Anita Blake 20 - Hit List (29 page)

“It’s not your call who comes. The warrants are mine and Edward’s. He’s got Newman with him now.”

“The boy has to learn,” Olaf said, “but the girl will be a werewolf in a month’s time. Training her is a waste of effort.”

He was right, as far as it went. “She needs this, Otto,” I said, remembering just in time that his official name was Otto Jefferies. Marshal Otto Jefferies.

“She will slow us down,” he said. He kept staring at me, but it was eye contact. I couldn’t accuse him of staring at my breasts or anything. I normally like eye contact, I give great eye contact, but there was something about Olaf’s attention that made holding his gaze feel like work, as if his eyes were weight that I had to hold up just to stay standing there. If he’d been a vampire I’d have accused him of doing some vampire mind shit that I hadn’t heard of, but it wasn’t that. It was just him. Just the weight of his personality and our growing shared history. Shit.

“Maybe, but she’s still coming.”

“Why?” he asked, and I think it was a real question. A real attempt to understand what I was doing and why, so it deserved a real answer.

“This has really shaken her confidence, and she feels like a monster already. Her father wouldn’t even touch her hand, as if just that would contaminate him.” I shook my head and didn’t try to keep the anger off my face.

“Why do you care about her? She is a stranger to you.”

“I’m not sure I can explain it to you,” I said.

“Once I would have thought you meant I was too stupid to understand, but I know you do not think me stupid.”

“No,” I said, “I never think that.”

“Then explain to me why you care.”

“We’re supposed to take care of each other, Otto.” I spread my hands wide, almost a shrug, showing that I just didn’t know how to say it better than that.

“If they are an asset in the field, you want them healthy so they can give you backup. That is common sense, but the new marshal will not be helpful. She is traumatized, and that slows most people down. She will make bad decisions.”

“You don’t know that,” I said.

He gave an arrogant smile. “I do know that.”

“You don’t know Karlton. You don’t what she’ll be like in the field now.”

“She is a woman. She will be weak.”

I suddenly had no trouble meeting his eyes, at all. Anger makes so many things easier. “Do I point out the obvious?” I asked.

“If you like,” he said.

“It wasn’t a man who broke your wrist.”

Bernardo stepped a little more between us, so we both looked at him. “Let’s take this outside.”

“Why?” I asked.

He leaned in close enough that his long, straight hair spilled up against mine. I had a whiff of expensive cologne, something spiced and musky, but just a hint, not too much, and you had to be close to notice it. Unlike some men who seemed to bathe in it. No matter how nice the cologne, if the man put too much on it smelled horrible; Bernardo didn’t smell horrible.

He whispered, “What you just said doesn’t match the story we told the emergency room staff.”

Oh. Out loud I said, “Sorry, yeah, let’s take it outside.”

We all moved for the big doors and the outside world. A woman in a white coat with her short brown hair in a tiny ponytail got my attention. It took me a second to recognize her from when I got stitched up. She was one of the interns. I couldn’t think of anything she needed from me, but I stopped like you’re supposed to; I was girl enough not to keep walking.

The men stopped with me, waiting. She seemed a little flustered at that, and motioned me away from them. I wondered if she was going to ask me more questions about my healing abilities, or even ask to see the wound. I’d had other medical professionals ask to see injuries that they’d helped treat.

She was only a little taller than me, maybe five-five, though I glanced down as she leaned in, and saw she was wearing at least two-inch heels on her low boots.

“Marshal Forrester had a wife and family, but how about the other marshals with you?”

I didn’t try to explain that he wasn’t legally married to Donna. They’d been living together longer than Micah, Nathaniel, and me, and only a couple of years less than Jean-Claude and I had been dating.

“The one with his hair back in a ponytail is married with kids.” I hesitated about Nicky.

Technically he was free to sleep with other women. I wasn’t monogamous, so it seemed unfair to make him cleave only unto me, but he was here to feed theardeur and guard my back, so I said,

“The blond is with me.”

“Lucky you,” she said.

I smiled automatically. “Thanks. To my knowledge neither Marshal Spotted-Horse nor Marshal Jefferies has a girlfriend.” Then I realized I was talking to a petite dark-haired woman. The hair was a little less dark than he preferred, but she was close enough to his victim profile for me to think of it. If I thought of it, so might he. Crap.

