Hit List (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 20)

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."

The "deputies" part wasn't exactly true, but it wasn't untrue either, so I ignored it and moved on. "Hey," I said, "sorry, Marshal Jefferies, but we have to go hunt bad guys now."

"So you just work together," the woman said, her hand still in his. She seemed to take encouragement from the fact that he was still holding her hand.

I nodded, but he said, "Only because she refuses to date me."

The woman glanced back at him as if to see if he was kidding her. He kept his face very carefully full of wry humor, an expression I'd never seen on his face and a set of emotions that I didn't think he ever felt.

"Then she's a fool," she said, and put her arm around his waist, and he cuddled her against him, tucking her up under his arm. She couldn't see his face anymore, and the charming humor was just gone; one minute he was a flirting man, the next he was Olaf. He let me see in his eyes, his face, that he wasn't thinking anything safe, sane, or consensual. He let the monster show in his face with no hiding. It stopped the breath in my throat, made me hesitate between one step and the next so that I almost stumbled. That one raw look let me know that Olaf hadn't changed at all; if anything he'd been hiding more from me.

Nicky touched my arm and kept me moving, whispering, "Don't let him spook you; that's what he wants."

I nodded and kept walking. He dropped his hand away and let me walk on my own, but he stayed beside me now. Lisandro trailed us both.

"We need to rejoin Marshal Forrester and the others now, Otto," I said; my voice was calm, very calm, trailing down to that emptiness where it would have almost no inflection at all. I was one step away from going to that empty staticky place in my head where I used to go when I killed people. Lately, I didn't have to disassociate to pull the trigger. That probably should have worried me, but it didn't. Olaf worried me. One monster at a time, even if one of them is yourself.

"Time to go, Marshal Jefferies," I said, my voice that low, careful, empty sound.

He was still holding the woman's hand. "She wants to date me."

She was looking from one to the other of us. "Is something going on between you two?"

In unison, he said, "Yes," and I said, "No."

She tried to pull her hand out of his, but he held on. Without looking at her, he said, "She has refused every offer from me." He looked at the woman, and he dredged up one of those pretend smiles again.

She looked a little hesitant, and looked at me. "You're not his exgirlfriend?"

I shook my head. "No."

She smiled up at him. "Great." She even put her other hand on his arm, so she was holding on to him twice. It was sort of the girl version of the double-arm squeeze that some men use on women, except the guys always seemed aggressive and the woman just seemed like a victim clinging to his arm, or maybe the victim analogy was because I knew what he was.

"No," I said, shaking my head, "no."

"You had your chance," the woman said.

"What's your name?" I asked.

She looked unsure, but said, "Karen, Karen Velazquez."

"It won't help," Olaf said.

"What won't help?" she asked.

"Giving him a name to personalize you," I said.

"What?" Karen Velazquez asked, and she dropped the second hand from his arm.

Bernardo called out behind us. "Hey, Otto, got a call for you from Forrester. You turn your phone off again?" His voice was all cheerful, and normal. It lay on the tension between us like oil on water. It covered, but it didn't change anything.

Bernardo kept walking up to us, as if the tension weren't thick enough to walk on. He was smiling and pleasant and again he stood halfway between us, but not exactly between us.

"We're supposed to join up with everybody. They found a clue."

Edward would have called me first, I was ninety-nine percent certain of that, but I appreciated Bernardo trying to help get the woman away from Olaf. I didn't really think he'd hurt her here and now, but if he made a date with her there was only one kind of date that Olaf wanted from a woman. One with blood and death and things done that couldn't be repeated unless you liked the dead, and I had Olaf pegged for wanting his victims alive enough to feel pain or it was no fun.

Olaf raised Karen Velasquez's hand up and laid a kiss on it, but stared at me while he did it. She didn't seem to notice, just smiled, and was almost flustered in how pleased it made her.

"You are quite lovely, and I am eager to see you later."

She nodded, grinning. "Call me."

He smiled. "I will contact you."

Bernardo said, "Now, let's all go to the cars. Bad guys to catch." He made a shooing gesture at all of us, and we began to go for the parking lot. The nurse called after Olaf, "Call me."

