LEDUC MADE COFFEE, and we helped him finish off a second pot before Newman got anyone to answer a phone at any of the numbers that he had for this area. They were all still asleep an hour past dawn on a Sunday, lazy bastards, and we still hadn’t gotten the actual judge on the phone. Clerks were useful, but they couldn’t change the parameters of the warrant; only the judge who signed it could do that. In all the time I’d been hunting monsters, I’d never tried to get a judge to change a warrant, so I had no idea how it worked or even if there was a step in the legal system to cover it. Surely there was, or if not, there needed to be, but I honestly didn’t know. I wasn’t used to this much downtime when I was hunting monsters. It had given me enough time to text Edward and let him know Olaf was here. Since he hadn’t texted back or called, I had to assume he was on a plane on his way here.
Olaf came to stand next to me against the wall. I tensed up, waiting for something creepy, or at least sexist, but he asked, “Do you normally just wait like this?”
“Wait like what?”
He motioned with his coffee mug at Newman trying yet another phone call and Kaitlin trying to get the images of the two very different footprints up on the computer so they could be sent to the judge when he finally returned the call. Livingston and Duke were talking quietly together in the far corner.
“While they gather evidence and talk to lawyers, do you just wait and do nothing?”
“I don’t know.”
He frowned down at me.
“I’ve never been on a case like this. I come into town, round up the bad guys, hang ’em high, and get out of Dodge.”
His frown became a scowl. “You meant that as a metaphor of some kind, didn’t you?”
I had a minute to remember that his first language wasn’t English, though he spoke it perfectly now. The one thing that travels least well between languages is slang. I’d grown up watching old Westerns, and he probably hadn’t.
“Even I have never hung one of my victims,” he said.
I sighed. He just couldn’t help himself; he always had to push it to the next level of disturbing.
He noticed my expression and knew it wasn’t happy. “Have you hung one of yours? Vampires can’t even die from suffocation. It seems very inefficient even for shapeshifters.”
I shook my head. “No, I have never executed anyone by hanging them. What I meant is that we’re like Old West lawmen. We ride into town, shoot the bad guys, and then we leave. I’m not used to waiting around like this either.”
“Ah,” he said, and took a drink. I think he drank to give himself time to think about what he wanted to say next. He cared about how I reacted to him. He didn’t always care in the way I wanted him to, or the way that a non–serial killer would, but within his limits he was trying.
“The monster is locked up and maybe innocent. I’ve never had that happen before.”
“The way the law is written, his guilt or innocence doesn’t matter,” he said.
“If you mean the warrants of execution are worded in such a way that we could kill him and not go to jail, you’re right. If you were any other fellow marshal, I wouldn’t say this, but it’s not about covering our asses legally. It’s about doing what’s right.”
“You do not think I have a sense of right and wrong?” he asked, his voice low, and I realized that to the rest of the room, we looked like Livingston and Duke: just two cops talking shop.
“I think your sense of right and wrong isn’t the same as most people’s.”
“That is true,” he said.
“I want to kill the person who killed Ray Marchand, not the person who was framed for the crime.”
“So, you agree with Newman that it’s about not allowing the murderer to use you.”
“That’s part of it.”
“What is the other part?”
“I took this job believing that if I killed the monster, it would save the lives of all their future victims. Killing the monsters keeps the rest of us safe. But killing someone that hasn’t gone rogue doesn’t save lives. It just takes a life.”
“You see yourself as the protector of the innocent,” he said.
“I guess so.”
He took in a deep breath so that his chest rose and fell noticeably with it. “I do not see our job that way.”
“I know you don’t.”
He looked down at me, those deep-set eyes so intense that I wanted to look away from them. It took more willpower than I’d admit out loud to stare back and not flinch. “How do I see our job?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“I never ask questions unless I want the answer, Anita.”
I fought the urge to lick my lips, but I was trying to keep my heart rate slow and even, and if I was going to waste energy doing that, I’d be damned if I’d show any secondary signs of nervousness. “It’s a legal way for you to indulge in your violent fantasies and get paid for it.”
He smiled, and it was one of the best and most normal ones I’d ever seen from him. It changed his face like a shadow of what he might have been if he’d been a completely different person. “Yes, exactly.”
I licked my lips and added, “You’re also like Ted. You like testing your skills against the most dangerous prey, and there’s nothing more dangerous to hunt than vampires and shapeshifters.”
Even his eyes sparkled with his happiness as he said, “I’ve never met a woman that understands men as well as you do.”
“I’m just one of the guys, I guess.”
He nodded, the smile beginning to fade into something more serious but not yet disturbing. “That is truer of you than of any other woman I have ever met.”
I shrugged, not sure what to say to that.
A voice called from the open door to the cell area. “Hey, I think we need some help back here.” It was Wagner, the deputy who would be seeing real jail sometime soon.
I called back without moving from the wall. “What do you need?”
“Can you beat a wereleopard to death?”
“What? Why do you want to know that?” I pushed away from the wall and moved around Olaf toward the doorway.
“Because Bobby hasn’t moved at all, and I’m not sure he’s breathing.”