Frost Burned

be useful. In return, I assure you that we will turn our resources to locating and rescuing your people.”
    He was sincere and truthful, which surprised me somehow. I’d expected him to lie his head off.
    “We are on the same side,” Armstrong said earnestly, and he believed that, too—I could hear it in his voice.
    “Those men who broke into your house are all dead, Mr. Brooks,” Asil said quietly—and Armstrong jerked his head around so fast it was a wonder he didn’t kink his neck. He wasn’t so much surprised about the dead men, I thought, but that Asil knew about their deaths.
    I wondered if Asil had killed them himself.
    The werewolf caught my expression and smiled, showing his teeth. “Not me. I was not sent here merely as a liaison, Ms. Hauptman, but as a useful tool in your arsenal. They were released on bail last night. Because they were scheduled to fly to Seattle, then off to South America by private charter, I thought it would be expeditious to talk to them before they left. But they were dead when I went to the hotel they had checked into, and I nearly interrupted a federal cleanup of the site.” He smiled toothily, and I understood that the cleanup was of the sort meant to keep the men’s deaths from the local police as well as the public.
    If he knew all that, Charles had been busy, because he was more current than Ariana had been when she left. Armstrong was watching him with sudden wariness. Apparently he hadn’t known how much Asil knew.
    “Did
you
kill them, Agent Armstrong?” I asked. Most people didn’t know that werewolves could hear lies, and those who did thought I was human.
    “No, ma’am. But my people were responsible for the cleanup. There was an anonymous call to my superiors.” He grimaced. “I’ve spent most of the last twenty-four hours playing cleanup, catch-up—and all sorts of other things that end in -up when things go to hell.”
    Asil nodded at me. Like me, he’d heard the truth in the agent’s voice. Armstrong had not killed them and “unhappy” was a very small word for what he was feeling about their deaths and the involvement of Cantrip agents in the whole thing. My nose could sense more than just lies. Emotions, especially strong emotions, have scents, too.
    “You told the police that they wanted your husband to go after Senator Campbell, Ms. Hauptman,” Armstrong said.
    I lifted my chin. “That’s right.”
    He shook his head. “Doesn’t scan. These guys were the real deal, Ms. Hauptman. They make a lot of money by not shooting their mouths off. There is no way that they told you that.”
    Asil met my eyes. He knew how I got my information. He tilted his head a little and gave a shrug.
    He was the dominant wolf in the room. If he didn’t care what I told a federal agent about how werewolf magic works, maybe I shouldn’t, either.
    I opened my mouth, then closed it again, visions of being locked up in a white room somewhere with someone asking, “What is Adam looking at, Ms. Hauptman? Is it a triangle or a square?” in my head. It was probably the result of too much
Mystery Science Theater 3000
at a young age, but there was also a real danger in telling people too much.
    “You know how you told us that there were things you couldn’t tell us?” I said. “It’s like that. There are things I cannot reveal to you at this time. Need-to-know things.”
    Armstrong grunted, but he could hardly complain. “On a scale of one to ten, how sure are you that the threat was aimed at Campbell?”
    “Zero,” I told him, because I’d thought long and hard about this. “The threat was aimed at the werewolves. Campbell might be a secondary target—or maybe he was scheduled to be miraculously saved at the last moment. It’s easy to thwart an assassination when you know the who, where, and when. I don’t know why they picked Adam.”
    “He’s become a public figure,” murmured Asil. “People like him, and they trust him. When newspapers and magazines want to talk to a werewolf, they try for Adam because he’s pretty and well-spoken. Three-quarters of the people interviewed on the streets of New York for a recent morning news story could pick Hauptman out of a lineup. Better than either of the last presidential candidates or the mayor of New York did.”
    “You think this was aimed at Adam specifically?” I asked.
    Asil frowned at me. Maybe we weren’t supposed to be talking in front of Agent Armstrong. “I think,” he said slowly,