Agent Fisher wants us for her very own.

Brother Wolf brought his attention back to the room, where the other Homeland Security agent, Jim Pierce, was speaking. "What if the killer was a werewolf?"

Anna shook her head. "Then you wouldn't be finding tagged bodies; you'd be finding body parts."

"Werewolves eat people?" asked Heuter, coming alert like a hound. "That killing in Minnesota-that was werewolves?"

Anna snorted and lied like a politician. "Look. Becoming a werewolf doesn't make you a serial killer-and it doesn't make you a superhero, either. Whoever you were, that's who you are. If a bad guy gets Changed, he's still a bad guy. However, we police our own and we're pretty good at it. Mostly we're just ordinary people who turn into a wolf during the full moon and go out and hunt rabbits."

Being Changed turned everyone into killers. Werewolves weren't timber wolves or red wolves who hunted only when they were hungry. Werewolves were killers-and the ones who couldn't control it sometimes took a lot of people with them before they died.

No one looking at his mate's earnest freckled face would ever hear the lie-unless they were a werewolf, too. His da would be proud.

CHAPTER 4.

Anna followed Charles out of the hotel, trying to figure out what had happened with him and why so she could decide how to proceed.

Charles led the way out of the hotel and turned in the direction of the condo where they were staying. Charles, the Aspen Creek Pack, and the pack's corporation had condos all over the place. The one in Boston belonged to the corporation. It made travel more discreet, no hotel charges, no strangers coming in to clean every day.

"Wait a minute," she said.

Charles turned back. The expression on his face was exactly the same as the one he'd had when they left their house yesterday, heading for the airport so he could fly them to Seattle, where they had caught the commercial flight. But he felt so different.

When Charles had chosen to frighten all those poor people at the airport so she'd win her bet, she'd thought she'd detected mischief in his eyes. But it had been so long since he'd laughed-or teased her with his sneaky sense of humor-that she'd been afraid to hope. After all, they had been patting him down pretty thoroughly, something that could have ticked him off enough to growl, and the timing could have been accidental.

And even the meeting...it had been necessary, if the feds were to believe she was the one with the information, for him to feed it to her. And the best way to do that was for him to open the bond between them. Bran didn't want the feds scared of werewolves, and Charles, especially the past few months, was really scary.

If he were just doing it for business's sake, he would have closed their link down when they left the hotel, but he hadn't. And he'd touched her.

Bran, it seemed, had indeed found a cure-or at least a bandage-for his son.

"What?" Charles asked. Evidently she'd been staring at him too long. He reached up and tucked a flyaway piece of her hair behind her ear.

She wanted to grab his hand and hold it to her, wanted to climb into his arms and feel them close around her. But she was afraid if she drew his attention to it, he'd close her off again. So she kept her hands to herself and bounced up and down on the b.a.l.l.s of her feet a couple of times instead. She needed to keep him off his game, keep him thinking about other things-and she had just the thing to do it with.

"Let's go exploring." She pulled the city map she'd taken from the hotel's lobby this morning out of her pocket and opened it up.

"I know Boston," said Charles, with a slightly pained look around to see if anyone had noticed the map. It was bright orange and highly unlikely to evade even the most casual glance.

"But I don't," she told him, enjoying the expression on his face. Being mated to a wolf two hundred years her elder meant that she seldom got to see him disconcerted. "And since I want to do the exploring..." He would take her to interesting places, she knew. Tomorrow that would be good, and doubtless she'd enjoy it more than anything she found herself. But today she wanted to be more...spontaneous.

"If you run around with that bright orange map in your hand," Charles told her, "everyone will think you're a tourist."

"When was the last time you were a tourist?" she asked archly.

He just looked at her. Charles, she had to agree, was not tourist material.

"Right," Anna told him. "Buck up. You might even enjoy it."

"You might as well have 'hapless victim' tattooed across your forehead," he muttered.

She grabbed his hand and pulled him across the street to King's Chapel and the oldest graveyard in Boston-according to her map.

