Текст книги "Night Broken"

Автор книги: Patricia Briggs

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

She’d been angry, her daughter had told me, that Adam had insisted on moving all the way out to Finley instead of building in one of the more prestigious neighborhoods in West Richland or Kennewick. He’d given her free rein in the house to make up for the fact that he’d wanted the house next to my trailer because Bran, who ruled all the weres in this part of the world, had told him to keep an eye on me. In addition to ruling hundreds and maybe thousands of werewolves, Bran had been the Alpha of the pack my foster father, Bryan, had belonged to. That had occasionally left Bran with delusions that he had a right to interfere with my life long after I’d left Montana and his pack behind.

Christy was shorter than me by a couple of inches, about the same size as Jesse. The body in the blouse and peasant skirt was softly curved, but not fat. Her hair, brown when I’d last seen her, was now blond‑streaked and French‑braided in a thick rope that hung to her hips.

“Could you find some paper towels, Jesse?” she asked without turning around. “They’ve been moved, and I have bacon ready to come out of the frying pan.”

I opened the cabinet that held the paper towels exactly where she probably had put them on the day she first moved in. I hadn’t changed the organization of the kitchen. Too many people were already using it, so it made more sense for me to learn where everything was than for me to reorganize it to my tastes.

So Christy’s kitchen was exactly as she’d left it–still hers in spirit if not in truth. Her presence in my kitchen felt like an invasion in a fashion that the Gray Lord who’d been here in the wee hours of the night had not, despite his intentions.

Christy knew I wasn’t Jesse, I could smell her tension–which was sort of cheating, so I didn’t call her on it. Also, accusing her of lying right off the bat didn’t seem like a good way to make peace with her.

“Paper towels,” I said as peaceably as I could manage, setting them down on the counter beside the stove.

She turned to look at me, and I saw her face.

“Holy Hannah,” I said before she could say anything, distracted entirely from my territorial irritation. “Tell me you shot him or hit him with a two‑by‑four.” She didn’t just have a shiner. Half her face was black with that greenish brown around the edges that told you it hadn’t happened in the last twenty‑four hours.

She gave me a half smile, probably the half that didn’t hurt. “Would a frying pan be okay? Not as effective as a baseball bat, but it was hot.”

“I would accept a frying pan,” I agreed. “This”–I indicated the side of my face that corresponded to her damaged cheek with my fingers–“from the guy you’re running from?”

“It wasn’t my aunt Sally,” she said tartly.

“You go to a doctor with that?” I asked.

She nodded. “Adam made me go. The doctor said it would heal okay. He gave me a prescription for pain meds, but I don’t like to take prescriptions. Maybe tonight if I can’t sleep.”

The front door opened, and I didn’t have to back out of the kitchen to see who it was; Adam had a presence I could feel from anywhere in the house.

“Hey, honey,” said Christy. “I’ve got BLTs going on the stove. They’ll be done in about ten minutes if you want to go upstairs and get cleaned up.” She glanced at me, and said, “Oops. Sorry, just habit.”

“No worries,” I said pleasantly, as if she hadn’t bothered me at all when she’d called my husband by an endearment–then could have shot myself because I saw the satisfaction in her face. My reaction had been too controlled to be real, and she’d caught it.

“Maybe you could set the table?” she asked lightly.

As if it was still her kitchen, her house to rule.

“I need to get out of these clothes,” I said. “You should ask Jesse to set the table since you took over her job tonight. We might have one more for dinner–a new wolf in town.”

I left before she could reply and rounded the corner for the stairs to see Adam. He walked with me up the stairs.

“Any luck hunting down the guy who hit her?” I asked, stripping off my clothes once we were in our bedroom. Even though my overalls absorbed most of the mess of mechanicking, the clothes I wore under them reeked of oil and sweat.

“No. It’s not that we can’t find people named Juan Flores, it’s that there are too many Juan Floreses,” he told me. “John Smith would be easier, though it helps that he doesn’t look like most Juan Floreses. He’s around six feet tall with blond hair; she said his English was good. He has an accent, but she doesn’t think it was Mexican or Spanish, despite his name.”

“She met him in Eugene?”

He shook his head. “Reno. She was out partying with some friends. He was a friend of a friend. Rich–with cash–not just credit cards. He talked about Europe like he was very familiar with it, but he didn’t tell her if he was living there or if he just traveled there a lot.”

“Cash means real money,” I said. “Not just someone pretending to be wealthy.”

“Probably,” Adam agreed.