“Oh, sorry, Marshal Jefferies, the tall guy, is involved with someone. It’s new, I keep forgetting.”

“How new?” she asked.

I smiled. “Trust me, what was your name again?”

“Reed, Patience Reed.”

I crooked an eyebrow at that.

She laughed, and it was a good laugh, happy, light. She seemed younger just from the sound of it. “I know it’s a terrible name for a doctor.” She rolled her eyes, and again I thought, young, innocent. So, had to keep her away from Olaf.

I smiled, and pushed it all the way up into my eyes, so she wouldn’t see me worry. “Patience is pretty funny for a doctor. Anyway, Olaf is pretty serious about the new woman in his life, but Bernardo is free and clear for dating.”

“Bernardo, is that his name?” She looked behind me as she said it, and I was pretty sure without turning around that she was looking at him.

“Yep, Bernardo Spotted-Horse.”

“He’s Native American?” she asked.

“Yep.”

She looked away hastily and blushed just a touch. I was betting that Bernardo had favored her with one of his killer smiles. The one that made the drive-through girl tell him what time she got off work.

Patience Reed said, “He’s almost too beautiful to ask out.”

“You should ask him out,” I said.

“You think he’d go out for coffee, or drinks?”

I nodded. “I don’t know if any of us are going to have time to socialize much, but you should give him your number or something. We might have some down time, you never know.”

“Oh, I couldn’t just ask him like that.” Then her eyes narrowed at something behind me. It made me glance back to find a couple of nurses talking to Bernardo. He was smiling and talking to them.

“I’d give him your number before they do,” I said.

Patience began to walk very purposefully toward the growing crowd. She moved up to join the circle around Bernardo. The hesitation was gone as she pushed her way through the now three other women. Lisandro was fending off an admirer by raising his left hand and showing off his wedding ring, which meant she’d gotten pushy. God she was fast, from zero to making him flash the wedding band in less than five minutes.

Nicky was against the other wall being charming with a blonde pretty enough that even I thought words likebeautiful . She was a little short on curves, but when they’re almost six feet tall a lot of women seem to lose curves, as if it all goes to those long, long legs. I was almost sure the blond curls spilling over her pale blue scrubs were her natural color. I was betting on blue eyes to match the scrubs.

Nicky turned as I came closer. One minute he was smiling and flirting with the blonde and the next he was focused on me. He wasn’t rude, and even introduced us. “Anita, this is Michelle.”

I smiled and did my best to be friendly. She didn’t disappoint me on the eyes, flashing big, soft blue ones at me, but the look in the eyes wasn’t soft. She’d had all his attention, or so she thought, and then I walk up, and it was like the sun turning away to shine on someone else. I knew Nicky could be charming. He’d told me once that his ability to flirt had helped him do better undercover work, and even get information from women by seduction. Pillow talk was supposed to be very good for gathering intelligence. Most of the time he didn’t bother flirting with the female shapeshifters and vampires at home. He’d explained that he could have fuck buddies among them, but they all knew he was mine, and he preferred me to them. Harsh, but now I saw it for myself. Even I had thought he was genuinely interested in the blonde. Had he been, or had it all been an act?

He smiled at me, and though we didn’t touch each other, not even to take hands, we were just together. I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but one minute he was giving off signals that he was available and the next he was aware of me and he was just no longer on the market. The blonde’s eyes flicked from one to the other of us. She had a moment of letting it show on her face that she wasn’t used to losing out to other women once she’d started trying for a man.

I smiled, not quite sure how to react. I tried to keep it friendly, but it was as if she felt cheated somehow. Nicky had been giving all the signs of flirting and saying yes to at least coffee, if not more, and then it was suddenly turned off, gone, and he made his allegiance to me very clear.

He’d flirt, he might even do more if he got the chance and I was okay with it, but he was mine.

There were other women who would have been angry about him flirting, and maybe I would have been a little jealous if he’d kept flirting, but he’d reacted instantly to me, and made it clear, subtly, that he wasn’t really on the market. He was window shopping, when she wanted to buy.

