Frost Burned

Adam—and Warren looked up, then away. “Do you need to leave?” It was a real question, not a reprimand, and Warren took it the way it was meant.
    “You need Kyle here,” he said, his voice low and his head tipped slightly away from Adam’s. “In his legal capacity.”
    “Not as our lawyer,” Adam said. “Not yet. But his presence is useful, yes. I’d like him to stay.”
    “Then I’ll stay, too. I can deal.”
    Adam looked at Tony. “I asked Sylvia to come because Gabriel was endangered. I asked you to stay because I do not want to keep the police in the dark about what happened. You are safer if you know everything. However, we cannot afford to let this go to trial in human courts. We . . .
I
will not allow it.”
    Tony narrowed his eyes. “I am a servant of the law, Adam.”
    “There will be hearings, just not in the human court system,” Adam told him. “I answer to a higher power—that power that kept werewolves from being the monsters Cantrip is afraid we are for all the years that humans knew nothing of us. If my actions are deemed excessive, I will pay for them with my life.”
    “Those werewolves who killed that pedophile in Minnesota this past spring—they died within a few days of it. All of them. Natural causes, we were told, though their bodies were cremated very quickly and no autopsy was performed,” Armstrong said neutrally, his eyes on me rather than Adam.
    “A force of nature, anyway,” I said obliquely. Charles was a force of nature, right?
    “I’m a servant of the law, too, Tony,” Kyle said too hastily to be as smooth as his usual redirection. “And no one knows better than I how the law and justice do not, can not, always coincide. I swear to you now that werewolf justice is swifter and more
just
, if more brutal, than our court system can manage.” He leaned forward earnestly. “We humans are not equipped to deal with a werewolf fairly. And if the police had tried to arrest those men in Minnesota, some of them would have died. I am content that justice will be served in this case.”
    There was a long pause.
    “Even if
I
agree it was self-defense,” Tony said, “you have just confessed to killing federal agents. I am not qualified to give you a pass on that, Adam.”
    “Agents who attacked law-abiding citizens without provocation,” murmured Kyle. “Adam is a security expert. I imagine that he has the attack on his house on camera somewhere.”
    Adam grunted. “With nice face shots of several of the Cantrip agents, Gutstein informed me tonight. And we have Peter’s body.”
    “Where is Peter?” I asked.
    “Safe,” Adam told me. “They’d buried him in the vineyard next to their own dead. We dug him up, and arrangements are being made.”
    “Suspicious deaths require autopsy,” said Tony.
    Adam looked at him and nodded. “Yes. We’ll talk. There is nothing suspicious about his death. He was murdered right in front of me. He has a bullet hole in his forehead.”
    No one said anything for a moment after that. The expression on Adam’s face might have accounted for the silence.
    “I have the power to say that Cantrip and the federal government is satisfied that Adam acted in self-defense when he killed those people,” Armstrong said. “Mr. Brooks is right, it would be a political nightmare for Cantrip if the actions of these men were to come out even though they were not acting in any kind of official capacity.” He took a deep breath. “It would be a similar disaster for the werewolves. In the current climate, I don’t know that you could get a judge to declare self-defense, Mr. Hauptman. If the trial went to a jury, a decision either way could lead to riots and unrest that might break out into open fighting in the streets.”
    Armstrong looked at something none of us could see, then he met my eyes and held them. “I am a federal agent, sworn to uphold the interests of my country. I am a patriot. I have seen fear and hatred cause men and women who have likewise so sworn to forget their oaths and give in to their hatred. I don’t want this to go to court.”
    Tony threw up his hands. “I agree with you,” he told Armstrong. “Both about the self-defense and Adam’s chances in court—though if the case is kept local, I think he would do better than you think. Still, there are bodies.”
    “The buried Cantrip agents were shot execution style, with the same gun that killed Peter,” Adam said.
    “You run ballistics?” asked