I LOOKED AT Olaf and all I could think was This is it. We will have to kill him. My lioness crouched inside me as if readying herself for a real leap, as if she could help me fight him. My hand touched my gun, but Edward came up with a better idea. He called back to the others in the office and said, “Give us a minute, pardners,” and closed the door so we had some privacy.
“Anita trusted you to keep her safe in Florida when that car almost ran into us,” Edward said, the Ted slipping out of his voice the way it had slipped from his face.
Olaf actually startled, his whole body reacting to it. My pulse slowed down, the fear of the moment replaced with the memory of older fear. We’d piled too many of us in a car on a hunt in Florida. Long story short, I’d ended up sitting in Olaf’s lap because I didn’t fit anywhere else. It sounded stupid and careless now, but it had made sense at the time. A car had nearly crashed into us and only the driver’s car-handling skills had kept us from either being T-boned or flipping over. The fact that I had broken my solid rule about seat belts in that moment . . . I thought I was going to die, but Olaf had folded his arms around me. He’d kept me safe with the strength of his hands, his arms, his body wrapped around mine. His legs and body braced to keep us both in place. In that moment I had curled myself against him, burying my face against his neck, and held on to him, and weirdest of all, I had known that he would keep me safe even if it meant putting his body in harm’s way. In that moment all the strength that I normally feared had been my shield.
“I did,” I said, my voice a little breathy.
My lioness relaxed against the path inside me; she rolled herself on that dark ground, remembering the surety of Olaf’s strength. She’d made no secret of the facts that she liked his lion and that she wanted a mate. I’d told her she couldn’t have Olaf, but I hadn’t found anyone else to put in his place. Of all my unmatched beasts, she was the “loudest” about missing her other half.
“You didn’t see Anita as prey after you saved her in the car.” Edward made his words a statement.
“No,” Olaf said, like he wasn’t sure he was happy with the answer, but it was still the truth.
“Being able to protect someone you care for doesn’t make them weaker, Olaf. It makes you stronger,” Edward said.
Olaf frowned, and even though he had sunglasses on, you could see him fight to understand the concept. “That Anita trusted me to keep her safe did feel . . . good.”
“That’s what it feels like to protect a woman that you care about.”
Olaf stared at him, frowning so hard that his handsome face gained lines I’d never noticed before, like a preview of what he might look like in a few decades. “She did help me torture the waitress in the restaurant later, after that.” His voice was hesitant, almost thinking out loud. He’d now lost me on his logic train, but apparently Edward was still on board, because he explained Olaf’s thinking.
“Would you have played your part in threatening the suspect if you hadn’t had that moment of trust with Olaf in the car?”
I thought about the question, like, really thought about it. I hadn’t enjoyed scaring the waitress, but she’d helped kidnap other women, knowing that they were going to die horrible deaths. If we hadn’t gotten her to tell us what she knew right then and there, more innocent women would have died. It had been necessary, and it had been frightening to me how easily Olaf and I worked together to gain her information. She was a lycanthrope, so nothing we cut off wouldn’t grow back, and we’d saved the women who were still missing, so I counted it as a win, but it wasn’t one of my proudest moments. Truthfully, I tried very hard not to think about it.
“No, I don’t think I would have, but it wasn’t just that. I saw him with your kids. I didn’t realize he was Uncle Otto the way I was Aunt Anita to them until the wedding trip.” I looked up at the big man. “I don’t know how much was pretend on your part, but Becca and Peter trust and love you. They helped me be willing to stand on the other side of the woman in Florida and do what we did.” There, that was the absolute truth.
Olaf nodded. “You stood beside me in the firefight and never faltered. I never thought to find a woman that would have such courage.”
“Thank you.” Now was not the time to lecture him on the fact that women could be just as brave as men. Edward and I were winning this discussion; never argue when you’re winning. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down in the fight either.”
“You trusted me,” Olaf said.
I nodded. “Yes.”
The frown lines were smoothing out, but you could almost hear the gears working in his head again. Sometimes new thoughts can be almost painful, especially if they’re fighting with older thoughts or, worse, older certainties that are no longer certain.
“I have had women trust me in the past, but they did not know the truth of me.”
“You were hiding your truth from them,” I said.
“I was.”
“The lion has to hide in the long grass so the gazelle doesn’t see it,” I said.
Olaf nodded. “Yes.”
Edward said, “But the lions don’t hide from one another.”
Olaf and I glanced at him. In my head I thought, Well, sometimes they ambush other prides in the wild. But again, we were winning, so there was no need to talk real-lion biology when we were ahead.
“No, they do not,” Olaf said.
“The lions trust one another on the hunt,” I said.
“Will you help me hunt the gazelles, Adler?”
“It depends on the gazelle, Moriarty.”
“I don’t understand.”
I tried to think how to explain it to him without insulting him. “I can help you on legal hunts when hurting or killing people saves other lives.”
“She won’t help either of us hunt victims that she sees as innocent,” Edward said.
Olaf made a derisive noise. “No one is innocent.”
“How about children?” I asked before I could think if doing so was a good idea or not.
“I do not hunt children.”
“Good to know because that would be a hard line for me, too.”
“Child vampires are an exception,” Edward said.
“They aren’t children,” Olaf and I said together. It made me smile, and after a moment of missing his social cue, so did he.
“Vampires will still kill their own kind for bringing over children. It’s forbidden for so many reasons,” I said.
The thoughts that went with that knowledge wiped the smile off my face. Kid vamps were always crazy as fuck and usually sadistic or broken in some other major way. Teenagers could sometimes manage to survive okay, but if the victims were younger than puberty, vampirism just fucked them up.
“I am disappointed that this case is about keeping the wereanimal alive,” Olaf said. “I had hoped to help you kill him.”
“Even though he’s a he and not a she?” I asked.
“I told you before, I will help you kill your preferred victim so long as we kill together.”
He had, which again was high praise from Olaf, just creepy-as-fuck high praise.
“From what I understand about the case, aren’t we trying to find the real murderer so that we can save the suspect’s life?” Edward asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“That is what Anita wants to do,” Olaf said.
“The warrant of execution may have the suspect’s name on it, but the way they’re written, they leave us legally able to hunt anyone involved in the murder,” Edward said.
I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. Save Bobby Marchand, and then we’d see where we were legally.
Olaf smiled. “You mean we can still execute the real killer?”
“Legally,” Edward said.
“Newman and I both think the killer is human. They could go to trial for murder.”
“They could,” Edward said, “but they already killed once and are trying to use the marshal system to kill a second victim. Do you really think they deserve more consideration from the law just because they’re not preternatural?”
“Legally, that’s the way the law is written,” I said.
“It’s just as legal to execute them for it here and now and save the taxpayers a trial,” he said.
I looked at Edward, trying to figure out if he was humoring Olaf or really believed what he was saying. I finally said, “I’m not sure how I feel about your reasoning.”
“You argued legalities, Anita. The law is on our side.”
I sighed, and it was my turn to frown. “I’m fine with killing them if they’re trying to kill us or others. I’m fine if it saves lives, but cold-bloodedly killing them just because we can if they aren’t a danger to anyone else . . . Not sure I can sign off on that.”
“I will hope that the murderer threatens more victims, then,” Olaf said.
“Thanks for not saying you hope they kill more people.”
“You are welcome,” he said.
I still wasn’t sure if Edward had said it all to give Olaf hope that we’d get to torture and kill as a couple again, or if he’d meant every word he said. I hoped he hadn’t meant it. If we had time and privacy later, I’d ask Edward. I might not like the answer, but I’d like myself less if I was too afraid to ask the question.