He waved at her, but his face was already emptying of that good humor and flirting. By the time we got to the cars his face was its usual self except for the new beard.

I took a breath, but Bernardo beat me to it. "You know the deal, Olaf. If you do your hobby on American soil you lose everything. Your badge, both your jobs, everything, and Edward will kill you, so really everything."

"He will try to kill me," Olaf said.

I ignored the last comment, because Olaf had to make it, just like I'd have had to make it. We couldn't let anyone, not even Edward, think he was automatically better. But the details of Olaf's deal were new to me. "So, more people than just you, me, and Edward know what he is?"

"A few," Bernardo said, "but it all hinges on him not doing his serial killer thing here."

I looked at Olaf. "You must be really good at something for them to look the other way about the rest."

"I am very good at many things." He delivered the words almost flat; if it had been another man I think he'd have made it flirty, but Olaf didn't waste flirting on anyone but his victims, apparently. If he liked you for real, you got the real deal. Normally I preferred that in my men, but since the real deal was a sexually sadistic serial killer it was sort of a mixed blessing. Flattering, since I was pretty sure it was the most he'd ever shown himself to any woman, and scary as hell all at the same time. Flattering and frightening; that was Olaf all over.

"I believe that," I said, and meant it.

"Do you?" He looked at me, and he seemed to truly be studying me, or trying to.

"Yes," I said.

"It bothered you to see me with the woman."

"You let me see in your face what you wanted to do to her, Olaf; of course that would bother me."

"That bothered all of us," Bernardo said.

Olaf looked up and I thought he was looking at Bernardo until he said, "It didn't bother you, did it, Nick?"

"No," Nicky said.

I turned and looked at Nicky, standing right beside me, face peaceful as it usually was. "Do the two of you know each other?"

"Sort of," Nicky said.

"Yes," Olaf said.

I looked from one to the other of them. "All right, talk to me. How do you know each other?"

Olaf said, "I think we might wish to have the other men step away."

"Why?" I asked.

"Plausible deniability," Nicky said.

"What?" I asked.

Bernardo patted Lisandro on the shoulder. "Let's give them some privacy."

Lisandro looked from one to the other of us, and finally looked just at me. "You tell me to give you some room and I'll do it, but only because Nicky is here. I won't leave you alone with Marshal Jefferies."

Olaf gave Lisandro a long look. "You will do what Anita tells you to do. I've seen it."

Lisandro shook his head. "I've seen you, too. I won't leave Anita alone with you, even if she orders me to."

I started to say something, and Lisandro just turned to me and shook his head. "We've all agreed, Anita, you don't get left with him."

"And I have no say in it," I said.

"No," he said.

"He does not respect you," Olaf said.

"I respect Anita, but you" - he pointed at the bigger man - "you are not allowed to be alone with our boss."

"If Anita truly leads, then it is up to her who is alone with her."

"No, not on this," Lisandro said.

Olaf looked at me. "Will you let him rule you?"

The question was a trap. If I said any man "ruled" me, it could turn me from serial killer girlfriend to serial killer victim for Olaf. As uncomfortable as it was for him to think of me as a girlfriend, it was a lot better than just being meat for him. I did not want to change categories in Olaf's twisted little fantasies.

"Lisandro doesn't rule me, no one does, but if you hadn't noticed, Edward doesn't leave us alone either."

Olaf frowned. "But if you wanted to be alone with me, he would allow it."

"Oh, I got this one," Bernardo said. He did that odd almost stepping between us again. We both looked at him. He said, "No, Edward won't. He's given me orders that if I let the two of you go off alone and something bad happens, he'll kill me." He smiled while he said it, but it never reached his eyes. He was so not happy about it.

"You aren't responsible for me, Bernardo," I said.

"I know that, but it doesn't matter, Edward meant it."

"I'll talk to him," I said.

He shrugged. "You can try, but if the big guy here actually kills you, once Edward kills him, then we're all dead. Me, because he said he'd do it, and the rest of the men because they were your bodyguards and they failed. He'll kill us all, Anita, so do us a favor, stay alive; okay?"