“Did she call the police when he hit her?”

“She called them before he broke into her apartment and started hitting her. He left when he heard the sirens, though it might have been the frying pan she hit him with.” There was admiration in his voice, and I did my best not to flinch. Of course he was proud of her. It takes guts to fight back effectively after a hard hit to the head. “The police didn’t have any better luck than I’m having running the name he gave her.”

Adam stripped off his tie and unbuttoned the cuffs of his dress shirt impatiently. “Later that night, someone mugged the man she went out with after she returned to Eugene. Broke his neck and took off with his wallet. She’s sure it was Flores, that stealing his wallet was just a cover. The police are undecided but told her that she might find somewhere else to be while they ran down leads.”

“If her boyfriend is responsible, he kills pretty competently,” I said, pulling on clean jeans, which were in a drawer with a stack of other clean jeans.

I’d gotten used to keeping my clean clothes folded in drawers and dirty clothes in a hamper in the closet. Adam had gotten used to calling me when he was going to be late from work. I had learned that it was those things, compromise in the form of phone calls and folded clothes, that cemented the bedrock of a relationship. I wondered what habits Adam and Christy had left over from their marriage.

“I thought so, too,” Adam said, unaware of the twist of my thoughts. “My sources say that the kill was clean. Not so clean it couldn’t have been an accident–but unusual in a mugging, especially in Eugene, which isn’t exactly a hotbed of that kind of crime. So maybe he spent some time in the military.”

“Or as an assassin or crime lord,” I said.

Adam snorted as he pulled on a faded green t‑shirt that said I HEART COYOTES. Yet another sign that folding my clean clothes wasn’t too big a price to pay to make him happy. He didn’t have any I HEART CHRISTY shirts–or I would have burned them already. “You have an overactive imagination.”

“Says the werewolf,” I told him. Instead of my usual after‑work t‑shirt, I changed into a fitted shirt in a shade of lavender that looked good against my skin and showed off the muscles on my arms. Christy wouldn’t know that it was any different from what I usually wore. I didn’t have her soft curves, so I’d emphasize what I did have.

“You got my text about Zack Drummond, right?” The lavender contrasted nicely with my brown eyes. Maybe I should put on eye shadow? “Seems like a nice guy. Thought walkers like me were a myth.”

Adam grinned at me. “I think you’re pretty special, too.”

I kissed his cheek and rested in his arms for a moment before I broke away to find socks and shoes. No eye shadow. Christy wouldn’t know I didn’t wear makeup unless we were going out, but everyone else would. I usually went barefoot in the house, too, but with Christy in the kitchen, bare feet felt too vulnerable.

“Warren’s coming over tonight to grill Christy about her stalker and see if he can learn anything useful.”

“Good,” I said. “Cool.”

Warren had been working as a private detective for a while. He was smart about people, and he’d gotten good at finding secrets. But that wasn’t why I was pleased. Warren was my friend, and Christy didn’t like him. That left dinner tonight stacked in my favor–not that I reallythought I needed the advantage.

We went downstairs just as a knock sounded on the door.

Christy dodged past us, and said over her shoulder, “I invited Mary Jo to join us for dinner.”

I decided that I was going to have to get rid of the chip on my shoulder, or the next week or so was going to be unbearable. Christy cooked dinner. She was welcome to invite anyone to dinner, especially one of the wolves who had a standing invitation to the Alpha’s table at any time anyway. Mary Jo was Christy’s friend.

Christy was acting as though my house were still hers. It wasn’t. But as long as she kept her actions to those acceptable in any guest, there wasn’t a lot I could do to fix it without appearing to be jealous, insecure, and petty. So I’d swallow my first reactions and deal, until it was time to set her straight.

When Christy answered the door and let her in, Mary Jo hummed in sympathy at the nasty bruise.

“You need to have that looked at.”

“Nothing broken,” Christy told her. “Just bruised, and it will fade in time. Adam made me go to a doctor. A good thing, too, because Mercy was about to take me to the doctor herself.”

An exaggeration. Maybe.

Mary Jo apparently thought so, too, because she gave me a cool look. “It looks like it hurts.”

Christy touched her cheek, then shook her head. “It could have been worse. A man I dated a couple of times turned up dead, and I’m pretty sure Juan is responsible.”

“Ahh jeez,” Mary Jo said. “I’m so sorry.”

Warren came in. He didn’t knock and thus avoided the chance that Christy would answer the door again so she could make everyone think either that I was using her to do all the menial tasks or make me think she was trying to reclaim her home. Or both at once.

