The Killing Dance (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 6)

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. If I hadn't known better, I'd have said he was counting to ten.

"You got lucky," he said.

"I know."

Dolph stared at me. "She nearly did you."

"If those women hadn't come in when they did, I wouldn't be talking to you now."

"You don't seem worried."

"She's dead. I'm not. What's to worry about?"

"For that kind of money, Anita, there'll be someone else tomorrow."

"It's after midnight, and I'm still alive. Maybe the contract will be canceled."

"Why the time limit?"

I shook my head. "If I knew that, I might know who put the hit out on me."

"And if you find out who put the money up, what will you do?" he asked.

I stared at him. Off the record or not, Dolph was still the ultimate cop. He took his job very seriously. "I'll turn the name over to you."

"I wish I believed that, Anita, I really do."

I gave him my best wide-eyed, innocent look. "What do you mean?"

"Can the little girl routine, Anita. I know you too well."

"Fine, but you and I both know that as long as the money is out there, hitters will keep coming. I'm good, Dolph, but no one's that good. Eventually, I'll lose. Unless the money goes away. No contract, no more hitters."

We stared at each other. "We can put you in protective custody," Dolph said.

"For how long? Forever?" I shook my head. "Besides, the next hitter might use a bomb. You want to risk your people? I don't."

"So you'll hunt the money man down and kill him."

"I didn't say that, Dolph."

"But that's what you're planning," he said.

"Don't keep asking the question, Dolph. The answer won't change."

He stood, hands gripping the back of the chair. "Don't cross the line with me, Anita. We're friends, but I'm a cop first."

"I value our friendship, Dolph, but I value my life and yours more."

"You think I can't handle myself?"

"I think you're a cop, and that means you have to play by the rules. Dealing with professional hitters, that can get you killed."

There was a knock on the door. "Enter," Dolph said.

Rizzo came in with a round tray and three slender black china mugs. There were little red coffee stirrers in each one. Rizzo glanced from Dolph to me. He stared at my uncuffed hands but didn't say anything. He sat the tray on the desk far enough from me that I couldn't have grabbed him. Officer Rizzo looked like a twenty-year man, and he was still treating me like a very dangerous person. I doubted that he'd have turned his back on Anabelle. If she hadn't grabbed my purse, she could have shot me in the back. Oh, I'd have seen it in the mirror, but I'd have never gotten my gun out in time. I'd never have let a man, no matter how friendly or how helpful, come up behind me like that. I'd made the same mistake with Anabelle that people made with me. I'd seen a small, pretty woman and underestimated her. I was a female chauvinist piglet. It had nearly been a fatal flaw.

Dolph handed me the mug that held the lightest-colored coffee. It was too much to hope that the cream would be real, but either way it looked wonderful. I'd never met coffee that wasn't wonderful. It was just a matter of how wonderful it was. I took a hesitant sip of the steaming liquid and made appreciative 'mmm' sounds. It was real coffee and real cream.

"Glad you like it," Rizzo said.

I looked up at him. "Thank you, Officer."

He grunted and moved away from us to lean against the other wall.

"I talked to Ted Forrester, your pet bounty hunter. The gun in your purse is registered to him." Dolph sat back down, blowing on his coffee.

Ted Forrester was one of Edward's aliases. It had stood up to police scrutiny once before when we ended up with bodies on the ground. He was, as far as the police knew, a bounty hunter specializing in preternatural creatures. Most bounty hunters stayed in the Western states where there were still substantial bounties on shapeshifters. Not all of them were particularly careful that the shapeshifter they killed was really a danger to anyone. The only criteria some states had was that after death, the body was medically certified as a lycanthrope. A blood test was sufficient in most cases. Wyoming was thinking of changing its laws because of three wrongful death suits that had made it all the way to their state supreme court.

"I needed a gun small enough to fit in the purse but with stopping power," I said.

"I don't like bounty hunters, Anita. They abuse the law."

I sipped coffee and stayed quiet. If he knew just how much Edward abused the law, he'd have locked him up for a very long time.

"If he's a good enough friend to bail your ass out of this kind of trouble, why haven't you mentioned him before? I didn't know he existed until that last trouble you had with those shapeshifter poachers."

"Poachers," I said and shook my head.

"What's wrong?" Dolph asked.

"Shapeshifters get killed, and its poaching. Normal people get killed, and it's murder."

"You sympathizing with the monsters now, Anita?" he asked. His voice was even quieter, so still you might have mistaken it for calm, but it wasn't. He was pissed.

"You're mad about something other than the body count," I said.

"You're involved with the Master of the City. Is that how you keep getting all that inside info on the monsters?"

I took a deep breath and let it out. "Sometimes."

"You should have told me, Anita."

"Since when is my personal life police business?"

He just looked at me.

I looked down into my coffee mug, staring at my hands. I finally looked back up. It was hard meeting his eyes, harder than I wanted it to be. "What do you want me to say, Dolph? That I find it embarrassing that one of the monsters is my boyfriend? I do."

"Then drop him."

"If it were that easy, trust me, I'd do it."

"How can I trust you to do your job, Anita? You're sleeping with the enemy."

"Why does everyone assume I'm sleeping with him? Doesn't anybody but me date people and not have sex?"

"I apologize for the assumption, but you got to admit a lot of people are going to assume the same thing."

"I know."

The door opened, and Greeley came back inside. His eyes took in the handcuffs being gone, the coffee. "You have a nice chat?"

"How'd your statement to the press go?" Dolph asked.

He shrugged. "I told them Ms. Blake was being questioned in connection with a death on the premises. Told 'em that no vamps were involved. Not sure they believed me. They kept wanting to speak to the Executioner. Though most of them were calling her the Master's girlfriend."

That made me flinch. Even with a career of my own, I was going to end up being Mrs. Jean-Claude in the press. He was more photogenic than I was.

Dolph stood. "I want to take Anita out of here."

Greeley stared at him. "I don't think so."

Dolph set his coffee on the desk and went to stand next to the other detective. He lowered his voice, and there was a lot of harsh whispering. Greeley shook his head. "No."

More whispering. Greeley glared at me. "All right, but she comes down to the station before the night is over or it's your ass, Sergeant."

"She'll be there," Dolph said.

Rizzo was staring at all of us. "You're taking her out of here, but not to the station house?" It sounded accusatory even to me.

"That's my decision, Rizzo," Greeley said. "You got that?" His voice growled the words. Somehow Dolph had pulled rank, and Greeley didn't like it. If Rizzo wanted to make himself a convenient target for that anger, fine.

Rizzo faded back against the wall, but he wasn't happy about it. "I got that."

"Get her out of here," Greeley said. "Try the back. But I don't know how you'll get past the cameras."

"We'll walk through," Dolph said. "Let's go, Anita."

I set my mug on the desk. "What's up, Dolph?"

"I got a body for you to look at."

"A murder suspect helping with another case. Won't the brass get mad?"

"I cleared it," Dolph said.

I looked at him, eyes wide. "How?" I asked.

"You don't want to know," he said.

I looked at him. He stared back. I finally looked away first. Most of the time, when people said I didn't want to know, it meant just the opposite. It meant I probably needed to know. But from a handful of people, I'd take their word for it. Dolph was one of those people. "Okay," I said. "Let's go."

Dolph let me wash the dried blood off my hands, and we went.