Deadlocked (30 page)

“You got a police record?” I asked the plump girl.

Plump gave me a sly look. She had straight brown hair that fell to her shoulders. Her bangs were almost in her eyes. She’d stuffed herself into a striped tube top and blue jeans. She was wearing flip-flops. “I got a juvenile record,” she said proudly. “I set my house on fire. My mama got out just in time. My daddy and the boys didn’t.”

And I got what her daddy had been doing to her, just a single line of memory from her, and I was almost glad he hadn’t made it out. But the brothers? Little boys? I didn’t think she was too happy her mom had made it out, either.

“So Alcide wouldn’t admit any of you?”

“No,” said Van. “But when there’s a changeover, and the pack has a new leader, we’ll be in. We’ll have security.”

“What’s going to happen to Alcide?”

“We’re gonna overthrow his ass,” said Airman.

“He’s a good man,” I said quietly.

“He’s a douche,” said Plump.

During this charming conversation the woman in the front seat had not spoken, and though I couldn’t read her thoughts, I could read the ambiguity and regret that were making it hard for her to sit still. I sensed she was on the cusp of a decision, and I feared to say something that would tip her over to the wrong side.

“So where are you taking me?” I said, and Van put his arm around me.

“Me and Johnny might appreciate a little alone time with you,” Van said, his free hand lodging itself under my skirt. “You looking so fine and all.”

“I wonder what
you
were in jail for,” I said. “Gee, let me guess.”

The woman looked back at me, and our eyes met. “You going to put up with that?” she asked Plump. Thus goaded, Plump grabbed Van’s wrist and pulled his hand away from my crotch.

“You said you wouldn’t do this again,” she growled, and I mean growled. “I’m your woman now. No more.”

“Course you’re mine, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to cleanse my palate with a little country-fried steak,” Van said.

“Charming,” I said, which was unfortunate, because Van punched me and I saw bright lights for a second. You don’t want to get hit by a werewolf. Really.

I had to keep from gagging from the pain, but I resolved that if I threw up I was going to do it all over Van.

He grabbed my hand and squeezed it, squeezed it until I could feel the bones rubbing together. This time, I had to cry out, and he liked that. I could feel the pleasure radiating out from him.

Help,
I thought.
Can anyone hear me?

No answer. I wondered where Mr. Cataliades was. I wondered where his great-great-grandson, whom I’d always called Barry Bellboy, was. Too far away in Texas to hear my mental voice …

I wondered if I’d see tomorrow. I had planned on it being a happy day for me, a special day.

At least Van seemed to be taking Plump’s hostility seriously now, and he quit hurting me. Dealing out pain to me excited her jealousy just as much as him feeling me up. Unhealthy. Not that it was my problem, not that it would make any difference after we got wherever we were going. I’d picked up on a stray thought or two. I was beginning to get the bigger picture. It had a big skull and crossbones right in the middle.

The traffic was fairly heavy, but I knew what would happen to me if I signaled another car. I knew, too, what would happen to the people in that car. Not a single police car in the stream of traffic … not a one. We were on the interstate going east, back toward Bon Temps. There were a dozen exits, and when we left the interstate, none of them would have this much traffic. Once we got into the woods, I’d be doomed.

Well, I had to do
something
.

Just as a motorcycle began passing the car, I attacked Van. He’d been thinking about something entirely different, something involving the plump girl, so my sudden twist and lunge was a huge shock. I tried to grasp his neck, but my fingers wouldn’t meet around it, and I had a hank of his hair bundled into my grip. He yelled and his hands shot up to grip mine. I dug my thumbs in ferociously, and Airman turned to glance back. Glass shattered and as I closed my eyes I saw a fine mist of red. Someone had shot Airman in the shoulder.

We were at a level spot on the interstate, thank God. As we abruptly swerved off the pavement, the quiet woman in the front seat reached over and switched the car off.
Remarkable presence of mind,
I thought in a daze, and we began gliding to a stop. Plump was screaming, Van was beating the shit out of me, and there was blood all over everything. The smell triggered the wolf in them, and they began to change. If I didn’t get out of the car, I was going to get bitten, and then I’d qualify to be a pack member myself.

