I studied her face. “So if Duke comes back in here and tries to shoot Bobby again, you’ll shoot him to protect your prisoner?”
She nodded. “It’s my job.” She sounded sure of herself, but her eyes weren’t so sure.
“Maybe you would, but let’s not force you to make that choice, Deputy.”
She let out a breath and some tension went out of her shoulders. “I appreciate that, Marshal Blake.”
“So would I, if our roles were reversed.”
Newman holstered his gun and went for the door. “Let’s go find Duke.”
I used my body to hide the movement of my right hand from Frankie, because I drew my gun. I thought the danger was over, but I hadn’t much liked being a fish in a barrel for Leduc. Maybe he was a good man, but even good men can be pushed to a point where they go bad.
6
WE FOUND DUKE leaning against the side of his big SUV. I smelled the bitterness of the cigarette smoke before I saw the bright orange-red tip glow with the intake of his breath. He threw the cigarette to the paved road with a practiced flick of his fingers.
“I gave up smoking twenty years ago, but it’s just like riding a bike.” He fished breath mints out of his pocket and popped several in his mouth.
Newman walked up to him as if the last few minutes hadn’t happened. I hung back, my gun held against my thigh. Leduc seemed calm enough that I could probably holster it, but it might be a little awkward if he noticed me doing it.
“You’re holding that gun against your thigh nice and sneaky, Blake.”
“Not sneaky enough,” I said, and changed how I was holding the gun to a more natural position, business end pointed politely at the ground, as I moved up behind Newman. I kept my distance from Leduc. Guns are great from a distance, but too close and it can turn into a wrestling match. Struggling over who has control of your gun is a bad idea. I tried to avoid it.
“I’m just an old hand at this, Blake. I’ve seen all the tricks and lived to talk about it.”
He wasn’t calling me Anita anymore. It’s easier to shoot Blake than it is to shoot Anita. You think first names don’t matter, try looking down the barrel of a gun at a perfect stranger. It’s easier to pull the trigger. Let them tell you Hey, I’m Jimmy, or Armand, or Gustav, and it’s a little harder to go bang. Leduc knew how close he’d come to shooting me, and he was trying to distance himself from it, from me, from whatever emotional mess was inside him. I felt sorry for him and his daughter, but not sorry enough to forget or forgive what had happened.
Leduc offered the breath mints to Newman and me, but we both shook our heads. He seemed utterly calm. It was such an abrupt change of moods that to most people it would have seemed impossible, but I’d seen other police officers, soldiers, first responders of all kinds go from that level of emotionalism to outwardly cool and collected. Is it healthy to stuff our feelings that hard and fast? No, but sometimes it’s the only way you can hold your shit together enough to do your job. When first responders fail at their jobs, people die.
Normally you’re supposed to act like nothing happened. They ignore it, and you ignore it, but I couldn’t do that today, or not entirely. I wouldn’t break Bobby’s confidence about his uncle helping the sheriff out, but beyond that, we needed to talk.
“What the hell were you trying to prove in there, Blake?” Leduc asked. His voice was still calm; it even held an edge of amusement. It was a very good act.
“Nothing to prove. Just trying to keep our prisoner from getting shot.”
“You’re going to be executing him. Does it really matter when and how?” The amusement was leaking out of his voice.
“Yeah, it matters,” I said.
“If Bobby attacks someone else, then we can shoot him in self-defense, but if he’s not a danger, then it’s manslaughter at best and murder at the worst,” Newman said.
“Frankie and I would both testify that we thought Blake was in danger. Hell, Win, you had your gun pointed along with us.”
“Once Blake told me that she had the situation under control, I believed her.”
“Well, I haven’t worked with the marshal before, so forgive me if I didn’t feel so confident.” Leduc looked at me then and asked, “How did you get Bobby to calm down? Once a shapeshifter’s eyes go, the rest usually follows.”
“Do you have much experience with shapeshifters, Sheriff?” I asked.
He frowned hard enough that the dim light couldn’t hide it. “Not personally, but when this happened, I did some research online.” Something must have shown on my face, because he added, “I know you can’t believe everything you read on there, but with a crime like this, I didn’t have time to run to the library.”
“Eyes are the first thing to go, but most Therianthropes with experience can fight their way back if the eyes are the only thing that changes,” I said.
“How long is a person supposed to wait before we defend ourselves or another officer? Eyes, teeth, a tail? How are we supposed to know when the point of no return is, Blake?”
It was a good question, but I didn’t have a good answer or a satisfying one. “It depends.”