I spent an hour texting Rick, because his carrier didn’t offer good cell coverage this far south. Sometimes the government’s predilection to pick the cheapest bid on a job caused problems later on. Go figure. Rick made plans to join us, but it would be another day before that could happen, which left me many hours before he could get here. And few hours before the first day of the full moon.
Just after the texting ended, I heard back from the sheriff and the governor. The gov felt that PsyLED would take too long to find and kill the “wild dogs” and offered me a contract. But the wild-dog clause was a problem, legally speaking. With the tentative exception of vamps, supernats and their legal standing had not yet been addressed by Congress. Vamps were already in a legal limbo, with Leo having asked for a status like American tribal Indians had—called tribal sovereignty, making vamps a dependent sovereign nation within the federal government. It would give them a position that was similar to a state in some situations, and similar to a nation in others, with certain amounts of recognition, self-government, and sovereignty. It was a huge legal jumble of problems, which would take decades to sort out, and even longer to implement, all of which made the Master of the City of the Southwestern states happy, because it left him in charge of his people and free to act in any way that led to the safety of the human public. However, no such legal interference had been instituted or started for weres or witches, making their legal limbo even worse than the vamps’. And calling a were a wild dog was . . . wrong. Werewolves were sentient beings.
Yet people were dying. And I was stuck in the middle of the problems.
I copied Leo, my partners, and Rick on the offer and got a single-word text reply from my sorta-boyfriend.
Sigh . . . , it read.
“Yeah,” I said to my empty room. Our “wild dog” were had suddenly become a pack of three led by a sex-starved female. Add a lone wolf into the picture, and a state government that wanted in on the kill action, and this was suddenly FUBAR territory. I was not touching this with a ten-foot pole, not until Rick’s bosses at PsyLED decided on a course of action. Which might mean we were headed home in the morning. Yet the next night was the full moon, which would mean death for someone unless I acted. Which the legal situation could prevent. This sucked. I wanted to hit something, but Eli was asleep. Which sounded all wrong too. I rolled over in bed and commanded myself to sleep. I felt Beast sling out a claw and instantly I went under. My last conscious thought was of Beast as a sleeping pill.
? ? ?
It rained all night, sometimes so hard it beat against the windows, with lightning and thunder all around, the noise enough to rouse me several times. Mostly, thanks to Beast, I slept through it, knowing that the next three days could be sleepless and dangerous and deadly. Or not.
Sometime during the night, I got an official e-mail from PsyLED, but with the noise outside, I missed it. An hour before dawn, the storm broke, Beast slapped me awake, and I found my cell blinking. I rolled up to a sitting position and discovered that I had an official offer from the U.S. government, one worked out with Leo’s lawyers and two congressional committees, approved by the Louisiana governor, and vetted by the president himself, all in just under seven hours.
I had a kill order to take down the pack. And I was gonna get paid big bucks. “How cool is that?” I asked my dark, silent room. And best? No one said anything about the lone wolf, who hadn’t been in on the carnage and feasting.
As I sat there, I got a second text from Nadine, the sheriff, with a new sighting location. During the storm the night before, four local fishermen had taken refuge on land in the swamp over near Lake Boudreaux. They had seen two huge dogs and a bear as the storm cleared. Nadine sent both a map and a GPS, saved by the men. I pulled up a sat map and studied it. The sighting had been inland, if you can call the swampy area north of Lake Boudreaux inland, up through an old canal, on actual land.
I studied the site on sat maps and determined that we could get there via boat. I loved modern detecting methods. I got up, stretched hard and slow, and walked to the connecting door.
Banging on the Younger brothers’ door, I shouted, “Wake up, sleepyheads! We got a job with a GPS to start the day. Big enough bucks to buy the Kid a pony for his birthday!” I started to turn away but banged once again, my fist flat on the door. “And I’ll need my special equipment, pronto.” I sent the proposal and the GPS to them and got dressed, glad I’d gotten some sleep. I was gonna need it.
I was packing my boots and other supplies into a bag when my cell chimed. On the screen were the words Darlin’. PsyL authorized me to area. Officially. Flight landing at NOLA at two. See you at 4p.