Bitter Blood (Morganville Book #2)

Chapter 13

Joe Hess was driving his own car, but it had all the cool cop stuff inside - a radio, one of those magnetic flashing lights to go on the roof, and a shotgun that was locked into a rack in the back. He was a tall, quiet man who just had a way about him that put me at ease. For one thing, he never looked at me like some annoying kid; he just looked at me as a person. A young person, true, but someone to take seriously. I wasn't quite sure how I'd earned that from him, considering the death warrant delivery.

"I'm locking the doors," he told me as I climbed into the passenger seat, half a second before the click-thump sound echoed through the car. "Nice to see you, Anastasia."

"Thanks. It's good to see you, too. What about the buses?" I said. "Are they out of town yet?"

"Amelie herself escorted them through the barrier a few minutes ago," he said. "There was a little bit of trouble at the border, nothing we couldn't handle. They're on their way. Nobody was hurt."

That eased a tight knot in my chest that I hadn't even known was there. "Where are they going - No, don't tell me. I probably don't need to know, right?"

"Probably not," he agreed, and gave me a sidelong look. "You okay?"

I looked out the car window and shrugged. "My parents are on one of those buses, that's all. I'm just worried."

He kept sending me looks as he drove, and there was a frown on his face. "And tired," he said. "When you left me, did you go back to Bishop? Did he hurt you?"

There really wasn't an easy answer to that. "He didn't hurt me," I finally said. "Not . . . personally."

"I guess that's part of what I was asking," he said. "But that doesn't answer my question, really."

"You mean, am I in need of serious therapy because of all this?" Another shrug seemed kind of appropriate. "Yeah, probably. But this is Morganville. That's not exactly the worst thing that could happen." I turned my head and looked directly at him. "What was on the scroll I gave you?"

He was quiet for so long I thought he was blowing off the question, but then he said, "It was a death warrant."

I already knew that. "Not yours, though."

"No," he said. "Someone else's."

"Whose?"

"Ana - "

"It doesn't matter. We got it reversed. It's not an issue anymore."

"I delivered it. I have a right to know."

For answer, Joe dug into the pocket of his sports jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, still curling at the edges, with fragments of wax clinging to the outside. He held it out to me.

I unfolded it. The paper was stiff and crackly, old paper, with a faintly moldy smell to it. The handwriting - Bishop's - was spiky and hard to read, but the name was done larger and underlined.

Eve Rosser.

"That's not happening," Joe said. "I just wanted you to know that. If he tells you about it, I wanted you to understand that Eve is perfectly safe, all right? Nothing will happen to her. Anastasia, do you understand me?"

I'd carried an order to him to kill my best friend.

I couldn't think. Couldn't feel anything except a vast, echoing sense of shock. I tried to read the rest of the paper, but my eyes kept moving back to Eve's name, going over and over it.

I folded up the paper and held it clutched tightly in one hand. Breathe. I felt light-headed and a little sick.

"Why you?" I asked faintly. "Why give it to you?"