“I won’t chew on her,” said Warren ironically. “You go on shift tomorrow at five in the morning. Go home, Mary Jo.”
“I’ll see you when you get off work,” said Christy, managing to look like she wished Mary Jo would stay while indicating just the opposite with her words. It was quite a feat. “We can go get a manicure at that place we like in Richland.”
“It closed,” Mary Jo told her.
“I’m sure we can find another shop. Auriele will know someplace good.”
Mary Jo grinned. “She will. Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
“Mary Jo,” Adam said. “Go.”
Left with no choice, Mary Jo preceded us out the door. “Are you sure she’ll be safe with just Warren?” She looked back over her shoulder.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Adam with more patience than I’d credited him. “Her stalker set her apartment on fire tonight. There aren’t any direct flights, and it’s a six-hour drive from Eugene to here. Even if he came directly to murder her in my home, guarded by one of the toughest wolves I know, Juan couldn’t get here before I get back.”
Adam opened the passenger door of his SUV for me, shut it, and got the driver-side door of Mary Jo’s Jeep for her. She thanked him gravely, when she’d have given any other man the rough side of her tongue for his courtesy. Opening a woman’s door was ingrained in Adam, but he was careful not to do it where one of her coworkers might see it. Apparently firemen, even if they were women, were supposed to be too independent to have doors opened for them—and Mary Jo didn’t want to get teased about it.
Zack’s motel was in east Pasco. The Tri-Cities doesn’t have really dangerous neighborhoods, but east Pasco comes close. The motel was one of those old ones with little rooms that opened out onto the parking lot, the kind they don’t build anymore because they aren’t really safe.
The big, shiny black SUV garnered the interest of a group of boys hanging out smoking at the edge of the parking lot. They were in that fourteen-to-sixteen age category when men are old enough to feel the testosterone and too young to have acquired common sense.
“Hey, gringo,” one of them said. “You sure you want to park that there?”
“Why don’t you just leave that chica with us, gringo. ’Cus we know what to do with bitches like that. She don’t need no white meat. ’Cus everybody knows white meat is bad for you.”
Adam, who’d rounded the front of the car, kept walking until he was next to me. Then he turned his face a little up and out, letting the weak yellow illumination of the motel’s parking-lot lights hit his features full on.
The boys had been advancing in a slow, semi-menacing manner, obviously ready to enjoy running off some poor couple in the wrong place at the wrong time.
We’d had some real trouble with gangs in the Tri-Cities a few years back, but, except for the serious drug traffickers, who were too concerned with money and keeping a low profile to be harassing tourists for being in the wrong neighborhood, most of the gang activity had died down.
One of the boys paused, squinted at my husband’s face, and came to an abrupt halt. “Hey, man,” he said in a completely different tone of voice. “Hey, man. It’s okay, right? We didn’t mean nothing by it. Just having some fun. Right, man? We don’t want no trouble with you.”
The rest of them paused, disconcerted by the about-face.
“It’s the werewolf dude,” he whispered loudly. “From the TV? Don’t you idiots watch the news? You don’t screw around with him.”
The others turned to give Adam a closer look, then they all melted away with fake nonchalance.
“They make me feel old,” Adam said mournfully once they were gone.
“That’s because you are old,” I told him without sympathy. He’d enjoyed backing them down. “Come on, old man. Let’s go bring our new wolf into the fold.”
Before we could, a sleek silver ’67 Mustang pulled in next to the SUV, and Darryl got out. Darryl is big in daylight, but the night hides the intelligence in his face and the beauty of his features, which can distract from his size. In the dark, he is huge, and right then he was carrying a tide of irritation that made him even scarier than usual.
I thought of the impression Zack had given me in my garage, and said, “Hey, Darryl. If you could back down a bit? This guy isn’t Peter, who might have been submissive but wasn’t scared of anyone. This wolf is going to take one look at you and run.”
Darryl gave me a ticked-off look. “I am not irritated with the new wolf. I’m irritated with you. You are causing me trouble, woman.” Darryl’s voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a very deep barrel. It was the kind of voice I imagined a dragon might speak in—if there were dragons. Which didn’t exist. As far as I knew.
I’d thought Darryl was mostly just grumpy, but Adam growled with intent that lent Darryl’s declaration more seriousness. Darryl tipped his head away from me, but that didn’t make him any happier.
