Fair Game (Alpha & Omega #3)(20)
Author: Patricia Briggs

Isaac grinned, a sudden, charming expression that showed white, white teeth in his blue-black face. "Caught me, darling. But you didn’t answer my question."

"She is mine," said Charles. His aggressive answer didn’t show up in his voice, which was low and calm. "We have a meeting scheduled tomorrow, with you and your pack. There was no need for this…" He glanced around. People were still watching them, but they were pretending not to. "Theater," he finished.

"This is Boston, hoss." Isaac bent his knees and squatted, putting his head on a level with theirs. "That’s ‘thee-ah-tah.’ We’re all about theater here." He pronounced the second "theater" just as Charles had. He wasn’t native to Boston, she remembered. She thought he was from Michigan or Pennsylvania.

Anna gave him a gimlet eye and spoke to Charles. "He was probably walking by and spotted us. Decided he couldn’t wait until tomorrow to throw a hissy fit."

"And aren’t you one to burst everyone’s posturing?" Isaac’s dark eyes considered her. Then, in a more down-to-earth tone, he looked at Charles and said, "As a matter of fact, she’s right." Then his face and his voice went very, very serious. "I meant what I said. To get to my wolves, you’ll have to go over my dead body."

"If you do your job, he’ll never have to do his." Bitterness made Anna’s tone sharper than she meant it to be.

"She make all of your words, kemosabe?" Isaac asked Charles.

Charles raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated fashion and pointed his chin at Anna as if waiting for her to answer for him. He never used his fingers to point. It was, he’d told her, very bad manners among his mother’s people.

Speaking of bad manners…"Where’s our card for a free meal?" Anna demanded. "I think you owe us one. Cogita ante salis, my father would tell you. You should think before you leap."

Charles murmured, "Before you depart. Sally forth. Close enough."

Anna was never sure how many of the Latin phrases she knew were right, and how much her father simply had made up on the spot. She’d quit speaking it in front of Bran because he’d get this pained look on his face. Charles seemed mostly to find it funny, a joke they shared. He claimed not to speak Latin, but apparently Spanish and French were close enough to allow him to comment.

"Charles is not here to enforce justice, at least not on you or yours." She nodded at Isaac. "We were coming to you to ask for information. There are dead werewolves and the FBI and police apparently don’t have anything but bodies. We were sent here to help them. We were coming to ask you the questions the FBI probably already have in the hopes you could answer differently for us. How were our people taken and killed? Where were they taken from?"

"Information on the dead guys?" Isaac raised his chin and met her eyes. He waited for her to drop hers – and when that didn’t happen, he frowned thoughtfully. Likely he’d never met a wolf before that he couldn’t either stare down, or felt driven to bow before.

The Omega part tended to confuse a lot of wolves who were used to immediately sizing up others when they first met them. Is this wolf more dominant or less? Will she do as I ask, or do I have to do what she tells me? Are we close enough in rank that I have to worry about a fight to determine who rules and who is ruled, who protects and who is protected? Anna didn’t register at all on the obey-or-be-obeyed scale – and she apparently came with something that made all the dominant wolves need to protect her.

Finally Isaac shook his head. "My take is that it is some seriously powerful fae, vampire, or something of that ilk. I don’t know about the other two – I can give you the addresses of their hotels and their stated businesses. But they’ve been here before, lots of times. Neither was in the habit of causing trouble, so I don’t have them shadowed anymore. But my boy, Otten, he was taken right while he was out jogging along the Charles River about five in the morning."

Isaac glanced over his shoulder as if he could see the river from where they sat, though it wasn’t possible. "That’s early; I know that’s early. But there are other people, and damn, he’s a werewolf, right?" And Anna realized he’d turned his head so they couldn’t see the expression on his face. "Still, no one saw anything. No sign of a struggle – and Otten, he’s pretty old, right? Old, tough, and a fine scrapper in wolf or human form. He knew how to watch his back. Not someone to be surprised. Pack bonds hit me hard about three hours later, dropped me right down and out – he was hurt that badly. But there was so much static I couldn’t get a fix on him when I woke up."

He focused on Charles, meeting his gaze for longer than she’d ever seen anyone outside of his father. "They cut him. Raped him and killed him while they cut into him." His voice was raw with rage, and golden embers sparked in his dark eyes despite the tears on his cheek.

"They," said Charles intently. "How many?"

Isaac looked startled at the question, and then surprise jerked his head up and he frowned. "Two? Two…is wrong; there was a third. I just got impressions. Mostly pain. Didn’t think the shadows I got were important. Let me think." He closed his eyes and tilted his head, a wolflike motion that was familiar. They all did it, now and again. If Anna’s nose quit working, she’d still know a werewolf when she met him, just from that motion.

Isaac frowned and shook his head.

They cut him, Isaac had said. The FBI had shown them only select views of the later victims, as if to hide damage that had some significance they hadn’t wanted to share. Or else they were trying not to shock a civilian consultant who might pay so much attention to the dead body, he failed to see anything else. But cutting…She knew a kind of creature who might cut up a werewolf before killing him.

"Were the cuts random?" asked Anna. "Or were they in a deliberate pattern?"

Isaac caught on to where she was going. "Witches? You think witches are behind this?"

Charles shrugged. "This is the beginning of our hunt, Isaac. I try not to think anything at this point."

Isaac nodded and looked at Anna. "Could be the cuts were deliberate. Or it could just have been someone playing, like a cat with a mouse – they seemed to enjoy it. The bond between an Alpha and his wolves isn’t a mating bond – I just caught the worst of what he was experiencing here and there." Something unhappy grew in his face, and his eyes widened as he kept the tears in. "He wasn’t scared, you know? Even when the pain was bad. Otten was a cool one, just waiting for his chance – but they didn’t give him one."

"I knew him," said Charles, and his voice said a lot more than the words. It acknowledged and agreed with Isaac’s assessment of the man and told Anna – and Isaac – that the dead man had been someone Charles respected and liked. "Thank you for talking to us, Isaac. You’ve helped. We’ll stop them, and when we do, you’ll know that you helped."