"Would you go down and let Darryl and Warren know they'll be wanted for witnesses? I think I'll go lie down for another ten minutes." He was in the hallway when he said, "If I survive, Mary Jo, we'll have to come up with a suitable reparation for the bowling alley.
You ruined a very promising evening, and I won't forget about it." "YOUR FOOD IS COLD," GROWLED DARRYL, AS I ENTERED the kitchen.
"I hope your business was important." Jesse was still there, drying, while Auriele washed.
There was no saving this, not if Paul specified the fight be here--no chance of talking Jesse into waiting this one out somewhere safe; she was too much her father's daughter.
"Paul's challenged Adam," I told them.
"Fifteen minutes from now in the dojo in the garage." Darryl whirled around with a growl, and Auriele stepped between him and Jesse, though I don't think Jesse realized it because she was staring at me.
"How did he get to Adam?" said Auriele.
"Who was supposed to be watching him?" "Me," I said after a stunned moment.
"I guess that would be me." "No," said Auriele.
"That would have been Samuel.
Ben said he left Adam with Samuel and you." "Samuel's not pack," growled Darryl, eyes light gold in the darkness of his face.
Sam wasn't Samuel, I thought.
In the normal course of things Samuel would have kept that challenge from happening.
I wondered if Paul or Henry had realized that.
Probably not.
"My fault," I said.
"No." I'd left Mary Jo in Jesse's room, but she must have followed me down.
"Not your fault," Mary Jo said.
"Maybe Warren or Darryl could have stopped Paul, but Henry was very careful to make sure they weren't there." She gave me an inscrutable look that would have done credit to Darryl, inscrutable but not overtly hostile.
"They wouldn't have thought Samuel would interfere.
They think of him as a lone wolf, not as Adam's friend." The look, I realized, was to let me know that she wouldn't tell them about Samuel unless I did.
"Henry?" Darryl was shocked into dropping his anger.
"Henry?" Mary Jo lifted her chin.
"He planned it." She looked at me, then away.
"He wants Adam dead and is using Paul .
.
.
used me, too, in order to accomplish it." "Is that what they told you?" Henry himself came into the kitchen.
He was a compact man, a little taller than me, with a quick smile and hazel eyes that could look either gray or gold rather than the more usual brown and green.
He wore his hair in a conservative cut and almost certainly shaved with a regular razor rather than an electric because an electric never produces quite the same well groomed look.