MY CALL WENT to Ted’s voice mail. I left a very vague message, because I didn’t know if he’d play it where one of his kids could hear it. Okay, where his stepson, Peter, would hear it. The two of them didn’t seem to have any secrets from each other, which should have been a good thing, but I didn’t want Peter joining the family business or feeling that he needed to ride to my rescue if Edward was unavailable. Peter had nearly died saving me from a weretiger when he was only sixteen. He was about to turn twenty. I did not need more heroics from him. If I didn’t want to tell Donna, Edward’s wife, that he had died in the line of duty, I sure as hell didn’t want to tell her that her son had gotten himself killed.
Newman parked behind the sheriff’s car on a wide gravel area beside the main road. The only streetlight I’d seen for miles shone down on a gate and a wall that peeked out from the trees on either side, as if the wall had been there long enough for the forest to grow up around it.
Sheriff Leduc was punching a keypad, but nothing was happening. He pushed a larger button and yelled into an intercom.
“We have the code to the gate,” Newman said.
“Who could have changed it?” I asked.
Newman shook his head. “No one but one of the other deputies is supposed to be at the house.”
We both started to get out of the car, but my phone rang, and it was Edward’s ringtone, “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood.
I answered with “Hey, Ted.”
“You talk to Forrester,” Newman said. “I’ll find out what’s going on at the gate.”
I gave him a thumbs-up as Edward said, “Anita, I take it you’re not alone.” He sounded slightly out of breath, which was unusual.
The car door closed, and I was suddenly alone in the quiet, night-dark car. “I am now.”
“Social or business?” He still sounded out of breath.
“Business. Did I catch you working out?” I said.
“Yes, but if it’s business, I’ll get some water while you talk.” I could hear sounds in the background and debated if they were from weight machines or something else.
While I gave him a thumbnail sketch of the case, especially what had just happened in the jail, he found a quieter place to listen. So when I was done, it was truly silent on his end.
Edward’s first question was “Do you believe the sheriff would have shot you?”
“Yes.”
“You need more than just Newman for backup,” he said.
“The kid did good,” I said.
“Would he really have pulled the trigger on the sheriff?”
“Yeah, I think he would have.”
“I trust your judgment like I trust my own. You know that,” he said.
“I know that.”
“But I don’t want to trust your life to Newman.”
“Me either, but he had his gun aimed at Leduc’s head. I think he would have pulled the trigger, Edward. I really do.”
“And yet you’re calling me.”
“Newman is doing a good job, but there’s no other marshal I trust as much as I trust you.”
“I think just having more preternatural marshals on-site would protect you from the sheriff.”
“Are you ass deep in alligators and not able to come out and play?” I asked.
I could almost hear the smile in his voice as he said, “No, but it will take me nearly five hours to fly to you, or almost twenty-four hours driving. What I need to know from you is how fast you need backup.”
“And if I said sooner than five hours?”
“Put out a general call through official channels, and they’ll send the closest marshal from our section to your location.”
“You’re talking round your ass to get to your elbow. It’s not like you, Edward. Newman said I was direct like a shark, but you’re part of what taught me to be direct. What are you trying to say or not say?”
“The nearest marshal to you is Olaf.”
“No. Just no. I’ll go without backup before I invite that psycho here.”
“I figured you’d say that, but I had to be sure.”
“How do you even instantly know where he is? I don’t know.”
“I make it my business to keep track of him.”
“Do you keep track of me like that?”
“No.”
“Do you keep track of anyone else like that?”
“No.”
“You want to know where he is in case you decide to kill him,” I said.
“No, I want to know where he is in case I have to kill him.”
There was a time in our friendship when I wouldn’t have understood that distinction, but that had been a while ago. Olaf, aka Marshal Otto Jeffries, was a serial killer. Edward and I both knew that, but neither of us could prove it, and Olaf had never committed that particular crime on American soil to our knowledge. I’d never even caught him in the act. Edward had once. If Edward caught him at it again, he would kill Olaf. They both knew the rules of the game. So far Olaf hadn’t done anything illegal that Edward could use as an excuse, but he kept tabs on him, waiting. Olaf had fallen off the radar when he first contracted lycanthropy, even from Edward’s resources. When Olaf reappeared, he had a level of control of his inner beast that most shapeshifters would have envied. Olaf was a scary, sociopathic suspected serial killer, but no one had ever accused him of slacking when it came to training.
“So, if I put out a general call for aid, he’s the nearest help,” I said.
“I’m afraid so,” Edward said.