I didn't know what to say to that. "I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself."

"Yep, you can," Bernardo said, "but Edward's grief if you die will be a terrible thing. It will hurt him, a lot, and men like him make sure they never grieve alone. He will spread his grief all over us, not because we failed, but because it'll give him something to focus on so he doesn't have to feel the pain."

"What are you talking about?"

"If he blames all the men you brought with you and has to kill them all, plus me, it'll take time to kill us all, and there's always a chance we'll kill him before he gets us all. I'm good at staying alive and killing things, and the men with you are pretty damn good, too; it's a tall order even for Edward with us knowing he's coming."

Nicky said, "So, killing us all will give him a goal, things to do, so he doesn't have to feel."

"Yeah," Bernardo said.

"You've given this a lot of thought," I said.

"When someone like Edward tells you that he'll kill you, you give it a lot of thought."

I couldn't really argue with that.

"It's also a way to risk suicide without the suicide," Nicky said.

"I think so," Bernardo said.

"I don't think I'm important enough to Edward for all that. He wouldn't risk leaving Donna and the kids."

"He'll do exactly what I just said, Anita. In the front of his head, no, that's not what he's thinking, but trust me, Anita, if you get dead, especially if he blames himself in any way, he will be a force of destruction looking for a place to be aimed. And he's blamed himself for introducing you to Olaf here from the get-go. If Olaf did to you what he's done to some of his other victims, Edward would drown the world in blood to try to erase those images."

I didn't know what to say, but I wanted to protest. I wanted to say he was wrong, but a part of me asked, What would I do if it were Edward tortured to death and I thought it was my fault? I wouldn't kill tons of people, but anyone I thought was responsible for it - they'd be dead. I had more rules than Edward did, so if I felt that way about him, how much more would he do if it were me dead? Especially at Olaf's not-so-tender mercies? I didn't want Nicky and the boys dead, and I'd talk to Edward about that, and Bernardo. They didn't deserve that, but Olaf dead at Edward's hands, oh, hell yes. The thought that Edward would probably kill him slowly was like a warm, happy thought.

"I'll talk to him about you, all of you. I wouldn't want anyone else hurt just because I wasn't here."

"You can talk to him," Bernardo said, "but it won't help. I've known Edward for years. I've seen him do things that he wouldn't do in front of you. Trust me; I'd rather have almost anyone else after my ass."

Again, I didn't know what to say, so I just agreed. "I wouldn't want Edward gunning for me, either."

"All that, and you're going to concentrate on just that part?" Bernardo said.

I looked at him and shrugged. "What else do you want me to say?"

"God, you really are a guy, I mean you look like a girl, but that is such a guy thing. You ignore all the emotional shit and grab onto that Edward is dangerous. Shit, Anita."

"Are you always this much of a pussy?" Nicky said.

Bernardo glared at him and set his shoulders, moving slightly forward. People think that fights begin with frowns, or shouts, but they don't. They begin in much smaller body cues, the human version of dogs raising their hackles, but the dogs know what it means, and so do most men.

Nicky smiled, which was another way to egg the other man on. It was escalating the fight without most women realizing what he'd done, but I wasn't most women.

"Nicky," I said, "don't."

He looked at me, his face trying for innocent and failing.

Bernardo moved a little closer, and I stepped between them. "We are not fighting over stupid shit," I said.

"You're not my boss, not yet," Bernardo said.

"I don't know what you mean by the whole 'not yet' comment, but I do know we are not wasting time having a pissing contest."

"Bernardo's new," Lisandro said. "You haven't told Nicky that he can't fight him for real, and Nicky's been spoiling for a real fight for a while."

"I don't know what you mean by a real fight. Nicky spars with the rest of the guards."

"Sparring isn't real," Lisandro said.

I turned and looked at Nicky. "What have I missed?"

"Don't know what you mean," Nicky said.

"Why would you want to fight Bernardo for real?"

Nicky just looked at me.

"Answer my question, Nicky."

