Deadlocked: A Sookie Stackhouse Novel

face. He wasn’t thinking about my body, which was a nice change, but he was thinking about … making some kind of choice. It’s very hard to read Were thoughts, but that much I could discern.
    “Miss Stackhouse,” he said, and nodded. His dark hair swung forward and back with the motion. “We been looking for you.”
    “How come?” I might as well get this settled. If we were going to fight, I needed to know why I was going to get beat up. I sure didn’t want that.
    “Alcide’s found Warren.”
    “Oh, good!” I was really pleased. I smiled up at Van. Now Mustapha could come in from the cold, tell us what he’d seen, and all would be well.
    “Thing is, what we found is a dead body, and we ain’t sure it’s really him,” Van said. When my face fell, he added, “I’m real sorry, but Alcide wants you to have a look at him and tell us it’s Warren for sure.”
    So much for a happy ending.

Chapter 12
    “You-all were headed somewhere?” Van asked.
    “We were taking this one to the airport,” Bill said, nodding at Colton. This was news to me and to Colton, but it was good news. There really was a plan to get Colton away from the reach of Felipe.
    “Why don’t you two continue on, then,” Van said reasonably. He didn’t ask any further questions or demand to know Colton’s identity, which was a relief. “I can take Sookie to the body, she’ll check the identity, and I’ll get her home. Or we can meet up somewhere.”
    “At Alcide’s?” Bill asked.
    “Sure.”
    “Sookie, you okay with that?”
    “Yeah, all right,” I said. “Let me get my purse out of your car.”
    Bill clicked his car open and I reached inside to get my purse,which held a change of clothes. I definitely wanted to find a couple of minutes of privacy to put on something a little less revealing.
    I felt uneasy without knowing exactly why. We’d recovered Colton, and if he could get the hell out of town, he’d probably be safe. If Colton couldn’t tell the little he remembered about that evening at Fangtasia, Eric would be safer, and therefore I would be safer—and so would all of the Shreveport vamps. I ought to be feeling happier. I slung my bag over my shoulder, glad that I had the cluviel dor with me.
    “You’re okay with these wolves?” Bill asked in a very low voice as Colton got into Bill’s car and buckled his seat belt.
    “Uh-huh,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure. But I shook myself and called myself paranoid. “These are Alcide’s wolves, and he’s my friend. But just in case, call him when you’re on your way, would you?”
    “Go with me,” Bill said suddenly. “They can identify Warren by smell, maybe. Mustapha could definitely do that, when he resurfaces.”
    “Nah, it’s okay. Get Colton to the airport,” I said. “Get him out of town.”
    Bill looked at me searchingly, then nodded in a jerky way. I watched as Bill and Colton drove off.
    Now that I was alone with the werewolves, I felt even odder.
    “Van,” I said, “Where did you find Warren?”
    The other three crowded around: a woman in her thirties with a pixie haircut, an airman from the Air Force base in Bossier City, and a girl in her teens with very generous curves. The teenager was in the first throes of experiencing her power as a Were, almost drunk with her newfound ability; it dominated her brain. The other two meant business. And that was all I could get of their thoughts. We were walking north on the street to a gray Camaro, which seemed to belong to Airman.
    “I’ll show you. It’s a little ways east of town. Since Mustapha wasn’t a pack member, we never met Warren.”
    “Okay,” I said doubtfully. And I thought of making some excuse not to get in the car, because my uneasiness was mounting like a drumroll. We were alone on a dark street, and I realized they had boxed me in. I had no real reason to doubt that Van was telling me the truth—but I had an instinct that was telling me this situation stank. I wished instinct had spoken up more clearly a few minutes ago when I’d had Bill at my side. I got in the car, and the Weres crowded in. We buckled up, and in a second we were driving in the direction of the interstate.
    Curiously, I almost didn’t want to discover that my suspicion was valid. I was tired of crises, tired of deceit, tired of life-or-death situations. I felt like a stone being skipped across a pond, longing only to sink to the anonymous bottom.
    Well, that was stupid. I gave myself a mental