"You'd be in the airport, and on the plane alone, Anita. If I really wanted to take you and it was important to not be seen doing it, that's what I'd be waiting for, you alone, away from the other police, and Jean-Claude."
I leaned close, speaking low. "So what do I do?"
"Have some guards come in from St. Louis."
"How do I explain that to the other cops?"
"We'll think of something." And then I knew the other marshals were too close to talk more, because Edward's face folded into a grin. His face lit with that charm that Ted always seemed to have. If there was an Emmy award for hired killers, Edward would so have won.
I wasn't nearly that good, but I managed a pleasant blank face to my fellow marshals. They asked, "See anything that'll help us catch these bastards?"
Edward and I dutifully said, "No."
Chapter Two
I HAD BEEN called into Marshal Raborn's office. It was a neat, square room. The only thing in the room that was messy was the desk, as if he'd straightened every edge in every file cabinet, and then left file folders on his desk overnight and they'd bred into short, unsteady towers of paperwork. Raborn was the local marshal in charge. If I'd been a regular marshal he'd have been more in charge of me, and Edward, but the preternatural branch was rapidly becoming its own entity, which meant Marshal Raborn was frustrated. He seemed to be particularly frustrated with me.
"There have been rumors for decades that Seattle has a weretiger clan," he said.
I gave him blank cop face, polite, interested, but blank. Every group of wereanimals, or kiss of vampires, runs its business slightly differently. The white tiger clan of Las Vegas and the vampires are very public about who they are, and what they're doing. The red tiger clan of Seattle, not so much. In fact, Seattle wasn't aware they had a tiger clan in residence. The queen of their clan liked it that way. Wereanimals were still people under the law, so they'd never been legal to kill on sight the way vampires had been before the new vampire citizen laws went into effect, but once someone shifted into animal form a lot of people panicked and a lot of wereanimals got shot. I'd been on the receiving end of more than one attack by a wereanimal, so I sympathized, but at the same time some of my best friends turned furry once a month. I was a little conflicted. Marshal Raborn thought so, too.
He seemed to want me to say something, so I said, "Sorry, I haven't been on the ground long enough to pick up rumors yet."
"There are weretigers here, Blake. I know there are." He gave me a steely, penetrating look out of a pair of gray eyes the color of gunmetal. It was a good hard stare. Bad guys probably folded like cheap card tables when he gave them the stare, but I wasn't a bad guy.
"Obviously," I said, "we have a known survivor of a weretiger attack as our victim here."
"Don't get cute, Blake," he said, in a voice as hard as the cold stare.
"Sorry, just a natural ability on my part."
He frowned at me. "What is?"
"Being cute, or so I'm told." I smiled at him.
"Are you flirting with me?"
"Nope."
"Then what's with the smart remark?"
"Why am I getting solo treatment in your office, Raborn?"
"Because you know more than you're telling about these killers."
Only years of training kept my face blank; only the slightest movement of one eye, almost an involuntary twitch, gave it away. It was the closest thing I had to a tell, as they say in poker. I covered it by smiling at him. I made it a good smile. I'd found that most men got distracted by it. I was buying time while I thought about what to say.
I shook my head, still smiling, as if he amused the hell out of me. What I was thinking was, Does he actually know anything, or is he just fishing?
"Do I amuse you, Blake?"
"A little," I said.
He opened the folder in front of him and started tossing out photos of body parts as if he were dealing cards. I wasn't smiling by the time he finished covering the desk in gruesome pictures.
I gave him angry eyes then. "You should see it in person, Raborn. It's much worse."