Special Agent Leslie Fisher stared out of the window that looked out over downtown Boston. From her vantage point she had a lovely, veryearly-morning view. Traffic was still light, and though it would get a lot heavier as people came to work, lack of parking kept the streets from being as crazy as Los Angeles, the last place she'd been assigned. In the FBI, she got to move every few years whether she wanted to or not, but she'd always thought of Boston as home.
The hotel was old and expensively elegant. Tasteful, striped, satiny paper covered the walls of the meeting room in authentic Victorian style. The smallish room was dominated by the large mahogany table with padded chairs that looked more like they belonged in a dining room than a boardroom. It was a hotel, though, no matter how well decorated, and it lacked even the hint of personalization that managed to break through the government drab in her own office cubicle.
She was here to meet a consultant. Though there was the occasional perfectly innocent computer geek or accountant, in her experience, consultants were quite often bad guys who had made deals so that the good guys could catch bigger bad guys: rewarding the smaller evil so that the big monsters got stopped.
Five people dead in the last month: an old woman, two tourists, a businessman, and an eight-year-old boy. A serial killer was hunting. She'd seen the boy's body, and to catch his killer, she'd have met with Satan himself.
In her time in the FBI, she'd dealt with former drug dealers, an assassin already serving a life sentence in jail, and any number of politicians (some of whom should have been serving life sentences in jail). Once, she'd even consulted a self-proclaimed witch. In retrospect, Leslie hadn't been nearly as afraid of the witch as she should have been.
Today she was talking to werewolves. To her knowledge, she'd never met a werewolf before, so it should be interesting.
She considered the table they'd all be sitting around. The FBI offices or a police station would have given her side the home advantage - her side being those who fought for law and order. Meeting with people on their own turf, in their offices or homes, lost her that advantage, but sometimes she'd used it to get information she wouldn't have gotten if the people she was interviewing hadn't felt comfortable and safe. Prisons, oddly enough, gave the home-court advantage to the prisoner, especially if she brought a nervous greenie along with her.
Hotels were neutral territory - which was why they were meeting here instead of the office.
"Why me?" she'd asked her boss yesterday when he told her she was going alone. "I thought the whole team was going to talk to him?"
Nick Salvador had grimaced and stretched his large self uncomfortably behind his desk - a space where he spent as little time as possible. He preferred being in the field. "FUBAR ahead," he said, which was his code for politics. When Leslie had come into the Boston office, the previous person who'd had her desk had taped a list of Nick-speak to the bottom of her drawer with a note that said he'd had it faxed from Denver, where Nick had last been posted. There was a full page of swearwords, and "FUBAR ahead" had been first on the list. It wasn't that Nick couldn't dance gracefully with the powers that be if necessary; it was that he didn't like doing it.
"I put in the request and word was we were going to talk to Adam Hauptman. He's done a lot of consults - been guest speaker at Quantico a couple of times. Thought we could get information to help us with the case and pick up a bit besides." He twisted his chair around and his knee hit the canvas side of one of his go-bags. He had a number of them stashed around his office. Leslie had three herself - each packed for different jobs. Hers were color-coded; Nick's were numbered. Which made sense - there were more numbers than guy colors (his bags were khaki, khaki, and that other khaki) and he needed more go-bags than she did because his job was broader reaching. She didn't have to keep a suit on hand, for instance, because she was unlikely to get called upon for television interviews or congressional hearings.
"Hauptman has a good rep," Leslie said. "I have a friend who sat in on one of his lectures, said it was informative and pretty entertaining. So what happened to that plan?"
"Got a call yesterday morning. Hauptman's not available - you remember that monster they found in the Columbia River last month? Turns out it was Hauptman and his wife who killed it, mostly his wife - that's for our information only." Not classified, but not to be advertised, either. "She apparently got busted up pretty badly and he can't fly out. Hauptman found us a replacement, someone higher up. But no more than five people can come to the meet - and we have to hold it in neutral territory. No name, no further official information." He pursed his mouth unhappily.
Nick Salvador could play poker with the best of them, but with people he trusted, every last thing he thought bloomed on his face. Leslie liked that, liked working with him because he was smart - and never, ever treated her like the token black female.
"That's not FUBAR," she said.
"FUBAR is hearing that the werewolf consultant is 'higher up' - makes it all sorts of interesting to a lot of people other than the FBI," he said.
