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“You see yourself as the protector of the innocent,” he said.
“I guess so.”
He took in a deep breath so that his chest rose and fell noticeably with it. “I do not see our job that way.”
“I know you don’t.”
He looked down at me, those deep-set eyes so intense that I wanted to look away from them. It took more willpower than I’d admit out loud to stare back and not flinch. “How do I see our job?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“I never ask questions unless I want the answer, Anita.”
I fought the urge to lick my lips, but I was trying to keep my heart rate slow and even, and if I was going to waste energy doing that, I’d be damned if I’d show any secondary signs of nervousness. “It’s a legal way for you to indulge in your violent fantasies and get paid for it.”
He smiled, and it was one of the best and most normal ones I’d ever seen from him. It changed his face like a shadow of what he might have been if he’d been a completely different person. “Yes, exactly.”
I licked my lips and added, “You’re also like Ted. You like testing your skills against the most dangerous prey, and there’s nothing more dangerous to hunt than vampires and shapeshifters.”
Even his eyes sparkled with his happiness as he said, “I’ve never met a woman that understands men as well as you do.”
“I’m just one of the guys, I guess.”
He nodded, the smile beginning to fade into something more serious but not yet disturbing. “That is truer of you than of any other woman I have ever met.”
I shrugged, not sure what to say to that.
A voice called from the open door to the cell area. “Hey, I think we need some help back here.” It was Wagner, the deputy who would be seeing real jail sometime soo
n.
I called back without moving from the wall. “What do you need?”
“Can you beat a wereleopard to death?”
“What? Why do you want to know that?” I pushed away from the wall and moved around Olaf toward the doorway.
“Because Bobby hasn’t moved at all, and I’m not sure he’s breathing.”
26
BOBBY LAY ON his side on the floor of his cell. I’d moved him onto his side so that he wouldn’t choke on his own blood, as Olaf had said they could suffocate. I hadn’t put him on his bunk because he’d have gotten blood all over it. He should have healed by now. He should have been up and moving by now. I tried to see if he was breathing under the blanket I’d pulled up over him. I wrapped my hands around the bars, willing him to move.
Olaf touched my hand, which made me jump and look at him. “He is alive, Anita.”
“How do you know?”
“I can hear his heartbeat.”
“I forgot you could do that now.”
He placed his hand over mine. I think if he’d had room through the bars, he’d have held my hand, but the metal protected me from a more intimate gesture, just like it was supposed to protect us from the man on the floor I’d beaten senseless.
“Can someone please go in there and check on Bobby?” Wagner said.
Newman yelled back, “Duke, we could use the keys to the cells.”
Duke’s voice came a little muffled. “I’m working on it.”
