Fair Game (Alpha & Omega #3)(38)
Author: Patricia Briggs

THEY TOOK A taxi to Castle Island where Jacob’s body had evidently washed up, leaving Leslie’s car in the parking garage next to the morgue. There was apparently parking at the Island, but it was the middle of summer and Leslie didn’t like to waste time trying to find a place to park.

Anna’s doubts about traveling by taxi with Brother Wolf proved to be unfounded. Their taxi driver had a big mutt at home, he told them, who was a Great Dane crossed with a dinosaur. Once he found out that Anna had never been to Boston before, he gave her a complete rundown on the island that hadn’t really been an island since the 1930s. His stories included a ghostly tale of an escaped prisoner that somehow resulted in a haunting and a wandering yarn about how Edgar Allan Poe’s army service at Fort Independence had led him to place his story "The Cask of Amontillado" at the fort.

"Wicked," Anna told him when they got out of the car and she handed him a tip.

He laughed and gave her a high five. "Frickin’ wicked yourself. You’ll be a native in no time."

"Don’t you believe it," Leslie told her half jokingly. "Native Bostonians are the ones who’ve been here since the Revolutionary War – all others are interlopers, no matter how welcome."

The ocean air was refreshingly brisk as Leslie led the way down the cement walk that paralleled the ocean on the harbor side of the island. It wasn’t crowded, not really – there had been plenty of places to park – but there were a number of people out enjoying the sun. The tall granite block walls of Fort Independence dominated the landscape, which was mostly grass with a few bushes and moderate-sized trees.

"Jacob wasn’t here long before he was discovered," Leslie said. "Not a lot of places to hide a body around here and – as you can see – there are a lot of people this time of year. The harbor breeze keeps the temperatures to a reasonable level and the fishing is supposed to be pretty good."

"Do you think he was dropped in the harbor by boat?"

"That’s the theory. Too many people around to drop him off unseen, and the ME says the body was in the water for at least a full day. Jacob was found a number of days ago. I suspect that if there was something we missed initially, it’s too late now."

"Probably this is useless," agreed Anna. "But I’m not clear on what else we can do right now that is more helpful."

There were all sorts of people out and about – joggers, dog walkers, people watchers. The sound of kids yelling in the distance competed with airplanes from the airport across the harbor and seabirds.

They were passed by a woman with a Pekingese coming the other way. Her little dog hit the end of his leash and started barking hoarsely at Brother Wolf.

"He’s perfectly friendly," his owner said. "Now stand down, Peter." To his owner’s obvious embarrassment, the dog growled, keeping himself between the werewolves and his owner in a brave but misguided attempt to protect her, until they were long past.

"Peter," said Anna, smiling involuntarily. "Peter and the Wolf."

"Is that reaction usual?" Leslie asked.

"Most dogs have troubles with us at first," Anna admitted; then she smiled. "He was all of ten pounds, wasn’t he? Pretty brave of him when you think of it. After insults have been exchanged it usually works out fine. Cats…cats don’t like us. And they don’t adjust, ever." She grinned at Leslie. "Just like Cantrip agents, I expect."

"Heuter is just one man," Leslie pointed out. "Hard to judge all of Cantrip by one man."

"I don’t know about that," Anna said. "Who else would join an agency like Cantrip except for people who are afraid of the dark?"

"People who need jobs?" Leslie suggested dryly. "Cantrip takes a lot of Quantico graduates who don’t get on with the FBI. As a job, Cantrip is less time-consuming than the FBI or Homeland Security, and it pays better than most police departments. It’s less dangerous, too – because they don’t actually do anything but collect information."

"Not yet," Anna said affably. "My father says that government unchecked is like a snowball; you can always count on it getting bigger and gathering more power." She walked a few paces. "Heuter was going to shoot someone in the morgue. If he could have gotten the shot off before it became obvious Charles wasn’t going to hurt anyone, he’d have shot Charles. If you hadn’t been there, he would have done it. I thought at the time he was going to go for the witch, but I’ve changed my mind. Cantrip carries weapons loaded with silver bullets."

"Mine is, too," admitted Leslie, sounding sheepish.

"Good for you," Anna told her. "You didn’t even think about drawing, though."

"I don’t know why not. I really should have."

"Charles did what you wanted to," Anna suggested. "Got the witch’s hands off that poor boy. She was preparing to feed off him, and Charles stopped it."

"Feed?"

"Suck up the residual magic the killers left behind."

"That doesn’t sound appetizing. Sounds necrophilic."

"Mmm," agreed Anna. "But you and I are not witches."

Leslie stared out in the harbor for a moment, then smiled. "I suppose that was it. I wanted to smack her, and your Charles did it for me."

There was a monument up ahead that looked something like the Washington Monument in miniature – or, since they were in Boston, like the Bunker Hill Monument. It was a tall, sea-battered, narrow-sided rectangle that lifted to the sky and ended in a point. On the ocean side of the path were some wharfs with a few people fishing from them.

"Still, Heuter…" Anna said. "You know Senator Heuter’s views on werewolves, right? He’s one of the proponents of that bill to include us as an endangered species."

Leslie frowned. "Endangered species?"

"And therefore not citizens," Anna said. "I don’t suppose it would be of as much interest to you as it is to us werewolves. He also wants to RFID tag us as if we were pets who might go astray."

"RFID?"

"That one hasn’t made it into a bill yet," Anna said. "But it’s been in a couple of his speeches."

"That wouldn’t be constitutional," said Leslie.

"It would if we were an endangered species." Anna looked at Brother Wolf. "I’d like to see someone try to put a radio control collar on Charles. It might be fun to watch on YouTube."

He gave her a look.

Anna raised the hand that wasn’t holding the leash. "I’m not saying I’d do it. I’d just pay money to watch someone try."