"Hauptman is Alpha of some pack in Washington, right?" Leslie pursed her lips. "I didn't know there was a higher-up than an Alpha."
"Neither did anyone else," agreed Nick. "I don't know what the deal is, but I've been informed that two Trippers are coming to the party."
Trippers, in Nick-speak, were agents from CNTRP. The acronym stood for Combined Nonhuman and Transhuman Relations Provisors, the new agency formed specifically to deal with the various preternaturals. They pronounced it "Cantrip." Nick called them Trippers because whenever they involved themselves in an investigation he was in, he tripped all over them.
"They wanted to send two Homeland Security agents, too, but I put my foot down." Nick scowled at the phone as if it were to blame for annoying him. "Special Agent Craig Goldstein, who was involved in three earlier cases with this same killer, finished the most urgent of his cases and so is breaking loose from Tennessee to come help us." She'd never met Goldstein, but knew that Nick had, and that he liked him - which was enough of a recommendation for her. "I want him to talk to our werewolf. I wanted two of my agents in there with him - but I got outvoted. Two Trippers, one Homeland Security agent" - his voice dropped coldly - "who has no business whatsoever in this case. And Craig and you."
"Why me?" she asked. "Len could go. That way you could include the police." Len was the local Boston PD officer who worked on their task force. "Or Christine - she's done a few more serial murder cases than I have."
Nick sat back and stilled, pulling all his energy in the way he did when they got a good lead on someone they'd been looking for. "A friend of mine called me and gave me a heads-up. He knows Hauptman - more importantly, Hauptman knows he is a friend of mine. Hauptman called him to give me some more background."
Leslie's eyebrows went up. "Interesting."
"Isn't it?" Nick smiled. "My friend told me that Hauptman said I might want to be careful who I sent. Someone low-key, good with body language, and absolutely not aggressive."
He looked at her and she nodded. "Not Len, not Christine." Len was smart, but hardly low-key, and Christine had a competitive streak a mile wide. Leslie could hold her own, but she didn't need to rub people's noses in it.
"That lets me out, too," Nick admitted. "Angel and you are probably the best fit, and Angel is just a little too green to send out on his own against the bad guys just yet." Angel was fresh out of Quantico.
"I'll take good notes," she promised.
"Do that," Nick said. His fingers were doing the little impatient dance they did when he was thinking among friends - like he was conducting invisible music.
Leslie waited, but he didn't say anything.
"So why are we making this extra effort to get along with the werewolf?" she asked.
Nick smiled. "My friend told me that Hauptman said that the people we'd be meeting might be persuaded to give us a little more concrete help if the person we sent was someone they felt they could trust."
"People?" Leslie leaned forward. "There's more than one?"
"Hauptman said 'people.' That didn't come through official channels so I saw no reason to pass it on."
Nick was very good at cooperating. Cooperation solved crimes, put the bad guys behind bars. Cooperation was the new byword - and it worked. However, put Nick's back up, and cooperation might mean something...a little less cooperative. He might disparage the Trippers in private, but it didn't hinder him at all in the field. Homeland Security, on the other hand, tended to set his back up rather more forcibly because they liked to forget that the FBI had jurisdiction on all terrorist activity on US soil. Nick reminded them of that whenever necessary and with great pleasure.
"I would very much appreciate," Nick said, "if we could use our consultant or consultants in the field."
"It would be interesting to see what a werewolf could do at a crime scene," Leslie said, considering it. From what little she knew about werewolves, it might be like having a bloodhound who could talk - instant forensics.
Nick showed his even white teeth in a heartfelt grimace. "I don't ever want to see another waterlogged child's body with a livestock tag in his ear. If a werewolf might make a difference, get them on board, please."
"On it."
LESLIE PUT HER hands flat on the hotel conference table. Her nails were short, manicured, and polished with a clear coat that matched the sheen of the wood she claimed under her hands. Territorial rights were important. She had a degree in psychology and another in anthropology, but she'd understood it since Miss Nellie Michaelson had gone puppy-hunting in Mrs. Cullinan's backyard.
She'd come early because that was a way to turn neutral territory into hers. It was one of the things that made her a good agent - she paid attention to the details, details like gaining the home-court advantage when dealing with monsters - especially ones with big, sharp teeth.
She'd done a boatload of studying since Nick dropped this on her yesterday.
