“Are you?” I asked.
“You move very well for a human,” said Agent Kent, who didn’t seem nervous or green today. The change was so great that I wondered if the appearance of being a rookie was one he used for effect.
“Thank you,” I told him. “I’ll tell Sensei that you were impressed.”
“My wife takes lessons in Shi Sei Kai Kan. Additionally, we spar in various styles several times a week. I do not intend that anyone hurt Mercedes again.” Adam’s tone was cool, and the warning in his last sentence was clear to anyone who was listening.
“We are familiar with the … alleged assault,” said Agent Orton.
“Have you seen the security footage from that?” asked Torbett before Adam could speak.
I got my heel on Adam’s foot, but he’d cooled off considerably and frowned at Torbett.
“No,” said Orton. “However—”
“I have.” The older man’s voice was cool. “I assure you that an assault took place, and the bastard got what was coming to him.” It was nice that he agreed there had been an assault, but was there anyone in the whole world who hadn’t seen me assaulted? Anyone except Orton, that is. Maybe we should have just put it up on YouTube. I forced my hands to unclench before anyone noticed.
“The issue remains,” said Agent Kent, taking up the charge as the senior agent stalled out. “That we believe, Ms. Hauptman, that you have not been entirely forthcoming about whether or not you are human.”
“Are you?” I asked again. Because my nose told me that he was not.
“Yes,” Kent said, believing he told the truth. “How about you, Ms. Hauptman?”
“No, you aren’t,” said Adam, intrigued. His head tilted, and he took a deep breath, so everyone would know what sense he was using to determine it. “Fae. Though you aren’t even a half-blood. Maybe one of your parents?”
Agent Kent just stared at him.
“You might talk to them and ask,” I suggested. “Do you have trouble with metals?”
“I have a nickel allergy,” he said defensively.
“This isn’t about Agent Kent.” Orton had had time to recover. “We’ve determined that Ms. Hauptman is a potential threat to the public safety, and we are bringing her in as a murder suspect who has supernatural powers that make her too dangerous to be incarcerated in the usual ways.”
“Under what authority?” asked Jenny.
“Under the Humanity Act that established the agency I work for, Ms. Trevellyan, and the discretionary detention provisions in the Patriot Act. We can detain Ms. Hauptman indefinitely as a possible terrorist.” Orton’s tones were smug.
I wasn’t afraid of their taking me. But I was terrified of what Adam would do to ensure that they did not. Adam, though, wasn’t tense at all. I frowned at him. Why wasn’t he upset?
“Are you acting on your own, sir?” asked Larry Torbett.
“I have my orders,” said Orton repressively. “Ms. Hauptman, you aren’t going to give us any trouble here, right?”
“I’m not,” I said, still watching my husband, who seemed pleased. “But I wouldn’t go counting your prisoners before they are safely in your detention cell.”
Larry Torbett smiled at me. “Well said, Ms. Hauptman. Mr. Hauptman, you should know that I have in my possession documentation that someone in high places would like a pet werewolf and was not opposed to kidnapping to achieve his desires. How presumptuous of him to try to use the law to enable him to do so. Who is your supervisory agent, Agent Orton?”
Orton frowned at him. “Supervisory Agent Donald Kerrigan. Ms. Hauptman, I would advise you not to resist arrest. That will only add to your troubles.”
“Allow me to clarify matters, before this goes too much further, gentlemen,” said Jenny. “Agent Orton, Agent Kent, Mr. and Ms. Hauptman, this is Larry Torbett, Ph.D. Dr. Torbett is teaching a four-day seminar at WSU Tri-Cities on fae-human relations. He retired two years ago from a government think tank in Washington, D.C., though the president called him back to help deal with the mess last year when the fae retreated to their reservations. He was also my law professor, which is why he is staying with me. He asked to join us out of curiosity and boredom, I suspect.” She smiled at the continued clueless looks she was getting. “But the layman would better know him as L. J. Torbett, editor of the Watchdog Times.”
