"Will you get in trouble for his death?" I asked Kyle. He was a lawyer - family law - but he should still know.
He shook his head. "Self-defense in a slam dunk." He looked at Stefan. "Do you know who is responsible?"
"Renegade Cantrip agents is our working hypothesis," I said. FBI agents would have had too much experience to react out of fear the way Mr. Jones had. Homeland Security, I didn't know enough about. But Cantrip - short for Combined Nonhuman and Transhuman Relations Provisors - had attracted a number of anti-nonhuman zealots. I knew that they had training but not much field experience - and they'd have access to as much information as the government could amass on the werewolves. For firepower, they'd have to have help. "And a hired troop of competent mercenaries for muscle. Here" - I jerked my chin toward the two men on the floor - "we have the mercenaries. There are at least three more downstairs. I didn't see anyone else, but they'd be dumb not to have someone out keeping watch."
"Mercenaries mean money," said Stefan. "A lot more money than most Cantrip agents make."
Kyle smiled briefly. "Follow the money. Fine. You're sure that the police would be helpful?"
"Wait." There had been a click. Everyone fell silent - and then air started to blow out of the registers in the floor. I'd heard the heat turn on. Stefan went to the door, cracked it open, and took a quick peek outside. He shut it noiselessly and shook his head.
But he was quieter when he talked than we'd been before. "They only really need one person alive to blackmail Adam. The rest are just a precaution. If Adam and the pack are hostages, they need every one they can keep their hands on." He frowned at us both. "That doesn't mean they are safe - idiots are the hardest people to plan around, and anyone who captures a werewolf pack without killing every last one is an idiot."
"Okay," said Kyle. "Let's see if we can't make this a little uncomfortable for them." He walked to the side of the bed and picked up his cell.
I grabbed his hand and looked at Stefan. "What if they're listening to the phones?"
Stefan smiled. "Then they'll have warning and either run - or they will attack us up here."
A lot of things could have gone wrong. We settled down to wait, ready to defend ourselves if the men downstairs decided to check on Kyle.
Stefan left when the sun started coming up. Ben and I waited with Kyle, despite Kyle's protests that he could handle this on his own. We were safely out of it; if we left, we gave the enemy no one to follow ... Kyle had a lot of arguments, which he delivered with the cell on mute.
I wasn't leaving Kyle alone in a house full of bad guys. I finally stole his phone, took it off mute, and introduced myself to the operator. I explained that I thought that these same men were responsible for launching an attack at my house - yes, I was married to the local Alpha. One of the pack had escaped and found me - and we'd figured out something was wrong. We snuck in through the upstairs window just after Kyle had managed to free himself. I told her about the blood we'd found in the backyard that belonged to Kyle's boyfriend, a pack member, who had been taken off the premises by these bad guys, presumably to be held by whoever had taken the rest of the pack.
Kyle listened hard, since it was the first time he'd heard a lot of what I said. I didn't give the police the whole truth. There were too many things the werewolves didn't want getting out, and I wasn't mentioning Stefan. But I stuck to it as closely as I could.
When I'd finished, it was not just the SWAT team who were headed our way, but a fair percentage of a number of different police departments - and, to my relief, someone was going to go check at the firehouse where Mary Jo worked as well as the houses of our married pack members who hadn't come to our Thanksgiving dinner but had been taken just the same. They'd make sure that there were no other hostage situations.
I handed Kyle back his phone. He shook his head at me but took it in one hand, put it against his ear, and opened the gun safe in his closet with the other. The safe held two handguns and Warren's rifle - it was a Spencer repeating rifle dating back to the Civil War. He'd let me shoot it a couple of times.
Kyle took Warren's .357 in hand and gave me his own 1911 because that fit my hand better than Warren's gun would have. My own gun was still in Marsilia's car. Kyle left the rifle in the safe when he closed it.
Warren's father had carried it during the War Between the States and at his death it had come to Warren, who was eight or nine at the time. That's as much as I knew about Warren's life as a human except that he considered himself a Texan and had spent a long time as a cowboy.
I agreed with Kyle's decision: the Spencer was too important to be risked if the police decided to take the guns. If we had to shoot someone, it was probably going to be within handgun range anyway.
"Stay quiet and find a good hiding place," said the 911 operator on the other end of the phone; she'd been giving us all sorts of good advice and updates.
"We are taking cover in the bathroom," said Kyle, and gave her the basic layout of the house - which took a while because it was a big house.
He was steady and cool while we watched the door between his bedroom and the rest of the house. The bathroom afforded us a little protection - the walls were marble slabs, and we weren't in direct line of sight from the door.
Kyle kept the phone tucked between his ear and shoulder, and I could hear the operator keeping him up-to-date on what was happening. I had a sudden sick thought that we really didn't know if we could trust the police. What if the government really was behind it all? What if the police were in on it, too?
Paranoia: the gift of the survivor and the burden of the overtired, stressed, terrified coyote.
I thought about the likelihood of the police being under the control of the bad guys and came up with it as being unlikely - but not as unlikely as a group of humans descending on pack HQ and abducting a pack of wolves - including wolves who were not out to the public. Since the latter had happened, it made me feel less paranoid for suspecting the former.
"Okay," said the operator. "The police are there and in position, just hang tight and wait for them."
As the sounds of rapid-fire orders seeped into our bolt-hole, I became more and more uneasy about trusting the police to be on our side.
About that time, there was a gentle tap on the bedroom door.
"Mr. Brooks? This is Kennewick PD, sir. Please put down your weapons. We have the suspects in custody and you are safe."
Kyle put his gun down on the floor - then noticed me not doing the same thing. He reached out toward me, and Ben growled. I was not alone in my paranoia - or else Ben was just picking up on how unhappy I was. Wounded and surrounded by the dead and terrified, he wasn't exactly Mr. Sane right now, either.