Laurell Hamilton - Hit List

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.