Tales Of The Sazi 05 - Moon's Fury (34 page)

"Copy that, T-l. Let me know if you need backup or a tow truck.”

"10-4. T-l out." She released the radio button and eased back out of the cab, then checked the radio on her hip to make sure it was on, but the volume was low. Bobby and Tony were waiting on her front porch. Their cars would be hidden from the main road, and she'd made certain to lock the gate to the ranch so nobody could follow.

In a few minutes they were seated at the kitchen table and Bobby was taking his second draw from an ice-cold beer, while Cara waited for water to boil. If Adam was coming back this soon, along with a bunch of other alphas …well, she'd better keep drinking tea. She might be mad at him, but she wasn't stupid. With the way her emotions were swimming today, it was a good thing both Tony and Bobby were mated.

Tony leaned back in his chair and took off the gloves with a frustrated sound. At a glance from Cara, he shrugged. "I
hate
gloves. They're damned hot. Just stay on that side of the table and we'll be fine." He pointed at Bobby with an exasperated look. "You, too. I've had my fill of visions from you this trip.”

Bobby snorted. "Oh, and you becoming a seer is somehow
my
fault?”

"No, you grabbing the salt this morning at the diner is your fault. Just fucking wait until I'm done with it and pass it to you next time. I'm not going to spend every goddamned meal fumbling with my fork through gloves because you can't remember not to touch me. I'm getting tired of living out the kinky shit you do with your wife.”

Cara felt her brows raise and she hid a smile with a cough. Tony shifted his glare to her. "That's how hindsight works …at least for me. I'm
living
the memories with the subject. Whatever powerful events they see and feel, as they remember it." He motioned to Bobby with his chin and continued with sarcasm thick in his voice and his scent full of annoyance. "And when my
partner
spends an hour on the phone with his wife before breakfast, then what's on top of the pile is the last time he had sex with her. You don't want to know what a snake and a dragon consider
fun.”

He reached out and grabbed his beer and took a long swallow while Bobby offered Cara a sheepish smile and a small chuckle. It made Tony shake his head angrily. His voice lowered a few notes and took on a decidedly Italian accent while he stared at the slender black man with deadly calm. "Laugh it up, slither boy. But I swear to God—one more time and I'm gonna shoot something off that'll take a damned long while to grow back.
Capisce?”

Bobby sighed and the dry, sandy scent of embarrassment rose from him enough for Tony to nod.

"Okay, okay. I'll be more careful. Now, how about you tell us about Ziri.”

The tea kettle whistled in the background and Cara stood up. A brief stutter of static made her listen for a second. The Garcias were at it again—he
really
needed to start eating lunch at a restaurant. She shook her head and then looked back over her shoulder as she turned off the stove and reached into the cabinet for a mug. "Go ahead. I'm listening.”

"Okay. Well, first, she's really good at lying through her teeth." That stopped Cara cold. She turned, the kettle poised over the mug.

"What's she lied about? I don't know that anyone's been able to question her with the language barrier.”

Now Tony smiled. "See,
that's
what she's lying about. She speaks fluent Spanish, but she doesn't want to let on. Don't ever play poker with her, because she takes everything in and never shows any sign. Not even a scent. But I wish all of my sessions were as vivid as her memories. I didn't have to use rewind but once or twice. She takes it
all
in.”

Cara opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but Tony must have realized he said something unusual because he added, "Memories are like a video. You have to rewind the tape to get to the right spot. Sometimes you overshoot and have to fast forward. That's why I started to ask Ziri questions about the men and her family before I touched her. It helps get the memories back
close
to the right spot. I was just guessing when I asked if the men lied to her mother about where she was going, but apparently nailed it. I figured scattering in a few Yucatan words Lucas taught me would help, too. Her memories rewound straight back to her village and telling her mother good-bye. Handy, because I'll recognize the place when we go down there.”

Bobby nodded. "John-Boy would be proud of you. You're really starting to pick up on this interviewing stuff.”

This time Tony laughed and the sunny, penetrating scent of oranges rose into the air. "You say that like I had to step
up
to his level or something. I was
always
better at couch sessions." He noticed Cara's curious expression while she scooped tea into the small metal infuser and lowered the chain into the hot water in the mug to steep. "John Corbin is a psychiatrist buddy. He decided to do it for a living, but I got better grades in all our psych classes together. I might add that he's pretty damned envious of me for the hindsight. Think about how many shrinks would kill for the chance to get the real scoop on their patients' problems
."
He snapped his fingers. "Just like that—diagnosis and start to fix it. Ten minutes, tops.”

Cara walked back to the table with her cup, the small silver chain clinking lightly against the glazed ceramic. "Wow. I've never heard much about hindsight. So does that mean you get everything that happened to the person …emotions, sensations, sights, sounds …the works?”

