Sucker Punch (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter #27) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,239

no win here, Edward.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Probably?”

The truck finally left, and we were able to park at last. Edward reached for his door handle. “I’ll just be sorry when we have to kill him, and I’ll be sorrier if he kills us first.”

With that, he got out of the SUV, and I was left hurrying to catch up. We were in the crowd on the porch of waiting customers by the time I caught up, so I couldn’t say any of the things I wanted to say. But then, neither could he.

76

WE ENDED UP in the manager’s office, Pamela’s office. She’d brought in extra chairs so she could sit beside Hazel instead of at her desk. Hazel’s shoulders hunched forward, her arms holding her stomach as if someone had hit her there and doubled her over, but it wasn’t a physical blow that had hit her. Pamela sat beside her, one hand making small circles on the other woman’s back, the way you’d soothe a baby to sleep. Hazel didn’t react to the touch, but she didn’t tell Pamela to stop either. Either it made her feel better or she wasn’t even aware the other woman was touching her. Carmichael hadn’t been dead two hours yet, so it wasn’t so much grief yet as pure shock. The hard-core grieving—where you missed them forever and had to accept that it was forever and nothing you could do would change it, or bring them back, or let you feel their warm hand in yours ever again on this side of the grave—that was still to come.

I sat facing the women in one of the other chairs clustered in front of the desk. Edward and Olaf were standing farther down the wall as far away as the room allowed. They’d be able to hear, but we were trying not to spook her. Livingston had drawn a chair to one side of all of us girls, so he was leaning back against the wall. Hazel knew him, trusted him through Pamela, so he was more a big comforting presence to them both, I think.

Hazel’s voice was low, thick with crying already, though the tears stopped as she talked as if talking steadied her, gave her something else to do besides cry. “They killed him. I know they did.”

“Who’s they?” I asked.

She looked up at me. Her eyes held some of that harsh distrust I remembered from the restaurant. “Rico and Jocelyn.”

I gave her the long blink, the one I’d learned over the years when I couldn’t afford to show shock or act like I didn’t know what the hell was going on. “Tell me what you know,” I said, keeping my voice even and neutral.

“Mike showed up to work high a couple of times, and Mr. Marchand put him on notice that if it happened again, he’d have to let him go. I begged Mike to not screw it up, but it was like he couldn’t help himself. If there was something good in his life, he had to fuck with it, you know?” She looked up at me as if willing me to understand that the man she loved hadn’t been bad, just flawed.

I gave her my best sympathetic face, nodding. “I know people like that, too,” I said.

That seemed to be enough for Hazel to smile and sit up a little straighter. “Mr. Marchand was a good man, but his sister is a bitch. She heard what had happened and she asked Mike to take small things from the house. She told him she’d give him some of the money when they sold, and he could start saving for when he had to find another job. Mike didn’t tell me what he was doing. I thought he was cheating on me when he was handing stuff over to them to sell.” She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I wish he’d been cheating on me. He’d still be alive.”

Pamela made sympathetic noises, and I resisted the urge to ask Hazel what any of this had to do with Rico and Jocelyn. She had more color in her face than when we’d first come into the room. The more she talked, the stronger she seemed, and that meant eventually we could ask more questions, but she had to get there first. I’d learned a little patience over the years. Besides, there was no reason to rush. Bobby was safe. No one else’s head was on the chopping block. We had