“She says with all the enthusiasm of a teacher grading a math quiz …”
“A-plus. Now let’s move go. Before someone else comes along.”
We reached the office safely. The door was locked, but Tristan hadn’t trigger-spelled it.
Marsten gave the handle a sharp twist, and it snapped open.
“I’ll find my purse,” I said as we hurried inside. “You pull the body out.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I flipped on the light and looked around. No obvious sign of my purse. It must have fallen—
“It’s gone,” Marsten said.
“No, I’m sure it just fell—” I glanced up to see him leaning over the desk. “You meant the body?”
A grim nod, and he pulled the desk farther from the wall. “Find your purse. I’ll find the body.”
He leapt onto the desk, hopped into the gap behind it, bent, and disappeared. I resumed my purse search. I looked under the desk, beside it, between the desk and filing cabinet, under a stack of papers—every place my purse could have fallen and a few it couldn’t.
Marsten popped back over the desk, started to crouch, and then noticed me watching.
“What?” I said when he paused.
“I have to sniff the floor.”
“Then sniff the floor.”
Again he paused, as if trying to think of a dignified way to do it. I sighed and turned my back to give him privacy.
A moment later he said, “Nothing. They must’ve carried him out.”
“Meaning you can’t pick up the trail. Not of the museum guard, at least. But what about Tristan’s guard?”
“Questionable. I can try, but it’s difficult to do in human form.”
He motioned for me to keep looking for my purse as he pitched in, checking the other side of the room.
“I’ll still try tracking,” he said as we searched. “I know a few tricks.”
“Ah, so you did get the user’s manual.”
“Most werewolves do.”
“Right. Most of you are hereditary. So your father …?”
“Raised me and taught me everything I needed to know about following a scent.” A quick smile. “Although there was usually a diamond or two at the other end.”
“Your father raised you to be a thief?”
The smile vanished. “My father raised me to have a career suitable for a non-Pack werewolf who can’t stay in one place without being rousted by the Pack or his fellow ‘mutts.’”
“The Pack doesn’t let—?”
He cut me off with a wave. “It’s not like that anymore. Not entirely. But in my father’s day, a nomadic life was a must, and thieving skills helped.”
“Tell you what, then. You don’t slam my mom for setting me up on blind dates, and I won’t slam your dad for teaching you to steal.”
The smile returned. “Fair enough. No jabs against well-meaning—if occasionally misguided—parents. As for your purse …”
“It’s gone, isn’t it? Tristan or his guard found it when they were cleaning up.”
“Most likely. As for the body, though—”
“Billy?”
The voice echoed down the hall. We both froze and turned toward the closed door.
“Billy? You down here?” Then, softer, “Damn kid.”
It was another security guard, looking for his dead colleague. The only place to hide was the same spot the body had been, behind that desk wedged between the wall and the filing cabinet. Marsten waved for me to get behind the desk, and we both climbed onto it just as the door opened.
A flashlight beam pinged off our backs. Marsten slipped his arm around me in an awkward, interrupted embrace. We looked over our shoulders to see the same older security guard who’d “helped” me open the janitor’s closet. He speared Marsten with a glower.
“Get lost on your way to the bathroom again, sir?” he said. “This is bigger than that storage closet, but I’m sure the young lady would be more comfortable in a hotel. There are two right down the road.”
“Uh, oh, yes, of course,” Marsten stammered. “We weren’t—that is to say, we wanted to look around the museum, see the sights.”
“Oh, I know what sights you wanted to see, sir.” He waved us off the desk. “You’re a long way from the dinosaur exhibits.”
We complied, getting off the desk and pretending to straighten up. The guard continued to glare at Marsten, as if disgusted that a man wealthy enough to afford tickets to this gala couldn’t spring for a bed.
“There’s a Holiday Inn three doors down,” he said as we walked past. “But I’m sure the lady would prefer the Embassy, which is—”
One of Tristan’s guards strode in. He didn’t notice the security guard against the front wall. His attention—and his gun—were on us. The security guard stepped up behind him, surprisingly silent for a man of his size.
“I thought I heard voices,” Tristan’s man said to us. “Good thing I came back. Tristan will—”
The security guard pressed the barrel of his gun between the younger man’s shoulder blades.
“Didn’t see me, huh?” the old guard chortled as the other man stiffened. “A word of advice, boy? Always check the room before you walk into it. Now, lower that gun or—”
The younger man spun, his gun flying up. The security guard’s eyes widened and he froze, whatever ex-cop reflexes he had buried under years of chasing kids off dinosaur displays and foiling amateur thieves. Marsten threw himself at Tristan’s man. I wish I could say I did the same. God, how I wish I could. But the truth is that I just stood there, as shocked into impotence as the old guard.
Tristan’s guard fired.
Marsten hit him in the side, knocking him away even as the silencer’s pffttt still hung in the air, even as the museum guard was still falling, bloody hole through his chest, even as I reeled backward from the chaos explosion.
I hit the floor and, for a moment, could only lie there, system shocked by the high-voltage jolt. If there was any pleasure in that shock, I didn’t feel it. I lay there, gasping, my mind blank. Then another silenced shot snapped me from my shock, and I leapt up. Marsten was crouched over Tristan’s guard, who lay in a heap, neck twisted, eyes open and staring.
“The shot,” I said. “Did he hit—?”
Marsten waved to a bullet hole in the wall but didn’t speak, just stayed crouched with his back to me, his breath coming in sharp pants.
I ran to the old security guard. Even as my fingers went to his neck, I knew he was dead. The bloody spot on his breast now covered half his shirt.
As I looked down at the man, I remembered him sneaking up behind Tristan’s guard, his eyes dancing as he imagined himself retelling the story, how he’d single-handedly apprehended an armed man. I heard his “See, I’ve still got it” chortle as he put his gun to the young man’s back. I rubbed my arms, trying to chase away the chill, unable to pull my gaze from his body.
My first murder. My first witness to death.
What had Marsten said when I’d asked if he thought me a fool? Naive, probably, but not a fool. Probably naive? Could I have been any more naive? I’d pulled a gun on a werewolf thief. I was lucky Marsten hadn’t snapped my neck.
“I need to hide the bodies,” he said, his voice soft. “You can wait in the next room if you’d like.”
“No, I’ll help clean—” I took a deep breath. “I’ll help clean up.”
That’s what I did. Cleaned the crime scene as he hid the corpses. When I realized—really realized—what I was doing, my blood went cold.