"Depends on the person. Most people don't consciously focus on sounds and scents, so I have to dig around to get the whole picture. But in Ziri's case, you betcha. That girl's a goldmine of information. I'd lay odds she's a musician and artist, because she thinks of voices in keys and even categorizes different shades of yellow. Want to make her day? Give her a print of Van Gogh's
Sunflowers.
She'll be entertained for a week, but you might have to remind her to blink.”

Tony leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table and met each of their eyes in turn. "Okay, just so you know—I probably shouldn't be telling you guys this before I talk to Lucas, but I figure we're leaving here and he's busy up there." He pointed at Cara with purpose. "You need to get a forecast of the storm that's coming, Salinas, because the horizon's an ugly color right now.”

The tale he related made Cara forget to even take the tea ball from the mug. She just continued to dip it into the water, over and over, while Tony told a vivid account of Ziri's terrifying journey to Texas.

"So five girls started out in the van with her?" Bobby was taking notes in that same strange shorthand he'd used at the academy. It never mattered whether he left his exam notes sitting out in plain sight. Nobody could read them anyway. "Were they all from her village?”

Tony shook his head. "No. Only two others—names Oomay and Torgi. That's phonetic, by the way. You'll have to ask Lucas for spellings in that language. She doesn't know what happened to them after they were taken from the shack on the border where they were kept prisoner for about a week, but she has opinions. Ziri figured out pretty quickly that some of the girls were bound for a brothel somewhere, instead of the restaurant jobs they were promised. One of the goons beat one of the girls, a young Mexican girl named Inez, pretty badly for refusing to strip for them after dinner one night. Then they raped her while the others listened.”

"¡Madre de Dios!
The poor thing …no wonder she's been trying to forget." Cara hissed in a breath and finally realized the tea was almost black when Bobby touched her hand and pointed down. She pulled the infuser out of the now lukewarm water and placed it on the folded paper towel next to the cup. The first sip made her grimace enough that she was forced to add some sugar. She couldn't afford to pour it out. There wasn't enough left to waste. Bobby flicked his tongue multiple times and furrowed his brow. Then he picked up the infuser and let some of the remaining liquid drop into his palm. But he motioned with his chin for Tony to continue, just before he licked up the small amount of tea. Cara couldn't decide who was more interesting to watch.

It was Tony tapping his fingers on the table that caught her attention. "Don't count her out so fast. Mentally, she's fine. She's a tough one. No, Ziri's keeping quiet because she discovered they wanted
her
and the other two girls from her village for something different and she doesn't want them to know
she
knows. Even though we're being nice to her, she's not entirely convinced that all of us aren't involved. After all, she's already seen several of the locals— you included—change forms just like her captors did. No, she's just biding her time.”

That made Cara's brow furrow. "Biding her time for
what?
What did they want her for?”

Tony moved his tapping fingers to the side of the silver can and let out a small snarl. "Biding her time to
escape.
We need to get Adam's butt back here because things are going to start to get dicey pretty quick. Someone's apparently started a Sazi raptor factory down here. Ziri and her friends were being saved to become attack victims." He let them process that information for a moment, nodding his head at their shocked expressions. "See what I mean about
hot?
According to what Ziri overheard, after the girls were turned, they were either going to wind up murderous feral birds that would hunt meat for the flock, or—and this is my worry—they were going to be turned over to some sort of…
creature
the men wouldn't even mention without crossing themselves and muttering prayers—
as food."
24

"Officer Mueller?" Adam turned his head while struggling to pull his briefcase from the overhead compartment in the now-empty plane. He saw the slender, dark-haired flight attendant who'd waited on his section. "Don't forget these.”

She held out a paper-wrapped bouquet, the stems dripping water on the carpeted aisle. He tugged and the compartment finally released his case, so he held out his hand for the flowers. "Thanks. I appreciate you putting them in water for me.”

Her smile and raised brows had a knowing hint that seemed right at home with the soft Southern accent. "Well, wilted flowers aren't much of an apology and believe me when I say y'all might want to consider adding chocolates.”

"Yeah? Why's that?" He lifted the case over the backs of the seats and edged sideways down the row.

"You said your lady friend is a sheriff down here?”

He nodded as she stepped back between the seats so he could get by. "Yeah.”

Another smile, this one with real amusement that showed in her scent briefly before disappearing into the vents overhead. "Well, there's a very pretty, and
very
annoyed-looking lady with a badge pacing the concourse in front of this gate. Oh, and she's armed.”

Adam grimaced and clutched the flowers a little tighter. "A hazard of cops dating each other. It's occasionally surprising we survive to breed." It had been a convenient excuse to get the flight attendant to find a vase during the flight, but he was starting to wonder if it wasn't the truth. He certainly had the same butterflies as if he was dating her.