Probably she was just doing normal things, and I was being paranoid and jealous.

Yes, I was going to have to work on my attitude. Adam kissed the top of my head.

“Let’s all move to the dining room,” Christy said. “I put dinner out there. Is your new wolf coming, Mercy? If we wait much longer, dinner might get cold.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe something came up.”

“Let’s eat without him, then,” she said. “If he comes later, he can have leftovers if there are any, or I can make him a sandwich.”

There was room at the kitchen table to eat there, but the dining‑room table had been set with a tablecloth and good china and all. I wondered if Jesse had set it, or if Christy had done so while Adam and I were up changing. The only time I used the dining‑room table was on Sunday breakfasts or holidays when everyone didn’t fit in the kitchen.

I sat down on Adam’s right, and Christy took the seat to his left before Jesse could sit in it. Jesse smiled apologetically at me and took the next seat over.

“All right, everyone,” Christy said as soon as everyone was seated. “Dig in.”

The sandwiches were all cut into triangles and set on a plate in the center of the table, a gloriously beautiful presentation with bacon cooked exactly right, red tomatoes, and bright crispy lettuce on golden toast. A huge, cut‑glass bowl held a salad and sat next to a plate with homemade croutons.

Cloth napkins were folded just so, and there was a vase with the first of the spring lilies from the front flower bed. The whole table looked as though Martha Stewart and Gordon Ramsay had both come to my home to prepare a casual meal for a few friends.

Mary Jo took a bite of the sandwich and all but purred. “I haven’t had a BLT this good since that picnic you had out here that Fourth of July, do you remember? You made BLTs and carrot cake. I have missed this.”

That started a conversation about the better old days that eventually spread to include Adam and even Warren. Jesse met my eyes and grimaced in sympathy.

I didn’t know if Christy was taking over my home on purpose or by accident, but I had my suspicions. I knew what I would do if someone else had Adam. I might use my fangs or a gun instead of a BLT dinner, but Christy’s weapons were different from mine. I did know that the only way to take control back was to be a witch–and that was just another way of losing.

“Do you like your sandwich?” Christy asked me as the good‑old‑days talk started to wind down.

“It is very good,” I said. “Thank you for making dinner.”

Mary Jo gave me a look. “I’d have thought that just having flown in and being hurt, someone else could have cooked tonight, Christy.”

“That was my job,” said Jesse. “But Mom said–”

“I told her that I wanted to make her favorite dinner because I don’t get much chance to see her.” Christy looked up, her blue eyes–Jesse’s eyes–swam with tears that she bravely held back. “I know that’s my fault. I’m not a good mother.”

She wasn’t lying. She believed everything that she said. I had to give her credit for accepting the responsibility for what she’d put Jesse through–but the thing was, she was looking at Adam when she said it. Then she looked around the table. She didn’t look at Jesse. This wasn’t an apology; it was a play for sympathy. I wasn’t the only one who noticed.

Jesse put her fork down, carefully. “Thank you for dinner, Mom. It was good. I just am not feeling well tonight. I’m going to head up and do some homework.”

She picked up her plate and carried it into the kitchen and left us in silence. If I said anything, I worried she’d make Jesse’s leaving or her bad parenting my fault, so I kept my mouth shut. I don’t know why no one else said anything.

“You see?” said Christy huskily as soon as Jesse was out of human earshot. “I don’t know why I said that, I knew it would upset her. She doesn’t want to hurt my feelings–but she can’t lie, either.”

I’d lived through Christy’s drama for a while now– Sorry, Jesse, I know I was supposed to pick you up or you were supposed to fly down, but it just isn’t convenient right nowwith reasons that varied from new boyfriends to trips to Rio. Work trips, really. I knew that she was good at manipulating people, and still the expression on her bruised face made me feel bad for her.

“It’s all right,” Mary Jo told her. “You’ll have time now to fix things between you.”

And abruptly all my sympathy died away, washed away by dismay. Just how long wasChristy planning to stay?

“I don’t know,” Christy murmured sadly, her fork playing with the remnants of her salad. “I’d like to think so.”

Adam patted her on the shoulder.

I ate with steady determination that was not helped at all by the fact that the food was good. I could cook anything that went into the oven as long as it had sugar and chocolate in it. Beyond that, I was a pretty indifferent cook. Adam was a lot better than I, but his ex‑wife was practically a gourmet chef. She’d made the mayonnaise on the BLTs from scratch.

