“I’ve got to go,” I heard him say, his voice sounding a million miles away. “This has been . . . fun.”
I watched Xian get up and grasp his hand. She batted her eyelashes and kicked the stacked toes of her enormous Mary Jane shoes against the scuffed linoleum. “Can’t you stay just a little bit longer?” she asked, cherry red bottom lip pushed out.
“We have to go now.” My voice cut out through the din of anime conversation, broke over the whining hum of an overworked air conditioner.
Alex shrugged his shoulders and broke away from Xian, following me out the door.
“You couldn’t have done that, like, twenty minutes ago?”
I pressed my index fingers against my temples and rubbed tiny circles.
“I was just kidding, Lawson. It wasn’t that bad. If I go LARP with them this weekend, Xian said I could be the Pirate Prince of Pettigrew. Whoever that is.” He pressed his lips together in a sweet smile, then cocked his head, his blue eyes clouding.
I was blinking furiously.
“Lawson?”
I wasn’t going to cry. I hated crying.
It was one of the things I was known best for.
“I take it Feng wasn’t amenable to giving you any intel?”
I sniffled. “No. Not at all.”
Alex didn’t look totally shocked and that annoyed me.
I crossed my arms in front of my chest and Alex fell in step beside me. “You didn’t think she would?”
“First if all, it’s not that I don’t trust your powers of investigation. But Lawson, they’re werewolf hunters. Generations old or whatever. Did you really think she was just going to let you in on her plan? No offense, but you and your job? Kind of diametrically opposed to her and her job. She probably doesn’t think you’re on her side with this one.”
“On her side?” I spat. “I’ll never be on her side.”
“Weren’t we trying to make sure that if a wolf was the perpetrator of the homicides, he gets taken care of?” Alex asked. He paused for a beat, then licked his bottom lip and shifted his weight. “We’re on the same side, right?” He had the gall to look apologetic and that burned an angry hole in my gut. I seethed silently until Alex sighed.
“Did she at least let you know if she was working that day at Sutro? Is she actually tracking a werewolf ?”
I gritted my teeth and fisted my hands. “Not anymore,” I said, shooting down the sidewalk.
I situated myself in the car while Alex got himself inside and fiddled with the radio until he found a Giants game. He cheered when the fans cheered and then looked at me quizzically.
“Really? You take me to my first game and you don’t even care that we’re creaming the Rockies?”
“Huh? Oh.” I shook my head. “Is there any new information?”
Alex’s eyebrows raised and pinched together. “It’s a live game, Lawson.”
I blew out a larger than necessary huff and clicked the radio off. “Not the game. The crime scene. Anything new?”
Alex flicked on his blinker and hung a sharp right, his black SUV veering toward the police department. “We can check. Can I ask you something, though?”
“Sure.”
“Why are you so interested in this case?”
I put on my super-cool-Sophie face. “What are you talking about? I care about all of our cases.”
Alex didn’t hide his amusement, but he didn’t look at me either. “Our cases?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Your cases. Cases that affect the city in which I live. Cases that involve rabid maniacs tearing unsuspecting women apart limb from limb. But they are your cases. Happy now?”
I felt the car lurch forward as Alex leaned on the gas. “It was just a question.”
I was still unnerved and uncomfortable by the time I got into my car. Feng was going after Sampson and she wouldn’t let up. If I could at least find out who sponsored the contract, maybe I could buy Sampson some time, I thought.
But time for what?
I wanted to help Sampson. I didn’t want him to run anymore. But with Feng and Xian and the entire Anime Army, did he even have a chance? Did we?
I clicked on my earpiece and dialed Sampson’s cell phone, listening to ring after ring until it went to voice mail. I groaned and clicked off the phone, then cranked up the radio, hoping the latest pop star du jour would take my mind off the images seared into my brain, the images that Feng recalled so readily.
My heart was doing a spastic I’ve ruined everything pump by the time I pulled into my underground parking space, pop princess cooing about young love and butterflies notwithstanding. My eyes were wet and I took the stairs two at a time, huffing by the time I got to the third-floor landing, my heart threatening to bulge through my eyes, my blouse sticking to my sweat-damp bra.