Текст книги "Fair Game"

Автор книги: Patricia Briggs

Соавторы: Patricia Briggs
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The frown in Special Agent Fisher’s eyes extended to her full lips as she said, ‘We are having this meeting here, with as few people as possible, because the man who set it up said it wouldn’t be smart to upset the werewolf.’ She lifted a well-groomed eyebrow. ‘You don’t look easily upset.’

Scolded. Anna fought not to grin in satisfaction. Now. How to tell her what she needed to know without scaring her.‘They’re not worried about upsettingme. It’s my husband who’s the problem werewolf.’

The other woman frowned.‘So thereis another werewolf coming here. Your husband?’ She sounded faintly incredulous. That Anna was married? That her spouse was a werewolf? That there were two of them? If Fisher knew werewolves well, she’d be most incredulous that Charles had left her alone.

Anna was a bit incredulous about that herself– and it gave her a smidgen of hope that Bran was on the right track with this business. She hadn’t been as certain as he and Asil that it would be good for Charles to hunt down a serial killer rather than hunt down misbehaving wolves, but Charles had agreed and so it was done.

‘Yes.’ Anna nodded. ‘I’m a werewolf. I’m married. And my husband is a werewolf, too.’

Fisher’s frown deepened. ‘The word is that whoever we’re supposed to meet is up the line from Hauptman, who’s the Alpha of a full pack of wolves.’

‘Is that what the word is?’ murmured Anna as she wondered who’d let the word out and if Bran knew about it – or if he’d engineered it. If she kept wondering about how much of her life Bran engineered, she’d end up in a funny farm knitting caps for ducks.

‘You are barely old enough to be out on your own and your husband is higher up in the werewolf power structure than Hauptman,’ said Agent Fisher. ‘What did they do? Make you marry him when you were twelve?’

Anna blinked at her. In her little world built of religiously watched TV shows and movies, FBI agents would never have said something that personal to a person they had just met. They’d work up to it gradually – or insinuate something carefully. By the suddenly appalled look on Agent Fisher’s face, it was the same in her little world.

An Omega makes everyone a bit more protective, Asil had told her a while ago. Anna hadn’t really connected it to the human world.

Anna grinned and hid her sympathy.‘No. They didn’t tie up poor, weak, innocent, little old me and force me to marry him.’ She considered it. ‘He’s not weak or innocent, but if I’d had to, I might have tiedhim up and forcedhim to marry me. Thankfully, it wasn’t necessary.’

The other woman had recovered herself.‘You said that he is the reason we couldn’t bring in more people?’

‘Right,’ Anna said. ‘But if you wait a moment, I’d rather just explain it once, and I think that—’

She let her voice linger while she timed the footsteps (not Charles’s) that she heard outside the conference room door. It might have been some hotel guest wandering the halls, but there were two men walking with purposeful speed that was just a little too fast to be comfortable, the way men who are competing with each other sometimes do.

The door popped open. Leslie’s attention diverted from listening to Anna to watching the new additions to the room. She took a couple of steps forward until she stood between Anna and the newcomers, putting Anna at her back. Which made Anna and the FBI agent a team facing the pair of Cantrip people – at least, that was who Anna assumed they were because there were two of them. Two Cantrip, two FBI, and one Homeland Security was what Charles had told her. She found it more than a little interesting that the FBI agent saw them as opponents – and Anna as an ally.

‘Jim. So they’re letting you out with the big boys now?’ Leslie’s tone was dry. Anna thought that the two men who came in took that as an amiable comment, one of those digs friends might make. But watching the other woman’s body language carefully told Anna that Leslie was very guarded, more so than she’d been around Anna after the first few minutes.

‘Leslie!’ the younger man exclaimed with a real smile. His body language said he liked the FBI agent, whatever she thought of him. ‘Special Agent Fisher,’ he corrected himself. ‘Good to see you. I am one of the big boys and have been for a long time. This is Dr Steve Singh.’

Leslie reached out and shook the hands that were offered her.‘And what does Homeland Security want with a serial killer? That’s for the local cops. The only reason this one is FBI is because our killer’s been traveling across state lines for years.’

Homeland Security. There was supposed to be only one person from Homeland Security. Anna frowned. Charles wasn’t going to be happy about that. He didn’t like surprises. He probably had a file on everyone who was coming to this shindig.

