“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—”

“There’s a lady present,” growled Adam. “Watch your language.”

Ben grinned at me. “Fine. Assuming fae ladies are like other ladies, this one would have been excited, triumphant over the kill. And enraged when I came along and ruined her fun. She didn’t even hesitate when she spotted me. Dropped the gun and ran—no fuss, no bother.”

“Well trained,” said Adam. “Or just a cool thinker.” He looked at me. “And while I admit it looks as though I was the target, it could as easily have been Zee or you. Heart had silver bullets—so the assassin used them, too. It doesn’t mean she was hunting werewolves, not when we know Heart was.”

Tony opened the front door. “You okay, Mercy?”

“Fine,” I lied, but I didn’t expect anyone here to believe me anyway.

Tony frowned at me, then turned his attention to Adam. “You have any enemies we should know about? Sounds like Heart’s producer wanted some more publicity—but we won’t know for certain until we run her down. He had the right paperwork, other than the small fact that it isn’t legitimate. There was a series of victim photos, too. We’ll look into how she got them when we talk to her.”

“Internet,” said Ben. “There’s a website devoted to pictures of dead bodies.”

We all looked at him, and he smirked. “Hey. Don’t look at me—it’s the job.” He saw Tony’s blank face and continued. “Information technologies, IT—you know, computers. At work, when we get bored, we issue challenges—like the person who can come up with the worst website gets taken out to lunch. I got the free lunch—the dead-bodies guy was the runner-up. When I chatted up the bounty hunter’s people, they showed me the photos of the bodies in the file. The dead-bodies website has a section devoted to animal kills. I recognized one of the photos from that.”