Inked

in the little town, though he’d been born here. He had a small ranch just north of it.
    “Yes.”
    “Okay.” She tossed him the keys. “You drive. I want to think.”
    When they were both inside, Rule started the car. “Am I a chauffeur, or will I be going inside when we reach Friar’s home?”
    “Inside, I think. He’d be within his rights to refuse to be interviewed with you present. If he does, I’ll have to take it private. But I’d like to see how he reacts to you.” She buckled up and got started on the thinking.
    But her mind stuck on one point. Rule knew where Robert Friar lived. He knew a lot more about Del Cielo and its inhabitants than she’d realized. She decided she’d better clear this up so she didn’t keep sticking on it. “Apparently you’ve been hanging out here off and on for years and know several of the players in our little skit.”
    He was silent as he pulled away from the curb and into what passed for traffic here. “I should have told you more on the plane. I didn’t intend to withhold information. I…This sounds foolish.”
    “You get to be foolish sometimes.” Right after hearing of a close friend’s death, for example.
    “On the plane, I wasn’t considering what I should tell you because I wasn’t really thinking, but also because…You’re so present to me now, so much a part of my life, that sometimes I almost forget that you haven’t always been with me.” He grimaced. “Foolish, as I said.”
    Yeah. Also unbearably sweet. She didn’t realize she’d reached for his hand until she felt it close around hers.
    For about a block, neither of them spoke. Then he continued in a more normal voice, “I don’t hang out here. I do, as Jason said, periodically check on the places the younger lupi like to hang out, and Del Cielo was popular with them for a few years.”
    “Why? I mean, the chief of police wants to hurt them, the founder of Humans First lives here, and…oh. You mean that’s why. The thrill of danger. Defying authority.”
    “Young lupi don’t precisely rebel, but they do need to test themselves. They’re allowed, even encouraged, to do so. You don’t learn much by avoiding all risk. Unfortunately, young lupi don’t always have any more sense than young humans. Some of them became too involved in Adele Blanco’s causes—and Adele was more interested in publicity than I liked.”
    “You want to control the clan’s PR yourself.”
    “Of course. But also, Adele’s ideas aren’t always sensible. I disbanded the lupus portion of her clique after she decided it would be a great notion to infiltrate Humans First. She persuaded one of Mariah’s friends, a human boy, to join the organization. At the time, he was sixteen.”
    “Shit. Sixteen? If he’s a local, they would have found out pretty quickly he’d been hanging out with what they consider the wrong crowd. What happened?”
    “Fortunately, Steve told me what was going on before anything went seriously wrong. I went to the boy and explained that the clan appreciated his courage, but I believed Adele had misjudged her opponent, and his input wouldn’t be helpful. He agreed to drop the project.”
    “Before anyone beat him up, then.”
    “I suspect Friar is too canny to allow that. He knew who the boy was and had been feeding him misinformation. He seemed to be setting up a nice, public confrontation in which Adele’s group would look foolish.”
    She retrieved her notebook. “What’s this boy’s name?”
    He glanced at her, smiling. “Dotting your i ’s?”
    “I never know what I’m going to need to know.”
    “His full name is Keoni Akana. He’s Hawaiian. He lived here for a year with a cousin of his mother’s while his parents were in Uruguay—they work for some alphabet-soup scientific foundation. Something about insects—I don’t recall what. He’s back in the islands now attending college.”
    “That was clear, concise, and useful. Do that for me with Adele Blanco and Mariah Friar.”
    “Not Robert Friar?”
    “Later, maybe. I read up on him on the plane, but the Bureau doesn’t have files for the others.”
    “I…didn’t realize the FBI had a file on Friar.”
    “Of course it does. He started a hate group.”
    Emotions slid through his face, quick and subtle, impossible to read in the gathering darkness. “I hadn’t realized that a group formed to brand us as beasts would be classified as a hate group.”
    “Humans First wants to kick out or keep out