He frowned, sighed, and answered, because he had to; if I made it a direct question he had no choice but to answer me. "I don't hurt people now because no one's paying me to do it, and you've told me I'm not allowed to kill anyone who belongs to you even if they start the fight. You've got some very tough people working for you. I could kill them, but if I can't kill them, they could hurt me, badly, so I don't fight."

"You spar," I said.

He looked out past the cars, as if he were counting to ten. "It's not the same thing, Anita. It's so not the same thing."

"Are you saying that you want to fight Bernardo so you can hurt or kill him?"

"I want to hurt someone, yeah." His big hands folded into fists and a tightness ran across his shoulders and upper body like a coiled spring waiting for the switch to release all that pent-up power.

"Why?" I asked.

Nicky gave me a look that wasn't friendly. It was the look you see sometimes in the zoo from the beasts behind the bars. No matter how much land they have to run in, how many toys they have to play with, there's always one big cat that seems to remember running free, and knows no matter how big the cage is, it's still a cage, and he wants out. Nicky's lion filled his one good eye with amber, and then he blinked and it was back to his human color, but I knew it had been there, his lion peeking out from the cage that I'd forged for it; a cage that it, and Nicky, resented. How had I not seen it? I hadn't wanted to see it, hadn't wanted to understand that no matter how tame he seemed, Nicky was still the sociopath that I'd met a year ago. I hadn't changed him; I'd just broken him to my will. Crap.

Nicky hung his head enough that the long triangle of bangs spilled forward from his face, so that the scars over the other eye socket showed stark in the sunlight. He didn't actually like to show the scars much, so I knew he was just too upset to care. His entire body posture had changed, no longer belligerent, no longer violence waiting to happen, but something softer.

"You feel bad now, and I can feel it. You're a little sad. I know you feel bad for what you did to me, Anita. I don't want you to feel bad." He raised his face and looked at me. There was something of pain in his face, a frowning effort to understand what he was feeling.

I reached out to him, and he moved closer so I could touch his face. He nestled his cheek against my small hand, and he let out a breath; something hard and unpleasant went out of him. He was my Nicky again, or what I'd begun to think of as mine. He pressed his hand against mine, pressing it closer against his face. "God," he whispered.

"That was creepy," Bernardo said.

"You have tamed him like a pet cat," Olaf said.

Nicky and I both turned to him, and the tension was just back in Nicky. His beast vibrated like heat down my hand and arm. He kept my hand pressed to his face as he glared at Olaf. It's hard to be tough when you're cuddling, but it didn't seem to occur to Nicky to let go of me, or maybe the desire to be near me was stronger than his desire to look tough?

"I heard you had reformed Nick, a good woman reforming a bad man, but it's not that at all. Nick had to make you feel better. He could not abide you being even a little sad." Olaf looked at me, and there was something I'd never seen on his face before, a soft horror.

"Do the two of you know each other?" I asked again.

Nicky moved my hand from his face and held it. I wondered, had it bothered him that I hadn't touched him more when he first got to town? He was looking at Olaf; even as he began to rub his thumb across my knuckles, he was staring at the other man.

"Of each other, yes," Nicky said.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means," Olaf said, "that we know each other's work. Jacob's pride of werelions had a reputation in some circles for handling things that other mercenaries would not attempt. They were as good as their reputation until they came up against you, Anita."

I wondered how much Olaf actually knew about what Nicky's people had tried to do last summer, and how badly they'd failed.

"Did you truly kill Silas with a blade?" Olaf asked, and that said he knew some real details.

Truth was I'd only hurt him with a blade, and then he'd knocked me unconscious and damn near killed me. I'd gotten another chance at him with a blade only after he got shot by somebody else. I don't know how much I would have shared, but Nicky answered for me. "Yeah, she did."

"Silas was good with a blade. That you killed him with one is impressive," Olaf said.

I squeezed Nicky's hand; he squeezed back. Was he telling me to just agree? "It wasn't as easy as it sounds," I said. Nicky squeezed my hand again, and that was yes, enough. He didn't want me to overshare with Olaf. Probably the smart thing to do, so I did it; I could be taught.

