cops wouldn’t work, but I still wanted to expose Deerling for what he really was, even if I need to resort to wild-kingdom justice.
I suppressed a grin because it would make me look as crazy as I felt in that moment.
I’d been willing to follow the letter of the law on this, but if the law was against us, we’d find our own way.
Cash was right to turn a blind eye.
He didn’t want to know how low I was willing to go to make Deerling suffer.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Stealth was out.
Following was out.
We needed a plan that would let us act quickly, grab Deerling without a fight and get him back to New Orleans. I worried about the Church, and whether they’d continue his legacy of death when he was gone. A small part of me was scared about what Cain planned to do with Deerling when we delivered him.
Then I remembered what those Church of Morning nutcases had wanted to do to me, what they had done to others, and my sympathy vanished.
Fuck him.
I hoped Cain would sell him into a life of service at a vampire blood den. I hoped he would be cursed to have his dick rot off. There was no punishment too awful to inflict on Timothy Deerling. If I could have made him suffer myself, I would.
I wondered about his kids. If the ginger army at the complex was his, that was a half dozen kids who would be left only with fleeting memories of their father, and God only knew what those memories must be. Then there was the baby yet to be born to think about. I felt the worst for that child.
Like me, they’d never know their father. Everything they learned would be someone else’s telling, if anyone told the kid anything at all.
My mother said my father was a killer. That might have been a dream, but it still nagged at me. It was hard to imagine my flesh and blood doing anything as awful as what Deerling had done. But wasn’t my mother a monster in her own way? What if my father had been worse? What did that make me?
I was struck by the sudden, intense need to show the world what Pastor Tim had done. They needed to understand that the man who was giving voice to all this hatred wasn’t basing his beliefs on fact. He wasn’t trying to protect people. He was using the approval of the public as permission to kill my kind.
The American TV-viewing public was sanctioning the murder of werewolves every time they listened to Maureen Cranston speak on CNN.
If the people wanted sensation, I could give them all the scandal they craved.
“Let’s go to the church,” I declared.
Wilder and I had taken Cash’s car again, broken window and all. The glass had been mostly limited to the backseat, and Wilder had cleared out the bulk of it, but I was still uneasy, considering all the trouble I’d recently had with my feet.
As far as shoes went, I’d been forced to make do with what was available to me. Since it was four in the morning and I couldn’t buy anything, I was wearing a pair of tennis shoes from Matt’s gym bag, with two layers of Cash’s socks to make them fit.
I couldn’t run well, but it was a lot better than going barefoot.
“You’ve lost your mind,” Wilder said.
“No, hear me out. I think he was holding Hank there. I think that’s where he sent the video from. And if we can get him to come to us, I think we might be able to get him to admit it.”
“This isn’t a bad TV cop drama, Princess. He’s not going to tell you about his nefarious scheme while you broadcast it to the world.”
“He was already dumb enough to send his video to Callum.” If this plan of mine failed, I’d get Callum to release that video once Deerling was in Cain’s hands. But I wanted Tim to confess to trying to kill me. I wanted him to admit he was responsible for the woman’s death. The more I could get him to cop to, the worse it would look for the church.
“This might be the worst idea you’ve had yet. The church will have a security system in place.”
“Good. I want him to come.”
“You know it likely won’t be him that comes, right? It’ll probably be the cops. And then we’re back to square one. Which is sharing a shitty jail cell