needle, coming between my baby and me."
"I would say, 'Get a room,'" Helena commented, "except you kids already have one at that dreadful motel."
"Dolly and Quick are the reason," Ric explained. "We needed dent-free parking, which eliminated ramps, and a place that doesn't ban hybrid wolves. Don't worry. I booked you into the downtown showplace."
She nodded approvingly. "We need to go somewhere private to discuss these files. Your place or mine?"
"Yours," Ric and I answered as one.
"I'm so relieved," Helena said. "I haven't been in a motel since before the Revelation. I shudder to think what vibes I might pick up in that tacky room of yours."
So did we.
SUNSET WAS THINKING about taking a bow by the time we ambled out of the fancy bar. Fountains gushed like Old Faithful through the trees, probably installed in "water features," as they were in Las Vegas. The rich loved gushers on their property.
I was feeling calm, although edgy and curious about the tattoo remark. I'd been an overly careful girl, dodging preteen trouble from the "bad boy" half-vamps on my trail, studying and moving on, hoping not to get noticed, hiding in the midnight dens or dorm rooms where the TVs blared all night, blocking out danger and questions.
We ambled toward the parking lot, Ric and me an openly entwined couple, Helena still cruising her backlit screen with a frown I didn't like the look of, but was too happy to worry about.
The sound of a sustained, deep, threatening growl interrupted our separate reveries. We stopped and looked ahead to the isolated, distant spot where Ric had parked to avoid door nicks.
A group of six men surrounded Dolly.
Ric's hand left my waist to push his suit coat aside and reach for the firearm at the small of his back. Yep, my guy "carried concealed," thank, uh, thank my recent friend of a friend, Anubis, Egyptian god of the underworld. (My religious high school education made me take God too seriously to invoke Him for any minor life crises.)
Wait. These guys dressed like Vegas werewolf mobster Cesar Cicereau's tame "small job" muscle. They were probably dead men, and they wore plaid, all right. Green and yellow and blue plaid baggy trousers now in danger of a thorough ripping, along with said contents.
Quicksilver was standing in Dolly's backseat, his thick fur raised in a fearsome Mohawk from between his flattened ears to his seriously bushed-out tail. His snout was curled back, black-lipped to display the formidable mountain range of his wolfish fangs.
I rushed to put myself between Quick and his gentleman callers. That allowed me a glance into the backseat. Which was pretty much filled with small, dimpled white balls bearing three gilt initials on each one.
"Those are our balls," a tremolo tenor announced behind me. "Is that your ... dog?"
"Your balls?" Helena intoned curiously, moving past the late-middle-aged men with a well-preserved wiggle. She turned to confront them. "I am so sorry. What shall you do without them?"
They gaped, open-jawed like Quicksilver, but not nearly so formidable.
I started shoveling golf balls out of Dolly's pristine red upholstery. "Teeth okay, not claws," I instructed Quick. "This is not Sunset Park. Down. Back. Leave kitty!"
Men in checkered caps topped with white fuzzy balls scrambled at my last silly command to reclaim airborne presents from Christmas Past.
Ric leaned against Dolly's side, eyes buried in his hand, trying not to laugh, but utterly failing.
THIS TIME I let Ric and Helena use their high-tech toys and Ric drive.
A not-too-chastened Quicksilver ran alongside Dolly, giving chase to bad drivers in Ford 350s who cut off good drivers at every opportunity. I wondered where the motorcycle cop genes had come from. Maybe he was an escaped K-9 dog, who knows?
We reached the Old Town in no time. I sat in the back-seat and consulted Ric's phone. A nineteenth-century warehouse had been gutted to house the boutique hotel, with soaring atrium and piano bar, but it was no Marriott, nor did it have Billy Joel live.
Like all hotels now, especially in Vegas, it boasted wireless access everything and all-suite rooms. The surrounding city center featured restaurants, shops, and Indian artifact museums.
The ambiance was charming, but Quicksilver was confined to the parking garage and Dolly. Downtown Wichita, no matter how restored, was not post - Millennium Revelation Las Vegas.
Good lord, I was homesick for Vegas.
"Very nice," Helena said, giving her foster son positive reinforcement for his choice. "We can order room service while we study the files."
My stomach started calisthenics again.
"The files"