Hit List

34

LISANDRO DROVE INTO the parking lot. I said, “Park in front of the office. I’ve got to see if they have enough rooms for everyone.”

He didn’t argue, just turned in the opposite direction from the rooms. Nicky leaned against the back of my seat, his hand still in mine, but now he could lean his face around the headrest and nuzzle the side of my face. I leaned in against that touch, as if I couldn’t help myself, but I said, “Car’s still moving. You need your seatbelt on.”

He spoke low, mouth buried in my hair. “We’re going ten miles an hour, Anita. I’ll be fine.”

I fought the urge to tell him to put it on anyway, because I was sort of fanatical about seatbelts staying on until a car came to a complete stop, but Nicky was right. Hell, as a shapeshifter he could go through the windshield full speed and survive. I had a moment to think, if my mother had been a shapeshifter she wouldn’t have died when I was eight. I had one of those moments of clarity, and wondered if I dated only preternatural men because they would survive.

Lisandro found a parking space in front of the banked windows of the office area. I had to pull away from Nicky to get out of the car, but the moment we were both free of the car, he took my hand in his. It was my right hand and my main gun hand, but since he was right-handed, too, one of us was going to have to compromise their gun hand. I had to force myself to do what I normally did automatically, which was to pull my hand out of his, and play a few minutes of who was going to complicate their ability to draw their weapon. I just knew it wasn’t going to be me. It was one of the reasons that Nicky and I didn’t hold hands much in public, because he was my bodyguard, among other things. The fact that we were both willing to have his right hand occupied, when we were out hunting dangerous things, was another clue that something was wrong with my need to touch and be near my metaphysical men. I promised myself to call Jean-Claude after he woke for the day and see if he had a clue.

But good idea or bad idea, Nicky and I followed Lisandro through the door to the office hand in hand. The moment we stepped inside, the rich, dark scent of coffee was everywhere. I realized I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had coffee. How had I let that happen? It had been a busy day, but still . . . The desk clerk who had worried about losing his job at the crime scene turned from the full coffee carafe, smiling. His short, dark brown hair was neatly combed this time, and almost didn’t match the oversized superhero T-shirt, jeans, and well-loved jogging shoes, as if his mother did his hair, but he dressed himself.

“Fresh coffee, if you want it?” he said, and pushed his silver-framed glasses up his nose in one of those automatic gestures people with glasses make.

“It smells like real coffee,” I said, pulling Nicky with me toward the tempting scent. Yes, we had bad guys to catch, but even crime fighters need coffee.

He grinned at me. “Boss says I have to keep coffee in the pot all day. He doesn’t say it has to be bad coffee.”

“I like the way you think,” I said.

He set out three cups and started pouring very dark, very rich coffee into them.

“You like coffee,” Lisandro said, from just behind us.

“None for me, thanks,” Nicky said.

The clerk, whose name completely escaped me, stopped in midpour, spilling a tiny bit down the side of the cup. “Sorry.” He put the pot back on the coffeemaker and reached for napkins and wiped off the side of the second cup. “I’m just glad some of you are drinking it. I hate wasting good coffee.”

Lisandro and I both took the cups. Nicky went back to being alert, as if someone might jump out of the walls and attack. He was right, though; he and I had to get a handle on whatever was making us be so touchy-feely, or I’d have to send him home. The real test would be if I was as bad around Domino, because he was the only other man from home who had a metaphysical tie to me. If it was both of them, then, well, that would mean something was wrong with the metaphysics, and that would be bad.

I breathed in the scent of the coffee, letting myself close my eyes for a moment and just enjoy it. I could tell by the smell alone that it wouldn’t need sugar or cream, it was good just the way it was.

“How can I help you, Marshal?” the clerk said.

I opened my eyes and smiled. “Sorry, got distracted by the coffee.”

He smiled back and shrugged thin shoulders. “Glad I could make your day a little better. I’m so sorry about the other marshal getting hurt.”

