“No door,” I squeaked. “She’ll walk in on us and make sure Jesse is with her.”
Adam froze and growled for real. “You’re right. You’re right. And I almost don’t care.”
“Jesse,” I said.
“Jesse,” he agreed with a groan, then rolled up—abdomen flexing nicely—and onto his feet. He began to strip, not bothering to hide his arousal. If Christy walked in, she’d get quite a show of what she’d thrown away.
“You might as well get ready for sleeping,” he told me in grumpy tones. “Morning is going to come early.”
“I’m keeping my clothes on,” I told him, equally grumpily. “Without doors, everyone will feel pretty free and easy stopping in to bring you their complaints.” Everyone being Christy. “I’m not taking chances.”
“They come in, they deserve what they get,” Adam told me and, naked, spread the blanket over the mattress and me.
I wiggled until I was right way around. Then I pulled the blanket off my face while he climbed under the covers. He planted himself right next to me, and his scent spread over both of us.
I was well on my way to sleep when a thought occurred to me. “He’s broken,” I told Adam.
Adam grunted. Then, when I didn’t say anything more, he laughed once. “Okay, Mercy. Who is broken?”
“Guayota, Flores, whoever,” I told him. “He was doing okay in the modern world before he ran into Christy. Before she reminded him of someone he lost a long time ago.”
Adam was thoughtful for a moment. “Because there weren’t any other bodies.”
“Warren would have found them if there were, right?” I asked.
“Warren or my buddies in the DEA,” he agreed.
“The women he killed, the ones Tony brought me in to look at, they all looked like Christy,” I told him. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”
Adam reached over and pulled me closer. “I believe that Guayota is very old and that Christy was his trigger. You know better than most how it is with the very old wolves. They’ll do fine—until suddenly they snap.”
“I still think we should give him Christy,” I said.
“No, you don’t,” he told me firmly. “I was there for your speech in the kitchen, remember?”
“If we gave him Christy,” I said persuasively, “we could visit them in the Canary Islands.”
“Like Lucia wants to visit Joel’s mother?” he asked. “Giving him Christy won’t fix him, Mercy. There’s no reasoning with the old ones once they are broken. He’s started killing and he’ll keep killing. And then there is Joel.”
I sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I think we’re going to wish that we’d had Tad come over here instead of going to Fairyland.”
“Tad didn’t have much of a choice,” Adam said. “We’ll figure something out.”
That meant he didn’t know how to kill Guayota, either, but that wasn’t going to stop him. I’d known that Christy was going to try to break us up, but I hadn’t considered that she might get Adam killed to do it. I lay tense and miserable beside him. Much as I wanted to, I couldn’t place the blame on Christy. It was just bad luck.
“So,” Adam said brightly, changing the subject, “have you planned what you’re going to tell Beauclaire when he comes looking for his walking stick two nights from now?”
“Yes,” I told him. “I’ll tell him to go ahead and take out the Tri-Cities, as long as he makes certain he takes out Guayota when he does. Then you, Jesse, and I can drive to my mom’s house in Portland for a surprise visit.”
“Mercy,” he said reprovingly.
“Okay,” I told him, “we don’t have to go to Mom’s. Montana would work, too.”
“Mercy,” he repeated. “We’ve been in tough places before. It will be okay. You’re just tired, or you wouldn’t be so upset.” He pulled me all the way over on top of him and patiently waited while I wiggled until I was comfortable.
“Go to sleep,” he said. “Things will look better in the morning.” I was almost asleep when he murmured, “And if it doesn’t, we’ll invite your mom down to deal with Guayota and Beauclaire.”
At some point in the night, I rolled off Adam, off the air mattress, and onto the floor. Maybe it was the rolling that woke me up. Maybe it was dreaming of Guayota eating at my kitchen table with Christy and my mom. They’d been talking about the flower garden and eating an avocado salad, so I don’t know why I was so scared, but even awake my heart was pounding, and I’d broken into a light sweat.
I sat up and rubbed the back of my neck to dispel the tension of the dream—and to rub away the lingering sting of my head hitting the hardwood floor.
“Mercy?” Adam’s voice settled me more than my rubbing hand had, wrapped around me like a warm coat on a cold night.
“Bad dreams.” My throat was dry.
“Do you want to talk about them?”
I rolled to my hands and knees, leaned over and down to kiss him. I pulled back and decided to revisit the kiss. Adam’s kisses were always worth a second pass. If we had had a door between us and Christy …
Even so, I was more than a little breathless when I answered his question. “Not necessary. I’m going to get a glass of water, then I’ll be right back.” I kept my voice to a whisper, so I wouldn’t wake anyone else.
He nodded, wrapped a hand around my hair, and pulled me down for a third kiss. Then he smiled, let me go, and closed his eyes. I really, really wished there was a door—or that I was more of an exhibitionist.
I was still dressed from earlier—without privacy I wasn’t going to strip and give Christy a chance to say something we might both regret. All I had to do was zip up my jeans, and I was ready to face anyone who might be wandering around the house at this hour.
In the kitchen, I drank some water and glanced out the window—and froze. A man sat on the roof of Adam’s SUV with his head thrown back, a bottle upended over his head as he drank. He wore scruffy jeans, boots of some sort, and a white t-shirt.
He was too far away for me to see him swallow, but the bottle stayed there for a while. I could tell by the way he pulled the bottle down that he’d drunk it dry. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then, glancing my way, casually saluted me with the bottle.
With the moon at his back, he should have had no way to see me tucked safely behind glass in the dark kitchen. I dumped the rest of the water out of the glass and set it quietly in the sink. My shoes were still in the mudroom where I’d left them. I slipped them on and walked out to talk with Coyote.