"It's not my car," I told him. "Marsilia left it for an oil change, and I couldn't resist." Kyle knew who Marsilia was. So I added, "Ben's been bleeding all over the back seat. Do you think we can clean the blood out of the leather well enough that she'll keep it? Who do you think should pay for the damage? Ben for bleeding on it; the bad guys for shooting Ben so he was bleeding in the first place; or me for stealing it?"
"That is Marsilia's car, and you stuck a bleeding werewolf in the back seat?" Kyle said, ignoring my attempted humor. "I shouldn't have sent Loren - you'd have been safer stuck in the black hole of the justice system for a few months until something distracts the Queen of the Damned from killing you."
He'd picked up my name for Marsilia. I hoped he never used it around her. I noticed that the earlier red marks on his face had darkened to bruises to go with the other bruises he had. His nose had been reset, but both of his eyes were black and puffed up. I might have won the disreputable award last night, but with Kyle's new bruises, for the first time in a long time, someone looked more beat-up than I did.
He limped when he stepped back to let me in.
"It's a good thing for the guy who beat on you that Stefan killed him," I said soberly as I walked into the entryway. Ben also limped, and I found that since my knee decided to hurt, I was limping, too. That made three of us. Kyle's house smelled like gun oil and strangers. "Or he'd have to face Warren."
Kyle flinched, closing the door behind Ben. "I know. It's going to be months before I'm not explaining my face to everyone I meet. Hello. No, I was beaten by an army of muscle-bound men who didn't even have the courtesy to be cute. No, don't worry about it. I'm fine now. The nose just has a little bump - like Marilyn's mole, it emphasizes the perfection of the rest of my face."
He glanced down at Ben. "Both of you come into the kitchen. Ben, I've pulled out the remains of last night's turkey. There's also four pounds of roast I was going to cook tomorrow. I'll cook Warren another turkey so he can have turkey hash. It's on a platter on the table."
Ben rubbed his muzzle over Kyle's shoulder in a way that I think was supposed to be reassuring. Kyle sucked in a breath. Either it hurt, or the reminder that the werewolf was big enough to rub his shoulder without much effort wasn't exactly reassuring.
"Ben, when was the last time you brushed your teeth?" asked Kyle.
Or else Ben's breath was really bad.
Ben showed his teeth in a mannerly grin and started eating the food Kyle had left on the table with enthusiastic concentration.
I slumped in one of the breakfast-bar stools and blew out a loud breath. "Did you find out if they found out anything about them?" I asked.
Kyle gave me a look, then busied himself making me a peanut butter and huckleberry jelly sandwich. "What really bothers me is that I understood that question. You will eat this and go to sleep, so your pronouns get their antecedents back. The police haven't gotten very far yet investigating the men who invaded my house. The bad guys have good lawyers, very good lawyers. Not as good as Loren and nowhere near as good as I am, of course, but top-notch, expensive, out-of-town lawyers. Loren tells me that he thinks the lot of them will be out on bail by tomorrow because of all the money floating around. Tough to keep them when the only dead body is one of theirs - and by my own testimony he was the only one guilty of assault."
I stared at him over the sandwich he put in front of me. "You're kidding, right?"
Kyle shook his head. "Eat that, Mercy, don't just stare at it. Dickens has it that 'the law is a ass,' and a lot of the times he is right. We have them on criminal trespass. Tony is incensed, he told me, but they can't get them for terrorist activity. Somehow, the two men downstairs were unarmed when they were arrested - so another man must have gotten away with their weapons, because the police turned my house upside down looking for guns while they were questioning us and all they found were our guns, the guns we took from the bad guys, and the Spencer in the gun safe." I thought about the man who'd given the orders, who might or might not have been one of the men in the living room and my vague suspicion that they would have left someone on watch.
"Then, mysteriously," continued Kyle, "the guns belonging to the two men up in my bedroom have disappeared from the evidence room. They are holding ours, Mercy, pending further investigation. So I'm doing some shopping today because I'll be damned if I'm going unarmed when people have kidnapped Warren." His manner had been as confident as always until he reached that last part, and his voice broke.
"He's alive," I told him. "You'd know if he weren't. The only one they killed was Peter."
Kyle jerked his head up. "Peter's dead?"
I nodded. It was too much trouble to stay upright, so I folded my arms and put my forehead down on them. "Peter's dead. The moron shot him because Adam let him see what Alpha meant. Now Peter's dead, and Adam ..." I shook my head.
