Anita Blake 20 - Hit List Read Free Page A

it.”
    “If they’re these ultimate spies, would you be able to sense them?”
    “I think so,” I said.
    He glanced at me, then went back to scanning the area. “That’s pretty arrogant.”
    “Maybe, but I’d still know if there was a preternatural close to us.”
    He spoke without looking at me, “Please, tell me this isn’t the first time you wondered if this was a trap for you.”
    “I thought they didn’t know the gold tigers were in St. Louis. They should have stopped killing the others after they learned that. It’s one of the reasons we made it public.”
    “So either it’s a trap to keep you away from St. Louis or Mommie Darkest forgot to rescind her order.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Would they slaughter the weretigers until she ordered them to stop, even if it made no sense?”
    I thought about it. “The ones that are loyal to her are fanatically loyal, so I think they might.”
    “So either she forgot to tell them to stop, because she’s busy doing something else . . .”
    “Or she’s just that crazy,” I said.
    He nodded. “Or she’s that crazy, or they’re waiting to either kidnap you, or kill you.”
    “Fuck,” I said.
    “You need to talk to Jean-Claude.”
    “I thought you didn’t like him,” I said.
    “You don’t like Donna either,” he said.
    “So we each don’t like the people that the other one loves.” I shrugged.

    “You need bodyguards, Anita.”
    “Why not just go home to St. Louis?” I said.
    “The Marshals Service frowns on us leaving a case in the middle of it, but that’s not the problem.”
    The other marshals were moving toward us. I moved closer to Edward, and asked, “Then what is the problem?”
    “How would you go home?”
    I frowned, but answered. “I’d get on the first plane I could catch and go home.”
    “The police would drop you off at the airport, and then you’d be alone.”
    “What?”
    “You’d be in the airport, and on the plane alone, Anita. If I really wanted to take you and it was important to not be seen doing it, that’s what I’d be waiting for, you alone, away from the other police, and Jean-Claude.”
    I leaned close, speaking low. “So what do I do?”
    “Have some guards come in from St. Louis.”
    “How do I explain that to the other cops?”
    “We’ll think of something.” And then I knew the other marshals were too close to talk more, because Edward’s face folded into a grin. His face lit with that charm that Ted always seemed to have. If there was an Emmy award for hired killers, Edward would so have won.
    I wasn’t nearly that good, but I managed a pleasant blank face to my fellow marshals. They asked, “See anything that’ll help us catch these bastards?”
    Edward and I dutifully said, “No.”

2
    I HAD BEEN called into Marshal Raborn’s office. It was a neat, square room. The only thing in the room that was messy was the desk, as if he’d straightened every edge in every file cabinet, and then left file folders on his desk overnight and they’d bred into short, unsteady towers of paperwork. Raborn was the local marshal in charge. If I’d been a regular marshal he’d have been more in charge of me, and Edward, but the preternatural branch was rapidly becoming its own entity, which meant Marshal Raborn was frustrated. He seemed to be particularly frustrated with me.
    “There have been rumors for decades that Seattle has a weretiger clan,” he said.
    I gave him blank cop face, polite, interested, but blank. Every group of wereanimals, or kiss of vampires, runs its business slightly differently. The white tiger clan of Las Vegas and the vampires are very public about who they are, and what they’re doing. The red tiger clan of Seattle, not so much. In fact, Seattle wasn’t aware they had a tiger clan in residence. The queen of their clan liked it that way. Wereanimals were still people under the law, so they’d never been legal to kill on sight the way vampires had been before the new