She chuckled and waved her hand toward the exit, obviously wanting to stay carefully behind him as he left the plane. He took a deep breath and walked down the corridor, his weight making the walkway bounce with each step. The phone call last night hadn't gone so well. He really believed that Lucas was going to tell Cara about everything, so he hadn't mentioned it. But when the elder wolf had told him that
as of now
he was the Texas alpha—he'd been expected to take the lead on getting information to Cara. So, now he was in hot water from both sides. Thankfully, though, he didn't have a planeload of pack mates with him. The phone conference with Bobby and Tony last night had changed things. Only Tommy, Jill, and Jenny would be arriving tomorrow because Jill was very close to a breakdown. She needed a change of scenery. The rest of the people would follow in a week, after the moon—when wolves on both sides were a little…calmer and Bobby could make some formula for Cara to replace her tea that would solve her scent problem. So, he and Cara only had a week to integrate two packs
and
find a murderous flock of birds with some larger, more sinister motive than just abducting girls.
Terrific.

He looked inside the paper tube in his hand again, still not sure about this bouquet. His first choice would have been roses, but Reggie had assured him that would only make things worse. He hadn't told his ex-partner what he'd done, just that she was mad. "No, amigo, you need poinsettias if you've screwed up. A chica will throw roses right back in your face." It'd taken hours to find a florist in the cities who had a poinsettia plant this time of year. He'd finally found one in the middle of St. Paul, with just barely enough time left to cut off the blooms and catch his flight.
I
hope Reggie was right.
Cool air filled with scents and sounds hit him in the face when he entered the main airport, the bouquet carefully hidden behind his back. Chief among the smells was fur and anger. It wasn't hard to spot Cara in the crowd. With a frown under mirrored sunglasses, hands on hips, and a stance wide and solid, she could have posed for a statute of the goddess of vengeance in nearly any culture. She was bleeding enough Sazi magic that everyone on the concourse was giving her a wide berth. Probably the reason for the sunglasses. And yep, she was armed.

And even still, the sight of her—dangerous and nearly feral, sent his pulse racing and magic flaring, reaching out to her…and not in a
what a great pack leader she is
sort of way. Maybe Lucas had been right. Shit.

He took a deep breath and walked toward her, skirting the bank of plastic chairs secured to the floor. It wasn't until he was standing just a few feet from her that he realized anger was only one of the emotions going on inside her. He might just have a chance to make this better, after all. He tipped his chin and crinkled the plastic behind his back. "Sheriff Salinas. Good to see you again.”

"Officer Mueller. Wish I could say the same." The words came out sneering and sarcastic, but they didn't match her scent at all. She looked around furtively and lowered her voice. "Who in the
hell
do you think you are, keeping vital information like tha—”

He pulled the bouquet from behind his back and held it out. "I'm sorry, Cara. I screwed up.”

She ignored it for a moment, her jaw clenching, but when he tipped the white paper tube so she could see inside, she faltered. He softened his voice and pushed the bouquet a little closer. "I'm
really
sorry.”

Her hands clenched into fists over and over until she finally reached up and snatched the bouquet out of his hand. The next words were harsh and rushed and the fiery pepper scent was taking on a thick wet quality that made him want to pull her against him and bear the pounding of her fists on his arms and back. But this wasn't the time or the place. "The truck is parked out front. Get your baggage and meet me there.”

It took nearly a half hour for the carousel to cough up the two suitcases he'd had time to pack. He'd loaded everything he could think of, because this might be it. He might never make it back north. David and Mom had promised to pack up his house if that's what winded up happening. While his mother had been very upset by the circumstances, she'd also apparently been briefed by David about Texas …and Cara. She'd sat him down when he stopped by. Patted the couch next to her like she always did when he was a child and she wanted to give needed advice. "Give it a chance, son," she'd said. "Now, you're just like your father don'tcha know …both you boys are. He was a great pack leader, but he could never let himself show anything. Typical for a Minnesotan, I suppose, but your new pack is going to be different. Remember I lived in Texas until I was ten. People are more open down there. They're going to expect you to speak your mind, and the pack members from up here are going to look to you …are going to take their clues on how to respond by how
you
present yourself." She'd smiled then, with both motherly concern and womanly amusement. "And that includes how you interact with the Alpha Female." She'd patted his hand when he frowned. "Just give it a chance.”

Give it a chance.
It sounded simple, but when he arrived at the truck to see Cara's frowning face, it might not be so easy in practice. She opened the driver's door as he approached. "Put 'em in back." Then she got in and closed the door with a sharp pull.

He swung the first case over the bed wall and took a moment to glance into the cab through the back window, his eyes searching for the bouquet. Reggie had told him that how a Latina dealt with the flowers was a good indication how the apology was going. At first, he didn't see them at all, which might mean they wound up in a trash can on the way out of the airport. But then he spotted them propped in the corner of the extended cab. As he arranged his two bags to protect the briefcase, and the laptop inside, he was pleased to see the stems were now safely in water again, in a tall glass vase that still bore the price tag from an airport shop.

