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"He went across the street to pick it up"

Though I didn’t like Nic being out of iveI should have done before now

"Do you have a phone?"

He pointed to the wall behind me

I considered the risks I doubted anyone would have thought to put a bug on this particular phone, and Edward always had his own linesdevices By the tione

I punched in the numbers as the clerk moved off to refill a potato chip display Edward answered on the second ring "Elise?"

How did he do that? The caller ID should have read "Joe’s Gas Station," not "Elise Hanover" So he hunted

My response - "Yes, sir!" - was rewarded with a vicious stream of Gerlad to hear from me," I muttered, "but is that necessary?"

"I have been calling the compound every half an hour, and the line is dead If we are having a malfunction, Elise, it is your job to inform me"

"It’s a little bit more than a malfunction"

"Be specific"

I’d knoard all ofvarious nannies, shipping ht-hand wo someone

There was little warht want there to be

"Specifically" I glanced around No one was in the gas station butthe Hustler supply than listening to me Nevertheless, I lowered my voice "There’s a crater where the coreeted e?"

I thought of the shadow, the shot, the silver "Definitely"

"The guard?"

"Dead"

"Subjects?"

"Could be alive" Edward’s grunt told me he understood the ramifications of that as much as I did

"Except for Billy"

"And Billy is not alive because ?"

"He pissed h traveled hundreds ofme, the sound lost none of its power to belittle

"Your temper is, as always, a problem"

Only Edould think that I had a temper Everyone else considered my personality one step removed from ice bitch of the universe Except Nic, but then, he didn’t really know ht

"I will send someone to Montana," Edward said "So care of things being a J-S eupheed to send soot there, there’d be nothing left to see

"Who is responsible for this travesty?" Edward continued

"Bad guys?"

The line went silent again, and I waited for the inevitable set-down But instead of a lecture, I was rewarded with a dry chuckle, which made my heart stutter

"Who is this?" I demanded

He had the heavy German accent down to a T, but there was no humor in Edward - never had been

Which was understandable His life had not exactly been one laugh riot after another

"What have you done with htened up in htened up ?

Okay, the world had stopped turning, and I had been too busy to notice

"So h" I could al in that way he had that implied both nonchalance and Old World European ether at the reer-Suchers I had known hiest, had helped him the most, yet when Edward had chosen pets, I was not one of theerald were Edward’s darlings as well as bosom buddies Not that they hadn’t tried to kill each other on occasion - when you released hunters into the saot explosions more often than tea parties - but they were two of a kind, and I didn’t fit in

I wasn’t the type to banter and snipe I didn’t dare participate in the physical scuffles they relished

Sarcas them take the place that I’d alanted in Edward’s affections made me a lot less enamored of them than he was

"If this is Edward," I continued, "then tellswell of silence drifted over the line For aot the better of the oldme

"By that," he said in a hard, cool voice that h he wasn’t there to see, "I suspect you’re referring to the fact that I killed your mother"