Singh didn’t say anything, just studied the FBI agent’s face before moving on to Anna’s. She stared back at him, just to see what he’d do. He frowned at her and tried to get her to look away, but even Bran couldn’t do that if she didn’t allow it, and he was nowhere near as dominant as Bran – oreven Agent Fisher, for that matter. But Anna dropped her eyes anyway. There was no sense starting a fight until it was important.

‘We heard that there was going to be someone higher up speaking for the werewolves on this,’ answered Jim Nolastname, apparently oblivious to the staring contest his partner had engaged in with Anna. ‘We decided that it would be a good idea if we knew who he was and what he had to say.’

Only a subtle tightening in the FBI agent’s back told Anna that the unconscious arrogance in the man’s voice had ticked her off.

‘And why are there two of you?’ Fisher asked. ‘The request was for no more than five people. Two of us, two from Cantrip, and one of you.’

The FBI agent had known why Homeland Security was checking out the werewolf, Anna thought. She hadn’t been surprised that there were two of them – but she was making a point of it for Anna’s sake. By not introducing Anna first, she was leading them to think Anna was the other FBI agent and letting them spill their agenda in front of the enemy.

‘We leaned on Cantrip a little,’ said Jim. ‘They owed us.’

It shouldn’t really matter that Fisher had made this an us-against-them kind of thing. They were all on the same side in the end – catching the villain. It might have been something as simple as departmental rivalry: FBI versus Homeland Security. Anna narrowed her eyes and considered it. It might have been a little of that – and Fisher definitely didn’t like Jim. But Anna thought it was a show aimed at her. Anna was patient; she’d see what the FBI agent wanted from her. In the meantime, she needed to get a handle on the other people in the room.

Jim had a freshness about him that gave him some charm. Anna didn’t miss the brains behind the shiny front. Dr Singh, the older man, was reserved in a manner that reminded her of some of the Alpha wolves she’d met over the past few years.

He was one of the ones who sat in the back and watched their packs, letting matters work out as they would until they veered too far from where he wished. Then he’d pounce with a brutal efficiency that meant he wouldn’t have to move again for a while. He’d noticed what Fisher had done, all right, but his relaxed shoulders told Anna that he hadn’t yet realized just who and what Anna was.

The door opened abruptly and another man came in. Anna started a little. She wasn’t as good at multi-tasking as she could have been. If she’d been paying attention, she would have heard him approach, but she’d been engrossed in the power play and had missed the sound of his footsteps.

Slight and almost frail in appearance, the newcomer glanced at them all with cool gray eyes. His suit was off the rack and looked a little wrinkled, but its blue gray color matched his eyes and complemented the fringe of trimmed dark hair that narrowly circled the top of his head.

His eyes looked older than his body, and if he was more than five feet tall, it wasn’t by much. The paleness of his skin added to the effect, but he moved easily, like a runner.

He frowned at the two men.‘Homeland,’ he said in a neutral tone, then looked at Leslie. ‘You must be Special Agent Fisher. I’m Special Agent Craig Goldstein. Introduce me, please.’

She did, starting with the Homeland Security team. Jim Nolastname, Anna discovered, was Jim Pierce.

‘And this,’ said Agent Fisher with only a hint of mischief, ‘is Anna Smith, our werewolf consultant. Anna, this is Special Agent Craig Goldstein. He’s our expert on this case.’

Goldstein looked

stunned, which she was pretty sure was an unusual happening. The Homeland Security duo looked just as surprised. Singh, recovering first, gave Fisher a sharp look.

Anna smiled warmly and reached out to shake the hand that Goldstein had automatically extended at the start of the introductions.

‘Hello, Special Agent Goldstein,’ she said earnestly. ‘I know that I’m not what you were planning on, but I’ll do my best. We’re waiting on the Cantrip people and my husband, who has gone out to get coffee.’

Charles would be here soon. She’d hoped to wait until the Cantrip people came, but she’d have to take what she could get. If Charles got here before she explained the rules, it might be disastrous.

Anna glanced at them all and blew out a breath.‘Listen, there isn’t much time. We’ll help you. But there are some things you should know. We all need to be sitting down when my husband arrives. Don’t look him in the eye. If you do, please, blink or look away if he meets your gaze. Don’t touch me, not even casually. I’m going to sit with an empty chair between me and anyone else.’ Bran had cautioned her before they’d left. In Aspen Creek, in the pack, Charles would be confident in her safety. That could change in a moment out of his territory. Anna was pretty sure he’d be fine. It wasn’t Brother Wolf who was in trouble;it was Charles. But she’d promised Bran she’d do what she could to avoid trouble.