Werewolves were supposed to be poor, downtrodden victims of a disease, people who used the abilities their misfortune granted them to help others. David Christiansen, the first person to admit to being a werewolf, was a specialist in extracting terrorist hostages. She was sure that his being incredibly photogenic had not been an accident. Leslie's oldest daughter had a poster up on her bedroom door of that famous photo of David holding the child he'd rescued. Other wolves who had admitted what they were tended to be firemen, policemen, and military: the good guys one and all.
She could have smelled the spin-doctoring from orbit. Spin-doctoring wasn't lying, not precisely. David Christiansen's little group of mercenaries had a very good reputation among the people Leslie had talked to. They got the job done with minimal casualties on all sides and they were good at what they did. They didn't take jobs from the bad guys. Because of that, Leslie was keeping an open mind - but because she was naturally cautious, she also was keeping a pair of silver bullets (hastily purchased) loaded in her carry gun.
The door opened behind her and she turned to see a young woman enter the room who looked like she should still be going to high school. Leslie felt that way all too often when she met the new recruits fresh from Quantico. The girl's light reddish brown hair was braided severely in an attempt to make her look older, but the effect wasn't enough to offset the freckles that burst across her pale cheeks or the innocent honey brown eyes.
"Oh, hi," the girl said brightly, her voice touched just a little with a Chicago accent. "I thought I'd be the first one here. It's a bit early."
"I like to get the lay of the land," said Leslie, and the younger woman laughed.
"Oh, I get that," she said, grinning. "Charles is like that."
Charles would be her partner, Leslie thought. They must be from Cantrip. This child wouldn't be a werewolf - there were supposed to be a few female werewolves, Leslie knew, thanks to her Internet crash course, but they were protective of them. They'd never have sent this one out among the feds. Come to think of it, she wouldn't have left the girl alone, either.
"So why isn't your Charles here, then?" He'd abandoned her to the wolves. It made her want to blister his hide - and she hadn't even met him. What if it had been the werewolf awaiting the girl here rather than an FBI agent?
Leslie received a slow grin that took in her private censure and found it amusing. "He lost a bet and had to bring coffee for everyone. He's not happy about it, either. I probably shouldn't enjoy it so much, but sometimes I take great pleasure in sending a man off in a snit; don't you?"
She surprised a laugh out of Leslie. "Don't I just," she agreed before taking a wary breath. This one was getting to her - she never laughed while she was working. She reassessed the other woman. She looked like a teenager dressed in a tailor-made, gray pin-striped suit-dress that somehow appeared to be a costume she was wearing rather than real clothing.
"I bet," Leslie said, testing an idea, "that dangerous men stumble all over themselves to make sure you don't stub your toe."
She knew she was right when, instead of looking flustered, the woman just smiled archly. "And I make sure they apologize when they bump into each other doing it."
"Ha," Leslie said triumphantly. "I thought even Cantrip had more sense than to toss a tender morsel to the wolves. I'm Special Agent Leslie Fisher, FBI Violent Crimes Unit."
"I'm Anna Smith, today." The girl gave her a rueful smile. "Not Cantrip. One of the wolves, I'm afraid. And even worse, Smith isn't my real name. I told them it was a silly one, but Charles said it was better to be obvious about it or you or Homeland Security would find some poor Charles and Anna Washington, Adams, or Jefferson to harass."
THE FBI AGENT wasn't exactly what Anna had expected, but she wasn't different, either. Smart, well dressed, confident - that, the TV shows, the movies, had gotten right. Anna had become very good at judging people since she'd been Changed. Body language, scent, those didn't lie. She'd surprised the agent with her revelation, but not frightened her, which boded well for their chances of working together.
The fine lines around bitter-chocolate eyes deepened, and for a moment Special Agent Leslie Fisher looked exactly as dominant as she was. She might be in her mid-forties, but the well-cut suit jacket she wore covered muscle.
Her eyes said she was tough. Tough like a junkyard dog - and not just physically. If she were a wolf - and male - she'd be second or third in a pack, Anna judged. Not Alpha, she didn't have the underlying aggressive territoriality that pushed dominant to the head of the pack, but near that. How many people had the FBI agent fooled with that cool exterior?
The frown in Special Agent Fisher's eyes extended to her full lips as she said, "We are having this meeting here, with as few people as possible, because the man who set it up said it wouldn't be smart to upset the werewolf." She lifted a well-groomed eyebrow. "You don't look easily upset."
