“No new Jettas,” I said, putting the emphasis on the word he’d tried to skate by me as I started for the stairs. “Even though they have airbags. I will be laughed at by all VW mechanics everywhere if I get caught driving a new car. I just have to find another old car. Those old VWs are engineered to fold around you so even without an airbag they do okay in accidents.”
I caught myself before confessing that I’d probably have been all right, or at least my nose would have been okay, if the seat belt hadn’t given way. Because that would feed his argument and not mine.
I thought about where I could start looking for another car as I started walking. It had taken me a while to find the Jetta. I’d call all the scrapyards here, in Yakima, and in Spokane, let them know I was looking for a car that was reasonably restorable. Maybe I’d have to give in and pay a little more—it was hard to find them cheap. At least those old Jettas and Rabbits weren’t doing what the Vanagons had done—Vanagons were more expensive to buy used than they’d sold fresh off the assembly line. My Syncro was worth a lot more now than it had been new.
“Maybe another Rabbit,” I mused. “My old Rabbit lasted me more than a decade. The Jetta didn’t even make it a year.”
“No more Rabbits,” said Adam. “At least not this week. I think we’ve had quite enough rabbits for one week.”
He trailed me down the stairs. Or maybe he was herding me down the stairs. I was starting to get an odd vibe from him.
I snuck a peek over my shoulder at him. Caught off guard, his eyes were still as unhappy as they had been when I opened the bedroom door.
“What?” Adam asked me.
But before I had to answer, Warren approached to ask him about the schedule for guard duty—and if we were still running with that plan after everyone had been told to bunk up.
IT TOOK US ABOUT A HALF HOUR BEFORE WE ACTUALLY got going. We didn’t talk in the SUV on the way to my office. I wasn’t sure why not.
I mean, of course I knew why I didn’t say anything. I was still mulling over what Bran had said, trying to organize it so it made sense. Sorting through the things Bran had actually said—and the things I’d extrapolated from those. The first being important, the second being a little more suspect.
But I didn’t know why Adam didn’t say anything. Maybe he’d forgotten what he wanted to talk to me about in the avalanche of questions he’d dealt with on our way out the door.
When I looked at him, his eyes were opaque in the shadows. For a moment, though, I was caught by the way the dashboard illuminated the planes and curves of his face. He had the kind of beauty that would make maidens in old tales throw themselves off cliffs in order to attract his attention. Mesmerizing.
He didn’t notice me watching him, though—too focused on whatever had been keeping him quiet the rest of the drive. Whatever it was, it wasn’t a good thought, judging by the tension in his shoulders.
I put my hand on his thigh. I wasn’t sure he noticed. That was really not like him at all. By the time we made it to the garage, I was starting to worry about him—or about what he had to say. Maybe he knew something more than I did about our current circumstances, but it didn’t feel quite like that.
The parking lot was lit up a lot better than it had been before we’d rebuilt the garage. I could have sat on the front step and read a book. The light made it easier for Adam’s security cameras to get clear pictures.
I stopped on the way to the office and stared at one of the cameras. Not that I could see it—it was really small. But I knew where it was.
“Adam,” I said thoughtfully. “How often do you purge the surveillance video from here?”
“I don’t,” he said.
That distracted me. “Really? Never? Doesn’t that take up a lot of data storage?”
“Data storage is cheap at twice the price,” he said. “You have been attacked here by werewolves, vampires, volcano gods, and—” He stopped and grimaced.
“A Tim,” I told him stoutly. “Though he came out the worst in that encounter.”
He gave me a short nod. “I don’t erase anything.”
“Okay,” I said, getting my brain off Tim and onto more current matters. “If you don’t erase it, do you have some nifty way of sorting through it?”
“What do you need?” he asked.
“James Palsic brought a car in for me to repair a couple of weeks ago. I didn’t notice him then, because I am pretty sure that remember-me-not thing he has going is a variation of pack magic that he’s learned to twist to his own use. Zee was here that day—and he didn’t even notice James was a werewolf.”
“If you didn’t recognize him then, how did you figure out he came in?” he asked. “Did he tell you?”
I shook my head. “Something clicked while we were exchanging words at Kelly’s house and that magic quit working on me. Apparently, it quit retroactively, too. Because as soon as it quit working, I remembered him.
“If you can find him on the feed, maybe he left some clue about where they are staying,” I said.
We had the plates to the Ford truck, but they were registered to a fictional address, according to George. They did tell us that the wolves had been here for long enough to acquire Washington plates. I didn’t expect the plates on his VW bug to be any more use. Especially because I was pretty sure those plates had been from out of state. But he had given us a phone number that might be of use.
Adam nodded and sounded more like himself when he said briskly, “Sounds like a good idea.”
I keyed in the sequence that would unlock the door—for a garage that specializes in inexpensive repairs to cars that tend to be older than I am, my shop’s security is pretty high-end.
“I know it’s a long shot,” I told him. “But I hate waiting for the bad guys to make a move. We could head to your office after we get done here.”
“I don’t like defensive wars, either,” Adam agreed. “I can access the video files from here.”
I let us in but didn’t turn the lights on in the office. There were windows all the way around, which was awesome for working there. But just now, lighting up the office would make us a perfect target for someone sitting outside with a gun.
It was true that the immediate threats I knew about were unlikely to be sitting outside with a gun. Though werewolves (and I supposed Wulfe, too) could use guns just fine, shooting us in an attempt to take over the pack would make them look weak. A bullet wouldn’t be enough fun for Wulfe to try.
But there were a lot of people who were unhappy about the changes taking place in the world, and everyone knew that the Columbia Basin Pack’s Alpha was mated to Mercy, who owned that garage in east Kennewick.
There were shades on the windows for just that reason, but they were a pain in the butt. They were supposed to be electronic, but that had lasted exactly a week. We were in discussions with the manufacturer that felt like they might take a long time.
“Can you see well enough to get into the video system?” I asked Adam. “I could just pull the shades and turn on the lights if that’s useful.”
“I can see fine.” He walked toward the door to the bays instead of to the corner of the office where a monitor that scrolled through the cameras sat on an expensive-looking pile of electronics.