Goldstein’s face tightened, but it was Singh who asked, ‘Is he dangerous?’

Anna snorted.‘Of course he is. I’m dangerous and I’d bet that you’re pretty dangerous, too. This isn’t about who is the most dangerous; it’s about being smart and keeping everything low-key.’

‘Are you playing good cop, bad cop withus?’ asked Jim Pierce.

‘Dominant werewolves don’t mix well with others,’ Anna told them. ‘If you play my game, we’ll all be a little happier.’ She gave Singh, who looked the least happy, a stern look. ‘If you were meeting a Chinese foreign minster, wouldn’t you listen to someone giving you a few pointers in Chinese manners? Think of it like that.’

3

Charles held two of the awkward drink carriers and strode through the crowded hotel lobby. In his hurry, it didn’t dawn on him that there was anything unusual about the way his path cleared, or the empty elevator that took him to the third floor where their meeting with the feds was to take place. Not until the man waiting for the elevator when it opened on the third floor backed up three paces and, keeping a wary eye on Charles, broke for the stairs, did it strike him that people’s reactions had been a little unusual.

He was a big man and Indian. (He’d been Indian for more than a century and only occasionally thought of himself as Native American. When he paid any attention at all, he might consider himself half-breed Salish or Flathead.) The combination of size and ethnicity usually had people avoiding him, especially in places where Indians weren’t as commonplace. Not their fault; it was in the nature of man to find the unknown intimidating, especially when it came in the shape of a big predator. His da dismissed it, but Charles was pretty sure that somewhere in their hindbrain most people knew a predator when they met one.

His brother maintained that what sent people backing away was neither his size nor his mother’s blood, but solely the expression on his face. To test Samuel’s theory, Charles had tried smiling – and then solemnly reported to Samuel that he had been mistaken. When Charles smiled, he told Samuel, people just ran faster.

The only one who appreciated his sense of humor was Anna.

People didn’t retreat from him when Anna was beside him. But even without Anna’s presence, having a person he wasn’t even looking at backing away from him as if he held a loaded gun instead of a bunch of espressos and lattes in a pair of flimsy cardboard drink carriers was a little excessive. He steppedout of the elevator and moved slowly so the man didn’t think he was giving chase.

Brother Wolf thought it might be fun and sent him a picture of the man running terror-stricken through the lobby as Charles loped behind him– still carrying the silly drinks. Because Anna had specified hot drinks for all, and he would never welsh on a bet.

So he walked with deliberate slowness down the hall instead of chasing, instead of rending and tearing sweet, metallic, blood-drenched meat between his teeth, just as he’d taken the elevator instead of running up the narrow stairs where someone might bump into him and spill the drinks.

Da had been crazy to send him on such a mission when he was so close to losing it that even a clueless human could tell there was something wrong with him. Charles had known there was something up when he’d arrived for lunch as requested and it had been only his father who awaited him, cooking BLTs in the big house’s kitchen.

Da had eaten his own lunch and waited until Charles had finished his before leading the way to the study. His father shut the door, sat behind his desk, and pursed his lips, giving Charles his‘I have a job for you and you aren’t going to be happy with me’ look. Father–son meals often included that expression on his father’s face. When Da wanted to talk to him alone, it was seldom a happy talk.

Charles waited, standing, to hear what his father had to say. His wolf was agitated, unhappy– and that meant he could not sit on the chair provided and hinder his ability to move.

‘Asil has been nagging at me about you,’ Da said.

‘Asil?’ Asil didn’t particularly like him – and Charles hadn’t so much as seen Asil for a couple of weeks. Which, come to think on it, was a little odd in a town so small someone might sneeze twice and never notice they’d driven all the way through it.

‘Anna, of course, goes without saying,’ Da continued.

Charles braced himself. She knew why someone had to keep order; she knew why it had to be him– she just thought he was more important. Anna was wrong, but it warmed him that she thought so. If her opinion had made his father decide to send someone else, though, it was something that had to be dealt with. Charles, as the Marrok’s son and longtime troubleshooter, was the only option for keeping the violence down to unnoticeable-by-the-public standards. His reputation – and who his father was – kept the packs from going to war to protect their own when someone needed to die.

