She looked at me, as if I'd finally done something interesting. "We might," her voice was cautious.
"Even if I don't remember where I saw them, if it gets close to the seventy-two hours, can we try bluffing?"
"Why?" she asked.
I crossed my arms over my ribs, and fought the urge to hug myself. "Because I want to know why this bugger is following me. Frankly, if he wasn't following me specifically I'd be more worried about St. Louis in general."
She frowned. "Why?"
"If Heinrick and crew were in town in general, then I'd say we have terrorism to worry about. Probably something with a racial bent." I touched the folder without opening it. "Though he's worked a few times for people of color, as the saying goes. Wonder how he justified that to his white supremacist friends?"
"Maybe he's just a mercenary," O'Brien said. "Maybe the fact that he's worked for the white supremacist is coincidental. They were the people who had the money at the time he needed it."
I looked up at her. "You believe that?"
"No," she said, and smiled. "You think more like a cop than I thought you would, Blake, I'll give you that."
"Thanks." I took it as high praise, which it was.
"No, if it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it's a duck, and his dossier reads like he's a white supremacist that isn't above taking money from the very people he wants to destroy. He's a racist, not a zealot."
I nodded. "I think you're right."
She looked down at me for a second or two, then nodded, as if she'd made up her mind. "If the seventy-two hours gets close, you can come and we'll play go fish, but I think we're going to need better bait than a couple of grainy photos."
I nodded. "I agree. I'll do my best to come up with more before we have to beard the lion in its den."
"Beard the lion in its den?" she shook her head. "What have you been reading?"
I shook my head. "I have friends that read to me, if there aren't pictures, I'm pretty much lost."
She gave me another of those looks, half disgust, half trying not to smile. "I doubt that, Blake, I doubt that very much."
Actually, Micah, Nathaniel, and I were taking turns reading aloud to each other at night. Micah had been shocked that neither Nathaniel nor I had ever read the original Peter Pan, so we'd started with that. I'd then discovered that Micah had never read Charlotte's Web. Nathaniel had read the book to himself as a child, but no one had ever read it to him. In fact, he didn't ever remember being read to as a child. That was all he said, just that he'd never had anyone ever read aloud to him when he was small, but that one bit of knowledge seemed to speak volumes. So we were taking turns reading aloud to each other, a bedtime ritual that was more homey, and strangely more intimate than sex, or feeding the ardeur. You didn't read your favorite childhood stories aloud to people you fucked, you read them to people you loved. There was that word again, love. I was beginning to think I didn't know what it meant.
"Blake, Blake, you in there?"
I blinked up at O'Brien and realized she'd been talking to me, and I hadn't heard her. "Sorry, really, I guess I'm thinking too hard."
"Whatever you were thinking about didn't look too happy."
What was I supposed to say, some of it was, some of it wasn't, like most of my personal life. What I said out loud was, "Sorry, it's unnerved me a little to have someone like Heinrick after my ass."
"You didn't look scared, Blake, you looked like you were thinking too damned hard."
"I've had hit men after me before, but not terrorists who specialize in politics. There is nothing political about what I do." The moment I heard it leave my mouth, I realized I was wrong. There were two types of politics that I was deeply involved in, furry, and vampire. Shit, had Belle hired him? No, it didn't feel right. I'd touched her mind too intimately; she still thought she could own me. She wouldn't destroy what she believed she could control, or use.
Richard was still digging out of the political mess he'd made of his pack when he tried to make them a true democracy. You know-one vote per person. It so hadn't worked, because he'd forgotten to keep that presidential veto power. He was Ulfric, wolf king, but he'd gutted the office of Ulfric and still hadn't built back up the respect and power base he needed. I was helping him rebuild, but some of the pack saw my involvement as another sign of weakness. Hell, so did Richard.
But to my knowledge no one was trying to move in on Richard's pack. Neighboring packs were giving us a wide berth until the dust settled. There wasn't anyone worthy of challenging him for pack leader except Sylvie, and she had held off, because she liked Richard, and didn't want to have to kill him. If Richard hadn't been afraid of what Sylvie would do as Ulfric he might have just stepped down for her, but he knew, and Sylvie had admitted, that her first order of business would be to kill anyone she suspected of disloyalty. That could be a dozen, or two. Richard wasn't willing for that to happen. But Sylvie would have come directly to my face if she had a problem. So...