“Fuck,” I said.
“Agreed,” he said.
“I don’t need backup that badly, Edward. Newman is good enough.”
“Good to know,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said, but I was mentally cursing. “I thought Olaf was out west somewhere at his home base. What the fuck is he doing in the upper Midwest?”
“He’s hunting a rogue shapeshifter.”
“How close to me is he?” I asked.
“Close.”
“How close?”
“Very close.”
“Just tell me, Edward.”
“If he dropped his hunt, he could be there in an hour, maybe less.”
“Flying or driving?” I asked.
“Driving.”
“Well, fuck.”
“You said that.”
“I’ll probably be saying it a lot more if I have to deal with tall, dark, and psycho.”
“You won’t have to deal with him, Anita. You and Newman can hold the fort, and I’ll be there in six hours or sooner.”
“I think having you come in as backup for this may be overkill,” I said.
“If you really believed that, you wouldn’t have called me.”
“I don’t think Leduc is dangerous enough to need you here.”
“Then why did you call?”
I thought about that for a few heartbeats and finally said, “If Newman hadn’t had a gun to his head, I think Leduc would have shot into the cell. I’d given up all my guns before I stepped inside.”
“Giving up your weapons is standard procedure,” Edward said.
“I know. That’s why I did it. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again for a different case, but usually the danger is the prisoner, not the other officers.”
“Leduc spooked you,” he said softly.
“He would have done it, Edward.”
“I’ll be there in six hours or less,” he said.
“Sounds like a plan,” I said.
“It is, but if things go south while I’m in the air trying to get to you and your choice is dead before I land or calling for more backup, promise me you’ll call for the backup.”
“No, Edward.”
“Anita, if you’re in the hospital or dead before I can get to you, I will be pissed.”
“I’ve never worked with Olaf without you there to help keep the distance or the peace between us.”
“I know, and it’s not my favorite idea either, but he’s a good man in a fight.”
“He’s evil.”
“Sometimes evil will keep you alive.”
“Being alive isn’t always enough, Edward. You’ve got to live with yourself afterward.”
“Promise me, Anita.”
“Damn it, Edward.”
“If the situations were reversed and you knew Olaf was close enough to save me, what would you want me to do?”
“That’s not fair. He doesn’t want you to be his serial killer girlfriend.”
“Just answer my question, Anita.”
“You told me once if I saw him to just shoot him dead and not to wait for him to hurt me, that you’d rather I be on trial than dead at his hands.”
“I remember what I said.”
“Then how can you want me to promise this?”
“Because I think you can negotiate the emotional baggage that Olaf has with you for six hours, but you can’t outrun a bullet. He acquitted himself well last time both professionally and with you.”
“I won’t give up my guns again, not to Leduc or his people. I’ll just wait for you.”
“Anita, just promise me you’ll do it. I don’t want to have to explain to Jean-Claude, or Micah, or Nathaniel, or any of your people that you died because you were too stubborn to take the closest help.”
“It’s not stubbornness, Edward, and you know it.”
“If we let our fear master us, Anita, then we’re already dead.”
“You’re afraid of the big guy, too.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t, and the thought of him being near you when I’m not there scares the shit out of me.”
That stopped me. He almost never admitted out loud that he was personally afraid of anything. “Okay, okay, I promise that if things get so dangerous that Newman and I can’t handle them, I’ll put out a general call for help, even if that means Marshal Otto Jeffries is the help.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
He got off the phone to check flights, and I finally got out of the car to join my fellow officers. It turned out that some of the family had come home, and the deputy guarding the scene had let them change the gate code. Leduc was yelling at someone over the intercom as the gates swung open. He was breathing heavily as he turned back to get in his car. Something must have shown on my face, because he said, “Looks like your personal phone call didn’t go well.”
“My personal business is none of yours.”
“No need to snap at me because one of your boyfriends is getting out of hand.”
I stepped up to him, invading the hell out of his personal space. He was so much bigger than me it probably looked ridiculous, but I didn’t care. “Fine, I was trying to be nice, but if you don’t want nice, we can do it the other way. I was calling another marshal for backup, because after having a fucking gun pointed at me by you, I felt we might need more guns on our side.”
I was sorry I’d said the words as soon as they left my mouth. I didn’t even have to see the pain in Leduc’s eyes to be sorry. The cold, dead stare that replaced the pain was chilling, like someone had walked over my grave. I’d given him a target for all his rage and fear—me. So stupid, so avoidable, so my own damn fault.