“Mercy?”

I’d betrayed him. For all the good reasons in the world, but I was his mate—and I’d chosen Samuel. I suppose I could have hoped he wouldn’t notice, but that seemed wrong in light of this morning. What if Heart hadn’t come here first? What if he’d run into Adam and shot him? What if he’d gone to Adam’s work or had a photo of him . . . Come to think of it, wasn’t that odd? Adam was out to the public, and his face photographed very well.

Someone hadn’t wanted Heart to know who Adam was.

“Mercy?”

“Sorry,” I told him. “I’m trying to distract myself. You need to look at Samuel.” I picked at a mucky spot on my overalls because I couldn’t meet his eyes.

If Bran wanted Samuel dead, he’d have to go through me to do it, which he could. But I was through lying to Adam, even if only by omission, merely to keep Bran from finding out.

Sam had trotted past both of us and gone to stand in the doorway, looking through the garage. I could hear Maia still crying for her puppy.

“Puppy?” said Adam, sounding amused. Sam turned and looked at him—and Adam froze.

I was well on my way to passing stupid for idiotic. It was only when Adam stilled that I had the sudden thought that it might not have been the best idea to show the Columbia Pack Alpha that he had a problem with Sam in the narrow confines of my office.

It was Sam who growled first. Temper flared in Adam’s face. Sam was more dominant, but he wasn’t Alpha—and Adam was not going to back down in his territory without violence.

I hopped off the counter in between them.

“Settle down, Sam,” I snapped, before I remembered what a bad idea that was.

I kept forgetting—not that Samuel was in trouble; I had no trouble remembering that—but that his wolf was not Samuel. Just because he hadn’t turned into the ravening beast that the only werewolves I’d seen who lost control to their wolf became, did not mean he was safe. My head knew that—but I kept acting as if he were just Samuel. Because he acted just like Samuel would have. Mostly.

Sam sneezed and turned his back to us—and I started breathing again.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized to both of them. “That was a dumb way of doing things.”

I didn’t want to look at Adam. I didn’t want to see if he was angry or hurt or whatever. I’d had just about enough already that day.

And that was a coward’s way out.

So I turned and looked up at him, keeping my gaze on his chin—where I could see his reaction without challenging him by meeting his eyes.

“You are so screwed,” he said thoughtfully.

“I’m sorry I let you think . . .”

“What?” he asked. “That you needed some time away from the pack, from me? When you really wanted to keep any of us from seeing Samuel?”

He sounded reasonable, but I could see the white line along his jaw where he was gritting his teeth and the tension in his neck.

“Yes,” I told him.

Ben boiled into the room—saw our little tableau, and came to an abrupt halt. Adam glanced over his shoulder at him, and Ben flinched and bowed his head.

“I didn’t catch it,” he said. “Her. The fae thing. But she was armed, and she dropped her weapon when she bolted.” He’d been carrying a jacket, and from under it he pulled a rifle that had very little metal on it. If it had been a little prettier, it might have looked like a toy because it was mostly made of plastic.

“Kel-Tec rifle,” said Adam, visibly dragging himself into a businesslike manner. “Built to fire pistol cartridges out of pistol magazines.”

Ben handed it over, and Adam pulled the magazine. Jerking his hand back with a hiss, he dropped it on my counter. “Nine millimeter,” he said. “Silver ammunition.” He looked at me. “I’m pretty sure that was a nine millimeter or a thirty-eight you were holding on Heart.”

The topic of my transgression was not dropped, just set aside for business. I wished we could just get it over with.

“Nine millimeter,” I agreed. “She could have shot someone, and they’d have blamed it on the bounty hunter. How likely is it that someone would have done a ballistics test and noticed one of the bullets didn’t come from the same gun?”

“Someone was supposed to die,” said Ben. “That’s what I think.”

“Agreed,” said Zee from the garage doorway. Samuel moved—a little stiff-legged, but he moved—so Zee could come into the office.

“Ballistics wouldn’t have mattered,” said Zee. “Making one bullet match another is cake if the fae is dealing with silver. Even a few with little magic could handle it. Iron is impossible for most fae to work, lead isn’t much better, but silver . . . Silver accepts magic easily and keeps it.”

My walking stick had silver on it.

Zee continued speaking. “The bullet would take on the appearance of the others. A little more glamour, and the extra bullet disappears. And whoever that was, they weren’t minor fae—they had a fair touch of The Hunt—The Wild Hunt.”

“I don’t know what that means.” But our fae assassin had been out to kill werewolves. To kill Adam. I needed to find out as much as I could.

“In this case, mindless violence,” Zee told me. “The kind that leaves a man looking at the bodies and wondering why he decided to pull the trigger when he only intended to make a point. If I hadn’t been here to counter it . . .” He shrugged and looked at Adam. “Someone wanted you dead with the blame easily placed, so no one would look too closely.”

Adam put the gun down on the counter next to the magazine, grabbed Ben’s coat, and tossed it on top of them. “I haven’t ticked off the fae recently. Have I?”

Zee shook his head. “If anything, it goes the other way. It must be an individual.” He frowned, and said reluctantly, “Someone could have hired her, I suppose.”

Ben said, “I’ve never seen a fae who used modern weaponry.” He turned to Adam. “I know she was fae and all—but could she be one of the trophy hunters?”

“Trophy hunters?” Zee asked before I could.

“David has captured two people and killed a third hunting him this year,” Adam said. “One was a big-game hunter; one turned out to be a serial killer who’d been preying upon marines from the local base and decided to take on bigger prey. And one was a bounty hunter—though there’s no bounty on David’s head any more than there is on mine. It looked like he just wanted to try his hand at hunting a werewolf.”

“David Christiansen?” I asked. Christiansen was a mercenary whose small troop specialized in rescuing hostages—I’d met him once before he’d become famous. When he retrieved some kids from a terrorist camp in South America, a photographer got a series of really terrific shots that made Christiansen look heroic and sweet. The photos made national news—and the Marrok chose David to be the first werewolf to admit what he was to the public—and thus the most famous werewolf around.

“Yes,” Adam said.

“ ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ ” I murmured. See? An education wasn’t wasted on me, no matter what my mother says.

“This doesn’t feel like that, though,” said Adam. “This wasn’t personal. Heart wasn’t hunting me for thrills, or at least not only for thrills. Someone set him up.”

“And not very well either,” I added. “He didn’t know who you were—and all his producer would have had to do was a simple Internet search for a photo. You’d think someone sending him out after you would make sure he knew who to shoot if you were the target.”

Adam tapped his foot. “This feels like a professional job. A lot of planning, a lot of work to kill someone in the most public way possible. And, most telling, when it didn’t work according to plan—she withdrew.”

“Not ‘someone,’ ” I said. “You. It makes sense. She didn’t want Heart killing you; she wanted to do it herself.”

“No.” It was Ben. “I was wrong to suggest a trophy hunter. This didn’t have that feel. It wasn’t personal. A woman out for blood—assuming fae females are like the rest of the cu—”