“So,” Warren said, putting his silverware on his empty plate. “If you are through eating, I’ve got some questions about this ex‑boyfriend of yours.”

“She’s hurt and tired,” said Mary Jo. “Can’t questions wait until she’s had a chance to recover?”

“No,” said Adam. “We need to deal with him, so Christy can go back to Eugene and get on with her life.”

Christy turned her wet blue eyes on my husband, and said, “I’ve been thinking of moving back home.”

The food I had just swallowed went down wrong and sent me off in a paroxysm of coughing.

3

“Well, now,” said Warren over the top of my coughing, Texas thick in his voice. “I don’t know ’bout all that, Miss Christy. Where you live is up to you. But the sooner we get rid of the man who is scaring you, the safer you are going to be. So I’m going to ask you to tell me how you met him and everything you can remember about him.”

Christy’s eyes got bigger at the solid authority in his voice, and she looked as though she were sixteen instead of the over forty I was sure of. “Okay,” she said.

He reached behind him and grabbed the notebook he’d tossed on the floor when we’d sat down, and said, “Let’s start with the first meeting. When and where?”

“A couple of months ago–early February, I can check for the exact date. My girlfriends and I were out gambling, a weekend in Reno. We’d gone to a show and were finishing up the night with dinner in one of the casinos. There were a lot of people around, and since we do this once a month, there were even a lot of people we knew.” She played with her plate. “This man came up to our table. He was beautiful–younger than me, in a suit that … You know that blue‑gray suit you had that was so expensive?”

Adam nodded, and I found that I was jealous of her memory of seeing him in a suit, even though he wore suits a lot. But I’d never seen him in the blue‑gray suit that she was talking about.

She kept her eyes on my husband as she continued. “It reminded me of that, not in color, but in the way it was shaped. He looked … expensive, but not in a ‘kept man’ or ‘I’m going to impress you’ kind of way. His eyes were bright, and he ignored the others, just looked at me. Tall, golden hair, swarthy skin–not the warm tones you usually see with South American Hispanics. More like Mediterranean dark. He was big.”

“How big?”

She looked at Warren. “Taller than you. Heavier–but all muscle. Like a bodybuilder.” Her eyes strayed to Adam. “He must spend a lot of time in the gym because the only other man I’ve seen quite that muscular is Adam. And when he looked at me, he sawme. Intense.”

She looked down and pulled her hands away from her plate. “It was intoxicating, flattering–to be the focus of such power–especially at my age.” She smiled tightly, glanced at me, then away. “I’m not eighteen anymore, and he didn’t look a lot older than that.” She’d met Adam when she was eighteen. He’d been older than that, a werewolf already. “He introduced himself, Juan Flores, though he didn’t have a Spanish or Mexican accent.”

“What kind of accent did he have?” asked Warren.

She jerked her attention back to him. “European. Not French, Italian, or German. I didn’t know it.”

“That’s not a crime,” said Mary Jo, because Christy had sounded like she thought that she ought to have known.

“Maybe it was a fake accent,” said Christy. “I’ve spent time in Europe, and I just couldn’t pinpoint it. He had a little British crisp in his English, like he’d learned it in Great Britain. I thought that was why I couldn’t pick it out. I didn’t even ask before I hopped into bed with him. I am so stupid.”

“Don’t blame the victim,” I told her with, I admit, a little of the irritation I was feeling. “Not your fault you didn’t recognize his accent. Not your fault he singled you out.”

“Adam told me that some of your friends knew him. That’s why you felt safe with him,” Warren said.

She nodded. “He’d done some business with Jacqui, one of my friends. She’s a financial officer at Nation First Bank, works their corporate and international accounts.”

“Her phone number?”

She blinked and rattled it off. At Warren’s urging, she also managed a better description of Juan. He coaxed her into remembering details about his habits of speech and dress. That he liked dogs and had two hulking dogs that looked enough alike that they must have been a breed, though she didn’t know what. He’d been impressed that she wasn’t afraid of them–it was at that point that his desire for a little fun had changed to something more possessive. He’d insisted that she stay an extra day at his expense.

“I was flattered at first,” she told us. “Who wouldn’t be? A rich, beautiful, younger man who appeared passionately attracted to me.”

“What changed?” I asked.

“I work,” she said a little defensively.

She did, though Adam supported her. He paid the bills for her condo, her car, her insurance, and her phone bills. He told me, once, that he felt he owed it to her. I’d told him that was between the two of them and promised (hand over heart) that I’d never fuss about anything he felt necessary.

