The Night Beat

particularly if you were looking for a good laugh. “So, what’re you in for?”
    “Bad…accident.” He cocked his head at me. “Why are you here?”
    My throat felt tight. “A…friend of mine got hurt and I just…I wanted to make sure he was going to be okay.”
    “Ah. That’s nice of you.” He sounded a little disappointed.
    “I guess.”
    His eyebrow raised. “You guess?”
    “It’s my fault he’s in here.” I heaved a big sigh, which I hoped meant I wasn’t going to start crying again. “I screwed up, big time, and he paid the price for it.”
    “You’re Enforcement,” he said with a shrug. “It happens.”
    I didn’t ask how he knew. It wasn’t the first time someone had recognized me even though I didn’t know them well or at all. Besides, I’d been out, so for all I knew he’d just asked someone who the weirdo was sleeping in the waiting room like it was a kennel.
    “It shouldn’t have happened. If I’d been paying attention, really paying attention, it wouldn’t have happened.”
    “How is that?” He didn’t sound accusatory or even salaciously interested. He sounded genuine.
    Put it down to hunger, exhaustion, heartache, or guilt, but I opened my mouth and the whole story poured out. He nodded, asked the right questions at the right time, and pretty soon he had the whole thing. “So, now Ralph’s at death’s door and I’ve given the Adversary all he needs to destroy us.”
    “You couldn’t have known,” he said gently. “Besides, you were being set up by the best.”
    “That helps Ralph exactly how?”
    He gave me a long look. “You know, he’s Enforcement, too. He knew the risks. And it sounds like you think he’s in love with you. Any male who isn’t willing to die to protect his female really isn’t worth keeping around.”
    I couldn’t hold his gaze. Rehashing it all hadn’t made me feel better -- it had confirmed that I’d been blithely clueless. “I fell for it, by falling for Jack. So I’ve been stupid for at least a year, and the Gods and Monsters know what he managed to do while I was mooning over him.”
    He chuckled. “From what it sounds like, Jack was a sleeper.”
    I looked up. “A sleeper?”
    “Sure. An agent programmed and put into place. He doesn’t know he’s an agent until he’s triggered. Then, once he is, he reverts to the programming. In some cases, sleepers can have moments when the programming takes over and their conscious mind doesn’t know it. I could go on, but there’ve been a lot of movies about things like this.”
    “But there’s no way to know.”
    “Sure there is. The angels didn’t know what was wrong with him, just that something was. That says sleeper to me. He bothered Ken and plenty of others, heck, he even bothered Sexy Cindy, as you call her.” He grinned. “Not the most subtle of street names. But no one could put their paw onto what was wrong with him. Again, that says sleeper to me. If Martin and Black Angels One and Two couldn’t spot what was wrong with Jack, you certainly couldn’t have known, you don’t have the psychic skills.”
    There was something wrong with what he’d said, but I couldn’t put my paw on it. “I suppose. But that doesn’t help Ralph.”
    “You in love with him?”
    It was so straightforward I was almost taken aback. “I don’t know.”
    “But you think you should be, because he’s in love with you?” He seemed intent with this question. I wasn’t sure if it indicated general or specific interest and figured all the recent emotional trauma with Jack and confusion about Ralph had me so turned around that I probably wouldn’t be able to tell, anyway.
    “Sort of. But that’s not really it. I feel like I’ve never given him a chance and maybe that was part of the overall plan, too, you know? Maybe if we hadn’t stopped running in packs, things would be different between me and Ralph.”
    “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe you were supposed to come around to it this way.”
    “Maybe Ralph won’t want to speak to me ever again and this entire conversation will be moot.” I didn’t add that maybe Ralph was going to die, which would make the conversation even more pointless and a lot more painful.
    “So you think he’s going to decide that you’re not worth it, just because he got hurt?” He sounded annoyed. Great.
    “I don’t know. I mean, I’d understand if he did. Wouldn’t you?”
    “No. Wolves are monogamous. That includes when they make mistakes.”