Smoke Bitten (Mercy Thompson, #12)(66)

That distracted me. “Really? Never? Doesn’t that take up a lot of data storage?”

“Data storage is cheap at twice the price,” he said. “You have been attacked here by werewolves, vampires, volcano gods, and—” He stopped and grimaced.

“A Tim,” I told him stoutly. “Though he came out the worst in that encounter.”

He gave me a short nod. “I don’t erase anything.”

“Okay,” I said, getting my brain off Tim and onto more current matters. “If you don’t erase it, do you have some nifty way of sorting through it?”

“What do you need?” he asked.

“James Palsic brought a car in for me to repair a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t notice him then, because I am pretty sure that remember-me-not thing he has going is a variation of pack magic that he’s learned to twist to his own use. Zee was here that day—and he didn’t even notice James was a werewolf.”

“If you didn’t recognize him then, how did you figure out he came in?” he asked. “Did he tell you?”

I shook my head. “Something clicked while we were exchanging words at Kelly’s house and that magic quit working on me. Apparently, it quit retroactively, too. Because as soon as it quit working, I remembered him.

“If you can find him on the feed, maybe he left some clue about where they are staying,” I said.

We had the plates to the Ford truck, but they were registered to a fictional address, according to George. They did tell us that the wolves had been here for long enough to acquire Washington plates. I didn’t expect the plates on his VW bug to be any more use. Especially because I was pretty sure those plates had been from out of state. But he had given us a phone number that might be of use.

Adam nodded and sounded more like himself when he said briskly, “Sounds like a good idea.”

I keyed in the sequence that would unlock the door—for a garage that specializes in inexpensive repairs to cars that tend to be older than I am, my shop’s security is pretty high-end.

“I know it’s a long shot,” I told him. “But I hate waiting for the bad guys to make a move. We could head to your office after we get done here.”

“I don’t like defensive wars, either,” Adam agreed. “I can access the video files from here.”

I let us in but didn’t turn the lights on in the office. There were windows all the way around, which was awesome for working there. But just now, lighting up the office would make us a perfect target for someone sitting outside with a gun.

It was true that the immediate threats I knew about were unlikely to be sitting outside with a gun. Though werewolves (and I supposed Wulfe, too) could use guns just fine, shooting us in an attempt to take over the pack would make them look weak. A bullet wouldn’t be enough fun for Wulfe to try.

But there were a lot of people who were unhappy about the changes taking place in the world, and everyone knew that the Columbia Basin Pack’s Alpha was mated to Mercy, who owned that garage in east Kennewick.

There were shades on the windows for just that reason, but they were a pain in the butt. They were supposed to be electronic, but that had lasted exactly a week. We were in discussions with the manufacturer that felt like they might take a long time.

“Can you see well enough to get into the video system?” I asked Adam. “I could just pull the shades and turn on the lights if that’s useful.”

“I can see fine.” He walked toward the door to the bays instead of to the corner of the office where a monitor that scrolled through the cameras sat on an expensive-looking pile of electronics.

“Adam?” I asked. “Where are you going?”

“The controls in the office are dummy controls,” he told me. “The real controls are in the garage proper.”

“Huh,” I said.

“We give the bad guys something to ‘shut down’ and they quit looking,” he explained. Which was why he made the big money in security.

“Okay,” I said. “While you do that, I’ll search the receipts. We require a phone number and an address. The address may be bogus—but we called him to get his car.” I was pretty sure he hadn’t given the name James Palsic. That was an odd enough last name, I’d have remembered it. And a pseudonym might be a clue, too.

“So he’ll be on the cameras twice,” Adam said.

“Yep. He came in about four p.m., maybe as early as three thirty, but no earlier than that. Not last week but sometime in the previous two weeks,” I told him.

“Okay.”

He waited in the open doorway while I settled myself on a box behind the counter and pulled the office keyboard and monitor down where I could use them. Tucked behind the counter, they were low enough that no one would see the light from the monitor from the outside.

“Why did we put all the windows in here, again?” Adam asked as I sat down. I think he was trying for a teasing tone, but his eyes were focused on my face. On my nose. The tape strapped across the bridge of my nose was going to be my friend for a week or so; I’d get rid of it about the same time my black eyes would turn yellow. At least they hadn’t had to pack it.

“Because windows are more friendly than walls,” I told him, touching my nose a little self-consciously. “And mostly we are in the bays anyway.” Having our bond shut down was making me ridiculous. Adam loved me, broken nose and all. I reassured myself of that with the memory of his face when he’d first seen me in the hospital. Even so, I couldn’t help but say, in a voice that was a little wobbly, “They said it would heal without a bump.”