Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(65)

“Your house?” he asked, tipping his head toward my empty manufactured house.

I started to say yes, then hesitated. “I don’t want to run into Anna again,” I told him. “How about the garage? I can check the phone while we’re there.”

I had forwarded that phone to mine, but no one had called for the garage since this morning. That might mean that no one needed their car repaired. It might also mean that I’d flubbed it.

“Okay,” he said, holding the bedroom door wider and stepping back in invitation. “I’ll drive. Your cars are under the weather.”

“Ha-ha,” I grumbled, walking past him. “Poor Jetta.”

I was going to have to find time to work on the Vanagon, I thought, resigned. I hated to drive it until I got all the air bubbles out. The air bubbles wouldn’t actually hurt anything. All they would do was make the gauges tell me the van was overheating when it wasn’t. The big problem with that was that if the engine really did overheat, I’d ignore it because I’d think it was just air bubbles. That would ruin the engine.

“I will buy you a new Jetta,” Adam said, stepping into my path so I stopped.

He reached up and caressed my cheeks on either side of my broken nose. His touch was gentle enough that it didn’t make my nose hurt worse than it already did.

“I’m onto your devious plot,” I said, rising up on my toes to kiss his cheek. I did not wince when the move caused my ribs to remind me that they’d been injured, too. I didn’t want to devolve into a “Mercy is hurt” conversation again.

“No new Jettas,” I said, putting the emphasis on the word he’d tried to skate by me as I started for the stairs. “Even though they have airbags. I will be laughed at by all VW mechanics everywhere if I get caught driving a new car. I just have to find another old car. Those old VWs are engineered to fold around you so even without an airbag they do okay in accidents.”

I caught myself before confessing that I’d probably have been all right, or at least my nose would have been okay, if the seat belt hadn’t given way. Because that would feed his argument and not mine.

I thought about where I could start looking for another car as I started walking. It had taken me a while to find the Jetta. I’d call all the scrapyards here, in Yakima, and in Spokane, let them know I was looking for a car that was reasonably restorable. Maybe I’d have to give in and pay a little more—it was hard to find them cheap. At least those old Jettas and Rabbits weren’t doing what the Vanagons had done—Vanagons were more expensive to buy used than they’d sold fresh off the assembly line. My Syncro was worth a lot more now than it had been new.

“Maybe another Rabbit,” I mused. “My old Rabbit lasted me more than a decade. The Jetta didn’t even make it a year.”

“No more Rabbits,” said Adam. “At least not this week. I think we’ve had quite enough rabbits for one week.”

He trailed me down the stairs. Or maybe he was herding me down the stairs. I was starting to get an odd vibe from him.

I snuck a peek over my shoulder at him. Caught off guard, his eyes were still as unhappy as they had been when I opened the bedroom door.

“What?” Adam asked me.

But before I had to answer, Warren approached to ask him about the schedule for guard duty—and if we were still running with that plan after everyone had been told to bunk up.



* * *



? ? ?

It took us about a half hour before we actually got going. We didn’t talk in the SUV on the way to my office. I wasn’t sure why not.

I mean, of course I knew why I didn’t say anything. I was still mulling over what Bran had said, trying to organize it so it made sense. Sorting through the things Bran had actually said—and the things I’d extrapolated from those. The first being important, the second being a little more suspect.

But I didn’t know why Adam didn’t say anything. Maybe he’d forgotten what he wanted to talk to me about in the avalanche of questions he’d dealt with on our way out the door.

When I looked at him, his eyes were opaque in the shadows. For a moment, though, I was caught by the way the dashboard illuminated the planes and curves of his face. He had the kind of beauty that would make maidens in old tales throw themselves off cliffs in order to attract his attention. Mesmerizing.

He didn’t notice me watching him, though—too focused on whatever had been keeping him quiet the rest of the drive. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a good thought, judging by the tension in his shoulders.

I put my hand on his thigh. I wasn’t sure he noticed. That was really not like him at all. By the time we made it to the garage, I was starting to worry about him—or about what he had to say. Maybe he knew something more than I did about our current circumstances, but it didn’t feel quite like that.

The parking lot was lit up a lot better than it had been before we’d rebuilt the garage. I could have sat on the front step and read a book. The light made it easier for Adam’s security cameras to get clear pictures.

I stopped on the way to the office and stared at one of the cameras. Not that I could see it—it was really small. But I knew where it was.

“Adam,” I said thoughtfully. “How often do you purge the surveillance video from here?”

“I don’t,” he said.