“Sounds good. Call Honey, then get everyone out of the house.”
“You two okay?”
Adam’s eyes traveled to me. “Yes.”
“Kyle called about ten minutes ago and said to tell you that a Gary Laughingdog is at our house and would like to talk to Mercy on a matter of some urgency.”
“Tell him we will be right there.” Adam pulled a U-turn. “We’ll move them on to Honey’s house. Call me if Honey has a problem, and we’ll come up with something else.”
“Right. Is Laughingdog the guy Mercy visited in prison?”
I said, “Yes.”
There was a little pause. “So he broke out of jail?”
I said, “Yes,” again.
“Kyle doesn’t know that,” Warren said. “If the wrong things happen, Kyle could lose his license to practice law for having him in the house.”
“You get everyone safe,” said Adam, “and I’ll take care of Kyle.”
“Movin’ on it, boss.” Warren hung up the phone.
“Do you think he’ll go after our house?” I asked. “Guayota, I mean.”
“I don’t know enough about him to be making predictions,” Adam said.
“Why do you think that he believes she—” I stopped speaking.
“What?”
“I almost saw it then,” I sat up straighter and turned toward Adam. “I’m stupid. When Tony took me to look at the crime scene in the hayfield, I thought for an instant that one of the bodies he’d left was Christy’s.” The ghost could have been her sister. “She was the right age, right hair color, and right body type. All of the women were, I think—though it wouldn’t hurt to double-check.”
“We need to find out who this guy is,” said Adam grimly. “And we need to find the walking stick, so that Beauclaire doesn’t kill us before Flores does.”
“We have his name,” I said. “Guayota. That might help. And Zee gave Tad some insight he shared with me about Beauclaire and why not running Coyote down before Sunday might not mean disaster.”
He glanced my way and back at the road, inviting me to keep talking. So I explained Zee’s reasoning. When I was finished, Adam gave me a short nod. “Might work. It would be better to have the walking stick, but beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Zee’s insights into the problem with Beauclaire and the walking stick have showed me I need to start thinking outside the box more,” I said.
“Oh?” Adam glanced at me, then back at the road.
“I thought we should apply that kind of thinking to the matter of Christy’s stalker.”
He gave me a skeptical look.
“No, really,” I said. “Now that we know that Flores is really this nasty, fiery, superpowerful nothing-can-kill-me demon from hell, maybe we should consider just giving Christy to him?”
He laughed.
“I’m serious,” I said. And I was. Really. If only a little bit.
“Right,” he said affectionately. “I know exactly how serious you are. We’ve got a twenty-minute drive ahead. Why don’t you close your eyes and rest up?”
It sounded like a plan. My hands hurt, my hip hurt, my cheek throbbed, and someone had thrown a finger at me—and I hadn’t eaten today. Adam’s hand curled around the top of my knee, and I relaxed and let myself drift off. Nothing was so bad that Adam’s touch couldn’t make it better. Even if he wouldn’t let me give Christy to the fire-dog from hell.
8
