“Kitty, he’s going to kill you!”
“It’s a stunt. Some righteous zealot trying to scare me off the air.”
“Kitty—”
“I’m not leaving. You get out if you want.”
He scowled, but returned to his board.
“And grab one of the remote headsets out of the cupboard for me.”
Matt brought me the headset and transferred the broadcast to it. I left the booth, removing myself from direct line of sight of the door. The next room, Matt’s control room, had a window looking into the hallway. I moved to the floor, under the window, near the door. If anyone came in, I’d see him first.
Cormac would need maybe five minutes to ride the elevator and get from there to here. So—I had to talk fast.
“Okay, Cormac, let me ask you this. Who hired you?”
“I can’t say.”
“Is that in the contract?”
He hesitated. I wondered if he wasn’t used to talking and resented that part of the job he’d taken on. I didn’t doubt he really was what he said he was. He sounded too controlled, too steady.
“Professional policy,” he said finally.
“Is this one of those deals where I can offer you more money to not finish me off?”
“Nope. Ruins the reputation.”
Not that I had that kind of money anyway. “Just how much is my life worth?”
A pause. “That’s confidential.”
“No, really, I’m curious. I think I have a right to know. I mean, if it’s a really exorbitant amount, can I judge my life a success that I pissed someone off that much? That means I made an impact, right, and that’s all any of us can really hope to accomplish—”
“Jesus, you talk too much.”
I couldn’t help it; I grinned. Matt sat against the wall, shaking his head in a gesture of long-suffering forbearance. Getting pinned down by an assassin definitely wasn’t in the job description. I was glad he hadn’t left.
Thinking of everyone who had it in for me was an exercise in futility—so many did, after all: the Witchhunters League, the Right Reverend Deke Torquemada of the New Inquisition, the Christian Coalition . . .
The elevator pinged, one, two . . . two more to go. “So let’s back up a bit, Cormac. Most of your jobs aren’t like this, are they? You go after rogue wolves. The ones who’ve attacked people, the ones whose packs can’t control them. Law-abiding werewolves are pretty tough to identify and aren’t worth going after. Am I right?”
“That’s right.”
“You have any idea of how few wolves actually cause trouble?”
“Not too many.”
Cormac’s assertion about my identity, on the air, demanded some response. Denial. Claims of innocence, wrongful accusations—until he shot and killed me. Or until he tried to shoot me and I defended myself. I hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
He probably expected me to make denials—you can’t shoot me, I’m not a werewolf. But it was a little late for that. Denials now would sound a bit lame. And if he really did have photographs—where could he have picked up photos? Only thing left was to brazen it out. So this was it. The big revelation show. My ratings had better pay off for this.
“So here I am, a perfectly respectable law-abiding werewolf—must be kind of strange for you, tracking down a monster who isn’t going to lift a claw against you.”
“Come on, Norville. Go ahead and lift a claw. I’d like the challenge.”
There it was. I’d said it on national radio. I’m a werewolf. Didn’t feel any different—Cormac was still riding the elevator to my floor. But my mother didn’t even know. I heard a series of metallic clicks over the headphones. Guns, big guns, being drawn and readied.