I raised up. "What is this, a rape theme down here?"
Thompson slapped me on the back of the head. "Be still, or I'll make you be still." But his hands weren't playing with my thighs. He could hit me more and harder if his hands didn't wander lower.
"This can all stop, Richard," Wilkes said. "This can all be over. Just leave."
"You'll kill the trolls," Richard said.
I turned to look at Richard. I wanted to scream at him, "Just lie!" We'd figure it out later, but I wanted him to just lie now. I couldn't say that out loud. I stared at him and did something I had rarely attempted. I tried to open the bond between us. I reached out to him not with my hands or with my arms, but it felt like reaching. I moved out towards him with things I couldn't see but could feel. I opened something inside him. I felt it give. I saw the widening of his eyes. I felt the beat of his heart.
Thompson grabbed my shoulder and shoved me back to the bed. It broke my concentration.
There was a knock on the door. The other deputy, who had been with Thompson that first day, stepped into the doorway. He gave the room a once-over, eyes lingering on me on the bed, but his face stayed neutral. "There's a crowd gathering, Sheriff."
"A crowd?" Wilkes said. "The tree-huggers are out studying their precious trolls. If it's just the bodyguards, fuck them."
The deputy shook his head. "It's a shit load of people, Sheriff."
Wilkes sighed. He looked at Richard. "This is your last warning, Zeeman." He walked over to me, and Thompson backed off. He squatted so we'd be eye to eye. I gathered the sheet and turned to meet his gaze.
"Where are Chuck and Terry?" he asked.
I blinked and kept my face neutral. Once, not long ago, I wouldn't have been able to do it. Now my face gave nothing away. I was as blank and empty as the white sheet around my body.
"Who?"
"Thompson." Wilkes stood.
I felt Thompson move in from behind me.
"Does he do all your dirty work, Wilkes? You aren't man enough to abuse an unarmed woman?"
Wilkes hit me a backhanded slap that rocked me against the bed. I tasted blood. I probably could have blocked the slap, but that would have made the second blow harder. Besides, I'd asked for it. I don't mean I deserved it. I mean I preferred Wilkes to Thompson for abuse. I never wanted to be at Thompson's mercy without Wilkes there to rein him in. Thompson wasn't a cop. He was a goon with a badge.
The second blow was a slap, the third was another backhand. The blows were quick and hard and left my ears ringing. I saw spots of light against my vision. The proverbial stars, and he hadn't even closed his fist.
Wilkes stood over me, breathing too hard, hands in fists at his side. That fine trembling was back again, as if he was fighting not to close his fists. We both knew if he did, he wouldn't stop. If he hit me even once with his fist, it would be over. He'd hit me until someone pulled him off. I wasn't a hundred percent sure that there was anyone in the room who would pull him off.
I stared up at him with a trickle of blood at the corner of my mouth. I licked at the blood with my tongue and stared into Wilkes's brown eyes. I saw the abyss down at the end of his gaze. The monster was there, barely caged. I'd underestimated how close to the edge Wilkes was. I knew in that moment that this last warning was just that: a last warning. A last chance, not just for us, but for Wilkes. A last chance for him to walk away without any actual blood on his own lily-white hands.
The deputy by the door said, "Sheriff, we've got over twenty people outside here."
"We can't do this with an audience," Maiden said.
Wilkes kept staring down at me, and I held his gaze. It was almost like we were both afraid to look away, as if even that small movement would uncage the monster. Maybe it wasn't Thompson I should be afraid of.
"Sheriff," Maiden said softly.
"In twenty-four hours," Wilkes said, voice squeezed down until it was almost painful to hear, "we'll file a missing person's report on Chuck and Terry. Then we'll be back, Ms. Blake. We'll be back, and we'll take you in for questioning regarding their disappearance."
"What are you going to write down in the report as to why you thought I might know where they are?"
He went back to staring at me, but at least the fine trembling had stopped.
I kept my voice neutral but said, "I'm sure some of the tree-huggers called the cops last night. But no one came. You're the law in this town, Wilkes. You're all these people have between them and the bad guys. Last night, you didn't come because you thought you knew what was happening. You thought Chuck and Terry had gotten carried away. So you come by this morning to pick up the bodies, but there aren't any bodies."
"You killed them," he said, his voice soft and tight.
I shook my head. "No, I didn't." Which was technically true. I hadn't killed them. I'd killed Chuck but not Terry.
"You're saying you never saw them last night."
"I didn't say that. I just said I didn't kill them."
Wilkes glanced behind at Richard. "The Boy Scout didn't do them."
"Never said he did."
"That little guy you were with, Jason? Schuyler? He couldn't have taken both of them."
"Nope," I said.