"Then it must have been difficult indeed, because I worked once with Silas before he joined Jacob's lions. He would not have been an easy kill before he became a werelion. You are better than you have shown me."

"Didn't Anita just break your wrist? How much better does she have to show you?" Lisandro said.

Olaf moved his head to look at the other man. He just looked at him, but apparently it was his signature cave-deep look. Lisandro gave him cold eyes back, and it was a stare that would have given a lot of people pause, but Olaf wasn't most people, and neither was Lisandro. "Save the scary stares for the civilians."

Someone's phone began to go off. It took me a few seconds to realize it was mine. The song was "Bad to the Bone," by George Thorogood. I'd managed to figure out how to get the song "Wild Boys" off as my main ring tone, but Nathaniel had chosen a lot of individual ring tones; I hadn't caught them all yet. Nicky didn't seem to want to let go of my hand so I could get the phone. That answered the question about whether it had bothered him that he hadn't had more attention when I first saw him.

"Yeah," I said, when I finally answered the phone; I admit it was something of a snarl.

"Anita?" It was Edward's voice, but he made my name a question.

"Yeah, I'm here, I mean, it's me. What's up?"

"Is everything all right on your end?"

"Yes, yes, what's up?"

"Did you run into Jefferies at the emergency room?" he asked.

"Olaf has a wrist cast, but its not really him that's causing the problem." I walked away from the other men. Nicky trailed me. I started to tell him not to, but I wasn't sure if he and the other guards had decided I wasn't allowed to be alone, and I didn't want to argue, I just wanted to talk to Edward.

When the only person who could hear was Nicky, I spoke to Edward. "Olaf was flirting with a nurse at the hospital. She's petite, long, dark hair, just his type."

"She looks like you," Nicky said. He moved closer to me, his broad shoulders probably hiding me from the view of the others.

I glanced up at him, and he was actually too close, so I had to step back a touch to focus on his face. "No, she didn't," I said.

"No, she didn't what?" Edward asked.

"Nicky says the nurse looked like me. I disagree."

"Did Bernardo think she looked like you?" Edward asked.

"I don't know."

Nicky moved close again, putting his hand on my shoulder. I started to move away from him, but two things stopped me. First, he seemed to need to touch me. Second, I'd almost totally ignored him when he got to town. Third, it felt good for his hand to be on my shoulder. It was like that with almost everyone who was tied to me metaphysically; it felt good to touch and be touched.

"If Bernardo says she looks like you, then she does."

"I don't know what Bernardo thinks about it, but we already knew I fit his victim profile," I said.

"You fit it, but not absolutely; if he was flirting with a nurse that looks a lot like you, Anita, that could mean things. Bad things."

"It isn't good that he's looking to date a woman at all, Edward." Nicky put his hand on my other shoulder. I stayed stiff for a moment, and then let myself sink in against the front of his body. The moment he felt me relax in against him, he relaxed even more, folding his big arms across my shoulders, going all the way across the front of my body. He could have wrapped me around a second time with all that muscle. I put my free hand over one of his arms, sliding it over the swell of his muscles.

"I don't give a damn about some stranger, Anita. Either he's flirting with this woman to see if it bothers you, or he's trying to find a substitute because you won't date him."

"We can't let him date anyone, Edward. He doesn't date, he tortures and kills." I rested my face against Nicky's arm, wishing that his jacket weren't in the way. It was leather, and a new jacket that I'd bought him to fit over the extra inches of muscles he'd put on since moving in with us, but even the soft leather wasn't as good as bare flesh would have been to me in that moment. Now that I'd given in to touching him, I wanted more skin contact; it was part of the problem with giving in to touching him at all, that once I started I didn't want to stop. Touching Domino would have been the same; almost anyone I had a metaphysical tie to would have been the same. I wondered if Ethan would affect me like that eventually, and I him.

"He says he's willing to date you," Edward said.

"I know he wants to hurt me, Edward."

"I don't mean date you like that."

"You mean a date-date like dinner and a movie?" I asked.

"I don't know about dinner and a movie, but he would try something more normal than his usual."

"He said that to you?"

"Yes."