‘I know what she had to say. But Anna is wrong. Brother Wolf is not ready to break loose.’

‘No,’ agreed his father softly. ‘But your grandfather would tell you that you need to cleanse yourself of all those ghosts you carry with you.’

Charles flinched. He should have known that his da would understand what was happening to him. Da wasn’t a spiritual man, not that Charles could tell, anyway. He was pretty sure that his father couldn’t see the ghosts the way that his grandfather would have. But his da had a way of seeing right to the heart of things when he wanted to.

‘I have tried,’ Charles said, feeling about thirteen. ‘Fasting and sweat lodge haven’t worked. Running. Swimming.’

‘You hold on to them because you do not feel that their deaths were just.’

Charles turned his head away slightly and angled his eyes down but not so far that he couldn’t see Da’s face. ‘It is not for me to determine the law, only to carry it out.’

Da frowned at him, not like he was displeased, just thoughtful.‘I had a talk with Adam Hauptman.’

Charles raised his eyebrows and found a dry voice to say,‘Adam is worried about me, too?’

‘Adam is worried about his mate, who is injured, cranky, and obstreperous,’ replied his father. ‘So he’s not available to take on a rather tricky situation.’

Charles didn’t follow where this conversation was going, so he adopted silence as a strategy. Da liked to hear himself talk anyway.

The old lobo sighed, stretched, and put his feet up on his desk– a sign that Charles was talking to hisfather and not just the Marrok.‘I’ve been racking my brain – not to mention Asil’s brain – with how to make your job easier.’

He spoke as if Adam’s situation had some bearing on Charles’s, though he couldn’t see how. ‘You have.’

His father frowned at him.‘No. It’s becoming painfully obvious that nothing I’ve done has helped you.’

Bran didn’t say what it was for a few moments, just studied Charles’s face as if it were not the face he’d worn every day since he became an adult nearly two centuries before.

‘I cannot send anyone else to enforce the rules – but I am, as of this moment, relaxing the penalties for many transgressions in the hope that it will allow the Alpha wolves to need less

help enforcing them.’ He held up a hand and Charles bit back his protests. ‘You are the only one I can send out, yes. But if you falter, there will be no one but me – and I do not trust myself. So it is necessary that you not break. Anyone who has been Changed less than five years gets one warning. Asil is as frightening as you – and he also is not an Alpha right now. He has volunteered to go out and scare the bejeebers out of young idiots who break the rules the first time.’

Charles knew it was wrong. His father had weighed and assessed the needs for the wolves’ survival and had made the necessary changes in the laws of the packs. But it wasn’t shame, but rather relief, that made him drop his eyes.

‘I have failed you,’ he said.

‘No, son,’ said Da. ‘I nearly failed you. You are, as Asil has reminded me, one of my pack and I am responsible for your well-being.’ His tone turned wry.

‘Asil has appointed himself my guardian?’ asked Charles softly. Asil was overstepping himself.

‘He was bored, he told me,’ said his father. He gave Charles a small smile. ‘I have given him a job so he doesn’t get bored again.’

Da rocked back in his chair and studied the ceiling as if it were interesting for a moment, before turning his yellow eyes back to Charles.‘Asil scaring the britches off our young wolves won’t be enough. I

We will still need you to kill. However, Adam thought that maybe doing other things, too, might

dilute the effect. Maybe if every trip you take isn’t to go kill some more old friends and acquaintances—’ Charles hid a wince, or tried to. ‘Maybe it will help. So. I have a call from some of my contacts in the government that they need to consult with one of us about a possible serialkiller.’

His father saw his face and smiled without humor.‘Not one of us. One of the killers they’ve been tracking awhile seems to have changed his victim of choice. At least three of his kills in Boston have been werewolves.’

‘Three? And we didn’t know?’

‘I knew three had died,’ said Da. ‘From three different packs, but someone did not see fit to tell me that they were probably connected. I’ll deal with that part.’

Some heads would roll– probably not literally. ‘There is only one pack in Boston.’ It wasn’t quite a question, but Da should have started asking questions if three wolves from the same pack had died in a short period of time.

‘One tourist from a Vermont pack and another from Seattle. Only one from the Boston pack. The FBI is interested in anything we can add to the investigation.’

‘You’re sending me?’ People instinctively wanted to please Adam. Charles was better at the destroy-and-subdue, not so good at the coax-and-charm.

