“The nubile Danielle,” he said, nodding.
I pinned him back with a long look, but he met it with nothing but patience. “You said she wanted you to marry her—did you seduce her?”
“No.” Chagrin flickered in his eyes for a moment.
I prodded him again on the ribs. He took my hand and flattened it on his chest, rubbing my fingers absently. “I didn’t seduce her, although I did let her think I was interested in her. I had to have some way to infiltrate the Leshies, and since women like me, that seemed the best route.”
“I’m sure it did,” I said drily.
“Men!” Sam said under her breath, and I felt an immediate kinship.
“What I know about the Leshy group is that they are devoted to animal welfare. They vigorously defend what they call their wildlife preserves. There are a couple of small compounds where they live in rustic simplicity, so as to be more one with Mother Nature, or so Albert says. They also have a passionate dislike of hunters and hunting, and have been known to make trouble for hunters when they find them out in the woods. There’ve been a few assault charges, with one or two members of the group receiving jail time, but for the most part, they stay on their own land and take care of the animals that live there. I take it you were staying at one of their compounds?”
Avery’s lips twisted. “If you call the motley collection of tents and moth-eaten cots a compound, yes. It’s nothing more than a campsite so far as I’m concerned.”
“Thus speaks a man for whom the concept of nature in the raw is repulsive,” Paen commented.
“Really?” I asked Avery. “You don’t like camping?”
He grimaced. “It’s uncomfortable, unhygienic, and reminds me far too much of the time I spent in service to the king.”
“What king?” I asked, momentarily sidetracked from the subject at hand.
“George.” He grinned. “The first time I went to war, I was seventeen.”
“I remember that,” Paen said thoughtfully. “You had been pestering Father to let you join the mortals’ war on the Continent for a couple of years, but he felt you were too headstrong, and wouldn’t give his permission.”
“You fought against Napoleon?” I asked, having a hard time coming to grips with that idea.
“No, unfortunately. My father wouldn’t let me go.”
“So instead you waited until he and I were doing another switch, and you ran off to join the cavalry,” Paen said with an unreadable look at his brother.
Avery grinned even more, his eyes twinkling. “That was in 1812.”
The date resonated in my brain. I’ve never been a big one for history, but even I recognized the importance of the year. “You fought against the United States?” I whomped him on the arm. “You did, didn’t you! You fought against my country! Well, all right, my family didn’t leave Mexico until the 1930s, but still! It’s my country now! I can’t believe you’d kill Americans and then have the balls to come over here and act all innocent!”
“I didn’t kill anyone,” he said, grabbing my other hand and holding it, too. “My father had me sent home before my unit saw action. So you can stop thinking those thoughts about standing me against a wall and unleashing your sister on me.”
Mollified somewhat, I pulled my hands out of his. “Back to the Leshies, please. I’ve told you what I know about them; now it’s your turn. What have you been withholding from me?”
“Your precious animal-loving mates are murdering innocent people,” he said simply.
“What?” My jaw sagged as I gawked at him.
“And our furry friend in the bathroom is a part of it.”
“Dieter?” I shook my head. “I can’t believe it. I mean, he’s intense and all, but murdering people? I just can’t believe that!”
“It’s not quite that simple, but that’s the gist of it,” Sam agreed. Her face was somber. “What Avery appears to have not told you is that the animals are being smuggled to a private reserve in Scotland.”
“No, he told me that,” I said, more confused than ever. “I don’t see—”
“A private hunting reserve,” Avery clarified, taking my hand again.
“Oh. They’re collecting wildlife here—I assume big game, since that’s what hunters like—bears and cougars and such, and smuggling them into this private hunting reserve? That’s terrible. It has to stop. Not only is it wrong and illegal, but it’s bad for the population here. We in the wildlife department work very hard to keep the animal populations robust and healthy, and if people are capturing them and shipping them off to be hunted elsewhere . . . well, I won’t stand for it. I just won’t stand for it.”
“You don’t understand, Jacintha,” Sam said softly, giving Avery a look.
He sighed again. “I told you they were smuggling exotic animals into Scotland.”
“I assume Pacific Northwest wildlife would be considered exotic there.”
He watched me closely for a moment. “It’s more than that. They also smuggle big cats like lions, tigers, and leopards. And some other game—buffalo, rare deer, even elephants.”
“From where?” I asked.
“Here. The Leshy camp.”
“How can they do that? None of those animals are native to this area. Where are they getting them from?”
Avery said nothing, just stroked my hand, his mind filled with sadness.
I stared at him in incomprehension for a moment before it sank it. “They’re turning people into animals? Like they did you? And then sending them to Scotland where they’re . . . My God!” He nodded as my skin crawled with the realization of what Albert and his group were doing. “That’s wholesale murder!”
“Yes. And it’s why I felt it was so important to infiltrate the Leshies—I needed to see who was in charge and how they were getting their stock.” He gave a wry little smile. “Unfortunately, I have all too good an explanation of where they’re getting the animals.”
