Alien Diplomacy

memo,” Ishmael said in a bored tone of voice.
    “Do that,” Kevin said pleasantly. “Kidnapping’s not on the list of things good little boys do, either.”
    While they were doing the typical male posturing that seemed to activate whenever one alpha male was in proximity to another, I counted heads. Len and Kyle were leaning against the limo with the current and former Pontifexes in it, and Jerry, Hughes, and Walker were leaning against the second limo. Each limo had its doors open on the sides facing us. All of the men looked very ready to rumble. Counting me, that meant we had nine on our side, eleven if White and Gower got into any fight we might have, which I knew both of them would.
    There had been two men and two dogs per taxi. It wasn’t complicated math. So we were evenly matched, if I didn’t count Prince and the rest of his pack. Only, that was wrong. “Officer Moe, where’s your twelfth man and beast?” I asked as Prince yanked hard and pulled out of Ishmael’s grasp. He made a beeline for where I’d spotted the casings and started sniffing around.
    Prince started barking his head off. Ishmael ran to his dog, and I followed. I spotted something other than bullet casings. Blood. And lots of it.



CHAPTER 70
    T HE OTHER DOGS JOINED PRINCE, and everyone crowded around us. “Stop shoving, you’re going to ruin evidence,” Ishmael shouted.
    Everyone backed off, the K-9 cops dragging their dogs away. Prince whined, loudly, then threw back his head and howled. The other dogs joined in.
    “We have two officers down,” I told Kevin and Chuckie once the men had quieted their dogs. “One human, one canine.”
    “We’ll need to run tests to see whose blood this is, Kitty,” Kevin said.
    I shook my head and pointed to the dogs. “They already know. You think they were just doing the dog version of a twenty-one gun salute for a stranger?” I looked at Ishmael. “You’ve been too obvious. Someone spotted you following me and Mister Joel Oliver and decided to thin your herd.”
    Ishmael and the rest of his guys looked ill. “He wanted to look for clues to what you were doing here yesterday,” the one I thought of as Larry said.
    The rest of them started talking, and it was clear they were all freaked, upset, and ready to hit something. Ishmael tried to get them under control, but the dogs weren’t the only ones not listening to commands.
    “Shut UP!” Jeff bellowed. Everyone, man and beast, got very silent very quickly. No one bellowed like my husband. Once his voice had stopped echoing, Jeff looked around, eyes narrowed. “I feel for your loss. But right now, there’s a number of bad things going on, and if you’re not going to become part of the solution,then we’re going to arrest you all and let the guys in charge of taking people to Guantanamo sort you out.”
    Ishmael’s squad nodded and pulled themselves together. I wasn’t sure how much human speak the dogs understood, but they were all clear that the Leader of the Pack had just laid down the law, and none of them wanted to challenge for dominance. Eleven dogs were sitting at attention, ears alert, ready for action or for doggie treats, depending.
    Kevin and Chuckie took down the pertinent information while Reader and Tim called for some agent teams. No reason to involve the D.C. police—apparently the only ones who could make it on time to a crime scene had been laid off and were here with us.
    I spent the time handing out teething biscuit doggie treats and pets, which earned me a lot of dog kisses. Ensure the big dogs love you, that was my motto. I discreetly used a baby wipe to clean off the dog slobber.
    “So, you want to tell us what’s going on now?” Jeff asked once our teams showed up, all in limos. The A-Cs got out and started doing their thing. The human drivers stayed in the cars. I resisted the impulse to have Jeff and Chuckie do some sort of lie detector test on them—if we couldn’t trust the majority of our human agents, we were screwed anyway. However, I found myself hoping Ishmael was right and that the garage wasn’t going to find a dozen vehicles to be too much for it.
    Ishmael and I brought everyone up to speed. “So, you’re all no longer law enforcement,” Kevin said when we were done. “You’re just vigilantes.”
    Ishmael shot him a dirty look. “Not my fault we got cut.” He glared at Chuckie. “One too many complaints will do that for you.”
    Chuckie shook his head. “Neither I nor