Scolded. Anna fought not to grin in satisfaction. Now. How to tell her what she needed to know without scaring her. "They're not worried about upsetting me. It's my husband who's the problem werewolf."
The other woman frowned. "So there is another werewolf coming here. Your husband?" She sounded faintly incredulous. That Anna was married? That her spouse was a werewolf? That there were two of them? If Fisher knew werewolves well, she'd be most incredulous that Charles had left her alone.
Anna was a bit incredulous about that herself - and it gave her a smidgen of hope that Bran was on the right track with this business. She hadn't been as certain as he and Asil that it would be good for Charles to hunt down a serial killer rather than hunt down misbehaving wolves, but Charles had agreed and so it was done.
"Yes." Anna nodded. "I'm a werewolf. I'm married. And my husband is a werewolf, too."
Fisher's frown deepened. "The word is that whoever we're supposed to meet is up the line from Hauptman, who's the Alpha of a full pack of wolves."
"Is that what the word is?" murmured Anna as she wondered who'd let the word out and if Bran knew about it - or if he'd engineered it. If she kept wondering about how much of her life Bran engineered, she'd end up in a funny farm knitting caps for ducks.
"You are barely old enough to be out on your own and your husband is higher up in the werewolf power structure than Hauptman," said Agent Fisher. "What did they do? Make you marry him when you were twelve?"
Anna blinked at her. In her little world built of religiously watched TV shows and movies, FBI agents would never have said something that personal to a person they had just met. They'd work up to it gradually - or insinuate something carefully. By the suddenly appalled look on Agent Fisher's face, it was the same in her little world.
An Omega makes everyone a bit more protective, Asil had told her a while ago. Anna hadn't really connected it to the human world.
Anna grinned and hid her sympathy. "No. They didn't tie up poor, weak, innocent, little old me and force me to marry him." She considered it. "He's not weak or innocent, but if I'd had to, I might have tied him up and forced him to marry me. Thankfully, it wasn't necessary."
The other woman had recovered herself. "You said that he is the reason we couldn't bring in more people?"
"Right," Anna said. "But if you wait a moment, I'd rather just explain it once, and I think that - "
She let her voice linger while she timed the footsteps (not Charles's) that she heard outside the conference room door. It might have been some hotel guest wandering the halls, but there were two men walking with purposeful speed that was just a little too fast to be comfortable, the way men who are competing with each other sometimes do.
The door popped open. Leslie's attention diverted from listening to Anna to watching the new additions to the room. She took a couple of steps forward until she stood between Anna and the newcomers, putting Anna at her back. Which made Anna and the FBI agent a team facing the pair of Cantrip people - at least, that was who Anna assumed they were because there were two of them. Two Cantrip, two FBI, and one Homeland Security was what Charles had told her. She found it more than a little interesting that the FBI agent saw them as opponents - and Anna as an ally.
"Jim. So they're letting you out with the big boys now?" Leslie's tone was dry. Anna thought that the two men who came in took that as an amiable comment, one of those digs friends might make. But watching the other woman's body language carefully told Anna that Leslie was very guarded, more so than she'd been around Anna after the first few minutes.
"Leslie!" the younger man exclaimed with a real smile. His body language said he liked the FBI agent, whatever she thought of him. "Special Agent Fisher," he corrected himself. "Good to see you. I am one of the big boys and have been for a long time. This is Dr. Steve Singh."
Leslie reached out and shook the hands that were offered her. "And what does Homeland Security want with a serial killer? That's for the local cops. The only reason this one is FBI is because our killer's been traveling across state lines for years."
Homeland Security. There was supposed to be only one person from Homeland Security. Anna frowned. Charles wasn't going to be happy about that. He didn't like surprises. He probably had a file on everyone who was coming to this shindig.
Singh didn't say anything, just studied the FBI agent's face before moving on to Anna's. She stared back at him, just to see what he'd do. He frowned at her and tried to get her to look away, but even Bran couldn't do that if she didn't allow it, and he was nowhere near as dominant as Bran - or even Agent Fisher, for that matter. But Anna dropped her eyes anyway. There was no sense starting a fight until it was important.
"We heard that there was going to be someone higher up speaking for the werewolves on this," answered Jim Nolastname, apparently oblivious to the staring contest his partner had engaged in with Anna. "We decided that it would be a good idea if we knew who he was and what he had to say."
Only a subtle tightening in the FBI agent's back told Anna that the unconscious arrogance in the man's voice had ticked her off.