“Holy Mary—”
“And all the itty-bitty saints,” finished a voice from the door. “I agree, although what the saints would have to do with the heinous undead is beyond me. Please tell me that Vlad there hasn’t turned you into a vampire yet? I bought only one stake.”
Cora held up a gardening trowel.
“That’s a trowel, not a stake,” I felt obliged to point out.
Your sister is not going to live with us.
There is no us, Buster Brown. At least, not in the way you are thinking about, although I have to admit that bit about the bathtub and bath oil is intriguing.
“Trowel, stake, same difference. It’ll do the job. Hello.” Cora noticed Sam and Paen as she laid a coil of hose, the trowel, and a pair of gardening shears on the tiny table.
“Er . . . hi,” Sam said, eyeing the things.
I made a quick introduction, adding at the end, “What in God’s name have you bought, Cora?”
“Stuff to take care of the Fanged One over there. I see he’s awake. Don’t suppose you’d care to let me have your gun again?”
“You’ve really gone daft, haven’t you?” Avery asked, sighing again as he sat up. “You might as well know that Paen is my brother.”
“Yeah? So?” We watched her for a moment before it sank in. She spun around, clutching the trowel and giving Paen a wide-eyed look. “Two vampires! My God, you’re breeding like bunnies! It’s a good thing I bought the extra-long length of hose—they were out of rope, so I figured the hose would do to tie Avery up. Now I’ll have enough for both.”
“What a very odd woman you are,” Sam said, tipping her head on the side to consider my clearly deranged sister. “You don’t like Dark Ones?”
“Like them!” gasped Cora, horrified.
“Don’t get her started,” I begged Sam, marching over to Cora to gently pry the trowe
l from her hands. “There will be no staking and no tying anyone up with a hose, not that I think you could to begin with. Honestly, Cora, a hose?”
“It’s all they had,” she snapped, her arms crossed as she plopped herself down on a low chest of drawers. “And can I just say that you know how to ruin any fun I might have?”
“Hush up, or we won’t bring you up to speed with everything that’s happened in the last hour and a half.”
It took a good fifteen minutes to explain everything. By the time we were done, I was glad to see she was looking at Avery with less hostility. “You saved Jas’s life?”
“Of course.”
“The mortal belief that Dark Ones are undead and evil is wrong,” Paen said. “We are neither. We’re simply people like you who happen to be immortal and require ingestion of blood to exist.”
Cora shuddered.
“The act of feeding is actually very erotic,” Sam added, gazing at her husband with dewy eyes. He winked at her.
“Uh-huh. Right. Well, since Mr. Bitey over there saved my sister from a werewolf—”
“Therion wolf,” Avery corrected.
“Then I won’t stake you as I planned, although I’m going to be keeping an eye on you,” she finished, giving him a hard look.
“I shudder in my boots,” he answered, flashing her a particularly effective grin.
Stop flirting with my sister, I growled at him.
Jealous?
Don’t be stupid. I just don’t like your flirting with her.
You don’t lie very well, do you, love?
And stop calling me that. You already admitted you’re not in love with me.
No, but you’re beginning to grow on me, he said with an oddly warm rush of emotion.
“Why is everyone so quiet? You’re all thinking at one another, aren’t you?” Cora stomped her foot. “I hate being left out!”
“You’ll have to find your own Dark One, then,” Sam told her as she kissed Paen.
The expression on Cora’s face was priceless but beside the point. “What is it that your cousin found when she hacked the Leshy server?” I asked Sam.
She stopped making bedroom eyes at her husband and looked, if anything, guilty. “Er . . . I suppose it’s okay to tell you. The e-mails Claire and Finn uncovered were between someone at the Leshy group—they weren’t signed, and were sent to a generic address, so we assume it was Albert Baum, the leader—and someone in the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.”
“What?” I shrieked. “Who?”
“A man by the name of Morrison. Gregory Morrison.”
Chapter 6
“That’s impossible. Greg? Selling animals? But . . . how? Why? He’s always been . . .” I paused, unsure of how to go on. It was true that I had never liked Greg, not trusting that smooth demeanor, and the ruthless way he cut jobs and programs in order to pad the budget, but that was a far cry from being a part of a ring that more or less murdered people. Wasn’t it?
“A bastard?” Cora offered.
I frowned.
“Oh, come on, every time you’ve told me about him, you mentioned how much you didn’t like him. You said he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about anyone but himself. That sounds like a man who wouldn’t turn a hair about turning people into jaguars and sending them off to be hunted.”
“What exactly did the e-mails say?” I asked Sam.
“Most of them just talked about some unnamed plan that they were putting into place, but this one was particularly damning.” She pulled a piece of paper out of her purse and handed it to me. Avery and Cora both read over my shoulder.
It was a brief e-mail: I’ve taken care of everything, so stop worrying. Why would anyone notice a group of peaceable animal lovers? Just keep your nose clean, and no one will bother you.
“I’ve taken care of everything,” I mused, noting the date. “That was right around the time he axed four jobs. We all had the regions we covered doubled to compensate. That bastard. That money-grubbing, animal-hating, murdering bastard.”
