Шарлин Харрис - From Dead To Worse

"Oh, come on. It's Sookie Stackhouse. Why are you doing this?"

There was a long pause.

"Are you trying to trap me?" he asked.

"How? You think I got the phone tapped? I want to know why. I never did anything to you. I'm not even dating Alcide. But you're trying to off me like I am powerful. You killed poor Maria-Star. You killed Christine Larrabee. What's with this? I'm not important."

Patrick Furnan said slowly, "You really believe it's me doing this? Killing female pack members? Trying to kill you?"

"Sure I do."

"It's not me. I read about Maria-Star. Christine Larrabee is dead?" He sounded almost frightened.

"Yes," I said, and my voice was as uncertain as his. "And someone's tried to kill me twice. I'm afraid some totally innocent person is going to get caught in the cross fire. And of course, I don't want to die."

Furnan said, "My wife disappeared yesterday." His voice was ragged with grief and fear. And anger. "Alcide's got her, and that fucker is going to pay."

"Alcide wouldn't do that," I said. (Well, I was pretty sure Alcide wouldn't do that.) "You're saying you didn't order the hits on Maria-Star and Christine? And me?"

"No, why would I go for the women? We never want to kill pure-blooded female Weres. Except maybe Amanda," Furnan added tactlessly. "If we're going to kill someone, it'd be the men."

"I think you and Alcide need to have a sit-down. He doesn't have your wife. He thinks you've gone crazy, attacking women."

There was a long silence. Furnan said, "I think you're right about that sit-down, unless you made up this whole thing to get me into a position where Alcide can kill me."

"I just want to live to see the next week myself."

"I'll agree to meet with Alcide if you'll be there and if you'll swear to tell each of us what the other is thinking. You're a friend of the pack, all the pack. You can help us now."

Patrick Furnan was so anxious to find his wife he was even willing to believe in me.

I thought of the deaths that had already taken place. I thought of the deaths that were to come, perhaps including my own. I wondered what the hell was going on. "I'll do it if you and Alcide will sit down unarmed," I said. "If what I suspect is true, you have a common enemy who's trying to get you two to kill each other off."

"If that black-haired bastard will agree to it, I'll give it a shot," said Furnan. "If Alcide has my wife, not a hair on her body better be disturbed, and he better bring her with him. Or I swear to God I'll dismember him."

"I understand. I'll make sure he understands, too. We'll be getting back with you," I promised, and I hoped with all my heart that I was telling the truth.

It was the middle of the same night and I was about to walk into danger. It was my own damn fault. Through a swift series of phone calls, Alcide and Furnan had worked out where to meet. I'd envisioned them sitting down across a table, their lieutenants right behind them, and working this whole situation out. Mrs. Furnan would appear and the couple would reunite. Everyone would be content, or at least less hostile. I would be nowhere around.

Yet here I was at an abandoned office center in Shreveport, the same one where the contest for packmaster had taken place. At least Sam was with me. It was dark and cool and the wind was lifting my hair from my shoulders. I shifted from foot to foot, anxious to get this over with. Though he was not as fidgety as I was, I could tell Sam felt the same way.

It was my fault he was here. When he'd become so curious about what was brewing with the Weres, I'd had to tell him. After all, if someone came through the door of Merlotte's trying to shoot me down, Sam at least deserved to know why his bar was full of holes. I'd argued bitterly with him when he'd told me he was coming with me, but here we both were.

Maybe I'm lying to myself. Maybe I simply wanted a friend with me, someone definitely on my side. Maybe I was just scared. Actually, no "maybe" about that at all.

The night was brisk, and we were both wearing waterproof jackets with hoods. Not that we needed the hoods, but if it got any colder, we might be grateful for them. The abandoned office park stretched around us in gloomy silence. We stood in the loading bay of a firm that had accepted big shipments of something. The large metal pull-down doors where the trucks had been unloaded looked like big shiny eyes in the gleam of the remaining security lights.

Actually, there were lots of big shiny eyes around tonight. The Sharks and the Jets were negotiating. Oh, excuse me, the Furnan Weres and the Herveaux Weres. The two sides of the pack might come to an understanding, and they might not. And right smack dab in the middle stood Sam the Shapeshifter and Sookie the Telepath.

As I felt the hard red throbbing of Were brains approaching from both north and south, I turned to Sam and said from the bottom of my heart, "I should never have let you come with me. I should never have opened my mouth."

"You've gotten into the habit of not telling me things, Sookie. I want you to tell me what's going on with you. Especially if there's danger." Sam's red gold hair blew around his head in the sharp little breeze wafting between the buildings. I felt his difference more strongly than I ever had. Sam is a rare true shapeshifter. He can change into anything. He prefers the form of a dog, because dogs are familiar and friendly and people don't shoot at them too often. I looked into his blue eyes and saw the wildness in them. "They're here," he said, raising his nose to the breeze.

Then the two groups were standing about ten feet away on either side of us, and it was time to concentrate.

I recognized the faces of a few of the Furnan wolves, who were more numerous. Cal Myers, the police detective, was among them. It took some kind of nerve for Furnan to bring Cal along when he was proclaiming his innocence. I also recognized the teenage girl Furnan had taken as part of his victory celebration after Jackson Herveaux's defeat. She looked a million years older tonight.

Alcide's group included auburn-haired Amanda, who nodded at me, her face serious, and some werewolves I'd seen at the Hair of the Dog the night Quinn and I had visited the bar. The scrawny girl who'd worn the red leather bustier that night was standing right behind Alcide, and she was both intensely excited and deeply scared. To my surprise, Dawson was there. He wasn't as much of a lone wolf as he'd painted himself to be.

Alcide and Furnan stepped away from their packs.

This was the agreed-on format for the parley, or sit-down, or whatever you wanted to call it: I would stand between Furnan and Alcide. Each Were leader would grip one of my hands. I would be the human lie detector while they talked. I had sworn to tell each one if the other lied, at least to the best of my ability. I could read minds, but minds can be deceptive and tricky or just dense. I'd never done anything exactly like this, and I prayed my ability would be extra precise tonight and that I would use it wisely, so I could help to end this life taking.

Alcide approached me stiffly, his face harsh in the hard glare of the security lighting. For the first time, I noticed that he looked thinner and older. There was a little gray in the black hair that hadn't been there when his father had been alive. Patrick Furnan, too, didn't look well. He'd always had a tendency to porkiness, and now he looked as though he'd gained a good fifteen or twenty pounds. Being packmaster hadn't been good to him. And the shock of the abduction of his wife had laid its mark on his face.

I did something that I never imagined I would do. I held out my right hand to him. He took it, and the flood of his ideas washed through me instantly. Even his twisty Were brain was easy to read because he was so focused. I held out my left hand to Alcide, and he grasped it too tightly. For a long minute, I felt inundated. Then, with a huge effort, I channeled them into a stream so I wouldn't be overwhelmed. It would be easy for them to lie out loud, but it's not so easy to lie inside your own head. Not consistently. I closed my eyes. A flip of the coin had given Alcide the first question.