“What did I do?” I asked.
“You upset Christy, and that upset Auriele—who doesn’t think that leaving Christy’s general well-being to Adam is the right thing to do,” he snapped. “I do not enjoy being put in the middle of this.”
“I upset Christy?” I asked. “When?”
“This afternoon. You insisted she sleep in the ground-floor suite when she has a stalker after her. She’s just a little bit of a thing—”
“Darryl,” I said.
“I don’t know what you were thinking,” he said, forgetting Adam entirely. “Downstairs isn’t safe. She’s human and in danger from a stalker who, Auriele tells me, may have already killed a man.”
“Darryl,” I said again, then quit waiting for him to give me space to speak and just took it. “I admit I thought Christy would be more comfortable in the suite where she would have her own bathroom. The windows are alarmed, and there are werewolves—werewolves, Darryl—in the house to hear when any stranger approaches—even on foot.” I tried unsuccessfully to keep the exasperation from my voice. “In any case, she’s staying upstairs—and I didn’t object in any size, shape, or form as I wasn’t even home when she got there. I was at work.”
He stared down at me, and I met his gaze. He didn’t look away, and I finally threw up my hands in exasperation. “No. I am not thrilled by my husband’s ex-wife moving into my house and sleeping in the bedroom next to me. But I am not making her unwelcome. I am not putting her in danger. And you know, you know that I am not lying.”
Darryl inhaled. Looked away.
“Ah damn,” he said with less eloquence than a man with a Ph.D. who worked in a government think tank should use. “She’s doing it again. I’d almost forgotten.”
“I’m doing what again?” I asked. I was starting to get mad, too.
“It’s Christy, Mercy,” said Adam. “Christy is doing it again. She has a way of making people worry about her.”
“And that’s the kindest way to put it,” Darryl said, sounding poleaxed. “You’d think I’d have seen it. I’ve had a lot of experience. I’ll explain what happened to Auriele, and she’ll realize that she misunderstood what Christy said. Just like the last ten times she misunderstood—it will end up being my fault because I should have realized she misunderstood what Christy told her. My only excuse is that I’ve had years to forget, and Auriele is blind to the faults of people she loves. I am the most fortunate man in the world because I am the beneficiary of that blindness, but I forget that other people are beneficiaries, too.”
“Education and brains don’t help when dealing with my ex-wife,” Adam said, sounding amused, of all things. “You aren’t wired to see through Christy, and neither is Auriele. Now let’s go meet—”
I don’t know how long Zack had been standing outside his hotel room listening to us, but, from the look on his face, it had been long enough. He saw me watching, and his face went blank.
“Zack,” I said. “Let me introduce my husband, Adam Hauptman, and his second, Darryl Zao. Gentlemen, this is Zack Drummond.”
“Hi,” he said warily. He still looked tired and too thin. “Come in. Let’s get this over with.” Enthusiasm was notable by its absence.
Zack turned and walked through the open door of the motel room. Adam followed Zack, and Darryl gestured for me to go ahead. I stepped in and had to fight not to gag.
Maybe a human’s nose wouldn’t have picked up the odors in that motel room, or maybe it wouldn’t have picked up all the odors. Maybe. But I didn’t think even an asthma patient who hadn’t smelled a scent in months could have stayed in that room for longer than ten minutes without being nauseated.
Cigar, cigarette, pipe, and every other substance anyone could smoke permeated the room, along with the smell of sex, urine, feces, and old alcohol. I’ve heard people complain that there is nothing worse than the smell of stale beer, but that room proved them wrong. Stale beer was the least unpleasant scent in the room. There was also mold, mildew, and mouse. All it needed was a skunk.
Neither Adam nor Darryl showed any sign of distress. Zack looked at me and gave me a faint smile. “Beggars can’t be choosers.”
“You can move in with us for a few weeks,” I said. “As it happens, we have a freshly cleaned bedroom suite that no one is using.”
“No,” he said gently. “I’m sorry, but I’d rather put up with this than … Your house don’t sound like a safe place to be at the moment. I don’t like pack politics—them and me don’t get along.”
Darryl would have said something—submissive wolves usually do fine in pack politics because, like Christy, no one wants to hurt them—but Adam made a subtle hand gesture that meant “stop.”