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“You didn’t see Anita as prey after you saved her in the car.” Edward made his words a statement.
“No,” Olaf said, like he wasn’t sure he was happy with the answer, but it was still the truth.
“Being able to protect someone you care for doesn’t make them weaker, Olaf. It makes you stronger,” Edward said.
Olaf frowned, and even though he had sunglasses on, you could see him fight to understand the concept. “That Anita trusted me to keep her safe did feel . . . good.”
“That’s what it feels like to protect a woman that you care about.”
Olaf stared at him, frowning so hard that his handsome face gained lines I’d never noticed before, like a preview of what he might look like in a few decades. “She did help me torture the waitress in the restaurant later, after that.” His voice was hesitant, almost thinking out loud. He’d now lost me on his logic train, but apparently Edward was still on board, because he explained Olaf’s thinking.
“Would you have played your part in threatening the suspect if you hadn’t had that moment of trust with Olaf in the car?”
I thought about the question, like, really thought about it. I hadn’t enjoyed scaring the waitress, but she’d helped kidnap other women, knowing that they were going to die horrible deaths. If we hadn’t gotten her to tell us what she knew right then and there, more innocent women would have died. It had been necessary, and it had been frightening to me how easily Olaf and I worked together to gain her information. She was a lycanthrope, so nothing we cut off wouldn’t grow back, and we’d saved the women who were still missing, so I counted it as a win, but it wasn’t one of my proudest moments. Truthfully, I tried very hard not to think about it.
“No, I don’t think I would have, but it wasn’t just that. I saw him with your kids. I didn’t realize he was Uncle Otto the way I was Aunt Anita to them until the wedding trip.” I looked up at the big man. “I don’t know how much was pretend on your part, but Becca and Peter trust and love you. They helped me be willing to stand on the other side of the woman in Florida and do what we did.” There, that was the absolute truth.
Olaf nodded. “You stood beside me in the firefight and never faltered. I never thought to find a woman that would have such courage.”
“Thank you.” Now was not the time to lecture him on the fact that women could be just as brave as men. Edward and I were winning this discussion; never argue when you’re winning. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down in the fight either.”
“You trusted me,” Olaf said.
I nodded. “Yes.”
The frown lines were smoothing out, but you could almost hear the gears working in his head again. Sometimes new thoughts can be almost painful, especially if they’re fighting with older thoughts or, worse, older certainties that are no longer certain.
“I have had women trust me in the past, but they did not know the truth of me.”
“You were hiding your truth from them,” I said.
“I was.”
“The lion has to hide in the long grass so the gazelle doesn’t see it,” I said.
Olaf nodded. “Yes.”
Edward said, “But the lions don’t hide from one another.”
Olaf and I glanced at him. In my head I thought, Well, sometimes they ambush other prides in the wild. But again, we were winning, so there was no need to talk real-lion biology when we were ahead.
“No, they do not,” Olaf said.
“The lions trust one another on the hunt,” I said.
“Will you help me hunt the gazelles, Adler?”
“It depends on the gazelle, Moriarty.”
“I don’t understand.”
I tried to think how to explain it to him without insulting him. “I can help you on legal hunts when hurting or killing people saves other lives.”
“She won’t help either of us hunt victims that she sees as innocent,” Edward said.
Olaf made a derisive noise. “No one is innocent.”
“How about children?” I asked before I could think if doing so was a go
