Frost Burned (Mercy Thompson, #7)(12)

“The men who took the pack claimed to be government,” I said. “But Adam seemed to think they were lying. But they were human—which makes me think government anyway.”

“Are we safe here?” asked Gabriel. “Or do we need to find a better hiding place?”

“They could have traced our phones here,” I told him. “We need to keep moving. I was hoping to take a minute and see if I can contact Adam and figure out what’s going on.”

“You can stay here to do that,” Ariana said. “I can’t make the apartment disappear into a hedge of blackberries, but I can make it difficult to find for a few hours.”

“Mercy?” Jesse asked. “How much can you tell?”

“He’s alive,” I said. I decided to trust Ariana to know her own strengths. If she could keep us hidden until I talked to Adam, it would really help. “I need to find somewhere quiet to clear my head and see if I can pick up anything more.” I wasn’t going to taint Jesse with the mishmash of dark and violent emotions I’d been picking up from him off and on all night. It was the off and on that really worried me.

“Take a hot shower,” suggested Ariana. “Meditation is easier when you’re clean. I’ll bring you something to wear—and keep your flock safe.”

Ben growled, and she flinched.

I tried just sitting down on the floor of the spare bedroom—but I could smell Ben’s blood. My scalp itched. My right pant leg smelled of antifreeze from my poor deceased Rabbit. My shoulder ached where the seat belt had caught me, and my cheekbone throbbed. So I followed Ariana’s advice and showered.

I heard the bathroom door open while I was shampooing the blood out of my hair—how had it gotten in my hair?—and there were clean clothes folded neatly on the toilet seat when I got out.

I pulled the sweats up to my nose and shook my head. If someone had come to my house, even someone I liked, I’d have been damned before I gave them Adam’s clothes to wear—especially if it was someone he used to live with.

I could have blessed Ariana’s generosity, though, because when I sat on the floor of their spare bedroom wearing Samuel’s oversized shirt and sweatpants, I felt safe and at home. That helped while I struggled to find my way through the strong but tangled weave that was my bond to Adam, but it still didn’t seem to be enough.

Frustrated with my failure, I got up. Exhaustion, fury, and nagging pain that seemed generalized to my whole body rather than any one bruise fought with despair.

Despair won and left me muzzy and sick. I’d been so sure that I could contact Adam given just a little space and quiet. It should have been easy because his emotions were buzzing around me so strongly that it had been a strain to keep track of which were my feelings and which were his.

Only when I stood up did it become apparent that instead of plush carpet under my bare feet, there was hard-packed dirt beneath the boots I hadn’t been wearing. They were a scuffed black, and the leather gave around my feet with the softness of long wearing. They weren’t my boots, but I knew them.

What was I doing wearing Adam’s boots? My bleary thoughts tried to figure out the logic while I became vaguely aware of my surroundings. The air smelled dry and still. It smelled like pack, my pack who were all sick and hurting. As soon as I let my awareness seek them, their pain, their sickness drifted over me.

“Mr. Hauptman,” a stranger’s voice said, shocking me out of my contemplation of Adam’s boots on my feet.

I blinked and saw a man in dark clothes bare of any official insignia, though they had that sharpness that marked a military uniform. I narrowed my eyes and studied him more closely because something about the picture didn’t match: his body was soft. Not the softness of a soldier who had retired from action and moved to deskwork. This man was soft in both mind and body—he’d never served in battle.

Paper-pusher. Gives orders for other men to die while sitting safe in home base. “We were told you’d probably be down for another hour or more. I do apologize about the restraints—rather medieval, don’t you agree? But we didn’t think you’d be feeling particularly happy with us when you woke up, and killing you after all the trouble that we’ve gone through to capture you would be unproductive. You may call me Mr. Jones.”

He looked at us as he spoke. And I became aware that part of the heaviness that kept me from moving much was some sort of binding on my ankles and wrists. I couldn’t really see them, something was off with my eyesight, but I could feel them, just as I could feel the bite of the silver—worse than the time I’d rushed between two trees and burst through a hornet’s nest. Everything hurt.

The “Mr. Jones” made Adam think seriously about rolling his eyes like Jesse, but it would require too much energy. Jones? Did this man not know that Adam could hear every lie out of his lips? At least it hadn’t been “Smith.”

Adam also thought about shedding the restraints and killing the man behind the desk—but so far no one had been irreparably injured. The burn of the silver fought with the dampening effect of the tranquilizer and left his temper raw and vicious. But he had people to protect. So he held his temper and sarcastic comments and continued the parley that Mr. Jones had begun.

“You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get us here.” Adam’s voice slurred a little, and he pulled energy from the pack bonds, aware that he was taking from them what they didn’t have to give. But he needed to be strong and smart and able to fight for them. To do that, he could afford to show no weakness before the enemy. “What do you want?”