Steve shrugged and kicked the leg of my visitor’s chair. “Sophie’s love will come in time,” he said before disappearing in a blue-cheese-scented huff.
I rolled the bullet around in my palm, thinking of the tragic crime scene—the bodies destroyed, lives cut short—and then of Sampson.
“No,” I said to my empty office. “I know Sampson had nothing to do with this.” I slipped the bullet into my purse. “And I’m going to prove it.”
I was able to slip out of the UDA without much problem. The heat had thinned out the clientele and was slowing down the employees, and Steve’s odor knocked out everyone else. With each floor the elevator climbed, my confidence grew. I was going to talk to Feng and Xian. Let them know their wires were crossed. Pete Sampson had nothing to do with this murder. Maybe it was another werewolf. Maybe it was a marauding band of horrible humans. Either way, I would get the werewolf hunters to lay off. I felt myself smiling, even.
“Well, don’t you look like the cat that swallowed the canary.” Alex grinned at me from the police station vestibule. It was a smile that went to his eyes, that made their deep blue sparkle with a kind of sexy mischief that cut right through me and did things to my nether regions. Bad things.
Focus, focus, focus.
“Hey,” I said, using my best attempt at nonchalance. “What are you doing out here?”
“Actually, I was heading down to see you.”
Another zing, this one starting at my belly button. “You were?”
Alex nodded and held up a stuffed manila envelope. “I was hoping we could go over some of these pictures from Sutro Point.”
And just like that, the delicious zing of angelic sex was vanquished.
I bit my lip. “I’m actually on my way out. Later?”
“Yeah, sure. Where you headed?”
I looked over my shoulder at the sunbaked parking lot. Think, I commanded my brain, think! I had the introductory paragraph of my Krav Maga class and three whole seasons of Criminal Minds under my belt. I was practically a special agent.
“I’m going for a pap smear.”
Yes. I was Sophie Lawson: Special (Ed) Agent.
I was closing in on Chinatown when I had the overwhelming feeling of being followed. But unless my pursuers were a Vanagon full of photo-snapping German tourists, my intuition was way off—which wouldn’t be totally unheard of for me. I nabbed a space right along Stockton Street and was skipping through Grant’s Gate before the full weight of what I was about to do—and who I was about to see—hit me.
The last time I’d met Feng on her turf, she’d greeted me with a chokehold. I could still feel her fingers, like steel bars, closing in on my windpipe. I hightailed it back to the car, popped the trunk, and shook the knife out of a plastic Big 5 bag.
To answer your question, yes, I have a gun. But the last time I’d used it, I was forced to shoot a person—a sweaty, bat-shit-crazy, murderous person—but still. He screamed. He bled a heavy river of bright-red blood. And although I only shot him in his plentiful ass, the idea that I could have killed this human being—ended his life—was rough on me. So, I bought a knife. Not so much with the intent to gut and fillet; more with the hopeful idea that my brandishing such a weapon would incite a fearful retreat by whomever was ready to pounce.
I was tucking my new weapon into my shoulder bag when the hairs on the back of my neck shot up. I cocked my head, trying to decipher the sound of footsteps, of heavy breathing from the huffing grunt of the Muni buses and the general clatter of downtown.
I was definitely being watched.
“I have a weapon,” I murmured without turning around. “And we’re in a very public place.”
“I have a weapon, too,” he murmured back.
I turned around, groaning. “Alex! What the hell are you doing here? Were you following me?”
He was looking at me with that stupid, sexy half smile, one eyebrow cocked. “Who says I was following you? Maybe I was in the mood for some chow fun.”
I slammed my trunk down hard and crossed my arms in front of my chest. “Are you in the mood for some chow fun?”
“Are you asking me out?”
I felt the unattractive flare of my nostrils and Alex broke into a gale of laughter. “Okay, fine. Sorry,” he said.
I eyed him.
“I was following you.”
“I told you I was going to get a pap smear and you follow me? Man, you’ve got some weird sexual fetishes. No wonder they kicked you out of Heaven.”
Alex rolled his eyes. “So you’re honestly telling me you go to a gynecologist in Chinatown?”
I hitched up my chin. “Dr. Kwan does good work. And I get a free egg roll afterward.”
“You’re a nut.”
“And you almost got yourself gutted,” I spat.
“Is that so?”
“Why are you following me?”
Alex fell in step with me. “Because you didn’t tell me where you were going.”
I opened my mouth and put up my hand to answer—as I had, in fact, told him where I was headed—but Alex grabbed it, pushed it down by my side. “You lied. That much I knew.”
“Since when do I have to tell you where I’m going?”