The Watchdog Times was an influential Web-based magazine that wrote and recirculated pieces about government mischief. Recently, it had engineered the forced retirement of a state judge in Pennsylvania caught giving harsh jail sentences in return for kickbacks from the privately run state penitentiary and was responsible for the highly publicized trial of a federal official who was spending ten years in jail rather than the cozy estate in the Bahamas he’d used tax dollars to pay for.
The Watchdog Times had also cleared the name of a conservative senator who was accused of having sex with a minor. They hadn’t saved his marriage, but they’d saved his career, mostly, and certainly rescued him from a jail sentence when they proved the whole thing had been set up by his political rival—and that the boy in question had been a very young-looking twenty-three-year-old who’d been well paid to act his part.
If he said he had documentation, L. J. Torbett had documentation.
“You were asleep when Jenny asked if I’d mind if her old friend joined us,” murmured Adam to me. “Jenny said he’d thought that it was odd that Cantrip Agents were first on scene, and asked to sit in this afternoon.”
I leaned against him and watched the old lawyer turned journalist wipe the floor with the Cantrip agents.
“This,” he said, “is a disgrace. That government agents who should be above reproach lend themselves to such a scheme is appalling.”
“You can say what you’d like,” said Orton with dignity. “But that doesn’t change my orders.”
“Yes,” Agent Kent said heavily. “Yes, it does. Unless you want to be dropped to junior-janitor rank for the rest of your tenure in Cantrip, it does. Kerrigan is a political rat, and if he’s behind this, he’d sell us down the river without a qualm. If he’s not behind it and it is from higher up, he’ll sell us even faster.”
Torbett nodded at the younger agent but looked at Orton when he continued talking. “There are larger issues at stake, too, gentlemen. Do you know that the fae are talking to the werewolves, trying to gain their support for an alliance against the government of the US?”
Orton gave a short nod. It wasn’t a secret.
Torbett said, “What do you think would happen if you forced the Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack, one of the most prominent packs in the US”—that the humans knew about, anyway—“to defend his wife against government agents? The man who gave you your orders doesn’t understand what he’s messing with. A man like Hauptman, a werewolf, will die defending his mate. He would never have let you leave with her. He tried to tell you that. Did you miss the part where Mr. Hauptman said he wouldn’t let anyone hurt his wife?”
He gave them a moment to digest that. Then he said, “Do you want to be famous, gentlemen? I assure you that your names would have gone down in the history books as the idiots who forced the werewolves into a confrontation with the federal government.” He leaned forward. “Do you know that Hauptman has been doing his level best to keep our relations with the werewolves from reaching the boiling point, as they did with the fae?”
“I think that we are going to regret not eliminating the werewolves while we have a chance,” said Agent Kent.
I thought about Bran and wondered what made Agent Kent think that they ever had a chance at eliminating the werewolves.
“Whatever you might think of the legality, Dr. Torbett, I believe this is a matter of survival. Having Hauptman and his pack under our control would have been the best thing for everyone—even the wolves,” Kent said heavily.
“Under whose control?” asked Torbett genially. “And do you know what they were planning to do with the werewolves? I do. I have”—he smiled—“interesting documentation that is eventually going to see some public servants and an elected official in jail.”
“It sounds like Mr. Hauptman is trying to blackmail us,” said Agent Orton, his voice gravelly. “We can’t take his wife in because he’ll start a war?”
“Is it blackmail to tell a child that he’ll burn his hand if he puts it in a fire, Agent Orton?” asked Jenny. “This is, I think, the same thing.”
“Orton,” said Kent, sounding tired, “we are done here.”
“We have orders,” the older agent said.
“No,” Kent told him. “This isn’t the army. We were given instructions and gathered new information that made those instructions unwise.”
“Gentlemen,” said Jenny, “I trust we are finished here. If you have further questions, please feel free to call me rather than bothering the Hauptmans.”
That’s when Detective Willis came in, looking exhausted. “Sorry to be late. We’ve found three more dead women, and the press has found out about all of them.” He looked at Adam. “We’ve watched that video and read the letter Ms. Trevellyan sent with it. We are satisfied that this Juan Flores is our killer, whatever he is. I’m supposed to tell you that if you have any more information on him, we’d like it, including where he can be found. For my part, I just hope you have more of an idea of how to handle this thing before it kills again than we do.”