TWO HOURS LATER, she was vying for food in the North Market building of Faneuil Hall Marketplace with what felt like four hundred tourist groups while Charles waited nearby with his back against the wall. The three feet of empty s.p.a.ce around him was probably the only s.p.a.ce open in the whole place-but that was Charles; people just didn't crowd him. Smart people.

Since most of the tourists in front of the booth where she'd chosen to grab lunch came all the way to Anna's waist, she was pretty sure she was in no danger, but you couldn't tell it by the focused attention her mate aimed at the children.

If you can't tell that I'm looking at something on you that is precisely on level with the little ones' heads-his voice in her head had a rough purr-then you need your eyes checked.

Her jaw dropped. Was he flirting with her? Anna turned her head to meet his gaze, which dropped immediately to her rear end. She jerked her head back before he saw her smirk-or her red cheeks. He had been checking out the crowd. She'd seen him do it, seen him take a good long look at each of the kids.

But Charles certainly wasn't lying to her, either, so all the rest had been automatic, but checking her out had been on purpose. She smiled and felt her wolf relax into the rightness of flirting with her mate.

She had plenty of time for her cheeks to cool. It took a while before she managed to order food-mostly because she took pity on an overwhelmed teacher who seemed to be in charge of a million kids all by herself. Anna escaped at last with a pair of sandwiches and a couple of bottles of water and let Charles escort her outside the building to hunt for someplace to sit and eat.

"We could have gone into a real restaurant," Charles said, taking a bottle of water she handed him. "Or waited for the starving hordes to disperse before joining the fray." He sounded serious, as always, but she knew better, knew because their bond conveyed his amus.e.m.e.nt.

"They were all of seven years old. I was confident that I was unlikely to end up on their plate when there were hot dogs and ice cream to be had."

"If they weren't predatory, you shouldn't have had to manhandle them," he said, making tracks toward an unoccupied seating area. Anna saw at least one other person start for the same place, then notice Charles and turn away, but at least he didn't look panicked.

"They couldn't see over the counter to the food," she told him. "We had a deal. They didn't bite me and I'd lift them up so they could see." She'd expected them to be shyer, but they'd really seemed to have had fun. Maybe they'd been too young to be worried about strangers. The teacher had been too busy lifting up her half of the cla.s.s to worry about Anna. Apparently the mothers who were supposed to be helping had wandered off to the ladies' room.

"All of the children?"

"Half. One at a time. It's not like they weighed very much. And I had help."

"Hmm." Charles raised an eyebrow. "There was some pretty intense jockeying for position considering that the prize was hot dogs and sandwiches and not priceless art treasures. I saw you elbow that woman."

"She cut in front of a seven-year-old little boy," Anna told him indignantly. "Who does that?"

"Ladies wearing four thousand dollars in diamonds, apparently." He cleared the table of the remains of someone else's meal and tossed it in a nearby trash can.

"I don't cut in front of children and I have four thousand dollars' worth of diamonds." She plopped on a narrow bench and put her food on the minuscule table, hoping it wouldn't wobble and dump everything on the ground.

"Do you?" Charles asked mildly, taking a seat on the other side. The one-person benches, unlike the table, looked st.u.r.dy enough and didn't creak beneath his weight, though she saw him rock a little to make sure it would hold. "Except for your ring, you don't wear them. And the ring is not worth four thousand."

"That one necklace, right? Wearing it wouldn't make me cut in front of some poor, hungry kid." He was playing with her, he was, teasing her because she was afraid to wear the jewelry his father had given her when they were married. Her wolf wanted to wiggle in joy and go hunt something to celebrate. Anna took a bite of sandwich. "Though maybe I'd have to put on the bracelet, too."

"No," he said. "Just the bracelet would do. But you don't wear them."

Her necklace was covered in at least twice the number of diamonds and several larger stones. She absorbed the idea of the bracelet itself being worth more than four thousand dollars, and was doubly grateful that she hadn't worn them. She tended to play with anything hanging around her neck-what if she broke the necklace?

"There's a time and place for stuff like that." Anna tried not to show him how appalled she was at the value of the jewelry. She preferred to downplay the material changes in her life since she'd met and mated with Charles. They weren't the important changes-if occasionally she found them more difficult than the real ways her life had altered. "When you're going shopping isn't a good time for jewels, especially if that makes you think that pus.h.i.+ng around little kids is okay."