"I don't see you and Olaf sitting around and talking about girls."

"I made sure he and I were clear on what he meant by dating you before I'd let him come as backup for me, Anita."

"So what did he tell you?"

"He'd be willing to have vanilla sex with you."

I tried to stand away from Nicky, but he curved his taller body over me, so I could stand more upright but he could still wrap himself around me. It felt warm and safe to have his arms around me, so good to have my body against the front of his, held so close. Close enough that I could feel the front of his body begin to swell. Sex had been part of the "magic" that I'd used to bind Nicky to me, to steal his free will. He and his lion pride of mercenaries had kidnapped me and had been threatening to kill three of the men I loved. They'd almost killed me, and in the end they'd stripped me of every power I had except for one. I'd used that one power to make Nicky betray everyone and everything, so he'd help me save myself and the men I loved. Until Nicky I hadn't understood what I was doing, or what it would mean to the person I was doing it to, but with Nicky I hadn't been innocent. I let him hold me, not just because it felt good for him to do it, but because I did feel bad about what I'd done to him. Yes, he'd been a very bad man, but no one deserved to be mind-fucked until there was nothing left, not even a sociopath.

"Anita," Edward said.

"Are you seriously saying you want me to have sex with Olaf? You can't be serious."

Nicky tightened his arms around me, laying a kiss on the top of my head. I began to smooth my hand back and forth on his arm, outlining the muscles under the leather of his jacket.

"Do I want you to have sex with him? No."

"Then what are you talking about?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know, what does that mean? You always know what you mean."

Nicky kissed my hair again. He tucked his body in tighter against mine, and just the feel of his body so hard, so thick against my ass, caught my breath in my throat, made me shiver against him, which made him wrap himself tighter around me, which made all the sensations more intense, which . . . "Edward, sorry, just give me a minute." I put the phone against my stomach and asked, "Nicky, room, I need a little room. It's too distracting."

"What's too distracting?" He whispered it against my hair and pressed himself a little tighter against the back of my body, giving a slight flex of his hips that made me have to try to step away from his body. He tried to hold on to me, tried to keep himself pressed against me, but I said, "Let me go, Nicky." And just like that he had to let me go, because I'd told him to do it.

I grabbed his hand in mine, and that small gesture earned me a smile that filled his face with such joy. It was so wrong that he reacted like that to me; you should only act like that around people you love. Nicky didn't love me, not in a way that should have brightened his face like that from a simple hand holding.

I put the phone back to my ear and tried to ignore Nicky and his too-happy face. "I'm back, Edward."

"You seem distracted, Anita. We have the . . . people that are killing the weretigers, and Olaf. You cannot be distracted and deal with either of them."

"I'm on top of it, Edward."

"Are you?"

Nicky pulled on my hand, drawing me a little closer. I moved my body to one side so that he couldn't draw us completely together. I couldn't afford to be distracted again so soon.

"Look, we're on our way to get fresh clothes for Karlton. Once she's suited up we'll join you in the field."

"No, there's nothing out here. Your wererat trailed them to the edge of the woods and then nothing. We think they either flew or had a car waiting."

"So the brilliant idea to use wereanimals to track the killers isn't so brilliant."

Nicky moved closer to me. I kept the side of my body to the front of his. He leaned over and laid his face against the top of my head, resting against my hair as if it were a pillow.

"It was a good idea, Anita, and when we get a fresher crime scene we'll try again."

"You're right, they'll kill again."

"They will," he agreed.

"I hate the idea of having to wait for another crime scene before we catch a break. It's like we want someone else to be killed."

Nicky moved his head to lay a kiss against my hair.

"We'll meet you back at the motel while you're getting Karlton's clothes. You need to get rooms for the rest of your deputies."

I leaned my forehead against Nicky's chest. "How's Bobby Lee doing?" I asked, because I knew he was the one who'd shapeshifted to try to scent out the bad guys.

"He's passed out in the back of the car."

"So he's already shape shifted back to human form," I said. Nicky put his arm across my back, trying to draw me in against his body again.

"Yes."

