Laurell Hamilton - Hit List

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.”