He raised his eyebrows. "Oh? When were you planning on wearing your diamonds?" Charles sounded amused. He knew that she was planning on never wearing them now that she knew what they were worth.

"Maybe if we were meeting the Queen of England." She thought about it for a moment. "Or if I really needed to outs.h.i.+ne someone I didn't like." She took a few more bites of a sandwich that needed a little something...onion or radish, maybe. Something with a bite.

She really couldn't imagine a situation dire enough to risk wearing something like that set, especially not if the bracelet was worth four thousand dollars. What if the clasp gave way?

"Ah. That would be never?" It didn't seem to bother him one way or the other.

Anna thought about it seriously. "Maybe if I needed to intimidate someone-like if my brother decided to remarry and my dad told me he didn't like her so I had to fly to Chicago and drive her off. I would even cut her in line for a hot dog while I was wearing them. But she wouldn't be seven, either."

Charles smiled. It wasn't a laugh or a grin. But it wasn't his you're-going-to-die-before-you-breathe-your-next-gulp-of-air smile, either, which was as close to a real smile as she'd seen on his face for a while.

She gave a contented sigh and tapped the toe of her boot against the leg of his suit. They'd have been more comfortable in casual clothes, but then they'd have had to go change. And she was afraid that going back to the condo would give him an excuse to shut down again.

"It's all right," he said. "We can go change and do some more touristy stuff."

He was reading her through their bond. Hiding the warm fuzzies that gave her behind a distrustful look, Anna took a bite of her sandwich and then said, "Okay. But only if you'll agree to do this with me." She took her now-bedraggled map out of her pocket and tapped a finger on an advertis.e.m.e.nt.

Charles looked, heaved a long sigh. "I should have known we wouldn't get out of here without doing the imitation trolley car cemetery tour complete with costumed ghouls."

"Not in my territory," snarled someone behind her.

As it seemed an unlikely response to Charles's pseudo-reluctant agreement, Anna initially a.s.sumed it was directed at someone else. But Charles tilted his head and lowered his eyelids, the muscles tightening subtly in his shoulders, so Anna turned around in her seat to see who had spoken.

In rows along the outdoor marketplace were dozens of dark green wagons, resembling nothing so much as the covered wagons in her father's beloved old Western movies. The wagons served as kiosks where people sold T-s.h.i.+rts, purses, or other small portable goods. Standing on the top of the one nearest them was a young-looking black man, fine-boned and slight, watching them-watching Charles, anyway-with yellow eyes as the strings of beading supplies hanging from hooks all over the wagon swayed unsteadily.

From photos, she recognized him as Isaac Owens, the Alpha of the Olde Towne Pack-Boston being the Olde Towne, complete with the final Es. He wasn't in the habit of running around on the tops of unlikely perches or he'd have been in the local paper a lot more than he already was.

"You're attracting attention," said Charles in a conversational tone designed not to carry to human ears. Isaac, being a werewolf, would hear him just fine despite being a dozen yards away. "Do you really want that?"

"I'm out. They know who I am." Projecting his voice to anyone who cared to listen-and people were starting to pause what they were doing to listen-Isaac raised his chin aggressively. "What about you?"

Charles shrugged. "In, out, it doesn't matter." He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "No more does your declaration. You lost control of the situation that brings me here when you chose not to report the deaths in your territory. You have no say over what I do or don't do."

"We didn't kill anyone," Isaac declared, and pointed at Charles. "And you will have to go through me to take any of my pack."

Isaac was new, Anna remembered. New at his job, new at being a wolf-and, like her, he'd been a college student when he'd been Changed. Normally it would have been years before he was Alpha, no matter how much potential dominance he had. But the Olde Towne Pack had lost its Alpha last year in a freak sailing accident and Isaac, who had been second, had stepped in to do the job. His second was an old wolf who probably didn't know anything at all about this stunt.

