Deadlocked (Sookie Stackhouse #12)(62)
Author: Charlaine Harris

"Didn’t have time," I said, glad to get that out of the way. "I don’t know where they were taking me, but Mustapha shot the driver and got me out of the car, and here I am. So. Thank you, Mustapha."

He bobbed his head, still involved in his own thoughts, his own worry for his friend.

"Was there a woman with them, kind of quiet, about thirty?"

"Pixie haircut?"

Both the men looked blank. "Real short hair, light brown, tall woman?"

Alcide nodded vigorously. "Yes, that’s her! She okay?"

"Yeah. She was sitting in the passenger front. Who is she?"

"She’s my undercover," Alcide said.

"You have undercover agents?"

"Yeah, of course. Her name’s Kandace. Kandace Moffett."

"Can you please explain all this?" I hated to sound stupid. Telepaths get used to knowing stuff, I guess.

"I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version," he said, to my surprise. "But come in the bathroom and wash yourself off while I fill you in. Mustapha, man, I owe you."

"I know," Mustapha said. "Just help me find Warren. That’s all I need."

Alcide hustled me into a bathroom right off the entrance hall. It was all granite countertops and pure white towels, and I felt like the nastiest thing the cat had ever drug in. Alcide didn’t necessarily mind the blood, because that’s not a Were hang-up, but I sure did. I turned on the shower and stepped under it after shucking my shoes, which were the cleanest things I was wearing. When Alcide’s back was turned, I stepped out of the waitress outfit and let it fall to the floor of the shower. I grabbed a washcloth, soaped it up, and began scrubbing. Alcide resolutely kept his eyes turned away.

"Start talking," I reminded him, and he did.

"After I talked to you about Jannalynn, I began to think about her pretty seriously," he said. "The more I took her recent actions apart, the more I thought I should look deeper. I figured out that Jannalynn was not telling me the truth about a few things. I wondered if maybe she was skimming off the top at Hair of the Dog." He shrugged. "Sometimes when she was supposed to be around, she was out of touch. I thought maybe her romance with Sam was going over the top, but when she’d tell me one thing about them, you didn’t seem to know anything about it. And Sam’s your partner, so you’d know, I figured."

So he’d called me to talk about Sam and Jannalynn’s "wedding plans," at least in part to hear my reaction; of course, I’d been completely shocked.

"I saw her one time when she didn’t see me. She was at a bar way across town, instead of at the Hair. And she was with the rogues I had turned down. I knew she was planning something. I’d had them all over at social evenings at the house, talked to ’em. The only one worth anything was Kandace, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be in a pack. Didn’t like the power struggles. I got to respect that, but I thought she’d be an asset."

I thought maybe he’d also liked Kandace’s assets, but that was his business.

"So I called up Kandace, and I asked her to meet me alone. Without me even bringing it up, she volunteered to tell me what was going on, because it troubled her."

Alcide clearly wanted me to give Kandace a virtual pat on the back, so I said, "She must be a good person."

He smiled, gratified. "Kandace said Jannalynn wanted to challenge me, defeat me, but first she wanted to get a good toehold in the pack by socking away some money, enlisting pack members to her side, getting some of her own muscle. Her proposal to these rogues was that they could come into the pack if they’d do her bidding; then when she beat me, she’d let them have full benefits."

I wondered if that included health and dental, but I wasn’t going to go down a side path while he was still in a sharing mood. I hung up the washcloth and poured a dollop of shampoo into my hands. I began to scrub my scalp and hair. "Go on," I said, by way of encouragement.

"So," he said. "I got a guy she didn’t know to follow Jannalynn. He saw her meeting with your buddy Claude. There’s just no good reason for that."

I stopped rinsing the shampoo from my hair. "What … why? Why was she meeting with Claude, of all people?"

"I have no idea," Alcide said.

"So all we have to do is find Jannalynn and ask her a lot of questions," I said. "And find Warren. And hope that Claude comes back from Faery, so I can question him. And get Felipe and his vamps to leave us alone, here in Shreveport. And get that Freyda out of here."

Alcide looked at me, wondered whether to speak, and decided on full disclosure. "Is it true, Sookie? Palomino told Roy that Eric’s engaged to a vampire from Oklahoma?"

"I can’t talk about it," I said. "Or I’ll get real upset, Alcide, and you just don’t want that tonight. I owe Palomino a solid favor for getting us in to rescue … a guy, but she shouldn’t be telling vampire business around town."

"You owe her more of a solid than you know," he said. "She saw you being grabbed, and she called me. Right before Bill did. That was smart, Sook, getting him to call. It was all I could do to get him to continue on his way and check back in later. I promised him I’d keep you safe."

"So you called Mustapha? You’ve known where he was all along?"

"No, but after I got your phone messages, I called him. As you’d advised, when Jannalynn wasn’t around. He’d run down his last lead on Warren, and he had to talk to someone. I still don’t know where he’s been hiding."

"But it’s thanks to you that he found me in time."

"Both our efforts and some guessing, too. He knows those rogues. He figured they’d head back to their house outside Fillmore. Van does bad stuff to women, and he’d want to have some time with you before he handed you over to Jannalynn. The follow-up car was his idea, too."

"Oh my God." I felt sick, wondered if I was going to throw up. No. I got hold of myself.

After a little rinsing, I was as clean as I was going to get. Alcide left the bathroom so I could change into my more modest shorts and T-shirt. It was really interesting how much difference a few covered inches could make in your self-respect. Now that I felt more like myself, I could begin to think some more.

I came out of the bathroom. Alcide was having a beer, and Mustapha was drinking a Coca-Cola. I accepted one, too, and the cold sweetness tasted wonderful going down.

"So what are you going to do with the rogues, for right now?" I asked.

"I’m going to stow them in a reinforced shed my dad built," Alcide said. Jackson, his dad, had owned a farm outside Shreveport where the pack could run at the full moon.