She worked part‑time at a travel agency that allowed her to travel more than she would otherwise have been able to. She put together tours and business meetings, and from what Jesse had told me, she was good at her job.

“I had some extra vacation I could take, but I didn’t want to use it all. When I told him that I had to go home … he was weird about it. Weird enough that I pretended to agree with him–and while he was in the shower, I left my suitcase, grabbed my purse, and ran. Took a taxi to the airport, where I rented a car and drove home to Eugene.”

“Did he just show up at your condo after that?” asked Adam.

“No,” she said. “He started calling me. I answered the first one–I didn’t know it was him. I said too much. But that was the only one of his calls I took until he changed his number. After that time, I only answered calls from people I knew.”

“I’ll need the phone numbers he used,” Warren said.

She nodded. “I have them on my phone. He sent e‑mails, too. I read up on stalkers and all the advice I found said that I shouldn’t respond in any way at all. So I didn’t.” She took a deep breath. “Then the presents started to arrive. I order a lot of things online. The first one I thought was a misorder–a red silk scarf. I called the place that had sent it and found out that someone had purchased it in person and had it sent to me. They wouldn’t give me the name.”

“They’ll give it to me,” said Warren. “Do you still have the address?”

She nodded. “On my laptop. I’ll go get it.” She pushed away from the table and made an escape. Up the stairs.

I looked at the stairway thoughtfully, then looked at Adam. “I thought she’d be using the guest suite.”

“She was afraid to be on the ground floor,” he said, and I could tell by the way he said it that I wasn’t going to be happy about which upstairs room she’d taken. Warren gave him a guy look, the one that said, I wouldn’t be you in a million years, but good luck.

“She likes the peach room,” I said. It was the bedroom next to ours.

“Blue makes her sad,” he told me. The blue guest room was across the hall and next to Jesse’s room.

There was nothing to say that needed saying. I stood up, collecting as many dirty plates and silverware as I could. Adam touched my arm.

“Mary Jo,” he said. “If you’ll help Mercy clear the table, I’ll grab the tablecloth and toss it in the laundry.”

Mary Jo waited until we were in the kitchen loading the dishwasher to say anything to me. “It’s not her fault,” she said finally.

“What’s not her fault?” I asked. “That Christy attracted a stalker?”

Her face flushed. “That there’s tension between her and Adam. They were a couple for a long time. She called to see if I’d come and defuse the situation, so that you’d be more comfortable. She’s trying.”

I shut the dishwasher and started it. “Yes,” I said. “She is trying.” I didn’t say whatChristy was trying. I was pretty sure it wasn’t what Mary Jo thought it was.

Her eyes narrowed at me, so I guess my tone wasn’t as neutral as I’d hoped.

“It’s okay to like her,” I told her gently. “To worry and feel sorry for her. That’s all just fine. I want her safe, too.”

I wiped my hands off on the back of my jeans and let my voice drop into a threat. “Just be careful, Mary Jo. Be very careful. You’ve made mistakes before. Everyone makes mistakes. One you should not make is to imagine that Christy will ever be Adam’s mate. He is mine, and unlike her, I don’t throw away people who are mine.”

Mary Jo met my gaze, and I held hers. Held it until she looked at the floor and tipped her chin, exposing her neck.

Jesse had told me about her mother and Adam, back when she’d been too young to know that people shouldn’t share other people’s pain, and I had been too … too involved to stop her. Her mother had told Adam he scared her, that the werewolves scared her, and that he smothered her. But I’d always thought that the real trouble between them had a lot to do with Adam’s looking younger than she did. Which made her attraction to a younger man … something to keep in mind.

I returned to the dining room and the interested faces of Adam and Warren. Both of them had heard the conversation between Mary Jo and me, but before they could say anything, Christy was back with her laptop.

She sat next to Warren, and the two of them paged through her e‑mail. Adam’s phone rang, and he glanced at the number.

“I hired a man to watch over Christy’s condo,” he told us. “This is he.” He put the phone to his ear, and answered, “Hauptman.”

“It’s Gaven,” said a stranger’s voice; in the background, I could hear sirens. “There is a situation here.”

Adam stiffened. “He’s there?”