The woman who was working the kiosk-her body bestrewn with hand-beaded jewelry and tattoos in a bewildering mixture of color and texture-was backing slowly away, trying not to draw attention to herself. Not a bad strategy for someone caught between predators, though less glittery jewelry might have helped-another reason for Anna not to wear the diamonds.

"If no laws were broken, no one is at risk," said Charles, and Isaac sneered.

"Get off the stupid wagon before that poor lady calls nine-one-one," Anna said, exasperated. "Come introduce yourself, Isaac, and see what happens." She said it loud enough that she was clearly audible to the crowd of people that was forming a ring around them-close enough to see what was going on, not so close as to get involved. That meant she was speaking almost as loudly as Isaac had been.

The local Alpha looked at her for the first time and frowned. His nostrils flared as he tried to catch her scent-which would have been impossible to filter from the rest of the people nearby except that she smelled like an Omega wolf.

After a rather long pause, Isaac shrugged his shoulders to loosen the muscles and walked off the end of the wagon-a good nine-or ten-foot drop. He landed with flexed knees and turned to the proprietor of the shop, who'd stopped when Anna had drawn attention to her.

"My apologies," he told her. "I didn't mean to scare you." He smiled and handed her a card. "A friend of mine runs a pub-stop by and have a meal on us."

The woman took the card with a rather shaky hand that steadied as Isaac's smile warmed. She glanced down and her eyebrows rose. "I've eaten there. Good fish and chips."

"I think so, too," he said, gave her a wink, and strolled over to where Anna and Charles sat.

"Nice PR," Anna said. "Though considering what went before, I'm not inclined to give you an A for it."

He studied her, ignoring Charles's brooding presence. "Ayah, nah," he said, exaggerating his Boston accent into incomprehensible nasal sounds before he dropped most of it to continue more clearly. "What in the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Good to meet you, too," Anna said. "I bet that card was your second's idea, wasn't it? To make up for your lack of manners?" She dropped her voice and added a touch of Boston to it. "Oops-sorry I destroyed your car. Here, have a meal on me. Was that your dog I ate? Oh, sorry. Have a drink at my friend's pub and forget all about it."

Isaac grinned, a sudden, charming expression that showed white, white teeth in his blue-black face. "Caught me, darling. But you didn't answer my question."

"She is mine," said Charles. His aggressive answer didn't show up in his voice, which was low and calm. "We have a meeting scheduled tomorrow, with you and your pack. There was no need for this..." He glanced around. People were still watching them, but they were pretending not to. "Theater," he finished.

"This is Boston, hoss." Isaac bent his knees and squatted, putting his head on a level with theirs. "That's 'thee-ah-tah.' We're all about theater here." He p.r.o.nounced the second "theater" just as Charles had. He wasn't native to Boston, she remembered. She thought he was from Michigan or Pennsylvania.

Anna gave him a gimlet eye and spoke to Charles. "He was probably walking by and spotted us. Decided he couldn't wait until tomorrow to throw a hissy fit."

"And aren't you one to burst everyone's posturing?" Isaac's dark eyes considered her. Then, in a more down-to-earth tone, he looked at Charles and said, "As a matter of fact, she's right." Then his face and his voice went very, very serious. "I meant what I said. To get to my wolves, you'll have to go over my dead body."

"If you do your job, he'll never have to do his." Bitterness made Anna's tone sharper than she meant it to be.

"She make all of your words, kemosabe?" Isaac asked Charles.

Charles raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated fas.h.i.+on and pointed his chin at Anna as if waiting for her to answer for him. He never used his fingers to point. It was, he'd told her, very bad manners among his mother's people.

Speaking of bad manners..."Where's our card for a free meal?" Anna demanded. "I think you owe us one. Cogita ante salis, my father would tell you. You should think before you leap."

Charles murmured, "Before you depart. Sally forth. Close enough."

Anna was never sure how many of the Latin phrases she knew were right, and how much her father simply had made up on the spot. She'd quit speaking it in front of Bran because he'd get this pained look on his face. Charles seemed mostly to find it funny, a joke they shared. He claimed not to speak Latin, but apparently Spanish and French were close enough to allow him to comment.