‘No,’ said his da. ‘That would be dumb. I’m sending Anna. You are going as her guard. I’ve sent the particulars of what I know to your e-mail and to hers.’

And thus Charles found himself wandering around a hotel, trailing a pair of federal agents as he held a cardboard coffee cup holder in each hand, instead of out killing misbehaving werewolves. He knew they were federal agents because only men who were partners moved that closely together. Body language said they weren’t in a relationship, so that meant military, feds, or cops. Since they were headed the same direction he was, Charles surmised that he’d happened upon two of the feds they were supposed to meet with.

The thought came to him suddenly that he was enjoying himself, stalking feds through the halls of the old elegant hotel, especially because they had no inkling that he was doing it. It amused him.

If he hadn’t lost the bet to Anna, he’d never have gotten the chance. Who’d have thought that the security people at SeaTac would be so worried about him that they’d miss Anna smuggling a bottle of water through the checkpoint? His bet should have been a safe one – and the worst that would happen to Anna was that they would throw out her water bottle.

It was his fault he’d lost the bet.

Maybe Samuel was on to something when he’d told Charles that his expression put people off, because one of the hotel workers who’d been giving him a worried look suddenly relaxed and gave him a cheery grin.

He could have beaten Anna. He hadn’t needed to let out a subvocal growl at exactly the right moment to distract everyone when Anna threw the plastic bottle over the scanners and onto someone else’s pack on the other side of the machines. No one heard him, not really, just felt the hairs on the backs of their necks crawl while Brother Wolf laughed at their mate’s audacity.

Not only had Anna made it through unscathed; she’d distractedhim while they patted her down and ran her through the scanners. Which had probably been her intent in the first place. Smart woman, his Anna– but she hadn’t let him off from paying up on the bet.

When the TSA finally let him through security– because being scary wasn’t really enough to keep him off an airplane – Anna had been waiting for him comfortably curled up on one of the little benches where people sat to put on their shoes. She’d raised her blue food-colored water in a triumphant toast and then drank it down to the lastdrop. It had been Anna’s idea, not his, to dye the water so she couldn’t just play sleight of hand – she would never cheat on a bet with him.

Watching her throat as she downed the liquid was a strangely erotic thing– erotic and magical, something that couldn’t exist in the same universe as the deaths that haunted him. So the ghosts retreated, not a permanent thing, but it was more freedom than he’d had for a while, and it was good.

Charles didn’t mind losing to his mate, though leaving Anna alone to deal with the feds while he fetched for her didn’t make his wolf happy. But he knew that Anna could charm the birds out of the trees, and a few feds who needed their help weren’t going to give her any trouble. No one was going to try tohurt her. Not yet, not before they involved themselves in the FBI’s hunt.

Da thought it would be good for Charles to hunt something other than a werewolf, something truly evil. He hoped that his father was right– and empirical evidence tended to support his hope, as his da was frequently correct.

So Charles followed the pair of feds down the hallway to the room where they were meeting his mate and a small group of others. These weren’t FBI field agents, he decided, because neither of them noticed him, even though he wasn’t making any particular effort to avoid detection. Homeland Security and Cantrip tended to have more chair sitters than the FBI did. They were speaking quietly enough that it would have taken a werewolf’s ears to hear them. Unabashedly, he listened in.

‘Are you sure this is safe?’ asked the blond man of the federal pair nervously. He looked fresh out of college, not yet twenty-five. ‘I mean,werewolves, Pat. Plural.’

‘They’re cooperating with us,’ said Pat, the older man. Charles pinned his accent as New England native softened a little by a stint somewhere in the South. He was in his early forties and walked like someone who’d done a lot of it. ‘They’ll behave themselves because they have to.’

‘You don’t think they’ll be mad because I tagged along? It was supposed to be just you. Five people. Two FBI, two Homeland Security, and one of us.’

They must be Cantrip, then, thought Charles. According to Da, there should have been two of them and one Homeland Security. Someone had been flexing their muscles. Several someones. Brother Wolf decided that Charles was feeling too relaxed to teach them to mind their manners better.

‘Easier to ask forgiveness than permission,’ said Pat as he opened the door to the room that they were meeting in. ‘Isn’t that right, Leslie?’

‘One of you can leave,’ said a woman’s voice coldly. ‘Just because you aren’t in the FBI anymore, Pat, shouldn’t mean you forgot how to count. Five. It’s easy. You can cheat and count your fingers if you have to.’

