I nodded. I didn’t say out loud that it had to be a change of heart toward me on Edward’s part. Once I’d believed that if he had to he’d kill me—he might miss me, but he’d do it. Now, I realized maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he was finally emotionally attached to me in a very un-Edward-like way.
If Edward had known that Ethan was part gold tiger, I’d have just said my thinking out loud, but he didn’t know. I was thinking that the fewer people who knew, the better, but if the Harlequin knew, then Ethan wasn’t safe. Of course, maybe it had just been coincidence that he was the guard who was with me when Alex attacked me. I frowned and rubbed my forehead. I was giving myself a headache.
“I think I’m overthinking this.”
“Overthinking what?” Ethan asked.
I looked from him to Edward. We were alone. Alex had gone with the guards to tell the queen what had happened. They’d left some guards outside the door of the room we were in, but only Ethan was in the room with us, mainly because Edward had insisted he needed to talk to Ethan.
“Okay, I’m thinking that maybe Alex attacking you wasn’t just to make you kill each other so I’d be alone and easier to snatch. I think maybe George saw a way to kill two birds with one stone.”
Ethan frowned at me. “I don’t understand.”
I told them both what I’d smelled from Ethan’s skin. He gave me an incredulous look. “If I were part gold I’d have the power to command the other colors, and I so do not have that.”
Edward was looking at me. “Anita is the Mistress of Tigers; if she says you smell like the golden tigers, then you do.” He looked at the other man.
“I have three tiger forms, three.” He actually held up three fingers. “Red, blue, and white, that’s it. No gold.” He folded the fingers down into a fist. “I can’t be.”
“All I can tell you is that you carry the strain. I’ve never smelled a weretiger that smelled of four different colors, so I can’t tell you why you don’t have three shapes to go with it, but I can tell you it’s there.”
“You think that George sensed it, too, and when he had a chance to kill Ethan and not get caught, he took it,” Edward said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“If that’s true,” Ethan said, “then I’m dead. They are the greatest warriors, greatest assassins and spies that ever lived. I am so dead.”
He seemed oddly calm about it.
Edward and I exchanged a glance. I saw the slight frown of disapproval around his eyes, which let me know he wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but that he wasn’t going to say no, because he wasn’t sure it was a bad idea either.
“Then you stay with us, with me.”
Ethan raised eyebrows at that. “How does that keep me safe?”
Edward and I looked at him.
Ethan smiled, quick and surprised. “Are you saying that the two of you are better than all of us?”
I shrugged, not always the most comfortable thing in the shoulder holster. It made me have to resettle the straps with a shoulder movement that looked like what it was, adjusting a strap on a holster that wasn’t quite comfy.
“I think it’s more that Ted and I trust each other more than we trust a bunch of men we don’t know.”
“What she said.”
“You’re human,” Ethan said. “You saw what just one of these people did to a hallway full of weretigers. They’re trained guards, Anita.”
“They’re not as well trained as you are,” I said.
He shrugged, and had to do his own version of resettling the straps; without his own marshal Windbreaker it was very obvious. “The other guards wouldn’t agree with you.”
“You held your own with George. Hand to hand with him armed with a gun and a blade, and you kept him at bay.”
“He was toying with me, Anita. He was keeping me enough in the fight so my body was blocking your shot.”
“When did you figure that out?” I asked.
“When he had an opening for the knife and didn’t take it.”
“If you hadn’t sacrificed your arm to his knife and thrown yourself backward, I’d have never been able to shoot him.”
Edward motioned at the bandage on Ethan’s arm. “So you let him cut you, knowing it was a silver blade, and threw yourself back onto the floor so Anita could shoot him?”
Ethan nodded.
Edward gave a small smile. “You trusted her to shoot him before he could fall on you and finish you.”
Ethan nodded again.
Edward studied the other man. “You trusted that George was more worried about Anita shooting him than about killing you?”
“Yes,” Ethan said, and he was frowning now.
“Why?” Edward asked.
“Why what?”
“Why would you trust Anita that much? You’d just met her.”
Ethan frowned. He seemed to think about it for a moment or two. “Her reputation, and the fact that one of the greatest fighters to ever walk the face of the earth was that worried about her. He was that convinced that she would not only shoot him, but kill him. He was way more worried about her than me.”
“So you trusted that the bad guy had researched Anita, and if he was scared of her, then you’d trust her to be scary?”
Ethan thought about that for another moment or two. Then he nodded. “I guess so.”
“You decided all that in the middle of a fight,” Edward said.
“While healing a wound in his side,” I said.
Edward looked at me. “What?”
“When the bad guy made Alex go crazy with rage, he shoved Ethan into the machinery.”
“I got that,” Edward said.
“Did you also get that one of the broken pipes got shoved through Ethan’s side?”
Edward raised eyebrows just a little at that. “No.”
“He dragged himself off the pipe while I was trying to calm Alex.”
“Dragged himself off the pipe?” Edward said.
“Yep.”
Edward looked back at Ethan, and it was a considering look. He finally gave a small nod. “That’ll do.”
I smiled, because I knew what that meant.
Ethan frowned at both of us. “What’ll do?”
“You,” I said.
He frowned harder. “What?”
“You’ve passed inspection,” I said.
Ethan looked at Edward. “His inspection?”
“Our inspection,” Edward said.
He looked from one to the other of us. “You guys have worked together a long time.”
We glanced at each other and then back to Ethan. We both said, “Yes.”
17
EDWARD’S PHONE RANG. When it wasn’t Donna, apparently his ringtone was an old-fashioned ring. Good to know. “Forrester here.”
I heard a man’s voice like a rumble over the phone. I wondered if Ethan could actually hear the other side of the conversation.
Edward went straight into his Ted voice, all cheerful and aw-shucks. “Tilford, that’s good thinkin’ if ya got a good enough psychic.”
Ethan raised eyebrows at the change in Edward’s voice, but it wasn’t just his voice. Edward stood a little differently; his facial expressions matched the voice. There was more than one reason that he’d been so good at undercover work. He wasn’t just good at killing people; he was, in his way, as good at hiding among his prey as the Harlequin.
“Really, Morrigan Williams.”
The moment I heard the name, my stomach tried to drop into my feet. She was a very good psychic. A little too good if you were keeping as many secrets as Edward and I were.
“So Morrigan Williams was here visiting. You lucked out, Tilford.” Edward grinned at the phone as if Tilford could see him. He could do the Ted voice without the whole body and face going with it, but he tended to stay in character if we were with more law enforcement, as if he were more concerned about not dropping the act when he knew he’d be “Ted” for a long time.
He’d mentioned the name twice so I’d be sure to get the point. Neither of us would want to be spending much time near her. She was entirely too good, and her specialty was things that dealt with death. She specialized in serial killer cases and other violent death. Violence spoke to her psychically, the way it drew Edward and me in real life.