Nathaniel, Jean-Claude, Asher, Dev, Jason, and Crispin all flirted more and even better than Nicky, but all of them but Jason did the same thing that Nicky did. Jason was just a close friend with benefits and had a steady girlfriend in another state, so it was good he didn’t react that way.

He wasn’t mine. The fact that Damian did react that way was one of the bones of contention between him, me, and his steady in-town girlfriend, Cardinal. She hated me just a little because of it, and I didn’t entirely blame her.

I totally did blame the blonde, Michelle, for disliking me so instantly. She’d talked to him for a few minutes; that was too quick to get possessive, but I’d noticed it with other strangers. I’d seen it before with Jean-Claude and Nathaniel and women at the clubs, but I’d thought it was because they were just both so damn beautiful. Nicky was handsome, yummy, but either I didn’t see him the way others did, or it wasn’t the level of pretty of the man in the situation but something else I was missing completely. I shrugged and let it go. So a strange woman was jealous that Nicky liked me better, not my problem.

Then I realized that we were a man down. Where was Olaf?

OLAF WAS OUTSIDE, under a little covered area to one side of the hospital entrance. He was talking to a woman who was shorter than I was, in pink hospital scrubs. Her black hair curled over the shoulders of all that pink. Olaf was smiling, bending over so he could hear what she was saying. Whatever she said, it made him laugh. I’d never seen him laugh. It was a little unnerving, like seeing your dog sit up and try to hold a conversation with you. I mean, you know the dog communicates, but it’s not supposed to speak the queen’s English. I knew there had to be laughter in Olaf somewhere, but not this soft, smiling face. It changed his face, filled it with lines that seemed almost—kind. Either he really liked this woman, or he was a better actor than Edward.

He looked over her head at me, and for just a moment he let the laughter slip away. He let me see in those cavernous eyes that he did like her, he liked her lots, but not in a good way. He let me see in that strangely handsome face that he was thinking about her not without her clothes on, but eventually without her skin. He let me see the darkness in his eyes for a blink or two, and then the woman touched his arm, made him look back down at her. I realized that with the height difference she hadn’t seen his eyes, hadn’t seen what he’d shown me. Fuck.

She spared a glance back at us, as if wondering what had attracted his attention. She had that expression on her face that let me know she was looking at me as a potential rival, doing that girl thing that some women do of assessing who’s the prettiest, who’s a threat. Whatever she’d decided about me made her move just a bit closer to him and lay her small hand on his arm. She was marking territory. If I reacted badly, she’d know I was interested in him, too.

Olaf laid his big hand over hers, pressing it to his arm, and smiled down at her. The frightening look was gone, washed away in a terribly normal flirting. Shit.

“I thought he wasn’t allowed to hunt anything but monsters on the job,” Nicky said.

“He’s not,” I said.

“Then you better do something, because he’s shopping for a victim.”

I sighed. “Shit.” I moved toward them with Nicky at my back. The doors whooshed open behind us and Lisandro came hurrying up behind us. “Anita, please don’t do that again.”

I kept moving toward Olaf and the woman as I said, “Do what?”

“Leave me alone with a beautiful woman who is obviously trying to pick me up.”

“You’re a big boy,” I said. “I thought you could handle it.”

“If I fall off the wagon again, my wife will divorce my ass. Help me avoid the temptation.”

I would have said it was ironic, his turning to me for help in avoiding the temptation of sex with other women, but we were up with Olaf and the woman. There wasn’t time to worry about Lisandro’s lack of logic.

Olaf looked at us, still smiling, the pleasant mask hiding everything, but the faintest flash in his eyes. If you didn’t know what you were looking at, you’d miss it, and how many women would be looking for serial killer sex in anyone’s eyes?

The woman touched his arm again, but he didn’t put his hand over hers this time. She noticed the lack of touch and looked at us all. She frowned at me, but seeing my U.S. Marshals jacket she both relaxed and frowned harder. Her hand tightened just a little, squeezing his arm. “Do you have to go to work?”

“I told you I was here to hunt monsters.” He smiled while he said it, and lifted her hand off his arm, gently. He held her hand for a moment, lingering. “This is Marshal Anita Blake and her deputies.”