Forty-six
“Whoa!”
“Edward—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,
whoa!” Edward had more than jumped out of his seat. He had rocketed
out of the damned thing. Adrenaline was a wonderful
thing.
He’d jumped up and
run over and stood in front of Rachael. “She didn’t do
it!”
“We
know.”
“So just pack up your
arresting paperwork and back off, Beriberi!”
“Oh, don’t tell me
that stupid nickname’s gonna stick now.”
“Focus, please!
Someone’s out to make Rachael look bad. Like they even could, I mean, look at
the woman. They don’t come much hotter than this, right?” He
gestured to her. She hadn’t moved from her seat, just shifted her
weight so she could tip her head back and look straight at him.
“That’s what all this has been about, making vampires look bad to
Pack, and Pack look bad to vamps.”
“That was our theory
as well.”
“There’s no way she
went to any of those crime scenes and committed any of those
murders to make those crime scenes. No
way!”
“Edward—”
“Shut up, Rache,” he
muttered. Then, louder, “You guys don’t even know, okay? She’s as
smart as she is hot, but even better, she’s as nice as she is
smart. Do you know how rare it is to find a chick this smokin’ who isn’t also a huge bitch? Huh?
Because it’s pretty fucking rare!”
“Awwww,” the queen
said. Then: “He’s right. We are
rare.”
“She’s not out here
by choice, she got sent here, like for
a job. She was made to yank her entire life out by the roots and
drag it halfway across the country, get it? And she’s such a good
person she didn’t question any of it! So now here she is, and
bodies are piling up, and that’s not her fault and it’s probably
not even you guys’ fault, but here she is anyway, stuck in the
middle of a mess she didn’t make. But she’s here, right? Getting
shit done. She got sent to keep an eye on you guys . . . and you
land her in this kind of trouble? When she could have said
fuck you to all of us and stayed
home?”
He knelt beside her,
took her hand in his—
worry anger fear anger love love love love worry anger
love love love
—and said, “Rache, I
know you’d never do anything like this. These guys aren’t touching
you. Nobody’s laying a finger on you, got it? We’ll get you out of
here and you’ll call your cousin and he’ll fix everything or you’ll
engage your awesome brain and solve the crime.
“But I’m not letting
them put you in a cage for even one nanosecond. I know you guys—the
Pack . . . well, I don’t know the Pack. I only know you. And you
couldn’t stand being in a cage. Not even a dinky holding cell
downtown for a couple of hours. And as long as I’m
here—”
“Encouraging you to
add resisting arrest to your résumé,”
Detective Berry said dryly.
“—nobody’s gonna lock
you away.”
“Edward . .
.”
“I mean it,
Rache.”
“Edward, you’re a
fool.”
“Thanks, I lo—wait.
You aren’t saying the lines I imagined you’d say,” he admitted,
looking flustered.
“You’re a fool and I
love you.”
“Oh. I imagined you
saying something like that, even if you’re not saying it exactly
the way I pictured.”
“I’d like to take you
for my mate. I’d like to bear your cubs.”
He looked at her. He
looked and his eyes got bigger and bigger and she was getting a
little alarmed—would he pass out?—when he turned away from her and
said to the room, “Y’see? She loves me! And I love her! (I’ve just
realized.)” He turned to her. “You knew I loved you before I did.
This is one of those cool werewolf things where you knew something
about me I didn’t know!”
“That isn’t true,
Edward.” She kissed him, a long one full of what they both knew.
“You knew before your body could give me the cues. Otherwise, there
wouldn’t have been anything for me to pick up on.”
He quickly kissed her
back. “I love you.”
“Yes, I
know.”
“Are you really gonna
be smug about this?”
“Sure.”
He laughed, and then
remembered they wanted to arrest his lover—except was she now his
fiancée, maybe?—for multiple murders.
Right. Back to
work.