Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

magazine. Jerking his hand back with a hiss, he dropped it on my counter. “Nine millimeter,” he said. “Silver ammunition.” He looked at me. “I’m pretty sure that was a nine millimeter or a thirty-eight you were holding on Heart.”
    The topic of my transgression was not dropped, just set aside for business. I wished we could just get it over with.
    â€œNine millimeter,” I agreed. “She could have shot someone, and they’d have blamed it on the bounty hunter. How likely is it that someone would have done a ballistics test and noticed one of the bullets didn’t come from the same gun?”
    â€œSomeone was supposed to die,” said Ben. “That’s what I think.”
    â€œAgreed,” said Zee from the garage doorway. Samuel moved—a little stiff-legged, but he moved—so Zee could come into the office.
    â€œBallistics wouldn’t have mattered,” said Zee. “Making one bullet match another is cake if the fae is dealing with silver. Even a few with little magic could handle it. Iron is impossible for most fae to work, lead isn’t much better, but silver . . . Silver accepts magic easily and keeps it.”
    My walking stick had silver on it.
    Zee continued speaking. “The bullet would take on the appearance of the others. A little more glamour, and the extra bullet disappears. And whoever that was, they weren’t minor fae—they had a fair touch of The Hunt—The Wild Hunt.”
    â€œI don’t know what that means.” But our fae assassin had been out to kill werewolves. To kill Adam. I needed to find out as much as I could.
    â€œIn this case, mindless violence,” Zee told me. “The kind that leaves a man looking at the bodies and wondering why he decided to pull the trigger when he only intended to make a point. If I hadn’t been here to counter it . . .” He shrugged and looked at Adam. “Someone wanted you dead with the blame easily placed, so no one would look too closely.”
    Adam put the gun down on the counter next to the magazine, grabbed Ben’s coat, and tossed it on top of them. “I haven’t ticked off the fae recently. Have I?”
    Zee shook his head. “If anything, it goes the other way. It must be an individual.” He frowned, and said reluctantly, “Someone could have hired her, I suppose.”
    Ben said, “I’ve never seen a fae who used modern weaponry.” He turned to Adam. “I know she was fae and all—but could she be one of the trophy hunters?”
    â€œTrophy hunters?” Zee asked before I could.
    â€œDavid has captured two people and killed a third hunting him this year,” Adam said. “One was a big-game hunter; one turned out to be a serial killer who’d been preying upon marines from the local base and decided to take on bigger prey. And one was a bounty hunter—though there’s no bounty on David’s head any more than there is on mine. It looked like he just wanted to try his hand at hunting a werewolf.”
    â€œDavid Christiansen?” I asked. Christiansen was a mercenary whose small troop specialized in rescuing hostages—I’d met him once before he’d become famous. When he retrieved some kids from a terrorist camp in South America, a photographer got a series of really terrific shots that made Christiansen look heroic and sweet. The photos made national news—and the Marrok chose David to be the first werewolf to admit what he was to the public—and thus the most famous werewolf around.
    â€œYes,” Adam said.
    â€œ ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ ” I murmured. See? An education wasn’t wasted on me, no matter what my mother says.
    â€œThis doesn’t feel like that, though,” said Adam. “This wasn’t personal. Heart wasn’t hunting me for thrills, or at least not only for thrills. Someone set him up.”
    â€œAnd not very well either,” I added. “He didn’t know who you were—and all his producer would have had to do was a simple Internet search for a photo. You’d think someone sending him out after you would make sure he knew who to shoot if you were the target.”
    Adam tapped his foot. “This feels like a professional job. A lot of planning, a lot of work to kill someone in the most public way possible. And, most telling, when it didn’t work according to plan—she