Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,21

of them didn’t seem to have any secrets from each other, which should have been a good thing, but I didn’t want Peter joining the family business or feeling that he needed to ride to my rescue if Edward was unavailable. Peter had nearly died saving me from a weretiger when he was only sixteen. He was about to turn twenty. I did not need more heroics from him. If I didn’t want to tell Donna, Edward’s wife, that he had died in the line of duty, I sure as hell didn’t want to tell her that her son had gotten himself killed.

Newman parked behind the sheriff’s car on a wide gravel area beside the main road. The only streetlight I’d seen for miles shone down on a gate and a wall that peeked out from the trees on either side, as if the wall had been there long enough for the forest to grow up around it.

Sheriff Leduc was punching a keypad, but nothing was happening. He pushed a larger button and yelled into an intercom.

“We have the code to the gate,” Newman said.

“Who could have changed it?” I asked.

Newman shook his head. “No one but one of the other deputies is supposed to be at the house.”

We both started to get out of the car, but my phone rang, and it was Edward’s ringtone, “Bad to the Bone” by George Thorogood.

I answered with “Hey, Ted.”

“You talk to Forrester,” Newman said. “I’ll find out what’s going on at the gate.”

I gave him a thumbs-up as Edward said, “Anita, I take it you’re not alone.” He sounded slightly out of breath, which was unusual.

The car door closed, and I was suddenly alone in the quiet, night-dark car. “I am now.”

“Social or business?” He still sounded out of breath.

“Business. Did I catch you working out?” I said.

“Yes, but if it’s business, I’ll get some water while you talk.” I could hear sounds in the background and debated if they were from weight machines or something else.

While I gave him a thumbnail sketch of the case, especially what had just happened in the jail, he found a quieter place to listen. So when I was done, it was truly silent on his end.

Edward’s first question was “Do you believe the sheriff would have shot you?”

“Yes.”

“You need more than just Newman for backup,” he said.

“The kid did good,” I said.

“Would he really have pulled the trigger on the sheriff?”

“Yeah, I think he would have.”

“I trust your judgment like I trust my own. You know that,” he said.

“I know that.”

“But I don’t want to trust your life to Newman.”

“Me either, but he had his gun aimed at Leduc’s head. I think he would have pulled the trigger, Edward. I really do.”

“And yet you’re calling me.”

“Newman is doing a good job, but there’s no other marshal I trust as much as I trust you.”

“I think just having more preternatural marshals on-site would protect you from the sheriff.”

“Are you ass deep in alligators and not able to come out and play?” I asked.

I could almost hear the smile in his voice as he said, “No, but it will take me nearly five hours to fly to you, or almost twenty-four hours driving. What I need to know from you is how fast you need backup.”

“And if I said sooner than five hours?”

“Put out a general call through official channels, and they’ll send the closest marshal from our section to your location.”

“You’re talking round your ass to get to your elbow. It’s not like you, Edward. Newman said I was direct like a shark, but you’re part of what taught me to be direct. What are you trying to say or not say?”

“The nearest marshal to you is Olaf.”

“No. Just no. I’ll go without backup before I invite that psycho here.”

“I figured you’d say that, but I had to be sure.”

“How do you even instantly know where he is? I don’t know.”

“I make it my business to keep track of him.”

“Do you keep track of me like that?”

“No.”

“Do you keep track of anyone else like that?”

“No.”

“You want to know where he is in case you decide to kill him,” I said.

“No, I want to know where he is in case I have to kill him.”

There was a time in our friendship when I wouldn’t have understood that distinction, but that had been a while ago. Olaf, aka Marshal Otto Jeffries, was a serial killer. Edward and I both knew that, but neither of us could prove it,