.
.
what we need to find out .
.
.
and I expect that we'll be really glad we have you with us then." ON THE WAY TO THE GARAGE, I CALLED SYLVIA.
SHE might insist on bringing the police into it--but I hoped I could talk her out of that.
Her phone rang until the answering machine picked up.
"Sylvia, this is Mercy--I have news about Gabriel.
You need to call me as soon--" "I told you," she said, coming on the line.
"My family doesn't want to talk to you.
And if Gabriel chooses you over his family--" "He's been kidnapped," I told her, before she could say something that would break her heart later.
She wasn't as tough as she liked to pretend--I knew, because I pretended to be tougher than I was a lot, too.
Into the silence that followed, I said, "Apparently he walked to the garage last night and tried to take one of the cars-- which he has my permanent permission to do.
You'd know better than I why he'd do that and where he was going.
I have a friend who is in trouble and that trouble crashed down on Gabriel." "Your kind of trouble, right?" she asked.
"Let me guess.
Werewolf trouble." "Not werewolf trouble," I said, abruptly irritated with her assumption that all werewolves were horrible.
Me, she could be mad at, but she would have to hold her tongue around me about the wolves.
"Tell Maia that her werewolf buddy is going to put his neck in the noose trying to save her big brother, who got himself kidnapped by the bad guys." Because I knew that Samuel-- my Samuel who was at that very moment dressing in the backseat--would never stand by and watch a human get hurt.
He was the only werewolf I knew who cared that much about mundane humans, just because they were mundane humans.
Most werewolves, even the ones who liked being werewolves, actively resented, if not hated, normal people for being what they could no longer be.
Sylvia was silent.
I supposed the information that Gabriel was in trouble was finally catching up to her.
"Gabriel is alive," I told her.
"And we've managed to make sure his kidnappers know that his continued health is important to their goals.
Police wouldn't help, Sylvia.
They just don't have the tools to deal with these people.
All that bringing the police into it will do is make things worse and get someone killed." Like Phin.
"My werewolf friend is a little better equipped.