Terror was surreal, Clarice thought. She was floating somewhere just separate from her body, even though she could feel that it was trembling as she raised her hands in supplication. “I’m not Veronica Chase,” she repeated, her voice wavering like her nerves.
Hands roughly checked her pockets and took the folder, flipping through it carelessly and dropping the contents in the snow. “Your business cards say Veronica Chase,” the man at her shoulder said. Clarice turned her head in slow motion to look at him, but the gun in her back poked her harder and she obediently kept her hands high and looked straight forward again.
Had Veronica set her up with someone she was in trouble with? Outrage was a splash of cold water acrossClarice’s consciousness. “This is her coat!” she explained. “Of course her business cards are in her pockets. I’mClarice Turner. My wallet is in my car.”
Two of the men by the front of the car were speaking rapidly in what sounded like Spanish but not quite. Clarice found some distraction in trying to pick out familiar words because the rest of her felt like it was in complete shutdown.
Their conversation defied her high school Spanish, though, and Clarice’s heart seemed to hammer in her ears and drown it out anyway. “I’mnotVeronica Chase,” she whispered.
“What do we do with her, Hunter?” a man behind her asked in English.
“Might as well make ourselves comfortable.” Clarice guessed that the man in the fur-trimmed coat whowasn’tholding a gun was in control here. He was shivering, and Clarice could sympathize; her ears were freezing, in stark contrast to the flush of terror she felt.
“Let me show you around the house?” Clarice offered weakly. “You already took my keys, but I have the code to get in…”
If they were amused by her terrible attempt at humor, no one laughed. She was shoved roughly up the steps to the front door and marched into the house.
32
BRUNO
It was sometimes a challenge to actively listen to a client. Bruno was careful to catalog expressions, to listen to subtle shifts in instinct, to guide the conversation, and to be patient with people who needed the process of talking, even when they rambled badly and said a whole lot of nothing for a really long time.
At first, he thought that the long-winded tale from Gloria’s childhood must have some kind of sinister undertone that he didn’t understand, but instinct went from slightly unsettled to absolutely on fire without any transition and it took Bruno a moment to tamp down his reaction and realize that it had absolutely nothing to do with the widow at all.
“I’m sorry, Gloria!” he said, standing abruptly. “I’m going to have to cut our session short. Something urgent has come up and I will call you as soon as I can to schedule a makeup session.” He struggled a moment, unable to explain instinct, because Gloria was one of his few fully human clients and he wasn’t sure she knew about shifters.
Courtesy warred with secrecy.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I’ll be in touch.” He didn’t wait for her to stand up and gather her stuff, only grabbed his coat from the hook by the door and left her in his office without a backward glance.
He had to pause when he turned on the car, in order to calm himself enough to drive, and to try to figure out what was happening. He knew that Clarice was in trouble, and he knew where, in a vague way—he couldn’t have pointed it out on a map, but he knew which way to drive, and that would be enough. But he didn’t know what kind of trouble his instinct was screaming about. Was she hurt? In a car accident? Without any other clues, that seemed like the most likely cause of the screaming in his nerves. His armadillo was catatonic, completely overwhelmed by his sensitivity to instinct, and no help at all when Bruno tried to dissect what he was feeling.
So Bruno drove, making turns that justfelt right, swearing impatiently at red lights that thwarted his forward progress, and taking risks in the sloppy snow to pass slow drivers. Several people honked at him, and he was glad for the good tires on his truck.
He found himself in the Bluffs more quickly than his anxiousness suggested he would be. The traffic thinned to nothing and the space between the grand houses increased dramatically. Instinct guided him down a driveway through an open gate, where Clarice’s car was parked with a sleek black SUV and a white, windowless van. A black luxury car meant the parking area was quite crowded and Bruno had to shove the nose of his car into a snowbank in order not to block the drive. A black-jacketed figure came out from the van to greet him, and Bruno was neither surprised nor happy to realize that he was carrying a wicked-looking rifle.
This wasnota car accident.
“You’re not one of Hunter’s guys,” the man said suspiciously, lifting the gun.
“I’m looking for Clarice.” Bruno put his hands up, but didn’t see any good reason to lie about why he was there. “She’s blonde, about yay high, wears glasses.”
“They got the real estate chick inside,” the man said. “Stay where you are.”
Bruno kept his hands up and the guard lowered the gun and made a phone call. “Yeah, there’s another one. Some guy. Who are you?” he asked Bruno.
“I’m Bruno Martin,” he said, as mildly as he could manage. “Clarice is my girlfriend.”
It wasn’t wrong, exactly, but it didn’t feelright.Girlfriendsounded juvenile, and he should have checked in with Clarice before labeling heranything. It was easier to try to categorize their relationship than it was to worry about her safety or wonder what he’d so stupidly blundered into. “Look, I’m not here to make any trouble…”
“Shut up.” The guard clearly didn’t consider Bruno a threat, but he also didn’t volunteer to look away while he continued the conversation on the phone so Bruno could think of something to do. “It’s the realtor’s sidepiece. I don’t know. Yeah. I’ll bring him up.”
Sidepiecewas worse thangirlfriend, but Bruno wasn’t going to argue when the man waved him with the gun to approach the house. Training suggested that it would be best to just go along with everything and watch for an opportunity, even if instinct was still screeching in his skull that things werewrongandbadandoffanddangerdangerdanger.
Bruno kept his hands up, walking carefully. “I’m not here to cause any problems,” he repeated. “I just came for Clarice. We aren’t involved in any of…whatever this is.”
Or was she?