I was out of hands to keep our bodies apart, so I turned my shoulder into his chest. His arm tried to turn me so that the fronts of our bodies would touch. I turned my body more firmly sideways to him. "He'll be unconscious for at least four hours," I said.

"Six to eight hours," Edward said.

"Nope, Bobby Lee is a more powerful shapeshifter than that. He'll be four hours or less and then he'll wake."

"Good to know."

"Some of the other people with us don't have to pass out at all when they change form." I was cuddling with one of them right that minute.

"That makes them very strong shapeshifters."

"Yep," I said. I let myself put my arm around Nicky's waist, and he tried to draw us into a complete hug, but I kept my body sideways, so that though we were hugging and the strong warmth of him wrapped around me, it wasn't as distracting as it could have been.

"You travel with some very big dogs, Anita."

"I'm a big-dog sort of person," I said. I looked up into Nicky's face. He kissed me on the forehead, lips so gentle.

"What are you doing, Anita?"

"Talking to you."

"Your voice keeps changing, going soft."

Nicky kissed my eyebrow, ever so gently. "I'm not whispering, Edward."

"I didn't say you were whispering. I said your voice keeps going soft, gentle. I didn't think Lisandro or Nicky had that effect on you."

"Lisandro doesn't," I said. Nicky kissed my eyelid, brushed his lips back and forth over my eyelashes. I raised my face up to him. He kissed my cheek, his breath hot against my skin.

"If Nicky distracts you this much, then you need to be careful, Anita."

"I'll be careful," I said, and it was almost a whisper, because Nicky's lips were just above mine.

"We'll see you at the motel, Anita," Edward said.

"See you," I whispered and hit the button so that when Nicky's lips touched mine I wasn't on the phone anymore. He kissed me. He kissed me gently at first, and then his arm tightened around me and I turned in his arms, against his body. We stopped holding hands and I finally let myself melt into his arms, his body, and his kiss. He kissed me hard and thoroughly, with lips, tongue, and finally teeth. He bit my lower lip, lightly. It drew a small sound from me, so that he bit a little harder, drawing my lip out and away.

I had to say, "Enough."

He let go of my lip, drawing back so he could see my face. He laughed when he looked down at me. "We forgot your lipstick."

I blinked at him, and realized he had red lipstick across his lips, and his smile showed lipstick on his teeth. I shook my head smiling, and reached up to touch his lips, trying to rub the scarlet off his mouth.

He laughed a low chuckle. "Yours is worse." He put his thumb under my lower lip and rubbed at the lipstick I couldn't see.

"I don't usually forget the lipstick," I said, but I was laughing.

"You did miss me," he said, and he looked entirely too pleased. Lisandro called out, "We can't keep him back forever."

Nicky and I looked back at the other men. Lisandro and Bernardo were both in front of Olaf. Bernardo had his hands on Olaf's upper body, literally holding him back. Olaf wasn't trying to get past him very hard, but Bernardo's hands were definitely reminding Olaf to stay where he was, and Lisandro stood there like a sort of secondary defense in case Olaf really did try to get past Bernardo.

But it was the look on Olaf's face that was frightening. Rage was plain on his face, so much rage. "He's jealous," Nicky said.

"Yeah," I said.

"He's more jealous of me." I moved away from him, wondering if that would soften some of the emotion on Olaf's face. Nicky reached out, took my hand. "Don't let him bully you, Anita. He'll take as much control of your life as you let him."

I let Nicky keep my hand in his now, because he was right. I couldn't let Olaf's weird jealousy control me. What I didn't understand was why he was reacting so badly to Nicky, or had Olaf just reached another level of obsession with me, so that any interaction I had with other men was going to drive him nuts? That would be bad, but if it was just Nicky, then that was a different kind of bad.

I had no idea how to talk Olaf down from what I saw as an insane and undeserved jealousy. He wasn't my lover, wasn't a boyfriend, wasn't even my friend. He had no right to the anger on his face, no right to feel possessive of me, but how do you convince a seven-foot-tall psychopath serial killer that you're not his love bunny without him trying to kill you, or you having to kill him? I had no idea.