her blond hair loose, and the wind whipped it around her narrow face. The crowd went crazy cheering.
Rule’s phone sounded. It was Lily. His heart pounded in a mix of relief and anxiety—relief because he’d hear her voice. Anxiety because she wasn’t here. “Yes?” he said, then, blocking his other ear: “Say again. There’s too many people screaming and clapping. I couldn’t hear.”
Even with his hearing, even with his other ear stopped up, he missed a few words when she repeated her message: “... going to be kinda busy here, but you need to know. Pass the word. They . . . making lupus dopplegängers. Wolf form. A whole lot of them. Must have used Brian’s tissue. Turning them loose on . . . here and . . . buquerque and . . . iego and New York.”
THE plan was simple enough. Let the bad guys get all their unconscious victims loaded up—then stop them, take their wheels, and show up in their place at the rally.
Having all the bad guys outside was obviously best. Having all the victims in one place and secured inside the truck made it harder for the bad guys to use them as hostages. The tricky part was that she was trusting Drummond. Sort of.
Lily was going with her gut—and maybe with Mullins’s gut, too. Drummond’s sense of right and wrong might be twisted as hell, but it was strong. Strong enough for him to sacrifice his career and his bloody stupid war against the Gifted to keep a bunch of homeless people from being sacrificed. In his screwed-up head, everything he’d done was supposed to protect people. Lily and Ruben, the lupi, the Gifted in general—they weren’t really people to him. But he couldn’t let “innocents”—people without Gifts or the knack of turning furry—be killed.
She wouldn’t turn her back on him, but she’d use him. He had an advantage she couldn’t overlook. He’d supplied the thugs in the first place.
Or rather, he’d arranged things. Dennis Parrott hadn’t known how to go about hiring muscle who wouldn’t object to wet work. Drummond might claim he didn’t know about the death magic, but he’d known his compadres were planning murder. Like most cops, he knew people on the other side of the law. He’d set up a meet between Parrott and Randy “Big Thumbs” Ballister. “Big Thumbs” got his name from saying he’d “squish that prick like a bug,” accompanied by a motion with his thumb. Word was, he did a lot of squishing.
Most of the operation would be carried out by the lupi. If everything went right, Lily wouldn’t even be needed. That grated on her. She didn’t like sending others into danger while she stood around giving orders, but she wasn’t going to risk lives just to soothe her ego. Lupi could do things she couldn’t.
So Lily squatted across the street from the Webster house, tucked behind a hugely overgrown juniper. The world was growing lighter, though still wrapped in shades of gray; she could see clearly enough. The catering truck was parked in the cracked driveway, its open rear facing the house. Its driver had just climbed back behind the wheel and rolled the windows down so he could enjoy a smoke.
He was a bit of a wild card; surrounded by metal, he’d be hard to take, and there was no cover to reach him unseen. They were hoping Big Thumbs’s men were scared enough of him to obey, no matter what. If not . . . that’s why Lily had picked this spot. It was the only place with cover that gave a good view of the man.
Two men emerged from the front door, a long, blanket-wrapped bundle carried between them. Another man—Big Thumbs himself—stood by, watching.
If the count was right, that was the next-to-last hostage. And here came two more men with another bundle. Where the hell was . . .
She sighed with relief as a white Ford that any self-respecting criminal would make for a cop car pulled up, blocking the catering truck. Drummond climbed out, slammed his door.
The first two men hastily heaved their bundle into the truck and hurried to back up their boss. They didn’t bother with subtle. Both drew their weapons.
Lily could hear Big Thumbs clearly. “What the hell you doing here?”
“Parrott thinks I’m his goddamn messenger boy, that’s what. He says he left something behind last time. Fancy card case, metal—might make it through the fire when you torch the place, and it’s got his