Frost Burned

that soft should have been.”
    “You don’t think he was a flunky.”
    “You read people, too,” the mercenary said. It didn’t sound like it bothered him. “No. I think he was the money man himself. I’ve trained a lot of men. Some of them are better at giving orders than taking them. He was one of those. But subtle about it.”
    “When and where?”
    The other man shook his head. “Now, that is too much. More my company’s secret than my ex-employers’.” He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. Crouching for that long wasn’t easy, especially if the one doing it was a human over thirty. But the mercenary didn’t seem to find it uncomfortable.
    “My doctor tells me if I don’t quit smoking, I’ll die of cancer someday,” he said.
    “If it ruins your endurance, it’ll kill you sooner than that,” said Adam. “Smokers don’t run as fast or as long.”
    The man laughed. “Tell you what. A couple of days ago word came to me that these folk aren’t Cantrip. Oh, they work for the agency all right. But they’ve gone rogue, and Cantrip has a group out looking for them.” He looked at his cigarette, then put it back in his mouth and inhaled. “Cantrip’s problem-solver got into town last night—just in time to do the cleanup on my boys.”
    A small red light flashed on his wristwatch. He tapped the watch and ground the cigarette out on the sole of his boot. “Son,” he said. “If I have to depend upon running fast to stay alive, I’m already dead. Got to go now.” He pulled out a key and frowned at it. “It’s a strange old world, you know? Never know who you’re going to find yourself in bed with.”
    He stood up and tossed the key toward Adam, who let it fall to the ground next to him.
    “Good luck, now.” The mercenary stepped over Darryl on the way to the door. “You aren’t a bad sort for an abomination.”
    “I could say the same to you.”
    The mercenary glanced back and laughed. “Yeah. There is that.” He opened the door, and said, quietly, “I heard one of them say that there’s another assassin on the senator’s security detail.”
    “Aimed at whom?” asked Adam.
    The mercenary nodded. “I do like you. That is the right question. For you if you succeeded, for the senator if you didn’t.” He left without another glance.
    As soon as the door shut behind him, Darryl and Warren both looked up at Adam. Darryl inhaled and gave a soft growl, too drugged from the ketamine to bring out words.
    “Yes,” said Adam. “I’m better.” He didn’t say why or how. They’d think it was Bran, and his legend would help them get up and on their feet.
    He used the key to free himself and opened the shackles that held Darryl first, then Warren. When Warren sat up, Adam dropped the key into the old cowboy’s hand. Warren was in the best shape next to Adam.
    “Free everyone, but stay here until I get back or summon you,” he told Warren. “Free Honey last, and be ready in case she really loses it.”
    Then he stood up and stripped out of his clothes. The final thing that he had learned in Vietnam, even before he’d been turned into a werewolf, was that he was good at killing.
    Naked, he walked to the door and turned the knob—his mercenary visitor had left the door unlocked and unbarred. It opened into the small antechamber where Mr. Jones’s desk was still in place. The room was dark, but they were underground—or so his nose told him, though the ceilings were higher than usual for a basement.
    The steel bar that kept them imprisoned was lying on the floor. Adam bent down, picked up the bar, and set it on the ground next to Darryl, who closed his hand on it and tried to get to his hands and knees. Adam’s second was functioning on instincts.
    “Shh,” Adam told him, and put a hand on his shoulder until he subsided. “Wait and protect. I’ll be back. See if you can get them to change.”
    Warren’s yellow eyes met his.
    “I’ll save Mr. Jones for Honey,” he told Warren, then let the wolf take him.
    By the time he rose on all four feet, most of the pack had been freed of their chains, but they were still unable to stand. Honey looked up into his face.
    “Are you going to kill them all?” she asked him.
    Murder, his father had taught him, was a sin.
    Honey had been in his pack for nearly thirty years, she knew better than to ask if he
could
kill them all. He nodded once and loped out of the open door with an eagerness he made no attempt to check.
    Adam had long