Frost Burned

her lungs, knew that her floppy head meant a broken neck. But her abrupt motion made me jump and drop her anyway. At least I’d moved her far enough so that I could get into the car—and I hadn’t squeaked.
    Only when the door was open did it cross my mind that there was a button for the trunk on the key fob in the hip pocket of the sweats. Guys’ sweatpants have neat things like pockets in them.
    Asil hadn’t helped me move the body the first time, but as soon as the trunk was open, he picked her up without my saying anything, grabbing the gun and the cuffs she’d used on me when he bent down. Body, gun, and cuffs gave him no trouble. She was locked safely out of sight in the trunk nearly as quickly as he’d taken her from alive to dead. He stared at the trunk for a moment and flexed his hands while I stared at him, hoping he wouldn’t look back at me.
    I’ve seen a lot of wolves in human form with those bright wolf eyes. A lot of them. And none of those eyes scared me as thoroughly as Asil’s had. There was something else at home in Asil’s head and it had enjoyed killing the woman and would have been happy to continue the little spree. Bran’s son and chief assassin, Charles, scared me, but I was confident that if Charles wanted me dead, it would be quick and painless. Asil’s beast enjoyed playing with his victims.
    Oh, yes, it would not be a good thing if Asil had to kill again, but I was pretty sure it would take something bigger than me to keep it from happening. After Asil’s little speech in the car, I would have thought he would have tried harder not to kill anyone all by himself.
    I opened my mouth to say something, and the bland little Corolla rolled past us again; the driver waved and shrugged. No parking for Hauptman Security. If I waved and shouted, would they come running or just keep looking for an empty parking space?
    Empty parking space.
    She’d been waiting right here for us, I thought. Right next to the only parking place, which, conveniently, had a garbage container for her to lie on top of—she’d jumped on me from above. I wondered if she’d glamoured the spot so no one tried to park in it. I wondered if she’d known Tad was here. I wondered . . .
    “What if she had a partner?” I asked, and started not quite running, but moving rather more briskly than a walk toward Sylvia’s apartment without bothering to put on shoes. A case of frostbite I could deal with—not so much dead Sandoval girls. She’d been looking to take me alive, but hadn’t hesitated to pull the gun. How did that play into our villains’ plan? And if they were willing to kill me, what about Jesse? Had she already visited the Sandovals?
    The only reason that I didn’t flat-out sprint was Asil. If his wolf was that close to the surface, there was a chance he’d decide I was prey if I started running away.
    “Why do you think there might be another one?” he asked, sounding entirely normal.
    “Because so far these guys have worked in teams of more than one.” But that wasn’t it, not really. My instincts were chattering unhelpfully—conclusions without evidence.
    He caught my not-quite lie. “The group that took Adam were human, yes? Fae and human do not work well together. Yet, you are sure she is involved.”
    I glanced at him. His eyes were dark again, and I was relieved.
    “Mercedes? Why do you think she is part of the kidnapping plot and not of some other thing? Adam is Alpha, and you are his mate—that makes you targets for all sorts of people.”
    It struck me that Asil was perfectly okay with the fact that there might be two separate groups out to kill us. “I think,” I said, “that adding another”—and remembered that he already thought there was more than one gun aimed at my pack even if they were all, mostly, working together—“adding
yet
another enemy who wants to kidnap or kill me to this soup pushes my belief in the ultimate fairness of the universe too far to one side. I just wish I knew how she knew we were coming here.”
    I looked up at the back windows of Sylvia’s apartment. She was a smart woman who worked at a police station: her apartment was on the third floor. There was nothing to hint at a problem within. No bodies flying through the air, no broken glass, no little pink-clad Sandoval girl screaming as she ran from scary people with guns.
    Maybe I was wrong. Maybe my dead assailant had been on her own.
    “Add to that,” I continued almost absently