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“You mean, leave Otto out of the crime solving?” I asked.
“Why not?”
“One, he’s actually a good man in a fight, and he sees things at a crime scene that no one else will see. If he wasn’t good at his job, I wouldn’t put up with the other shit.”
“So you think he’ll be helpful.”
“I do. I wish I didn’t, but I do.”
“Well, you are my mentor, so let’s go get the big scary fuck and head to the hospital.”
“Damn, Newman, you’re even beginning to sound like me.”
That made him laugh. My phone let me know there was a text. It was from Nicky. “Landed. Will head your way as soon as we get rental car.” There was a heart emoji and a purple smiley face with horns after the brief message. The devil emoji made me smile, because it was so him. If it had been Nathaniel, the message would have been longer with way more emojis or a GIF. Micah would have just done lots of hearts. Jean-Claude wasn’t big on texting.
I sat there staring at my phone, wondering who the we in the sentence were. I knew that they wouldn’t include any of those three men, and they would include more bodyguards, because I’d texted Micah that we needed more muscle when I gave him the heads-up that Olaf was here. Nicky was a werelion, and he had the size and training to go up against Olaf if it came to that. I trusted Nicky and Micah to have sent the right people for the task.
“You smiled, and now you have a look on your face. Are you okay?” Newman asked.
“Yeah, Nicky and the rest of his people landed at the nearest major airport. They’ll head this way once they get the rental car.”
“Duke is going to be pissed.”
“Tell him that I needed a booty call.”
“More pissed,” Newman said, smiling.
“Tell him I wanted more Therianthropes to help control Bobby.”
“That, he’ll believe.” Newman looked at me, eyes narrowing. “You didn’t just want me to invite the Coalition in to help with the case. You wanted more people to run interference between you and Jeffries.”
“That last part is true, but I asked you to invite the Coalition in before Otto got here. Remember?”
“I remember, but it’s still more backup for you with Jeffries.”
“Ted will probably get here first, but yeah.”
“Normally I’d either feel insulted or like you were manipulating me, but extra lycanthropes—Therianthropes—between us and Jeffries sounds like a great idea.”
I agreed. He put the Jeep in gear, and we went to pick up Olaf.
35
WE GOT GOOD news when we pulled into the hospital parking lot. The judge had agreed to add another eight hours to the warrant of execution, thanks to Kaitlin’s footprint evidence, but unless we had another name to put on the warrant by then, when the time limit was up, Bobby Marchand had to die. There would be no more extensions, so we had to find a clue and bust some crime. Newman had also given Bobby the name of the lawyer Micah had recommended. If all else failed, maybe the other branch of the law could come up with a delaying tactic.
Jocelyn Marchand lay against her snow-white hospital bed like the princess from a racially diverse cast of Sleeping Beauty. The pictures at the house had shown her as having grown up into a beautiful young woman, but they hadn’t done her justice. She looked like her mother had cloned herself. I mean, I’d known she looked like her mother from the pictures, but when I saw her up close, the resemblance was almost eerie, or maybe it was her own beauty that was disturbing. Her skin was perfect without a drop of base makeup to hide flaws, though as far as I could see, there were no flaws to cover. Her hair lay in near perfect ringlets around her face. I’d never been able to get my curls to be that well-behaved. The only way to come close was for someone else to use a very narrow curling iron over and over until every curl was tamed and hung like bouncy spiral magic. Her hair wasn’t black like the pictures had shown, but a nearly reddish brown. It looked natural, but you don’t go from black to that without an expert dye job. I couldn’t imagine what they’d done to take all that dark out of her hair to make it nearly auburn. Her eyelashes lay on her cheeks like thick black lace, as dark as the perfect curve of her eyebrows.
Olaf leaned in to whisper between Newman and me so that we could both hear. “She is awake.”
Newman whispered back, “How do you know?”
I looked away from her face to her body and realized that she was feigning the deep, even breathing of sleep. The pulse in the side of her neck beat against her skin like it was racing. She was nervous, maybe even scared. Why?
“Pulse rate and breathing are wrong,” I said.
Newman nodded and then said, “Jocelyn, I’m sorry but we have to talk to you.”
She tried to keep pretending to be asleep, but the pulse in the side of her neck was beating so hard, it looked like a butterfly trapped under her skin and beating its wings to escape. Her chest stopped trying to rise and fall but went to something shallower.
