Skin Trade

enough money?”

“The money was good,” he said, his hands still careful on the wheel, his face still blank and unreadable. You’d never know at a glance that we were talking about anything remotely interesting. It was the rest of us who were showing the interest.

“Then why didn’t you take the contract?” I asked.

He gave me the smallest glance as he slid the truck around the corner, almost on two wheels. We all had to grab parts of the car, though Olaf and Bernardo had to grab harder without seatbelts to help them. We barreled after the other police cars. They’d hit lights, but were still siren free.

“You know why,” he said.

I started to say, No I don’t, and then I stopped. I got my grip on the dashboard and the seat tighter and thought about it. Finally, I said, “You were afraid that Marmee Noir would kill you. You were afraid that this one would finally be too tough.”

He said nothing, which was all the yes I would probably get.

Olaf said, “But all the years I have known you, Edward, you have sought to test yourself against the biggest and baddest monsters. You seek to be tested. This would have been the ultimate test.”

“Probably,” he said, in a low, careful voice.

“I never thought I’d live to see it,” Bernardo said. “The great Edward’s nerve finally fails.”

Olaf and I both glared at him, but it was the big guy who said, “His nerve did not fail him.”

“Then what?” Bernardo said.

“He didn’t want to chance dying on Donna and the kids,” I said.

“What?” Bernardo said.

“They make you fearful,” Olaf said, quietly.

“I said his nerve had failed, and you yelled at me,” Bernardo protested.

Olaf gave him the full weight of that flat, dark gaze. Bernardo wiggled a little in his seat, as if he fought not to back off from the inches-away gaze, but he held his ground. Point for him.

“Edward’s nerve will never fail him. But you can still be afraid of something.”

Bernardo looked to me. “Did that make sense to you?”

I thought about it, let it roll around in my head. “Yeah, actually it did.”

“Explain it to me, then.”

“If Marmee Noir comes here and attacks us, then Edward will fight. He won’t run away. He won’t give up. He’ll fight, even if it means dying. But he’s chosen not to hunt down the biggest and baddest anymore because they’re more likely to kill him, and he doesn’t want to leave his family behind. He’s stopped courting death, but if it comes looking for him, he’ll fight.”

“If you fear nothing,” Olaf said, “then you are not brave; you are merely too foolish to be afraid.”

Bernardo and I looked at the big man. Even Edward took enough time to glance back at him. “What scares you, big guy?” Bernardo asked.

Olaf shook his head. “Fears are not meant to be shared; they are meant to be conquered.”

Part of me wanted to know what could scare one of the scariest men I’d ever met. Part of me didn’t want to know at all. I was afraid it would either be another nightmare for me, too, or make me feel sorry for Olaf. I couldn’t afford to feel sorry for him. Pity will make you hesitate, and one day I would need to not hesitate with him. A lot of serial killers have pitiful childhoods, hideous stories where they were the victims-most of them are even true. But none of it matters. It does not matter how horrible their childhoods were, or whether they were victims themselves. It does not matter when you are at their mercy, because one thing that all the serials have in common is that for their victims, there is no mercy.

When you forget that, they kill you.

42

EDWARD SPILLED OUT into the line of flashing police vehicles to find that the show was almost over. The second weretiger was on her knees in the yard with guns pointed at her, and Hooper and his men were piling on top of her. I got only a glimpse of white hair, cut short, and a flash of tiger-blue eyes before they bundled her into the truck.

“You start without us?” Edward called out to Hooper, in his best good-ol’-boy Ted voice. Good that he had a nice voice because I was ready to be pissed.

Hooper answered as they closed the doors on the truck. “She was kneeling in the yard, waiting for us.”

“Shit,” I said.

He looked at me. “Why shit? This was easy and quick.”

“They know, Hooper. The other tigers know.”

I watched his face get it. “Our bad guy may run.”

I nodded.

“Alert your surveillance on them,” Edward said.

“What surveillance?” I asked.

Edward and Hooper got a glance between them, and then Hooper was on his radio. Edward explained, “The moment we put their name in the hat, there was surveillance on them. It’s standard ops.”

“Fuck, no wonder they know.”

Edward shrugged. “It’s a way to follow them if they run.”

“It’s a way to spook them and get them to run. And no one mentioned this to me because…?”

“Hooper either didn’t want you to know, or figured you’d realize it was standard ops.”

I took a deep breath in and let it out slow, or tried to. “Fuck standard ops, the idea was surprise.”

It was Shaw who came up. “We don’t have to pass everything by you, Marshal. If a dangerous suspect runs, we want to know where.”

“You don’t get it,” I said. “These guys can hear your blood in your veins. They can smell you, though admittedly a tiger’s sense of smell is a lot less than, say, a wolf’s, but still, they will know the cops are out there.”

“My men are good at their jobs, Blake.”

“Shaw, it’s not about being good. It’s about being human and hunting things that aren’t human. Don’t you get that yet?”

“They’ll do their jobs,” he said, and gave me those persistently unfriendly eyes.

“Yeah, I know they will. I just hope that it doesn’t get them killed.”

I don’t know what Shaw would have said to that, because Hooper came back. “We’ve got radio confirmation on three of the other houses, but no answer on one.”

“Shit,” Shaw said.

I kept my mouth shut; an I told you so wouldn’t go over well.

Shaw glared at me, almost as if he’d heard me thinking too hard. “Radios break, Blake. It doesn’t have to be bad.”

Edward touched my arm lightly. I understood the gesture. I kept my voice even. “You’re a cop, Shaw; you know always to assume the worst. Then if it’s not true, great, but if it is, you have a plan.”

“Officers are already on the way to check on the men,” Hooper said.

“Take us there, Hooper,” I said.

“I think my men can take it from here,” Shaw said.

“This is a preternatural case,” I said, “we don’t need your permission to be here.”

Officers came out of the mob surrounding us, as if Shaw had already tapped them for the duty. He probably had. They were almost all in uniform, except for Ed Morgan. He nodded at me, smiling. It made the little crinkles at his eyes look pleasant and smiley, too. I wondered if the eyes behind the glasses were actually smiling, or if his face just went through the motions?

“Morgan here is chief of detectives at homicide,” Bernardo said, smiling. His face looked just as pleasant as Morgan’s had a moment ago. The announcement of his real title made the chief detective’s smile falter a little