business school, but it works for me.
"It's my name today."
"What's wrong with Leon as his name?" Bennington asked.
"It's based on the Latin word leo, which means 'lion.' Don't you think that's funny? Because I think it's freaking hilarious."
"I think I liked it better when you weren't talking," Jacob said.
"They come highly recommended, Ms. Blake."
"You've had them watching me and my boyfriends for a few days, before you came to my office. You hired them before I turned you down." The anger tried to flare back up, and I had to slow my breathing a little, concentrate on my pulse. I pictured him dead again, but the anger wanted him dead sooner, and that was the beast talking. Kill it now, eat it now, why wait? Animals are very into instant gratification.
"I told you, Ms. Blake, I'd researched you. Everything I had learned about you said that you would turn me down, so I had a contingency in place."
"A contingency. Is that what they're calling kidnapping and murder for hire these days?"
He flinched a little around his eyes, as if it were all too blunt for his sensibilities. "I'm truly hoping it doesn't come to that, Ms. Blake. If you raise my wife for me, then no harm comes to the men you love. You go back to your life and I go back to mine."
I looked at Jacob. "He may be an amateur, but you aren't. How are you going to make it safe for us all to go back to our lives?"
"Why don't we all sit down," he said.
Bennington stammered, "Of course, of course, how rude of me, I mean..." He trailed off as if he'd just heard himself, or didn't know how to finish the sentence.
"Always hard to know how polite to be to your victims, isn't it, Tony?"
"Sit down, Anita," Jacob said, and his tone implied that if I didn't sit down, he'd help me do it.
"She's tensed up again. She wants to fight. We can't afford to posture, Jacob," Nicky said.
It was Jacob's turn to count to ten.
"Am I missing something?" Bennington said.
"Loads," I said, smiling sweetly.
"Let's all sit down and discuss how we're going to live through this," Jacob said in a voice that was reasonable, even pleasant. I wondered what visual he used to gain control. Had he pictured injuring me, killing me?
But we all sat down in the huge great room that most modern houses have for living rooms. I don't like them, they're too open. They are absolutely indefensible and seemed designed to make a burglar's job easier. This room was particularly so, with the large stairway sweeping up one side with an open-railed hallway that cut across the entire length of the huge space. With all the talk of snipers it made me particularly not happy with the floor plan. I knew no one was up there, but it was just not a comfortable room when you knew that people really were out to get you. Of course, the people out to get me were sitting down on the white leather furniture looking at me. There was the mysterious Silas and his errand that he hadn't finished, but right now there were enough enemies in front of me; I didn't have to borrow.
"We're just going to wait here until Silas phones, and then we'll pack up and head for the cemetery," Jacob said.
Bennington added, "I had her reburied because I found that most animators needed a grave rather than a mausoleum."
"Very thoughtful," I said, and didn't try to keep the anger out of my voice.
"I am being reasonable, Ms. Blake. I could have had them kill your first boyfriend, Callahan, as an incentive for cooperation. You, unlike me, have spares."
"They're people, not extra tires in case of emergency." The anger rose another notch, and I had to control my breathing again, count again. The lioness was getting impatient in the long grass. We could kill him before they could stop us. She was probably right, and if we killed him then the money went away. That was an interesting idea.
"You've thought of something, Anita. I can see it in the set of your shoulders, the way you went still. Whatever it is, don't do it," Jacob said.
The trouble with wereanimals that were also professional bad guys was that it's very hard to surprise them. The only way to do it was to take action before you really think about it, the way you do in martial arts. You see your opening