Frost Burned

“Okay,” said the operator. “The police are there and in position, just hang tight and wait for them.”

As the sounds of rapid-fire orders seeped into our bolt-hole, I became more and more uneasy about trusting the police to be on our side.

About that time, there was a gentle tap on the bedroom door.

“Mr. Brooks? This is Kennewick PD, sir. Please put down your weapons. We have the suspects in custody and you are safe.”

Kyle put his gun down on the floor—then noticed me not doing the same thing. He reached out toward me, and Ben growled. I was not alone in my paranoia—or else Ben was just picking up on how unhappy I was. Wounded and surrounded by the dead and terrified, he wasn’t exactly Mr. Sane right now, either.

“Give us a moment,” Kyle called out. “Mercy’s pretty freaked-out. She’s had quite a night, and it’s not over. Let me talk her down.”

There was a pause, then a more familiar voice called,“Mercy, drop the gun. We’re the good guys. We’ll find Adam, but you’ve got to put down the gun and let us in.”

“Tony?” I called out, not releasing my grip on Kyle’s gun. But my stomach muscles started to loosen. Tony Montenegro worked for the Kennewick police and he was on our side.

“It’s me,chica. Let us do our job.”

I engaged the safety and put the gun down on the floor next to Kyle’s.

“Come on,” Kyle said. “They’ll feel better if we’re not near the guns.” And then he murmured, “I’ll feel better, too. Ben, is there anything you can do to look less frightening?”

Ben dropped his head and tail, hopping on three feet to accompany us to the bedroom door. I wasn’t sure his posture made him look less lethal—and that was before he ruined it by snarling at the bound kidnapper who had awakened at some point and was struggling.

The bald man froze, and I patted Ben on the head.“Sorry, Ben,” I murmured. “No eating the bad guys when they are tied up, and the police are on the other side of the door.”

I wasn’t really kidding, though I didn’t know it until I said it. Both Ben and Kyle gave me a thoughtful look.

“I’m going to have the werewolf lie down next to the wall,” Kyle said loudly. “He’s already been hurt by the guys who took out Adam. I don’t want anyone shooting him by accident.”

“Everything’s been going smoothly,” said Tony reassuringly. “We’ve got two guys, they surrendered peacefully enough, so no one is too trigger-happy except for Mercy. But lying down by the wall is a good idea.”

There had been a third man downstairs, I thought. Or maybe one of the two from below had been the man who’d come up to give the men holding Kyle their orders. I listened to Tony explain that the wolf who was in the room was one of the victims and not to be shot. He was being very cautious, but then he’d seen the werewolves before.

Timber wolves are big and scary. Anyone who has ever seen one in a zoo or in the woods is in no doubt that they are in the presence of an apex predator. Werewolves are bigger and scarier than that. Sometimes they can downplay it, a little body language, a little pack magic, and they can pass for a huge dog if no one is looking for werewolves.

Ben was in no condition to play harmless, which wasn’t his best thing anyway. That he was wounded meant that if someone got jumpy, Ben would take it to the next level. Lying down next to the wall ten feet from the door was as good as it got. I stood between him and the door.

“Okay,” said Kyle. “No one is armed or—” I think he started to say dangerous but stopped himself. He’d told me that no one should lie to the police; the trick was not to tell them much until you had a lawyer. “No one is armed.”

The door opened, and the police cautiously entered, giving Ben a wide berth—which was probably smart. He might be tracking a little better than I was at that point, but not much better. And he didn’t like being cornered by strangers in uniforms at the best of times. We all held very still while they examined the two men on the ground without touching.

“I killed the first guy,” said Kyle, sounding shaky. I couldn’t tell if it was an act or not. No one would believe a lawyer would confess to murder unless he was in bad shape, but Kyle didn’t want them looking at Ben.

“No bite marks that I can see,” said one of the officers, who was kneeling by the dead man. “I’m not a doctor, but I can’t turn my head that far around. I’d say his neck was broken.”

The tension in the room immediately dropped, replaced by a curious elation.

“No one wants a werewolf kill on their watch,” Tony explained quietly to me when he saw my expression. “And Adam has been very helpful from time to time. And no shots were fired, no one died at our hands, none of ours was hurt—and we got to play heroes. This operation went down slick and smart. It is a very good day when we can say that.”

Of course, it wasn’t over then. They took us to the Richland Police Department—I didn’t ask why they didn’t use the West Richland office.

They interviewed Kyle and me separately; he’d told me that would happen. I didn’t know the policemen who talked to me, and at least one of them was terrified of Ben.

I had told them that Ben needed to stay with me, and they didn’t argue after I pointed out to them that if I wasn’t with Ben, I wouldn’t be there to stop him if he got upset. I’d removed his bandages, and they’d taken photos of his wound—which still wasn’t healing. I’d refused medical care for him (by that time he was in a foul temper—in pain, his vulnerability exposed and photographed, andhungry). Someone had found a first-aid kit, and I’d rewrapped his leg.

His presence made the police who were talking to me start out a little unfriendly. No one likes to be afraid, and only an idiot wouldn’t be a little afraid of Ben in his current mood. They also seemed to be a little slow, asking me the same questions over and over again.

Then they went out for a bit and came back actively hostile.

Fine. I could be hostile, too. Adam was being held by crazy people with guns—and I was stuck arguing with a pair of officers I was beginning to think of as Tweedledumb and Tweedledumber. Maybe Ben wasn’t the only person in a bad mood.

They were convinced that the attack couldn’t have been unprovoked. What had the pack been involved in that got such a response? The attack on our house looked a lot like some of the drug cartel attacks. Did I know about the way the cartels were blackmailing the field hands at the paper-pulp tree farms to plant drugs between the rows of trees near Burbank?

About the fiftieth time we were going through the same old thing—they had a problem with me being unwilling to tell them where Jesse and Gabriel were hidden—a youngish man in a very well-tailored suit came in and introduced himself as Loren Hoskins, my lawyer. He advised me not to say another word, so I shut up and let him do his job.

An unpleasant three and a half hours later, he escorted me outside, a firm warning to me that I leave the police work to the police ringing in my ears. Presumably that meant that they didn’t want me out looking for Adam because the police are so well equipped to take on guys capable of taking out a whole werewolf pack. I might have said something to that effect as we were leaving. But they didn’t have a werewolf’s hearing, so the only one who heard me was my lawyer.

“They have training that you don’t,” said the lawyer in a very quiet voice.

That was true. But they didn’t have a mate bond and a werewolf pacing beside them. Ben was limping, but he was putting weight on his bad leg. Either he was getting better, or he was so tired all of his legs hurt.

“Kyle called me,” Loren-my-lawyer said, opening the back door of his car to let Ben inside without any apparent concern for his leather upholstery or the worry of having a werewolf sitting at his back while he drove. “He told me he thought that the both of you were at a point that a lawyer would be good—and heavily implied that if they were being so hard on him, it might be because there was some pressure from above. He also said, in so many words, that if they were giving him, a lawyer, a hard time, that they were likely doing worse to you—would I mind coming to your rescue and sending a lackey his way?”