“Told you,” Cora said smugly, sitting back on the edge of the bed next to me. Avery, on my other side, hmmed softly to himself.
“What?” I asked him.
“Nothing.”
“That wasn’t a nothing hmm. That was a ‘Something has just occurred to me, but I don’t want to tell anyone’ hmm.”
“Sometimes,” he said with great dignity, “a hmm is just a hmm.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud,” I answered, trying to open myself up to his thoughts. It was an awkward thing, trying to get inside someone else’s brain to see what he was thinking, but I managed it, and I was pleased when he allowed me to peer at his thoughts.
“Hmm,” I said.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Cora said, pinching me.
I offered an apologetic smile to everyone. “Sorry. Just slipped out. Avery feels, and I have to say, it’s an intriguing thought, that perhaps this is all just a bit too pat.”
“Too pat?” Sam asked, looking at her paper. “How so?”
“The Leshies don’t operate that way,” Avery said. “They are very close-knit and keep to themselves. In the entire three weeks I’ve been with them, I’ve never seen them speak with anyone outside their group. They have cell phones, but they don’t use them. When I told them my phone was dead and I needed to send some e-mails, I was informed that the only computer they had was locked up in a seldom-visited warehouse.”
“Then why do they have a Web site?” Cora asked, becoming intrigued by the situation despite herself.
“It’s a front,” I answered.
Avery nodded. “Most likely.”
“They want to make everyone believe they’re nothing more than a group of people devoted to the welfare of wildlife, so they put up a Web site with a bunch of activist-speak, and no one’s the wiser.”
“So how does your boss fit into the picture?” Cora asked me.
“Scapegoat? Red herring? Deliberate attempt to involve him? Or perhaps he really is a part of it, and we’re falling for a grandiose whitewash. I don’t know, but I intend to find out.” I glanced at my watch as I stood up. “Time to ask Greg a few questions.”
No, you’re not.
I stopped at the door, and Cora, who had followed me, bumped into me. I beg your pardon?
It’s not safe for you to confront him.
“I thought you just said Greg wasn’t involved?”
“I think it’s very likely he isn’t, but until I’m sure, it’s not safe for you to confront him on your own.”
I looked from him, to Cora, and on to Sam. “Does he really think he can boss me around like that?” I asked the latter.
“Oh, they all do,” she answered placidly, patting her husband on his leg. He glared at her. “They’re all into this macho he-man crap that says they can’t let their women do things on their own. Because, you know, we’re so frail and delicate and don’t have a brain among us.”
“I’ve never said you don’t have a brain,” Paen said quickly. “You are an elf, however. You are delicate because of that.”
“As delicate as a two-ton truck,” she answered, smiling at his scowl.
“Did he say elf?” Cora asked me in a whisper.
“I think so.” We both looked speculatively at Sam until she laughed and gestured toward her ears. “Half elf, really, and my ears have been bobbed. But getting back to the subject at hand—I have to admit, as intriguing as this e-mail is, I’d really like to see the Leshies. I’m a pretty good judge of when people are lying to me, and I bet I could get to the bottom fairly quickly of whether or not Jacintha’s boss is involved.”
“Well, I don’t care what we do—I just want to do something,” Cora said, picking up her hose and her trowel. “This sit
ting around talking is getting us nowhere. Besides, I bought this stuff to use, and by God, someone is going to get tied up, if not staked!”
“When did you become Buffy?” I asked her.
“More important, why does she think she’s a part of this?” Avery asked, matching her frown with one of his own.
“Oh, I’m part of it. I’m not going to let Jas walk into a group of weirdos without someone to watch her back, and just you remember that, sparkle boy.”
Sam snickered as both Avery and Paen looked offended. “I would never let Jacintha be harmed,” Avery told her. “And we do not sparkle.”
“Whatever. Let’s just get this show on the road.” Cora pushed past me to stand impatiently at the door.
Avery gave me a long-suffering look.
“I am not responsible for my sister,” I told the look, holding up my hands. “So, where to first? Greg or Albert Baum et al?”
“If I told you it was too dangerous for you to go to the Leshy compound—,” Avery started to say.
I pulled my gun from the holster. “I’d shoot you and go anyway.”
“Atta girl, Jas!” Cora cheered.
“In that case . . .” Avery thought for a few moments. “I am tempted to confront Albert Baum now, but if we were to all arrive at the compound, they would probably attack us.”
“And we’d be vulnerable since they must have warning of visitors,” I said. “The couple of times I went there, they were waiting for me.”
“They have sentries, yes.” He looked at me for a moment, then beyond to his brother. “How do you feel about a nighttime assault?”
Paen cracked his knuckles. “A little action would be welcome.”
Avery grinned. “I thought you’d like that. Sam?”
“Oh, I’m totally in on this. No way you boys can keep me out of it.”
“It might be dangerous,” Avery warned.
“Pfft. Like I can’t take care of myself?”
Paen made a wordless protest.
“Besides, I have Mr. Big and Bad here, and with the exception of that time I had my throat slit, he’s never let anyone hurt me.”