As I struggled with Van in a vain attempt to reach the door handle, that door flew open and a black-gloved hand reached in to grab mine. I seized it like a drowning man seizes a rope, and just like a rope, that hand hauled me out of deep trouble. I barely managed to grab my bag with my free hand.

“Let’s get out of here,” Mustapha said, and I jumped on the back of his Harley behind him, my bag slung over my shoulder and mashed between us to keep it secure. Though I was still trying to grasp what had just happened, my wiser self was telling me to think later, get the hell out of there now. Mustapha lost no time. Just as we zipped across the grassy median to head back into Shreveport, I watched a car pull up to offer help to the apparent wreck.

“No, they’ll get hurt!” I yelled.

“It’s Long Tooth wolves. You stay on.” And off we took. After that, I concentrated on clinging to Mustapha as we rocketed through the night. After my initial gush of relief, it was frustrating not to be able to ask any of the fifty questions racing through my mind. I wasn’t totally surprised when we pulled up in the circular driveway in front of Alcide’s house. I had to exert a conscious effort to unclench my muscles so I could dismount. Mustapha took off his helmet and gave me a thorough look. I nodded to let him know I was okay. My hand would hurt from the squeeze Van had given it, and I was covered with dots of blood, but it wasn’t mine. I looked down at my watch. Bill had had time to deposit Colton at the airport, but he should be driving here. The whole thing had happened that quickly.

“What you doing wearing prostitute clothes?” Mustapha asked severely, and hustled me over to the front door.

Alcide opened the door himself, and if he was bowled over with surprise, he did a good job of hiding it.

“Damn, Sookie, whose blood?” he said, and waved us in.

“Rogue werewolf,” I said. I reeked.

“No cars coming, so I had to take action then,” Mustapha explained. “I shot Laidlaw. He was driving. The pack’s taking care of the others.”

“Tell me,” Alcide said, bending down to look me in the eyes. He nodded, satisfied with what he saw. I opened my mouth. “In as few words as possible,” he added.

Apparently, time was of the essence.

“Palomino found where Felipe was keeping a guy hostage, a guy we needed to rescue. Discreetly. I kind of resemble her, so to leave her cover intact, I pretended to be her wearing this
waitress outfit
.” I glared at Mustapha.
“That the casinos picked out,”
I added, to make myself clear. Alcide gave me a little shake to speed me up.

“Okay! So Bill and I came out with the hostage and we were gonna drive off, when this group of four Weres comes up, and the leader, Van—whom I’d seen here, by the way, so I thought he was okay—Van tells us you sent them to get me and I need to come with them, because they’ve found Warren’s body and they want me to verify that it’s really Warren.”

Alcide turned his back and shook his head from side to side. Mustapha looked down at the floor, his face a map of complex emotions.

“So Bill headed to the—away, with the hostage, and I got in the car with Van and them, and I realized pretty quick that they were rogues because you wouldn’t have ’em. That Van …” And then I just didn’t want to talk about him anymore.

“He hit you, huh?” Alcide said, turning back to eye my face. There was a moment of fraught silence. “He rape you?”

“Didn’t have time,” I said, glad to get that out of the way. “I don’t know where they were taking me, but Mustapha shot the driver and got me out of the car, and here I am. So. Thank you, Mustapha.”

He bobbed his head, still involved in his own thoughts, his own worry for his friend.

“Was there a woman with them, kind of quiet, about thirty?”

“Pixie haircut?”

Both the men looked blank. “Real short hair, light brown, tall woman?”

Alcide nodded vigorously. “Yes, that’s her! She okay?”

“Yeah. She was sitting in the passenger front. Who is she?”

“She’s my undercover,” Alcide said.

“You have undercover agents?”

“Yeah, of course. Her name’s Kandace. Kandace Moffett.”

“Can you please explain all this?” I hated to sound stupid. Telepaths get used to knowing stuff, I guess.

“I’ll give you the
Reader’s Digest
version,” he said, to my surprise. “But come in the bathroom and wash yourself off while I fill you in. Mustapha, man, I owe you.”

“I know,” Mustapha said. “Just help me find Warren. That’s all I need.”