“Uh, no. That is, maybe, but I haven’t seen him. I’ve been watching your wife’s … sorry, ex‑wife’s apartment building since about two this afternoon. I haven’t seen anyone who matches his description, but her building is on fire–you might be hearing some sirens. The fire definitely started on her floor, and I’m pretty sure it was set in her condo. I happened to be looking up and saw a flash of color–flames in one of the windows of her place. I called it in myself–though downtown Eugene isn’t exactly deserted this time of day, so I won’t have been the only one. The fire department is fighting it, but it’s going up fast. It’s been–” There was a pause and a muffled swearword. “Sorry. Pieces of it are falling, and I was a little too close. It’s only been ten minutes, and the whole place is in flames.”

I glanced at Christy, who was watching Adam with a little frown that made me realize that she was the only one in the room who couldn’t hear the other side of Adam’s conversation.

“You’ve told what you saw to the police?” Adam asked.

“Gave my card to the fireman who’s giving orders. Told him I’d seen something. He’ll relay. I’m planning on cooperating fully with the authorities.”

“Of course.” Adam glanced at Christy, who had come to attention at the word “police.” “They already know that there is a problem. Make sure they make the connections, all right? They have my number, but it might not hurt to give it to them again.”

“They’ll want to talk to her, too,” the investigator said.

“What’s wrong?” Christy asked.

Adam held up a finger. “Of course. She’s not answering her phone directly. They’ll have to leave a message for her to call them back.”

“Right.”

Adam ended the call and looked at Christy. “I think your stalker just burned down your condo, building and all.”

She paled. “Did they get everyone out?”

Adam shook his head. “It’s a big building. There is no way that they could know that this early. They’re still fighting it. They’ll know more in a few hours, but it could be days before everyone is accounted for.”

The war committee continued to discuss Christy’s stalker with periodic interruptions from people calling with updates on Christy’s home.

Adam’s investigator told us the whole building was a loss and then gave Adam a few numbers of people involved in the investigation. Once he figured out that Adam was the famous Alpha werewolf, the arson guy got almost chatty. He told Adam that they’d have to wait until the building cooled before anyone could be certain, officially, that the fire had been set. But unofficially, his gut instinct was that the fire was arson. The first police officer called shortly thereafter to ask pointed questions about insurance policies–which seemed to imply that the arson investigator had not only shared his unofficial gut instincts with the police, too, but also told them that Adam was interested in the outcome.

Courteously, Adam told the policeman that Christy had filed a report about a stalker who had assaulted her. And when Adam had recently contacted the Eugene police on the matter, he’d been told that Christy’s stalker might also be involved in the death of a man she’d been dating. Adam gave him the phone number of the officer in charge of the Eugene police investigation without looking it up. The information seemed to mollify that police officer. But not the second one who called.

None of the calls I’d made concerning Coyote had been returned, but Zack called around ten and apologized for not showing up. He’d found a place to stay and also work, but the job had required him to start immediately. He’d come by as soon as he could.

“I understand,” Adam said. “But I’d prefer to bring you into the pack as soon as possible for your safety. My wolves won’t bother you, but there are other things running around town that might if you don’t have pack protection.”

“I’m on call this week,” Zack told Adam. “I can’t afford to turn down hours, nohow. I don’t know when I can come out.”

“Let’s dispense with the formal ceremony, then, and do something quicker,” Adam said. “Where are you staying?”

Almost reluctantly, Zack gave the name of a rent‑by‑the‑week motel.

“Okay,” Adam said. “My mate and I will be there in about half an hour. I’ll call my second. The three of us will make it official. Meeting the pack can wait until you know your schedule.”

“This could all wait,” Zack said.

“No,” Adam told him. “I have no intention of letting you run around my city unprotected.” He hung up before Zack could argue further.

“I’ll keep an eye on everything here, boss,” said Warren. “You go welcome the new wolf to the fold.”

“Mary Jo, go home,” Adam told her. “You’ve helped a lot tonight, but you need to get some sleep before you go to work.”

She gave Christy a worried look.

“I won’t chew on her,” said Warren ironically. “You go on shift tomorrow at five in the morning. Go home, Mary Jo.”

“I’ll see you when you get off work,” said Christy, managing to look like she wished Mary Jo would stay while indicating just the opposite with her words. It was quite a feat. “We can go get a manicure at that place we like in Richland.”

“It closed,” Mary Jo told her.

“I’m sure we can find another shop. Auriele will know someplace good.”

Mary Jo grinned. “She will. Are you sure you’ll be okay?”

“Mary Jo,” Adam said. “Go.”

Left with no choice, Mary Jo preceded us out the door. “Are you sure she’ll be safe with just Warren?” She looked back over her shoulder.