Dead Reckoning (Sookie Stackhouse #11)(61)
Author: Charlaine Harris

No pictures of children, thank God.

A hunter’s license, a few receipts, an insurance card. "That means he had a regular job," I said to the vampires, who never needed hospitalization or life insurance. And Hod had three hundred dollars.

"Gosh," I said. "That seems like a lot." All crisp twenties, too.

"Some of our employees don’t have a checking account," Pam said. "They cash their paychecks every time and live on a cash basis."

"Yeah, I know people who do that, too." Terry Bellefleur, for example, who thought banks were run by a Communist cartel. "But this money is all twenties, right from the machine. Might be a payoff." Kelvin turned out to be a Mayfield, too. Cousin, brother? Kelvin was also from Clarice. He was older, twenty-seven. His billfold did contain pictures of children, three of them. Crap. Without comment, I laid the school shots out with the other items. Kelvin also had a condom, a free drink card for Vic’s Redneck Roadhouse, and a card for an auto body shop. A few worn dollar bills, and the same crisp three hundred that Hod had had.

These were guys I could have passed dozens of times when I’d been shopping in Clarice. I might have played softball against their sisters or wives. I might have served them drinks at Merlotte’s. What were they doing trying to kidnap me? "I guess they could have taken me up to Clarice through the woods, on the four-wheelers," I said out loud. "But what would they have done with me then? I thought one of them . . . Through his thoughts I caught a glimpse of an idea about a car trunk." It had only been fleeting, but I shuddered. I’d been in a car trunk before, and it hadn’t ended well for me. It was a memory I blocked out resolutely.

Possibly Eric was thinking about the same event because he glanced out the window toward Bill’s house. "Who do you think sent them, Sookie?" he asked, and he made a huge effort to keep his voice calm and patient.

"I sure can’t question them to find out," I muttered, and Pam laughed.

I gathered my thoughts, such as they were. The fog of my two-hour nap had finally lifted, and I tried to make some sense out of the evening’s strange occurrences. "If Kelvin and Hod had been from Shreveport, I’d think that Sandra Pelt had hired them after she escaped from the hospital," I said. "She doesn’t mind using up the lives of others, not a bit. I’m sure she hired the guys who came to the bar last Saturday. And I’m also sure she’s the one who threw the firebomb at Merlotte’s before that."

"We’ve had eyes looking for her in Shreveport, but no one’s spotted her," Eric said.

"So this Sandra’s goal," Pam said, pulling her straight pale hair behind her shoulders to braid it, "is to destroy you, your place of work, and anything else that gets in her way."

"That sounds about right. But evidently she’s not behind this. I have too many enemies."

"Charming," Pam said.

"How’s your friend?" I asked. "I’m sorry I didn’t ask before."

Pam gave me a straight look. "She’s going to pass soon," she said. "I’m running out of options, and I’m running out of hope that the process can be legal."

Eric’s cell phone rang, and he got up to walk into the hall to take it. "Yes?" he said curtly. Then his voice changed. "Your Majesty," he said, and he walked quickly into the living room so I couldn’t hear.

I wouldn’t have thought so much about it if I hadn’t seen Pam’s face. She was looking at me, and her expression was clearly one of . . . pity.

"What?" I said, the hair on the back of my neck rising. "What’s up? If he said `Your Majesty,’ that’s Felipe calling, huh? That should be good . . . right?"

"I can’t tell you," she said. "He’d kill me. He doesn’t even want you to know there’s anything to know, if you can pick up what I’m putting down."

"Pam. Tell me."

"I can’t," she repeated. "You need to be looking out for yourself, Sookie."

I looked at her with fierce intensity. I couldn’t will her mouth to open, and I didn’t have the strength to hold her down on the kitchen table and demand the facts from her.

Where could reason get me? Okay, Pam liked me. The only people she liked better were Eric and her Miriam. If there was something she couldn’t tell me, it had to be associated with Eric. If Eric had been human, I would’ve thought he had some dread disease. If Eric had lost all his assets in the stock market or some such financial calamity, Pam knew that money was not my ruling concern. What was the only thing I valued?

His love.

Eric had someone else.

I stood up without knowing I was standing, the chair clattering to the floor behind me. I wanted to reach into Pam’s brain and yank out the details. Now I understood very clearly why Eric had gone for her in this same room the night he’d brought Immanuel over. She’d wanted to tell me then and he’d forbidden her to speak.

Alarmed by the noise of the chair bouncing on the floor, Eric came running into the room, the phone still held to his ear. I was standing with my fists clenched, glaring at him. My heart was lurching around in my chest like a frog on a griddle.

"Excuse me," he said into the phone. "There is a crisis. I’ll return your call later." He snapped his phone shut.

"Pam," he said. "I am very angry with you. I am seriously angry with you. Leave this house now and remain silent."

With a posture I had never seen before, hunched and humbled, Pam scrambled up from her chair and out the back door. I wondered if she’d see Bubba in the woods. Or Bill. Or maybe there’d be fairies. Or some more kidnappers. A homicidal maniac! You never knew what you’d find in my woods.

I didn’t say a word. I waited. I felt like my eyes were shooting flames.

"I love you," he said.

I waited.

"My maker, Appius Livius Ocella"–the dead Appius Livius Ocella–"was in the process of making a match for me before he died," Eric said. "He mentioned it to me during his stay, but I didn’t realize the process had gone as far as it had when he died. I thought I could ignore it. That his death canceled it out."

I waited. I could not read his face, and without the bond, I could only see that he was covering his emotion with a hard face.

"This isn’t much done anymore, though it used to be the norm. Makers used to find matches for their children. They’d receive a fee if it was an advantageous union, if each half could supply something the other lacked. It was mostly a business arrangement."

I raised my eyebrows. At the only vampire wedding I’d witnessed, there’d been plenty of evidence of physical passion, though I’d been told the couple wouldn’t be spending all their time together.