"You are pissing me off, Blake. You don't want me angry."
"No, I don't, Sheriff Wilkes. I really don't want you angry. But I am not lying. I did not kill them. I don't know where they are." That at least was totally true. I was beginning to wonder if Terry had ever made it to the hospital, and I was beginning to think he probably hadn't. Did Verne's pack kill him after I promised him we wouldn't? I hoped not.
"I've been a cop for longer than you've been alive, Blake. You make my bullshit meter go off. You're lying to me, and you're good at it."
"I didn't kill your two friends, Sheriff. I don't know where they are now. That's the truth."
He hunkered back down beside me. "This is your last warning, Blake. Get the fuck out of my town, or I am going to drop-kick you into the nearest hole. I've lived here a long time. If I hide a body, it stays hid."
"A lot of people go missing around here?" I asked.
"Missing people are bad for tourism," Wilkes said. He stood. "But it happens. Don't let it happen to you. Get out now, today. If you're not gone by dark, it's over."
I stared up at him and knew he meant it.
I nodded. "We're history."
Wilkes turned to Richard. "What about you, Boy Scout? You agree? Is this enough? Or does it have to get worse?"
I looked across the room at Richard and urged him to lie. Maiden still had a baton stretched across his throat. The towel had slipped down, and he was naked, with his wrists still in cuffs behind his back.
Richard swallowed, then said, "It's enough."
"You're out by dark?" Wilkes made it a question.
"Yes," Richard said.
Wilkes nodded. "I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that, Mr. Zeeman. Come on, boys."
Maiden very slowly took his baton away from Richard's throat and stepped back. "I'll take the cuffs off if you promise to behave yourself."
"It's over, right, Richard?" Wilkes said. "Take the cuffs off. They won't give us any more trouble."
Maiden didn't look as convinced as Wilkes seemed to be, but he did what he was told. He took the cuffs off.
Richard rubbed his wrists but didn't bother grabbing at the fallen towel. Without clothes, Richard was nude, not naked. He was comfortable. Most lycanthropes were.
Maiden followed Wilkes to the door, but he kept an eye on both of us, as if still expecting trouble. A good cop never turns his back completely.
Thompson was the last to move towards the door. He said, "Lover's thing is almost as big as you are."
Nothing else he'd done had made me blush, but that did. I hated it but couldn't stop it.
He laughed. "I hope you don't leave town. I hope you stay, because I really do want another chance to be alone together."
"My new goal in life, Thompson, is to never be alone with you."
He laughed again. He laughed while he walked out the door. The deputy that kept complaining about the crowd left. Only Maiden waited in the door for Wilkes.
The sheriff said, "I hope we never meet again, Blake."
"Ditto, Sheriff," I said.
"Mr. Zeeman." He gave a nod as if he'd just pulled us over for a traffic stop and let us go with a warning. His entire body language changed as he moved through the door. Just a good ol' boy talking to some strangers about that disturbance last night.
When the door closed behind them, Richard crawled to me. He started to touch my face, then stopped, fingers hovering helplessly around my face. "Are you hurt?"
"A little."
He hugged me, pulling me gently in against his body. "Go home, Anita. Go back to Saint Louis."
I pulled away enough to meet his eyes. "Oh, no. If you stay, I stay."
He cradled my face in his hands. "They'll hurt you."
"Not if they think we really left. Can Verne's people hide us?"
"Who do you think is outside in the crowd?"
I looked up into his open face. "Did they kill the other man? Did Verne's people kill Terry after they left?"
"I don't know, Anita." He hugged me again. "I don't know."
"I promised him he'd live if he told us what he knew."
He pulled back, holding my face in his hands. "You could have killed him during the fight last night and not blinked, but because you promised him safety, you're upset."
I pulled away from Richard, standing, tugging the sheet out from under his knees. "If I give my word, it means something. I gave my word that he'd live. If he's dead now, I want to know why."
"The cops are on the other side. Don't piss Verne and his pack off, Anita. They're all we have."
I knelt by the suitcase on the other side of the bed and started getting out clothes. "No, Richard, we have each other and we have Shang-Da and Jason and Asher and everyone we brought with us. If Verne's people went behind my back last night and killed Terry, we don't have them. They have us. Because we need them, and they know it."
I stood with an armful of clothes and shuffled towards the bathroom with the sheet still around me. For some reason, I just didn't want to be naked in front of anyone right now, not even Richard. I made one stop on the way. I got the Browning out from under my pillow and piled it on top of the clothes. No more going unarmed for the rest of the trip. If someone didn't like it, they could lump it. That included my nearest and dearest. Though, to Richard's credit, he didn't say a word about the gun or anything else as I closed the door.