A hand rested on my shoulder, then Kyle's face buried itself in my shoulder.
"I called my father," he said, his voice muffled by the material of the sweatshirt I wore. "Told him that if he didn't want his friends knowing all about his g*y son who was sleeping with a werewolf, he needed to release my trust to me today. In four hours, we'll have money to throw at the problem."
"I'll finish this sandwich," I told him. I knew how much it had cost him to call his family. The only one he talked to was an older sister. "Then I'm going to sleep. Do you mind if I sleep here?"
"Well, not here," said Kyle, pulling away from me. He wiped his eyes and covered up the emotion with brisk efficiency. "But in a guest room. A bed will be helpful when you wake up and feel like you are going to feel after tonight. I'm going to hit the hot tub and join you in the same room."
He gave me an apologetic smile. "The security people say it's the only bedroom in the house that is really securable. They've swept the place for bugs, and we have our own army surrounding the house. Jim Gutstein tells me this will be gratis - Adam is apparently a very good boss, and they are embarrassed to have lost him. He also expressed his desire to find Adam and assures you that the full power of the company is currently turned in that direction. They will let us know when they find out a bit more."
"You hired Hauptman security?" I asked. Jim Gutstein was the highest-ranking non-werewolf at Adam's office.
"Only the best," he said.
I filled him in on everything I knew that he didn't until he tapped me on the shoulder to stop me.
"Finish your sandwich and go to sleep in a proper bed. After sleep, we can go buy guns, then tear the Tri-Cities apart looking for our men, right?"
Kyle was a smart man, and I followed his advice.
I smelled him first: the musk and mint that said werewolf, the other unique scent that said mine. I was so relieved. I'd been sure he was hurt and alone and I couldn't find him ... but, silly me. Here he was, right beside me.
"Adam," I murmured.
The wolf stirred and put his nose on my shoulder. He was lying on top of me and making it hard to breathe under his weight. I vaguely knew it was a dream because Adam was both human and wolf at the same time, but Adam was more real than that thought, so I discarded it.
You are alive, he said, and there was a relief in his voice that shook me.
"Of course I am."
Something stirred the ant's nest, he said, nuzzling under my ear. What did you do?
I didn't want to think about it because then I knew I'd remember that this was just a dream, and I wanted to be safe in our bed with Adam stretched out half on top of me, touching me as I allowed no one else to touch me.
This was a dream where he was safe, and there were no men in body armor armed with nasty weapons who were backed by someone powerful enough to put pressure on the police. Not powerful enough to suborn them entirely, or they wouldn't have ridden to our rescue. But there was a lot of money involved and some raw power.
Figure out who they are, ordered Adam, pulling his head back so he could look me in the eye.
"Follow the money," I agreed, pulling him back down. I needed his warmth against me more than I needed to see him. My body believed better than my eyes, which knew I was looking at a figment of memory. "Kyle already suggested it. Now if I can just work out a way to do that." I could set Adam's associate Gutstein on that, couldn't I?
Gutstein can look. You were talking about the police. What have you been up to that the police were involved?
"When the bad guys took Warren, they took Kyle, too. Held him at his house."
Adam growled, and so did someone else. I couldn't see him or feel him, but my nose told me it was Warren.
"He's okay."
Adam stiffened, and that other wolf who was Warren snarled.
"I said okay, not terrific," I grumbled at them. "I wasn't lying. He got beaten up - Stefan killed the one who did it, though Kyle has to claim credit for it. He handled it, Warren. He's smart and tough. He'll be waiting, so you'd better survive this."
The snarl died, and Adam and I were alone in our bed in the huge house that served as pack HQ and as our home.
"Ben and I helped Stefan," I murmured to Adam. "They had Kyle alone and were trying to get him to speculate where Jesse and I would be likely to show up. Stefan killed the one and tied up the other. Kyle called the police, and they swarmed the house and saved the day."
Jesse.
He didn't have to say anything more. In this dream of mine I heard his terror, his fierce burning protectiveness.
"She's safe," I promised him. "I hid her with Gabriel and set Tad to watch over her."
Adam's body stilled, the stillness in a hunt that occurs just before something dies. Tad?
Here in my dream, safe with it just between us, I could tell him. "Zee told me that Tad could keep Jesse safe." Not in those words, but that was what the grumpy old fae had meant. Truths that you can read between the lines in a fae who is your friend are as far from a lie as a fae can get.