“Thank you,” I said. “We’re actually here to get clothes from her room to take back to the hospital.”

“So she’s okay?”

I shrugged and smiled noncommittally. I doubted the marshal service wanted the media to learn about Karlton being a werewolf, and I knew Karlton didn’t.

Lisandro said, “We also need rooms.”

I nodded, and he was right to get me back on track. What the hell was wrong with me? I was losing focus in the middle of a case, that wasn’t like me. Not to this degree anyway.

The clerk went behind the desk and said, “How many people, and are they comfortable with sharing rooms?”

I started to answer, but Bernardo and Olaf came into the office. Olaf was almost too tall for the drop ceiling. I had a moment to wonder how it would feel to be so tall that ceilings were too short. It was so not the problem I had.

“Fresh coffee,” the clerk called out cheerfully as he typed on his keyboard. “How many rooms do you need?”

I counted in my head while I sipped the coffee. It was as good as it smelled; yum. “Three, with two beds apiece.”

“Thanks, Ron,” Bernardo called out and went toward the coffee. It made me think better of Bernardo that he knew the clerk’s name. If the clerk had been female I’d have expected it, but that he remembered the man’s name to be friendly made me wonder if some of the flirting from Bernardo was just a level of social enjoyment that I didn’t have with strangers.

“So, room for six,” Ron said, typing on the keyboard.

“Yeah.”

Olaf came to stand near the desk.

Ron gave him a nervous flick of eyes that seemed to take in the top of his bald head that was ever so close to the ceiling tiles. “Coffee machine is over there.”

“No, thank you,” Olaf said, in that deep rumbling voice.

“He doesn’t drink coffee or tea,” I said.

“Good to know,” Ron said, and his effort not to look all the way up to Olaf was almost painful.

“We just drink the blood of our enemies,” Nicky said.

Ron stopped in his typing and looked at Nicky. “What?”

“He’s teasing you,” I said, and glared at Nicky. The glare said, clearly, for him to stop it.

“We have two rooms upstairs near your original rooms, and one downstairs. Is that okay?”

“We need to be close to Anita’s room,” Nicky said.

“Anita, oh, you mean Marshal Blake.”

“Yes,” Nicky said.

Ron typed some more. “I’m sorry, that’s the best we have until someone checks out.”

Lisandro was near the door, looking out and drinking the yummy coffee. Bernardo trailed over to join us. He seemed to be enjoying the coffee, though he’d added enough cream to make it tan, probably added sugar, too. I thought about calling him a pussy, but decided it wasn’t worth it, I’d actually started adding cream and sugar to some coffee myself. Never throw stones if you think they’re going to come back and hit you.

A wave of dizziness rolled over me. I steadied myself against the desk and Nicky grabbed my arm. “Are you all right?”

“Dizzy,” I said. My knees began to slide out from under me and the coffee spilled down the side of the desk. Nicky caught me. “Anita!”

Lisandro collapsed. His empty coffee cup rolled across the floor. I thought, Oh shit, the coffee, but I couldn’t seem to form the words out loud. I tried to reach for a gun, but I couldn’t make my arms move enough. Nicky was holding all my weight in one arm, tucking me against his body, because he had his gun out; so did Olaf.

Bernardo collapsed to the floor with his gun in his hand. The damned coffee spilled about half of a cup into the worn carpet.

Ron, the clerk, was holding his hands out from his body, “I didn’t know . . .” Olaf shot him in the chest. The shot was like an explosion. I fought to focus through the dizzy, tilting world, and had a moment to see the door behind the desk open black and empty, but somehow I knew it wasn’t empty. The black cloak and white mask were clear for a second as it moved in a blur so that it wasn’t there when Olaf and Nicky fired.

I heard the bell on the door, and the last thing I saw before the dizziness ate the rest of the world was a blurring wave of black cloaks coming toward us. My last clear thought was, Please, God, let that be the drug, and not their real speed.

I heard Nicky yelling my name in the dark.