Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

feelings for Adam well enough to discuss them tonight.
    â€œAnd you’re not in love with me.” I realized something more and it made me grin at Samuel. “Wolf or not, you aren’t in love with me—otherwise you wouldn’t have been getting such a charge out of teasing Adam all this time.”
    â€œI was not teasing Adam,” he said, offended. “I was courting you.”
    â€œNope,” I said, settling back in my chair. “You were tormenting Adam.”
    â€œI was not.” He started the car and pulled out aggressively into the traffic.
    â€œYou’re speeding,” I told him smugly.
    He turned his head to say something to put me in my place, but just then the cop behind us lit up.
    Â 
    We were almost home when he decided to quit being offended.
    â€œAll right,” he said, relaxing his hands on the steering wheel. “All right.”
    â€œI don’t know what you were so mad about,” I said. “You didn’t even get a ticket. Twenty miles an hour over the speed limit and all you got was a warning. Must be nice being a doctor.”
    Once the cop had recognized him, she’d been all kinds of nice. He’d apparently treated her brother after a car wreck.
    â€œThere are a couple of cops whose cars I take care of,” I murmured. “Maybe if I flirted with them, they’d—”
    â€œI was not flirting with her,” he ground out.
    He wasn’t usually so easy. I settled in for some real fun.
    â€œShe was certainly flirting with you, Dr. Cornick,” I said, even though she hadn’t been. Still…
    â€œShe was not flirting with me either.”
    â€œYou’re speeding again.”
    He growled.
    I patted his leg. “See, you didn’t want to be stuck with me for a mate.”
    He slowed as the highway dumped us in Kennewick and we had to travel on city streets for a while.
    â€œYou are horrible,” he said.
    I smirked. “You accused me of flirting with Tim.”
    He snorted. “You were flirting. Just because I didn’t take him apart doesn’t mean you aren’t fishing in dangerous waters, Mercy. If it had been Adam with you tonight, that boy would be feeding the fishes—or the wolves. And I am not kidding.”
    I patted his leg again and took a deep breath. “I didn’t mean to let it be a flirtation, I just got caught up in the conversation. I should have been more careful with a vulnerable boy like him.”
    â€œHe isn’t a boy. If he’s five years younger than you, I’d be surprised.”
    â€œSome people are boys longer than others,” I told him. “And that boy and his friend were both in O’Donnell’s house not too long before he was killed.”
    I told Samuel the whole story, from the time Zee picked me up until I’d taken the paper from Tim. If I left anything out, it was because I didn’t think it was important. Except, I didn’t tell him that Austin Summers was probably the brother of one of the boys who beat up on Jesse. Samuel’s temper might be easier than Adam’s—but he’d kill both boys without a shred of remorse. In his world, you didn’t beat up girls. I’d come up with a suitable punishment, but I didn’t think anyone needed to die over it. Not as long as they quit bothering Jesse.
    That was the only thing I left out. Both Zee and Uncle Mike had left me to my own devices in this investigation. Okay, they’d told me not to investigate, which amounted to the same thing. Proceeding without any help from the fae made investigating riskier than it would have otherwise been, and Zee was already mad at me for sharing what I had. More wouldn’t make him any madder. The time for keeping their secrets strictly to myself was over.
    If there was one thing I’d learned over the past few interesting (in the sense of the old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times”) months, it was that when things started to get dangerous, it was important to have people who knew as much as you did. That way, when I stupidly got myself killed—someone would have a starting place to look for my murderer.
    By the time I was finished telling him everything, we were sitting in the living room drinking hot chocolate.
    The first thing Samuel said was, “You have a real gift for getting into trouble, don’t you? That was one thing I forgot when you left the