They were running the video of my fight with Guayota on Honey’s projection system; the screen was even bigger than I remembered. The image was a little grainy, but I watched myself, larger than life, trip over the crowbar and land on my butt. In the background, the dog had already morphed into a man.
Most of the pack was there. I picked out Christy, Auriele, Darryl, Warren, Kyle, Ben, Zack, Jesse, Mary Jo, and Honey at a glance. Most of them were so focused on what they were watching that they didn’t notice me come in. Christy, half-turned away from the screen, saw me, but I couldn’t read her face.
The screen went blank, and there was a collective groan.
“Play it again.” Mary Jo’s voice was harsh. “I want to see that first part in slow motion. Where she figures out that he’s not human.”
I cleared my throat, and the room fell silent. “Honey? Is there a bedroom where I can put Lucia? Guayota paid her a visit, and she’s pretty fragile. We brought her here to be safe.”
“Lucia?” Honey got up from one of the couches scattered around the room, all facing vaguely in the direction of the screen on the wall. “That’s the woman who told us about the dogs, right?”
I nodded, taking a half step back because once I’d spoken, they’d all twisted around in their seats to look at me, and they were watching me with intent. To Honey I said, “Her dogs are dead, and her husband’s missing—she needs some time to regroup and a safe place to be, so we brought her here. Some clothes to sleep in and to wear tomorrow would also be nice.”
“Damn, lady,” said Zack, looking at me from the corner of his eye. “Damn, but you don’t have any quit in you at all.”
“Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’,” said Warren. “That’s our Mercy.”
Christy’s face was still unreadable, but she was watching me with her shoulders tight. Her eyes met mine for a moment, and I saw a flash of shame before she looked down and away.
“Why didn’t you run?” asked Mary Jo, pulling my attention away from Christy. “You could have gotten away.”
“Because I thought he was human,” I told her, all but squirming. I felt like they’d all seen me naked, though all they’d done was watch a video I’d known was running while I fought Guayota. I wanted to get out of there, but Mary Jo was waiting for more of an answer. “By the time I figured out that he wasn’t human, it was too late, and I was trapped in the garage. Where did you get that disc, anyway?”
“One of Adam’s security team dropped them off,” said Honey. “I thought it would be a good thing to see this man in action before we had to face him.” Honey got up and went to the projector system. I thought she was going to turn it off, but she hit REPLAY, then grabbed my arm and urged me back down the stairs while a larger-than-life-sized me got the gun out from under the counter and waited for Guayota.
“Do them good to see it again,” Honey said as we started down. “They like to dismiss you as a liability. Let them see you fight.”
“I’d have lost if Adam and Tad hadn’t shown up,” I told her.
“That lot, most of them, would have lost when the dog started his attack,” she said, unperturbed. She gave me a laughing glance. “What I really wish, though, is that there had been a camera at your house when Adam tore a strip off Christy when she wasted time playing stupid games with his phone when you were calling for help. I’d pay a lot of money to have gotten to see that.”
“She wouldn’t have done it if she’d known I was in danger,” I told her—and it felt odd to be defending Christy.
“Maybe not,” said Honey, “but I’d sure have liked to have been there to see Adam dressing her down. He never did before. She was too good at making everything someone else’s fault.”
She led the way back into her kitchen and did a double take when she saw Gary. “I thought you were in—”
Honey hadn’t been with us when we’d discussed his jailbreak and my seeing him at the crime scene in Finley. Apparently no one had mentioned it to her.
“I decided to follow you,” he broke in with a good-old-boy smile before she could say the “prison” word. “The most intriguing, most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I thought, if she would just look at me, I would never need to eat again because that look would sustain me for the rest of my life.”
“Do those kinds of lines ever really work?” Honey asked coolly, having gotten over her surprise. She glanced at Lucia and warmed her expression as she gave the rest of us a discreet nod. She wouldn’t talk about the jailbreak in front of anyone else. “Lucia, come with me, and I’ll get you set up.”
“What do you want me to do with Cookie?” When Honey looked blank, Lucia clarified. “With the dog?”
Honey looked at the battered dog, glanced at me, then went to her cupboard and pulled out a mixing bowl. “We’ll send someone out for dog food in the morning. There’s a bathroom off the bedroom you’ll be in, and we’ll fill this with water there.”
The two of them left, and I caught Gary by the arm before he could follow.
“You’d better cool your jets,” I told him, because although he might have interrupted her to stop her from blurting out where she’d last seen him, there had been real intent in his flirting—as there hadn’t been when he’d been messing around with Kyle and Zack. “Honey will wipe the floor with you.”
His eyes went half-mast, and his voice dropped in evident pleasure. “I know.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “You’ve been warned. Don’t come looking for sympathy here.”
The outside door opened, and Adam came in. He stomped the dirt off the bottom of his shoes on the mudroom mat with determined slowness. I recognized the careful movement as an attempt to keep his still-agitated wolf under control.
His calmness in the back of the SUV had been more of the same: my wolf didn’t like being helpless when someone he felt responsible for was in trouble. Joel had done some work for Adam, and that was enough to make him Adam’s responsibility.
I leaned against a counter and relaxed deliberately. Gary raised an eyebrow, looked toward the mudroom. Then he proved he was a lot better at reading people than he liked to pretend because he copied my position on the far side of the kitchen from the mudroom. He left a lot of space between me and him.