Laurell Hamilton - Hit List

“You didn’t want to tell him how many men I was sleeping with,” I said.

“Part of Olaf’s hatred of women comes from thinking they’re all manipulative whores. You weren’t having sex with anyone when he met you, so that helped him not have issues with you. I thought it was probably good to leave numbers of lovers vague.”

I couldn’t really argue with his reasoning, but... “Do you think I’ve gone over some magic line in Olaf’s mind? Am I not his girlfriend anymore, but just another whore that he’ll want to kidnap, torture, rape, and kill?”

Edward took off his sunglasses and rubbed his eyes with finger and thumb. He shook his head. “I don’t know, Anita, honestly I just don’t know.”

“Well, crap, that could complicate things,” I said.

“And you broke his wrist, so he’s going to be trying to prove that you’re not better at this job than he is; almost any man would.”

“I didn’t mean to make it worse, Edward.”

“I know.” He looked at me, his blue eyes pale and tired under the shade of his cowboy hat. I still couldn’t get used to the fact that “Ted” wore a cowboy hat and Edward didn’t. Edward didn’t like hats. He put his sunglasses at the back of his shirt, rather than the front. They were less in the way for shooting back there.

“What do you want me to do about him?”

“Hell, Anita, I don’t know. If he’s decided you’re just another whore, then you can never, ever work with him again. And he may try to go after you for real.”

“You mean make me one of his victims,” I said.

“Yes.”

We looked at each other. “So I don’t check on him at the hospital when I talk to Karlton?”

He shook his head, took off his hat, and ran his hands through his hair. He put the hat back on and moved it until it was back at the same comfortable angle it started at. He was being Ted more than himself the last few years; maybe Edward liked hats, too, now?

“I don’t like you being at the hospital at all with Olaf there, Anita.”

“You’re not asking me to skip the talk with Karlton, are you?”

He shook his head. “I know better.”

“Because I can’t let fear of Olaf prevent me from doing my job.”

“Holding Karlton’s hand isn’t your job, Anita.”

“No, but I don’t want Micah in this city with the Harle . . . shit, them here. He’d be a hostage, or a target.”

“Agreed,” Edward said.

“Then that leaves me to do it.”

“I know you’ll be careful.”

“Like a virgin on her wedding night,” I said.

He smiled, but it left his blue eyes untouched. He reached back and unhooked his sunglasses from the back of his shirt. He slid the glasses over his eyes so I couldn’t see how cold and unhappy they were. “I don’t want to kill Olaf until after he’s helped us catch these bastards.”

It was perfectly him to say he didn’t want to kill him until after, not that he didn’t want to kill Olaf, but just not now, not before the big man had been useful on the case.

“You do your bleeding-heart routine for Karlton. I’ll try to send Newman with you, and you try to leave both of them at the hospital.”

“He wasn’t useless in the woods, Edward.”

“No, but he’s new, fresh out of training, which means he won’t bend the rules like we do.”

“No one bends the rules like we do,” I said.

“Not true, a lot of the old-time marshals do it.”

I thought about it and nodded. “Fair enough.”

“If you count Bernardo and Olaf with us, then no one is as ruthless about bending the rules than we are,” he said.

I grinned. “I’ll include them.”

He smiled again. I wondered if his eyes were smiling behind the dark glasses. “I’ll go try to track the big, bad vampires while you waste time at the hospital.” He started walking away from me.

“Edward,” I said.

He spoke without turning around. “Sorry, I’m sorry, but until I know what Olaf’s intentions are toward you, Anita, I don’t like you away from me.”

I touched his arm, made him look at me. “Are you really more frightened by the idea of Olaf kidnapping me than the . . . Those Who Shan’t Be Named?”

He took in a lot of air, let it out slow, and then nodded.

“They’ll try to let the Wicked Bitch of the World possess my body, Edward. I’ll be worse than dead.”

“But they won’t torture you first, and I trust you to be strong enough psychically that you’ll still be in there, which means we might be able to get you back. If Olaf takes you, Anita, there won’t be anything left to save. You have no idea what he does to his victims.”

“And you do?” I asked.

He nodded. He looked pale through his summer tan.

“You’ve seen it in person?”

He nodded, again. “We’d finished a job, and we were all celebrating. We’d gone to a brothel, and I didn’t know Olaf’s rule that he waits until after a job to indulge.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Another customer was drunk and went in the wrong room, and started screaming. The sound stopped, abruptly. All of us who weren’t drunk came out of our rooms, armed; you just knew the sound of screams being cut off like that.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“The man who had screamed was dead in the doorway. The girl was tied to the bed.”

“She was dead?” I asked.

“No.” He said it softly.

I gave him wide eyes.

“We thought she was dead, but she wasn’t. I wished she were dead when we found them. I would have killed him, but he was standing there pointing a gun at me, at all of us. He bargained with us.”

“Bargained how?”

“We could all die, or we could we all live. We lived.”

“Why would you ever work with him again after that?” I asked.

“There aren’t that many people as good as I am, Anita. He’s one of them. Besides, part of the bargain was that he’d never indulge himself again, if he was working with me.”

“So you made a deal to dance with the devil to keep him from killing more women?”

“Yes.”

“Was Bernardo there?”

“No, he’s never seen Olaf’s work in person. He’d never work with him again if he had.”

“Because he spooks easier than you do,” I said.

“Easier than either of us,” Edward said.

I took the compliment. “What do you want me to do?”

“If you even suspect that Olaf has decided you’re his next victim, kill him. Don’t wait for a clean shot, don’t wait to be sure, don’t wait for no witness, don’t wait at all, just kill him. Promise me, Anita.” He reached out and grabbed my arm, holding tight. “Promise me.”

I could see my reflection in his dark glasses. I said the only thing I could say: “I promise.”

LAILA KARLTON LOOKED small in the hospital bed. Her face was very round and with her hair around her face in tight waves, she looked five, an earnest, sad five. The looking small and young could have been because the three men on either side of her were big guys. All three were at least six-four and built big and solid. The two younger men were muscular and fit, their barrel chests fitting into trim waists. The older of the younger men had a flat stomach that promised a real six-pack under the T-shirt. The younger one was softer in every way; though he hit the gym, he didn’t hit it as hard as his brother did. The oldest man looked like a slightly aged version of the younger men. It had to be Karlton’s father and football-playing brothers.

Once I saw the mountain of men in the room, I was glad that I’d left Nicky and Lisandro out in the hallway. Socrates and I were enough to add to the crowd.

“Anita,” Laila said, and her large brown eyes were suddenly shinier, as if tears were threatening. Jesus, all I’d done was come into the room.