As he got into the passenger side, he was very careful to keep his scent neutral and a smile off his face.

"I still don't think this is a good idea." Cara stared at the card key Adam held out toward her.

"We should head back tonight. I'm really worried about Ziri.”

"Just to turn around and come back before dawn?" The burnt metal of his frustration tainted the lush scent of the poinsettias curled in the crook of her arm as he reached forward and picked up her hand to press the credit-card-sized piece of plastic into it. "You said it yourself—there are at least four good reasons to stay over. Look, I'm sorry things haven't been going your way today, but that's the way it happens sometimes.”

She looked down at the richly colored carpet lining the hallway of the exclusive Riverwalk hotel and fought off a shudder. "But
two hundred dollars
a night? We could have stayed at the Motel 6 by the airport for about forty.”

Adam sighed for probably the tenth time since they'd checked in. "Yes, but the airport is the
last
place we need to hit in the morning. It doesn't make much sense to fight our way back to this exact spot during rush hour in the morning, does it? At least the jeweler was embarrassed enough at not finishing the engraving on the necklace you ordered that he's going to come in specially in the morning and bring it to you in the coffee shop next door.”

He touched her hand again for a second and a full blown shudder ran through her. No fighting this one off. His magic was teasing her arms again, and she doubted he even realized he was doing it. But it was getting more disconcerting how much it was affecting her—especially since Bobby had thrown a fit back at her house and had poured the rest of her tea down the garbage disposal. A
stash,
he'd called it. Well, how was she supposed to know some of the herbs Ten Bears used were
narcotics?
But she understood the python agent's concern. If she ever had to do a random drug test—belladonna, peyote, and even,
¡Madre de Dios,
poppy tar …
opium!
No wonder the old seer had taken off in such a rush, especially if he'd had a vision Bobby was coming. And he'd been a career
cop?
At least Bobby had let her explain and said he would see what he could come up with to replace it, using legal substances. But here she was …at a hotel with a man who made her condition a dozen times worse with no way to stave it off. Even with separate rooms, it was going to be a long night.

"Cara…
hello?
Did you hear me?" She started sharply and realized she'd been staring down at the carpet again, not even listening.

"Oh. Uh …no. Sorry.”

He shook his head with a small smile, smelling slightly amused. "I asked what order you wanted to do things in the morning. I was thinking we'd have a quick breakfast downstairs and then go to the coffee shop. Meet the jeweler, then head over to the police station for the paperwork on that prisoner you transported down here yesterday.”

The snort that erupted was inevitable. “That still pisses me off. They had me drop everything to rush him here and then didn't even bother to get a copy of the signed order from the court so I could release him. Any other day, I would have turned right around and taken him back until they could get their shit together. But they swore it would be ready at nine and at least the court clerk said the order existed. So yeah, that would probably work …and I can probably call the party company about finalizing delivery of the balloon arch on my cell at the coffee shop. We might not have to actually stop there. I shouldn't have even promised to do that, but Rosa was really ticked off that I wouldn't tell her what happened during Ziri's hindsight session, and it was a way to keep the peace. But I didn't realize your flight would be late and I'd miss them.”

Adam nodded. "And speaking of flights, we'll finish up at the airport and pick up the Taylors. Are you
sure
you don't mind? It's going to be a pretty full truck all the way back to Santa Helena.”

"It's silly to make them rent a car when we're already here. Besides, there'd be no place to leave it when they got there. We don't have a rental agency in town." Annoyance tugged at her insides again, but there was no point in arguing any further. It was going to happen, whether now or later. She couldn't help but blush as she glanced at his face. There was still a bit of red remaining along his jaw from where she'd hit him. But she had to give him credit. He'd seen it coming and hadn't dodged out of the way after their screaming match in a secluded corner of the Riverwalk. But there was no way she was going to let her pack be bound. She couldn't even
imagine
that the people up north would allow an Alpha to control their actions like some sort of puppetmaster!

That he backed down showed he respected her authority as Alpha …a lot more than her own pack did—not that either of them expected it would knock him back so hard he'd smack his skull against the bridge. She'd never had that kind of power before. It was a little unnerving and she was starting to wonder if the tea had been tamping down more than just her pheromones. But it had been a release she needed and he seemed to realize it. The trip back to the hotel along the meandering pathway next to the light festooned river had resulted in a much calmer talk, where she could relax and actually enjoy the sounds of laughter and water lapping against the sidewalk as boats of tourists passed. He hadn't brought up the incident since.

"So, we should probably turn in then, huh?" His voice seemed unsure as he lifted his chin toward the adjoining doors and reached down to pick up the largest suitcase. "Tomorrow's going to be a long day, Carita.”