“He is locked up at the Coyote Ridge facility in Connell. You’ll have to go see him there.”
“In jail?” I asked.
I heard the smile in Hank’s voice. “He is not a violent criminal, Mercy. But he has little respect for the law or personal property, and that lands him in trouble from time to time. This time it landed him in prison for two years, of which he has served eight months. He likes women, has a reputation with them.” There was a little pause, and Hank said, “Most of the coyote walkers have trouble with the law.”
“At least they don’t have trouble passing elementary school like the hawk walkers,” I said because Hank liked to tease and could take as good as he gave.
Hank was laughing when he disconnected.
“Do you know how to visit someone in prison?” asked Tad.
“Do you?”
He shook his head. “No. When they locked up my dad, he wouldn’t let me come home.”
“Adam will know,” I said, and dialed him.
“Adam Hauptman’s phone,” said Christy. “Can I help you?”
“Is Adam there?” I asked. There would, I knew, be a good explanation of why Christy was answering Adam’s phone—especially since he’d told her not to answer her own phone. I’d noticed before, when she wasn’t living in my home, that Christy always had good reasons for doing the wrong thing, reasons that made everyone look stupid for questioning her.
“Yes,” she said. “But he can’t come to the phone right now.”
“I see.”
“Is this Mercy?” she said brightly. “I didn’t know it was you. He’s on the house phone talking to the arson investigator. Can I give him a message?”
I couldn’t tell across phone lines, but I was pretty sure she was lying about not knowing it was me calling in the first place. My name would have scrolled across the caller ID.
“No,” I said. “It’s all right.”
I hung up and stared at my phone for a while. Adam had gone to work this morning the same time I had. He’d called in some of the wolves to watch over Christy. So why was he home, and why did she have his phone?
“I’d make you some brownies,” I told Tad. “But she’s always in my kitchen.”
The expression on his face was compassionate. “I expect that the jail has a web page with phone numbers of people who can help you figure out how to visit the guy you need to see.”
________
COYOTE RIDGE CORRECTIONS CENTER IS Aminimum- and medium-security facility just outside of Connell, which is about an hour’s drive north of the Tri-Cities. It’s a little town of about five thousand inhabitants, not including those who are incarcerated in the prison.
I didn’t go alone.
I glanced at my passenger and wondered if I’d made the right choice. Not that there were a lot of pack members who’d have been free to head out on short notice, especially now that Adam was keeping four wolves at our house all the time.
Honey had lost weight since her husband’s death, and she hadn’t been fat to begin with. She’d cut her honey-colored hair into a severe style that framed her face with its newly hollowed cheekbones. With that and her body reduced to muscle and bone, she should have looked hard, but instead she looked fragile.
She hadn’t said a word to me since I picked her up in my Vanagon. Not even to ask where we were going.
I’d told her I needed someone to come with me on an errand, and she hadn’t asked any questions. I’d decided it was a subtle defiance—following the letter of the law that said I was in charge without actually making an effort to be useful. But either driving or twenty minutes of distance from Christy cheered me to more optimistic possibilities. Maybe Honey just didn’t know what to say.
Or maybe she liked Christy more than she liked me, too.
“I had a fae artifact follow me home,” I told her. I couldn’t remember if she’d known about the walking stick. I’d tried not to talk about it too much. “It wouldn’t stay with any of the fae I tried to give it to. Which would have been fine except that it started to get bloodthirsty, so I found a safe place for it. Night before last, I was visited by a Gray Lord who informed me that it would be a good idea if I retrieved it and gave it back to him.”
“You gave the walking stick to Coyote,” she said. And when I looked at her, she raised a cool eyebrow. “You were raised among wolves. I’d think you’d know well enough how fast and thoroughly gossip travels in the pack.”
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know how to get ahold of Coyote in a hurry. In my experience, he just shows up when he chooses. So I called around and got the name of another walker who might know how to find him before the fae decide to destroy the Tri-Cities in retribution.”
