Fair Game (Alpha & Omega #3)(26)
Author: Patricia Briggs

Brother Wolf pinned his ears and stopped, because Charles told him what he was smelling was unlikely.

"What?" asked Anna, then, more properly, What?

She came here on her own, without touching the floor. Brother Wolf knew his tone was grumpy, but he could not change what was just because it didn’t make Charles happy. Sliding against the wall about three feet from the floor. Charles says, "No."

"Fair enough," said Anna, her voice soothing his ruffled fur. "Momentarily inexplicable evidence in an abduction that possibly involves fae or werewolves isn’t surprising when you think about it." She put her hand on his head, between his ears. "Arguing with your senses at this point is useless – which is something Charles taught me. There will be an explanation. Let’s see what her condo tells us."

More cheerfully – because she had taken his side over Charles’s – Brother Wolf resumed the hunt.

They came, by and by, to the twelfth floor, where Anna held the door open for him. It wasn’t difficult to locate the missing girl’s condo, because, like the building itself, there were police and other people standing around just outside the door.

The woman from the FBI was there, her arms folded and her face set. In front of her was a delicately built man, taller than the FBI woman, but he appeared shorter because of his build. His hair was chestnut and grayed at the sides. Fae – Brother Wolf’s nose could smell it. Some sort of water fae, maybe; he smelled like a freshwater lake at dawn.

He looked so very helpless, this fae, though there was no sense of timidity about him. Brother Wolf couldn’t get a fix on how powerful he was, either. Brother Wolf was no expert on fae, though he’d met his share. But it seemed to him that the ability to hide from all of Brother Wolf’s senses might mean the same thing among the fae as it did among the werewolves. Only Bran could hide what he was so well that Brother Wolf could not immediately discern his power.

"We are doing what we can," the FBI woman said. "We don’t know if this case is related to the others – only that our serial killer has been killing fae for a number of years and abducts his prey in a manner similar to this. No one sees or hears anything – though the abduction site is well guarded or well populated."

"My daughter is only half-fae," said the man. "And until Officer Mooney, here, asked me, no one knew it. No one. There is no reason to suppose that your serial killer has my daughter before your forensic people go in to see what they can find. I was in there, and there is no sign of a struggle. We were meeting to celebrate her successful audition – she won a place in a top-flight ballet troupe – and she would not have stood me up. Not without calling to cancel. If there is no sign of a struggle, then she knew her kidnapper and let him get too close. She was a trained athlete and I saw to it she knew how to defend herself. I need to find her address book and you need to start down the line and send people to visit each and every person there while we wait for the kidnappers to call and demand a ransom. We are wasting time."

This one, thought Brother Wolf, was used to giving orders rather than following them. He might have been tempted to teach him better except for the smell of frantic worry and heartsick terror that the fae was covering with quiet orders.

"If it is our serial killer," said the FBI woman, sounding much more patient than she smelled, "then there will be nothing our forensic units can find, and it won’t be anyone she knows. I have a – " Something caused her to look around just then. Probably the startled swearword one of the young cops said when she noticed Anna and Brother Wolf standing just outside of the stairwell.

The FBI woman –

Leslie Fisher, admonished Anna, because she had a thing about proper word-names.

To demonstrate that he knew perfectly well who he was talking about, Brother Wolf sent her a complicated impression of muted dominance, human, and a scent that was a combination of skin, hygiene products, and a family smell indicating that the FBI woman had a long-term relationship with a male and several not-adult children and two cats. He was showing off a little, because it took a lot of experience to separate a person’s scent into so much detail.

Anna thunked him lightly on the head with her knuckles. "Behave," she told him sternly. But he felt her laughter.

"Here they are," said the FBI woman, Leslie Fisher. Her eyes slid over him twice. She blinked, then focused on the leash.

Anna smiled. "We use the collar and leash because it makes people feel safer," she explained. "That way no one does anything stupid."

The fae looked at Brother Wolf and reached for a sword on his hip that wasn’t there – which seemed to discomfort him quite a bit. Brother Wolf relayed that to Anna so that she would know that the fae saw them as a possible threat.

"Anna Smith and Charles Smith, I’d like to introduce you to Alistair Beauclaire, a partner at the legal firm of Beauclaire, Hutten, and Solis. He was to meet his daughter, Lizzie Beauclaire, age twenty-two, here at eleven p.m. for a late celebration. But sometime between when he talked to her at six p.m. and when he came at ten minutes before eleven, she went missing."

Though her tone was mild, her body language, the way her own hand moved so she could reach a weapon, and the spike in her pulse told Brother Wolf that the FBI woman had seen what he saw. She talked more than she’d had to in order to give everyone time to calm down. All of which made her altogether more of a person to him, because she was not anyone’s victim and she was smart, Leslie Fisher of the FBI.

"Sir," said Anna, "we’re here to help. In addition to his other victims, this killer has taken out three werewolves in Boston this summer."

The slender man let his eyes drift from Anna to Brother Wolf, and Brother Wolf resisted displaying his fangs because he’d promised Charles that he would take care of Anna. Provoking a fight with a fae might be entertaining, but it was not protecting Anna.

"You’re both werewolves," said the fae.

Anna nodded. "Does she have a lot of people over?"

He shook his head. "She spends six to eight hours a day taking classes and rehearsing. Usually she’ll meet her friends at a club or restaurant if they want to go out. Most of her friends are dancers, too, which means poor. I think it embarrasses her to live this upscale. Her mother lives in Florida with her stepfather, as do Lizzie’s two younger half siblings."

"Good. That will help a lot. So who has been in the apartment tonight?"

Leslie raised her hand. "Me." Pointed to the fae. "He has." She looked around. "Hey, Moon. Mooney, are you still around?"