"And why are there two of you?" Fisher asked. "The request was for no more than five people. Two of us, two from Cantrip, and one of you."
The FBI agent had known why Homeland Security was checking out the werewolf, Anna thought. She hadn't been surprised that there were two of them - but she was making a point of it for Anna's sake. By not introducing Anna first, she was leading them to think Anna was the other FBI agent and letting them spill their agenda in front of the enemy.
"We leaned on Cantrip a little," said Jim. "They owed us."
It shouldn't really matter that Fisher had made this an us-against-them kind of thing. They were all on the same side in the end - catching the villain. It might have been something as simple as departmental rivalry: FBI versus Homeland Security. Anna narrowed her eyes and considered it. It might have been a little of that - and Fisher definitely didn't like Jim. But Anna thought it was a show aimed at her. Anna was patient; she'd see what the FBI agent wanted from her. In the meantime, she needed to get a handle on the other people in the room.
Jim had a freshness about him that gave him some charm. Anna didn't miss the brains behind the shiny front. Dr. Singh, the older man, was reserved in a manner that reminded her of some of the Alpha wolves she'd met over the past few years.
He was one of the ones who sat in the back and watched their packs, letting matters work out as they would until they veered too far from where he wished. Then he'd pounce with a brutal efficiency that meant he wouldn't have to move again for a while. He'd noticed what Fisher had done, all right, but his relaxed shoulders told Anna that he hadn't yet realized just who and what Anna was.
The door opened abruptly and another man came in. Anna started a little. She wasn't as good at multitasking as she could have been. If she'd been paying attention, she would have heard him approach, but she'd been engrossed in the power play and had missed the sound of his footsteps.
Slight and almost frail in appearance, the newcomer glanced at them all with cool gray eyes. His suit was off the rack and looked a little wrinkled, but its blue gray color matched his eyes and complemented the fringe of trimmed dark hair that narrowly circled the top of his head.
His eyes looked older than his body, and if he was more than five feet tall, it wasn't by much. The paleness of his skin added to the effect, but he moved easily, like a runner.
He frowned at the two men. "Homeland," he said in a neutral tone, then looked at Leslie. "You must be Special Agent Fisher. I'm Special Agent Craig Goldstein. Introduce me, please."
She did, starting with the Homeland Security team. Jim Nolastname, Anna discovered, was Jim Pierce.
"And this," said Agent Fisher with only a hint of mischief, "is Anna Smith, our werewolf consultant. Anna, this is Special Agent Craig Goldstein. He's our expert on this case."
Goldstein looked...stunned, which she was pretty sure was an unusual happening. The Homeland Security duo looked just as surprised. Singh, recovering first, gave Fisher a sharp look.
Anna smiled warmly and reached out to shake the hand that Goldstein had automatically extended at the start of the introductions.
"Hello, Special Agent Goldstein," she said earnestly. "I know that I'm not what you were planning on, but I'll do my best. We're waiting on the Cantrip people and my husband, who has gone out to get coffee."
Charles would be here soon. She'd hoped to wait until the Cantrip people came, but she'd have to take what she could get. If Charles got here before she explained the rules, it might be disastrous.
Anna glanced at them all and blew out a breath. "Listen, there isn't much time. We'll help you. But there are some things you should know. We all need to be sitting down when my husband arrives. Don't look him in the eye. If you do, please, blink or look away if he meets your gaze. Don't touch me, not even casually. I'm going to sit with an empty chair between me and anyone else." Bran had cautioned her before they'd left. In Aspen Creek, in the pack, Charles would be confident in her safety. That could change in a moment out of his territory. Anna was pretty sure he'd be fine. It wasn't Brother Wolf who was in trouble; it was Charles. But she'd promised Bran she'd do what she could to avoid trouble.
Goldstein's face tightened, but it was Singh who asked, "Is he dangerous?"
Anna snorted. "Of course he is. I'm dangerous and I'd bet that you're pretty dangerous, too. This isn't about who is the most dangerous; it's about being smart and keeping everything low-key."
"Are you playing good cop, bad cop with us?" asked Jim Pierce.
"Dominant werewolves don't mix well with others," Anna told them. "If you play my game, we'll all be a little happier." She gave Singh, who looked the least happy, a stern look. "If you were meeting a Chinese foreign minster, wouldn't you listen to someone giving you a few pointers in Chinese manners? Think of it like that."