Fair Game

After gesturing the waiting forensic team into the condo, Leslie took out a small spiral notebook and began scribbling things down in it. She didn’t look up when she said, ‘What else did you find?’

‘He came up unobserved. A pure-blood fae could have come up looking like anyone else, probably someone who actually lives here,’ A

Leslie looked up at that.‘He carried her down? Twelve flights of stairs?’

‘Without dragging her,’ A

he was more than human tall. A

She glanced at the missing woman’s father, who stood at parade rest, his gaze on the floor. ‘Because he didn’t leave a scent, it might have been someone who had been to the apartment before, someone she knew – but it didn’t have that feel. He took her by surprise in the hall in front of the bathroom. She fought him – fought hard. There’s a pretty good ding in the drywall next to the bathroom door. But she was no match.’

He used a drug, Charles said.I caught a hint of it in the bathroom.

‘What did the wolf just tell you?’ asked Alistair Beauclaire. His voice must have been quite an asset in the courtroom, cool, even, and beautiful. If she had been human, without her senses to tell her better, she’d never have known that her words had hit him hard – he’d been hoping it wassomeone he could track down.

‘The kidnapper drugged her.’ She looked at Charles. ‘Do you know what he gave her?’

Smelled like ketamine to me, said Charles.But it isn’t my area of specialty.

She related his answer and caveat to their listeners while she thought about how to get Lizzie’s father alone to discuss matters away from human ears.

‘I am sorry we ca

Agent Fisher gave her an assessing look while Mooney, the only regular police officer left on scene, cleared his throat harshly. Beauclaire looked at her with interest.

A

Leslie Fisher’s face grew speculative before it returned to neutral. She’d caught that A

‘You might as well go home,’ Fisher said. ‘If you think of anything else, give me or Agent Goldstein a call.’

6

A

‘If her father is an old and powerful fae, why can’t he find her?’ A

Perhaps his power doesn’t lie in that direction, answered Brother Wolf.Or there is something blocking him. I do not know a lot about fae magic, other than to say that no magic has answers for everything. It is a tool. A hammer is a good tool, but not useful for removing screws.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll buy that.’ She pulled off her shoes and finger-combed her hair. She was tired. ‘Can you tell me what’s wrong with Charles?’

Brother Wolf looked at her and said nothing.

‘I didn’t think so,’ she said. ‘Charles, how can I help if you don’t let me in?’

You ca

She sucked in a breath.‘Did you just lie to me?’ She wasn’t sure, but it hadn’t felt like the truth, either.

Brother Wolf looked away.Charles will not let you help.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘There. I lied to you, too.’ It wasn’t fine, not even close to fine.

We should be human when the fae lord comes, Brother Wolf said, finally.

A

It hurt to change, hurt more when you did it back and forth in only a couple of hours– and Charles hadn’t been in a good place when he’d started. A

It was better to leave him alone for a few minutes. It was better to remove herself from the temptation of a real fight, especially when they could have visitors at any time. And they weren’t back to square one, either. Their bond lay open between them, a testimony that he was better than he had been.

It was four in the morning. She debated showering and getting dressed– or brushing her teeth and going back to sleep. She didn’t make it to the bathroom. The bed was still rumpled from when she’d left it earlier, and it was too inviting to resist.

She crawled under the blankets and buried her head in Charles’s pillow. She felt more than heard when Charles came into the room. He paused by the bed and patted her rump lightly, and something inside her relaxed. ‘Don’t get too comfortable, Sleeping Beauty,’ he rumbled teasingly, sounding like his old self. He might not be letting her help, but he was making progress just the same, despite his decision to retreat behind Brother Wolf earlier. ‘We’ll have company sooner rather than later. You made the fae an obvious offer to give him information the FBI won’t, and he won’t wait until a polite time of day to come calling. I doubt he’ll sleep much as long as his daughter’s fate is uncertain – I wouldn’t.’

She waited until the shower started before pulling her head out from under the blankets. No. Charles wouldn’t rest while a child of his was in danger. If he had children.

Female werewolves couldn’t carry babies to term. The moon called and they changed to wolves, the violence of it too much for the forming child. She’d asked Samuel, who was a doctor, about staying in wolf form for the full term instead. He’d paled and shaken his head.

‘The longer you stay a wolf, the less the human rules. If you stay wolf too long, there is no coming back.’

‘I’m an Omega,’ A

‘It always ends badly,’ her mate’s brother had said roughly. ‘Don’t, please, talk to Charles or Da about it. The last one was brutal. There was a woman

She managed to hide from Bran until it was too late. A werewolf isn’t a wolf, A

His eyes had been raw and wild, so she’d changed the subject. But A

The werewolves were out to the world now with no further need to hide. There were ways for couples who could not have biological children for one reason or another that would work for werewolves as well as humans. Right now, with the public so ambivalent about werewolves, it would be difficult to try to use a surrogate to carry their child. But they could afford to wait awhile for public opinion to change.