Mercy Thompson 01-05 - THE MERCY THOMPSON COLLECTION

haven’t had time to look at the bill Zee prepared—but I am shorthanded. Does your son know anything about fixing cars?”
    â€œHe can change the oil and rotate the tires,” she said. “He will learn the rest. He is a hard worker and learns fast.”
    Like Zee, I found myself admiring her forthright, determined manner. I nodded. “All right. Why don’t we do this. Have your son come”—When? I had no idea what I was going to be doing for the next couple of days—“Monday after school. He can work off the repairs, and, if we suit, he can keep the job. After school and Saturday all day.”
    â€œHis school comes first,” she said.
    I nodded. “I can live with that. We’ll see how it works.”
    â€œThank you,” she said. “He’ll be here.”
    I watched her get into her car and reflected that Bran was lucky she wasn’t a werewolf or he might find himself having trouble keeping his place as Alpha.
    I paused and stared at my dirty hands. Last night someone had asked what the kidnappers wanted. They didn’t need Adam’s place in the pack, not if they had their own pack. If they wanted money, surely there were easier targets than the Alpha’s daughter. So there was something special about Adam. Among the werewolves, it is a matter of safety always to know where you rank in the pack. In the hierarchy of the Marrok it was not so important—as long as everyone remembered that Bran was on top. But people kept track anyway.
    I had a very clear memory of my foster father crouching in front of my chair and naming off names on my fingers when I was four or five. “One is Bran,” he said. “Two is Charles, and three is Samuel. Four is Adam of the Los Alamos Pack. Five is Everett of the Houston Pack.”
    â€œOne is Bran,” I said now. “Two is Charles, and three Samuel, both Bran’s sons. Four is Adam, now of the Columbia Basin Pack.”
    If there was something special about Adam, it was that—other than Bran’s sons, he was the nearest challenger for the title of Marrok.
    I tried to dismiss it at first. If I wanted to get Adam to fight Bran, I certainly wouldn’t start by kidnapping his daughter. But maybe they hadn’t.
    I sat down in the Bug’s driver’s seat, and the old vinyl cracked under me. What if they had come to talk to Adam rather than attack him? I closed my eyes. Suppose it was someone who knew Adam well like his old army buddy. Adam had a hot temper, explosive even—although he could be persuaded to listen, once he’d calmed down again.
    Given that the enemy was a werewolf, he would be afraid of Adam, or at least cautious. That’s the way the dominance game works. Meeting an Alpha on his home territory puts him in a superior position. Can’t take a gunloaded with silver ammunition because that would be a declaration of war—he’d have to kill Adam or die himself. Suppose this enemy had on hand a drug, something to calm a werewolf down. Something to keep Adam from killing him if negotiations went poorly.
    But things don’t work out right. Someone panics and shoots the person who opens the door—less dominant werewolves would have a tendency to panic when invading an Alpha’s home. Suppose they shoot him several times. A mistake, but not irreparable.
    Except that then Adam attacks. So they shoot Adam, too, and chain him so they can hold him until he listens. But Mac dies and Adam is not in any mood to listen. He begins to break free, and when you have enough drug in him to stop that, he is too far under to discuss anything.
    They are panicking. They have to come up with a new plan. How can they get Adam to cooperate?
    â€œJesse’s upstairs,” I said, snapping my fingers in a quick rhythm that answered the speed of my thoughts.
    Take Jesse, then force Adam to listen. Or, if he won’t listen, then threaten to kill Jesse.
    It made as much sense as anything else. So where did Mac and the drug experiments come in?
    I scrabbled out of the Bug and jogged into my office to locate a notebook. I had no proof of any of it, just instincts—but my instincts were sometimes very good.
    On one page, I wrote down: Drug experiments/buying new werewolves? and on the next Why replace Bran with Adam?
    I set a hip over a three-legged stool and tapped my pen on the paper. Other than the tranquilizers that had killed Mac, there was no