Heart turned to me, his face thoughtful. “Yesterday morning. Yes, that means that Daphne hadn’t been home for two days before that.” He smiled at me. “You were supposed to be the Alpha’s eye candy.”

Adam laughed.

“What?” I asked him. “You don’t think I’d be good eye candy?” I looked down at my overalls and grease-stained hands. I’d torn another nail to the quick.

“Honey is eye candy,” said Ben apologetically. “You’re . . . just you.”

“Mine,” said Adam, edging between Heart and me. “Mine is what she is.”

Heart took out another card and gave it to me. “Call me if you have any more questions. Or if someone knows something that might help me find Daphne. She’s good people. I don’t see her pulling this as a prank or publicity stunt.”

Heart gave Adam a nod and left. Ben followed him out the door—and Sam wiggled through before the door closed.

Zee looked at Adam and me. “I’ll just go keep an eye on Samuel, shall I? That way, if he hunts someone down, I can share in the spoils.”

“And you can give Heart back his gun,” I told him.

Zee grinned cheerfully and produced a hunk of metal that was sort of pretty—steel shot with silver. “I’ll be sure he leaves with it.” He shut the door to the garage behind him, leaving me alone with Adam.

“Mercy,” Adam said. And his cell phone rang. He pulled it out of its case on his belt with an impatient jerk. He glanced at the number, took a deep breath, and answered it.

“Hauptman,” he grunted.

“Adam,” said the Marrok’s easy voice. “I need you to locate Mercy and my son.”

“I know where they are,” Adam said, meeting my eyes. No such thing as a private phone conversation with me or any of the wolves around. Adam could have chosen to take the phone call outside, where he could have talked to Bran in private.

There was a little pause.

“Ah. Would you be so good as to put one or the other on the phone?”

“I think,” Adam said carefully, “that it might be a little precipitous to do that.”

Another long pause, and Bran’s voice was cooler when he spoke. “I see. Be very careful here, Adam.”

“I believe I am,” Adam said.

“I can talk to him,” I said, knowing Bran would hear me.

Adam was putting himself up as a shield between Samuel and his father. If something happened, Bran would hold him responsible.

I love Bran. He, as much as my foster parents, raised me. But I’m not blind about it. His first directive is to protect the wolves. If that meant killing his son, he would do it—but he would kill Adam faster.

Adam said, “No. My territory, my responsibility.”

“Fine,” said the Marrok. “If I or mine can help, you will call me.”

“Yes,” Adam said. “I’ll call you by the end of the week with the results.”

“Mercy,” Bran said. “I hope this is the best path.”

“For Samuel,” I said. “For me, for you. I think it is. Maybe not so much for Adam.”

“Adam has always had . . . heroic tendencies.”

I touched Adam’s arm. “He’s my hero.”

There was another pause. In person, Bran doesn’t think out his comments as much. The phone is difficult because wolves communicate so much with their bodies.

“That is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Bran said. “Be careful, Adam, or you’ll turn her into a real girl.”

Adam looked at me. “I like her just the way she is, Bran.” And he meant it, greasy overalls, broken fingernails, and all.

Bran laughed, then stopped. “Take care of my son. And don’t wait until it is too late to call me.” He hung up.

“Thank you,” I told Adam.

He put his cell phone away. “I didn’t do it for you,” he said. “Wolf in charge or not, Samuel obviously isn’t as dangerous as most of us would be. There are some advantages to being very old. But the letter of the law is what Bran has to follow. If he knew exactly what was going on, he’d have to carry out the sentence.”

“You don’t?”

Adam shrugged. “I guess I’m not much for following orders as written. I prefer the spirit to the letter of the law.”

I’d never thought of him that way. I should have remembered . . . the line between black and white is the one he draws.

I looked down. “So, I suppose an apology is too little, too late.”

“What are you planning on apologizing for? ‘Dear Adam, I’m so sorry I tried to keep you from knowing that Samuel lost it’? ‘I’m sorry I used the problems between us to drive you away so I could deal with it’? Or, and this one is my favorite, ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you what was going on, but I couldn’t trust you to deal with it the way I wanted it dealt with’?” He’d started out sounding amused, but by the last one his voice was sharp enough to cut leather.

I kept quiet. I do know how to do that. Sometimes. When I’m in the wrong.

He sighed. “I don’t think an apology will do, Mercy. Because an apology implies that you wouldn’t do it again. And, under the circumstances, you wouldn’t do anything differently, would you?”

“No.”

“And you shouldn’t have to apologize for being right,” he said, with a sigh. “Much as I’d like to tell you differently.”

I jerked my head up and saw that he was perfectly serious.

“If you had called me to tell me that Samuel had lost it, I’d have come over and killed him. Put him down with a bullet because I don’t know that I could take him in a fight. I’ve seen wolves who’ve lost it before, and so have you.”

I swallowed. Nodded.

“What I know, that you do not, is how the wolf longs to hunt, to feel blood in his teeth. The kill . . .” He glanced away and back. “On his own, my wolf would never have let that bounty hunter leave here alive after he held a gun on me. I doubt that he’d have put up with having babies crawl all over him.” Sorrow passed over his face. “Even with Jesse, my own daughter . . . I would not trust him. But Samuel’s wolf managed to deal. So we’ll give him a chance. A week. And after that week, we’ll let you go talk to the Marrok and tell him how his son has kept his cool for a solid week. And maybe you can buy more time for him.”

“I am sorry,” I said in a low voice. “I played on your guilt to keep you away.”

He leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “You didn’t lie, though, did you, Mercy? The pack bothers you, and so do I.”

“I just need time to get used to it.”

He looked at me—and I squirmed just as I’d seen his daughter do under that look.

“Don’t lie to me, Mercy. Not to me. No lies between us.”

I rubbed my eyes—I was not in tears. I wasn’t. It was just the adrenaline letdown after taking on a gunman with a rogue werewolf at my back.

Adam turned his back to me. I thought it was so I wouldn’t see the look on his face. Until he grabbed the counter and broke it in half—sending my cash register and a pile of receipts and book-keeping stuff boiling to the floor.

Oddly, my first reaction to the violence was the dismayed recognition that without Gabriel, it would be my job to figure out how all those papers needed to be reorganized to keep the IRS off my back.

Then Adam howled. An unearthly sound to come out of a man’s throat—I’d only heard it once before out of a wolf’s. My foster father, Bryan, when he held his wife, his mate’s body, in his hands.

I took a step toward him—and Sam was standing between us, his head lowered in readiness.

The door between my office and the garage is steel set in steel. After Sam’s entrance, it was also bent and broken, dangling from one hinge. I hadn’t heard it go; I’d only been able to hear Adam.

Who had made no sound, I realized. His cry had hit me from a different place altogether, where our bond tied me to him and him to me.

Adam didn’t turn around. “Don’t be afraid of me,” he whispered. “Don’t leave me.”

No lies between us.

I blew out a breath, took a couple steps back, and flopped in one of the battered chairs that lined the wall, trying, with my casual pose, to defuse the situation. “Adam, I don’t have the sense to be afraid of Sam in the state he’s in now. I don’t know why you think I’d be smart enough to be afraid of you.” It would be smarter to be more afraid of a werewolf so upset that he took out a counter Zee had built than of a little paperwork and the IRS.