‘Ha-ha,’ said Pat, pulling the door shut behind him. Charles stopped to listen before going in. ‘Bet you that no one really cares. When is the werewolf showing up? I thought the memo said eight straight up.’

‘Six people is fine,’ said Anna, and Brother Wolf relaxed further at the amusement in his mate’s voice. ‘Five was just to keep the numbers down.’

He’d known she was safe. She was a werewolf, and if the training he’d been giving her didn’t make her safe in a room full of humans, he’d been doing it wrong. But still, Brother Wolf was happier listening to the relaxed tones of her voice.

Charles looked at the door and realized that it would be tough to open with both hands full. He might have managed it, but there was another way.

He knew better, knew that the ghosts weren’t gone. But the temptation was too great. It had been so long since he’d touched her, and Brother Wolf was so hungry. Almost as hungry as he was.

So he opened the bonds that tied wolf to mate and said, as mildly as he could manage,Open the door, please– and someone is going to have to drink hotel coffee since I only brought enough for five federal agents.

The door snapped open and she looked up at him, her face entirely serious and her eyes bright with tears.

You talked to me. But more than words traveled along their bond from her side; she was always generous in sharing her feelings with him. She gave him a rush of relief that almost hid the deep-seated sorrow and pain of abandonment. He’d done that to her; he’d known he was doing it – and still knew that it was the lesser of two evils. He had to protect her from what was happening to him. Knowing he was right didn’t mean he wasn’t torn, that he didn’t regret hurting her.

‘I don’t mind hotel coffee,’ she said aloud, her voice a little foggy.

He was afraid that he was going to hurt her much worse before this was all over.

Charles bent his head down and touched his nose to hers, closing his eyes to hide the effect of the knowledge of what he’d been doing to her – and the effect of feeling her, skin on skin, once more. Brother Wolf wanted to drag her away from all of these strangers and find the nearest empty room so he could wrap himself around her and never let go. Charles wanted to say, ‘I’m sorry for hurting you,’ but that implied that he would do something differently if he had to do it again. He would never allow the ugliness of his life to stain her, not if he could help it.

So he said something stupid instead.‘My wife is drinking the cocoa I brought her.’ He looked past her and into the room. Except for the two men he’d followed, everyone was sitting down around the table. It must have been her suggestion, because all of them looked tense and uncomfortable. Being seated when someone else is standing can be a position of power – a way of saying, ‘I am so confident that I can take you that I won’t bother getting up.’ But when a monster comes into the room, everyone wants to be on their feet. Charles was a big monster.

Proof that Anna had been smart to do it, though, was the level of his irritation with the two men still standing behind Anna.

He met the younger Cantrip agent’s eyes. The human dropped his gaze and stepped back involuntarily, pleasing Brother Wolf. Charles smiled at the agent with his teeth. ‘You invited yourself where you weren’t asked. You can drink hotel coffee.’

And now they’d think he really was stupid, because most humans wouldn’t understand that he’d needed to establish who was in charge so that Brother Wolf would know that Anna was safe. Giving an order that they would obey had established the pecking order. It was okay they would think him stupid, he decided. He and Anna could engage in a little smart cop, dumb cop if they needed to. And playing with the federal agents was so much easier than trying to deal with what he was doing to Anna.

She should have picked someone else. Asil. Someone. But the thought of Anna with someone else sent Brother Wolf into a fit of jealous rage.

There is no one for me except you. Anna’s quick response reminded him that he’d chosen to leave the bond between them open. He didn’t know how much she was picking up, but it was more than time to control himself.

Charles moved past Anna and set the carriers down on the table. Pulling out the single non-coffee for Anna, he handed it to her as he watched everyone sit perfectly still and drop their eyes except for the Cantrip agents: Anna had been educating them.

Anna moved around to the back of the table, taking a chair with no one sitting next to her. The Cantrip agents took empty chairs on the other side of the table after he warned the younger one away from Anna with a lifted eyebrow. Charles stood behind Anna’s chair.

‘This is my husband, Charles,’ Anna told them, her hands folded. ‘Perhaps it would be a good thing to introduce ourselves again, now that we are all here. I’m Anna.’

‘Special Agent Leslie Fisher,’ said the other female in the room, a black woman with intelligent eyes and a firm voice. ‘Violent Crimes Unit, FBI.’