Adam was waiting for us at the highway's shoulder when I found him. He'd set the injured man down a few yards away, where there was a big rock he'd used to keep Benny's leg elevated.
"Hey." I spread the blanket over Benny and tucked it in around him. "How are you doing, Adam?"
"Not good," he admitted without looking at me. "I need someone to kill." I think he was trying to be funny, but it came out seriously.
I could hear the others approaching. My feet were battered, shoes or no shoes, and my calf ached where the water plant had been pulled off so abruptly. I hadn't made the best time up to the highway and, without Benny slowing them down, evidently they had been able to speed up a lot. I stood up and walked to Adam.
"No one here needs killing," I told him with quiet urgency. "These men were out looking for Benny here. They are the good guys, so you can't kill them."
Adam still wasn't meeting my eyes, but he laughed, and it sounded genuinely amused. "Shouldn't."
"Shouldn't what?"
"Shouldn't kill them, Mercy. Not can't."
I put my forehead against his shoulder. "It's the same thing for you," I told him confidently.
He took a deep breath and turned around to meet the four men who were approaching us a little warily--because they weren't stupid. "Hello," he said, his voice still growly and about a half octave lower than usual. "I'm Adam Hauptman. Alpha of the Columbia Basin Pack."
"Jim Alvin," said Jim, stepping forward. I'd told them not to meet his eyes, but he did better than that. Maybe it was luck, maybe he knew something of werewolves or just wild animals, but he turned one shoulder forward and tipped his head sideways and down submissively even as he reached out a hand. "Of the Yakama Nation. Thank you for the help. Benny's a good man." I noticed that Adam didn't get the elaboration of tribal bloodlines that I had.
"Do you know what happened to him?" asked Adam, after giving Jim's hand a brief shake. His eyes were wolf-bright, ominous yellow in the illumination of their flashlights.
"No idea at all," Jim said.
Fred Owens stepped up. His head was lowered, too, but he was looking up into Adam's face.
"I've seen all kinds of kills. A bear might bite off half a man's foot the way Benny's was. A bear or some other big carnivore."
It was a challenge, of a sort, and I held my breath.
The tension dropped from Adam's shoulders, and he suddenly grinned. "You think I bit off his foot? Hell, Marine, I just got married. I have more important things to do." "Barracuda," said Hank into the sudden silence. "It looks like a barracuda ... or maybe a tiger shark. They have these odd teeth that they saw back and forth."
"The Columbia," said Jim slowly, "is freshwater."
"Tiger sharks have been found up fresh waterways," Hank persisted.
"Not up past dams," said Fred. "How did you know I was a marine?"
Adam's eyes were now honey brown, not quite his usual bitter chocolate, but safer than before. "Easier than spotting a cop," said Adam. "Might as well have it tattooed across your forehead." He paused for effect, then said, "It helps that you're still wearing your dog tags."
"You're not a marine."
Adam shook his head. "Army ranger. I never could swim--and since I became a werewolf, I'm all but useless in the water."
"Could his foot have gotten caught by one of those old jaw traps?" asked Calvin, speaking up for the first time. "It looked sort of like that to me."
"I haven't seen one of those things being used since I was a kid," Jim said. "And it was illegal then. But he's right. It could do that sort of damage."
"A bear trap wouldn't catch two people," Hank said. Adam might have won over Fred with his military fellowship, but the other Owens brother was still suspicious. "Where is Faith?"
"He was afraid of something." I frowned at the unconscious man. "Really afraid. But it wasn't Adam."
Fred nodded abruptly at his brother. "No ranger would be dumb enough to leave a witness alive."
Apparently, he felt that left Adam in the clear.
Hank looked less certain and rubbed a hand along his ribs as if they hurt. Maybe he had strained something carrying Benny up the hill, or maybe it was a reflex thing.
About that time, the ambulance, followed by a sheriff's car, pulled up. With practiced speed, the EMT people slipped Benny onto a gurney, and the ambulance roared off to the nearest hospital. The officer took down names and statements. He seemed to know the other men, and, from their body language, they all got along pretty well. When Fred told him Adam was a werewolf, the officer tensed up and ran his flashlight over us.
His gaze brushed by me, then stopped. "You're bleeding," he told me. He aimed his flashlight at my leg--and damned if he wasn't right.
I pulled up my pant leg. It had been so cold, and my feet had taken such a battering, I hadn't really been paying attention. It hurt, but I hadn't connected that to actual damage. And there was quite a lot, really. Something had ripped the skin off my calf and taken some meat with it. It looked like a really nasty rope burn.
"I got caught up in some weeds wading out to Benny's boat," I said. "Benny hit the motor while I was holding on to the boat and pulled me loose."
"That doesn't look like something a weed would do," Fred told me, shining his flashlight on it. "Some of those underwater plants can be sharp and slice you up some, but that looks more like you pulled free of a hemp rope."