Storm Cursed (Mercy Thompson #11)(62)

“I’ll go with you,” said Zee.

Adam gave him a nod of thanks. So I and my bodyguard went back to see if I could earn a living.



* * *



? ? ?

Most of the pack stayed at our house that night. For one, it was our weekly ISTDPB4 night, when all our werewolves could pretend to be pirates and kill each other for gold, for women (or men—The Dread Pirate’s Booty didn’t bother with historical accuracy; Saucy Wenches were matched with Mouthwatering Manservants), and for the heck of it. I don’t know why ISTDPB4 ended with a 4 when CAGCTDPBT (Codpieces and Golden Corsets: The Dread Pirate’s Booty Three) ended with a T. It had started as ISTDPBF, but at some point someone had said “four,” and “four” it remained.

The other reason the house was full was that Adam had issued a quiet call to the pack, welcoming wives and dependents to stay. The conditions were crowded, but they were safe from the witches. He didn’t tell anyone why we were safe—that was Sherwood’s secret for now. To my . . . amazement, I guess, the pack decided that it had been something I’d managed.

When I went to bed, every bed and couch was full of people (sometimes more than one) trying to sleep while the pirates (including my mate) howled and hooted from the basement.

Cries of “Put up or shut up!” “Die, you freaking rapscallion!” “ARGHHHHH!” sounded sort of homey. I smiled when I closed my eyes.



* * *



? ? ?

The next morning, Adam and I drove to a house outside Pasco, situated in lonely exile on the bluffs overlooking the Columbia about ten miles away from its nearest neighbor. There was a helicopter on a pad next to the driveway we parked in, but other than that, the house could have been plopped down in any middle-class neighborhood in town and blended in.

Senator Campbell was borrowing the house, Adam had told me.

I followed Adam to the door, regretting the stubbornness that had put me in jeans and a button-down shirt instead of something more formal. Adam, of course, was wearing his working uniform, which was a well-cut suit.

We were met at the door by a smiling, middle-aged black woman who introduced herself as Ruth Gillman, Senator Campbell’s personal assistant.

“Come in,” she said. “The senator is on a conference call, but it should be finished up in the next few minutes. Can I get you something to drink?”

She led us through a sparsely furnished living room with worn patches on the carpet into a kitchen that was nearly as large as the living room and filled with cherry cabinets, marble countertops, and expensive everything else.

“I know,” she told us, “it looks like it belongs in a different house. It’s going to be Bob’s retirement house, and he and Sharon are redecorating one room at a time. This year, he told me, it will be the master bedroom.”

“Bob?” I asked.

“The senator’s younger brother,” she said. “He’s an engineer and worked for twenty years in Richland at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He was transferred to Virginia, but he fell in love with this country.”

“Huh,” I said. The TriCities were my home, but I’d grown up in the mountains of Montana. It had taken me a long while to appreciate the barren hills and rolling landscape.

She laughed. “His wife thinks he’s crazy, too. But she loves him. I think they still have a lot of friends here.”

“Are you making fun of Bob again?” asked Senator Campbell.

“No, sir,” she said. “I wouldn’t do that.” She lied when she said it, and he laughed because she intended him to.

He was a big man, maybe half a foot taller than Adam and fifty pounds heavier—not much of that was fat. His hair was light brown fading to gray around the edges. There were laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

His eyes were hard and predatory. Hawk’s eyes.

He gripped Adam’s hand firmly—and mine less so.

“Welcome to my brother’s home,” he said. “Why don’t we all go into the study—you, too, Ruth. If you and Ms. Hauptman are going to be working together, you might as well start now.”

The study had probably been a bedroom when the house was built, but like the kitchen, it had been changed into a better version of itself. The floor was some exotic hardwood, and the whole room had a masculine feel.

There was a mahogany desk, but there were four comfortable-looking leather chairs, too. He took one of them and left it to the three of us to take the others.

“So that our cards are on the table before we begin,” he said. “You know that I want to keep the fae and the werewolves and everything else that goes bump in the night as far away from the citizens whom I represent as I possibly can. If we could come up with something that could keep the werewolves from walking around with regular people, I would. If I could hit a button right now and kill all of your kind, all of the fae, I would.”

“Fair enough,” said Adam. “I know a few werewolves who feel the same about you.”

Campbell leaned back in his seat, his eyes steady on Adam. “So why the hell did you warn my team last fall that there was going to be an attempt on my life—that one of my security people was an assassin? I trusted him with my wife and daughters. I’d have sworn he was loyal. I told Spielman that. But he talked me into setting up a sting anyway, and damned if you weren’t right.”