Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

good to meet you, Tim. Are you performing later?”
    â€œI’m doing a workshop with a friend.” He smiled shyly. “You might like to attend it: Celtic folk music. Two o’clock Sunday in the Community Center. You play very well, but if you want to make it in the music business, you need to organize your songs better, get a theme—like Celtic folk songs. Come to my class, and I’ll give you a few ideas.”
    Samuel gave him a grave smile, though I knew the chances of Samuel “organizing” his music was about an icicle’s chance in Hell. But he lied, politely enough. “I’ll try to catch it. Thank you.”
    Tim Milanovich shook Samuel’s hand and then wandered off, leaving only the werewolves and Kyle behind.
    As soon as he was out of earshot, Samuel’s eyes focused on me. “What’s wrong, Mercy?”

chapter 4
    Kyle found a lawyer for me. He assured me that she was expensive, a pain in the neck, and the best criminal defense attorney this side of Seattle. She wasn’t happy to be defending a fae, but, Kyle told me, that wouldn’t affect her performance, only her price. She lived in Spokane, but she agreed that time was of the essence. By three that afternoon she was in Kennewick.
    Once assured that Zee wasn’t talking to the police, she’d demanded to meet with me in Kyle’s office first, before she went to the police station. To hear the story from me, she told Kyle, before she spoke to Zee or the police.
    Since it was a Saturday, Kyle’s efficient staff and the other two lawyers who worked with him were gone, and we had his luxurious office suite to ourselves.
    Jean Ryan was a fifty-something woman who had kept her figure with hard work that left taut muscles beneath the light linen suit she wore. Her pale, pale blond hair could only have come from a salon, but the surprisingly soft blue eyes owed nothing to contact lenses.
    I don’t know what she thought when she looked at me, though I saw her eyes take in my broken nails and the ingrained dirt on my knuckles.
    The check I wrote to her made me swallow hard and hope that Uncle Mike would be as good as his word and cover the amount—and this was for only the initial consultation. Maybe my mother had been right, and I should have been a lawyer. She always maintained that at least as a lawyer my contrary nature would be an asset.
    Ms. Ryan tucked my check into her purse, then folded her hands on the top of the table in the smaller of Kyle’s two conference rooms. “Tell me what happened,” she said.
    I had just started when Kyle cleared his throat. I stopped to look at him.
    â€œZee can’t afford for Jean to know just the safest part,” he told me. “You have to tell her everything. No one knows how to sniff out a lie like a criminal defense lawyer.”
    â€œEverything?” I asked him, wide-eyed.
    He patted my shoulder. “Jean can keep secrets. If she doesn’t know everything, then she’s defending your friend with one hand tied behind her back.”
    I folded my arms across my chest and gave her a long, level look. There was nothing about her that inspired me to trust her with my secrets. A less motherly looking woman I’d seldom seen—except for those eyes.
    Her expression was cool and vaguely unhappy—whether it was caused by driving a hundred and fifty miles on a Saturday, defending a fae, defending a murderer, or all three, I couldn’t tell.
    I took a deep breath and sighed. “All right.”
    â€œStart with the reason why Mr. Adelbertsmiter would feel the need to call in a mechanic to examine a murder scene,” she said without tripping on Zee’s name. I wondered uncharitably if she’d practiced it on the drive over. “It should begin, ‘Because I’m not just a mechanic, I’m a—’”
    I narrowed my eyes at her; the vague dislike her appearance had instilled in me blossomed at her patronizing tone. Being raised among werewolves left me with a hearty dislike of patronizing tones. I didn’t like her, didn’t trust her to defend Zee—and only defending Zee would be worth exposing my secrets to her.
    Kyle read my face. “She’s a bitch, Mercy. That’s what makes her so good. She’ll get your friend off if she can.”
    One of her elegant eyebrows rose. “Thank you so very much for the character assessment, Kyle.”
    Kyle