Alcide hustled me into a bathroom right off the entrance hall. It was all granite countertops and pure white towels, and I felt like the nastiest thing the cat had ever drug in. Alcide didn’t necessarily mind the blood, because that’s not a Were hang-up, but I sure did. I turned on the shower and stepped under it after shucking my shoes, which were the cleanest things I was wearing. When Alcide’s back was turned, I stepped out of the waitress outfit and let it fall to the floor of the shower. I grabbed a washcloth, soaped it up, and began scrubbing. Alcide resolutely kept his eyes turned away.

“Start talking,” I reminded him, and he did.

“After I talked to you about Jannalynn, I began to think about her pretty seriously,” he said. “The more I took her recent actions apart, the more I thought I should look deeper. I figured out that Jannalynn was not telling me the truth about a few things. I wondered if maybe she was skimming off the top at Hair of the Dog.” He shrugged. “Sometimes when she was supposed to be around, she was out of touch. I thought maybe her romance with Sam was going over the top, but when she’d tell me one thing about them, you didn’t seem to know anything about it. And Sam’s your partner, so you’d know, I figured.”

So he’d called me to talk about Sam and Jannalynn’s “wedding plans,” at least in part to hear my reaction; of course, I’d been completely shocked.

“I saw her one time when she didn’t see me. She was at a bar way across town, instead of at the Hair. And she was with the rogues I had turned down. I knew she was planning something. I’d had them all over at social evenings at the house, talked to ’em. The only one worth anything was Kandace, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to be in a pack. Didn’t like the power struggles. I got to respect that, but I thought she’d be an asset.”

I thought maybe he’d also liked Kandace’s assets, but that was his business.

“So I called up Kandace, and I asked her to meet me alone. Without me even bringing it up, she volunteered to tell me what was going on, because it troubled her.”

Alcide clearly wanted me to give Kandace a virtual pat on the back, so I said, “She must be a good person.”

He smiled, gratified. “Kandace said Jannalynn wanted to challenge me, defeat me, but first she wanted to get a good toehold in the pack by socking away some money, enlisting pack members to her side, getting some of her own muscle. Her proposal to these rogues was that they could come into the pack if they’d do her bidding; then when she beat me, she’d let them have full benefits.”

I wondered if that included health and dental, but I wasn’t going to go down a side path while he was still in a sharing mood. I hung up the washcloth and poured a dollop of shampoo into my hands. I began to scrub my scalp and hair. “Go on,” I said, by way of encouragement.

“So,” he said. “I got a guy she didn’t know to follow Jannalynn. He saw her meeting with your buddy Claude. There’s just no good reason for that.”

I stopped rinsing the shampoo from my hair. “What … why? Why was she meeting with Claude, of all people?”

“I have no idea,” Alcide said.

“So all we have to do is find Jannalynn and ask her a lot of questions,” I said. “And find Warren. And hope that Claude comes back from Faery, so I can question him. And get Felipe and his vamps to leave us alone, here in Shreveport. And get that Freyda out of here.”

Alcide looked at me, wondered whether to speak, and decided on full disclosure. “Is it true, Sookie? Palomino told Roy that Eric’s engaged to a vampire from Oklahoma?”

“I can’t talk about it,” I said. “Or I’ll get real upset, Alcide, and you just don’t want that tonight. I owe Palomino a solid favor for getting us in to rescue … a guy, but she shouldn’t be telling vampire business around town.”

“You owe her more of a solid than you know,” he said. “She saw you being grabbed, and she called me. Right before Bill did. That was smart, Sook, getting him to call. It was all I could do to get him to continue on his way and check back in later. I promised him I’d keep you safe.”

“So you called Mustapha? You’ve known where he was all along?”

“No, but after I got your phone messages, I called him. As you’d advised, when Jannalynn wasn’t around. He’d run down his last lead on Warren, and he had to talk to someone. I still don’t know where he’s been hiding.”

“But it’s thanks to you that he found me in time.”

“Both our efforts and some guessing, too. He knows those rogues. He figured they’d head back to their house outside Fillmore. Van does bad stuff to women, and he’d want to have some time with you before he handed you over to Jannalynn. The follow-up car was his idea, too.”

“Oh my God.” I felt sick, wondered if I was going to throw up. No. I got hold of myself.

After a little rinsing, I was as clean as I was going to get. Alcide left the bathroom so I could change into my more modest shorts and T-shirt. It was really interesting how much difference a few covered inches could make in your self-respect. Now that I felt more like myself, I could begin to think some more.