Tanned Hide by R. A. Meenan Page A

“Worries about possible abuse and neglect.
. .” She glanced at me over the file. “Anything else you want to
add to that, Mr. Black?”
    “ You’re a horrible monster,
Miss Piper.”
    “ No, Mr. Black,” she
said. “You are the
horrible monster.” She passed me the rejected application. “Better
luck next time. Assuming there will be a next time.” She waved me
out of her office.
    I walked out with the application in
hand, consciously closing the door slowly so she couldn’t add
“violence” to my case file. God dammit. Damn it all to hell. How
the hell did this happen?
    And yet, I couldn’t really get mad. I
knew she was right. I was a monster. But I was working on it. I had
spent the last ten months cutting all my assassin connections. I
was getting out of the business, like Mom asked. Trecheon with me.
We’d finally be clean, even if it meant I was stuck with the slow
life of an HVAC man for the rest of my life.
    But I couldn’t prove that to Miss
Piper. It wasn’t like I could show up and say “Hey! Remember how I
was a horrible assassin? Well I’ve been clean for ten months!
Here’s my rehab records!”
    If only life worked that
way.
    The only thing I could do is somehow
“prove” my innocence to the FBI and let them tell Miss Piper that I
was clean. Only I couldn’t think of a single way to do
that.
    “ Need help with something,
Mr. Black?” a cooing voice beckoned to me.
    I glanced up and nearly froze in
place. The three doe of the Triple Danger stood in the parking lot
near a limo. They wore matching dark green dresses and pearls. All
of them eyed me with disturbing half-smiles.
    My first thought was to run, but I
couldn’t get my legs to work. I tried speaking instead. “What do
you want?”
    “ We want to help, Mr.
Black,” one of the doe said, pacing toward me. I noticed as she
walked that she was heavily pregnant. She stopped in front of me
and held out a hand. “If you’d just come with us. This won’t take
long.”
    “ I imagine it wouldn’t,” I
said, but I didn’t take her hand.
    She lifted an ear and her smile
widened. “Oh come now, Mr. Black. Don’t be so nervous. We want to
help. I’m sure you’re curious.”
    “ Curiosity killed the cat,”
I muttered.
    “ But you’re as skittish as
a newborn fawn,” the doe said. She reached down and gently took my
hand. “I promise, Mr. Black, we only want to help. Give us a
chance.”
    Everything screamed at me to get away,
but I allowed her to lead me to the limo. The four of us got in and
the driver drove off. One doe pressed a button and raised the
privacy glass between us and the driver. As I settled myself, I
noticed a car seat with a baby fawn in it. She couldn’t have been
more than two months old.
    “ One of you jumped the gun
before I ever got the Matron, huh?”
    “ We were pretty
confident.”
    One of the doe handed me a glass of
champagne. I took it gingerly, but I didn’t drink it. “I never did
get your names.”
    The doe who took me by the hand
giggled. “Logos,” she said.
    I lifted an eyebrow.
“What?”
    “ My name.
Logos.”
    “ I’m Pathos,” another
said.
    “ Ethos,” the last one
nodded.
    I blinked a moment, until my mind
drudged up an old English lesson. I rolled my eyes. “I get it.
Clever.”
    “ The Matron thought so,”
Logos said. “Now, Mr. Black. We understand you’re trying to adopt
your brother.”
    I tried not to flatten my ears. “Yes,
I am.”
    “ No luck so far,” Pathos
said. “After four tries. Yes?”
    Lightning ran up my body, but I didn’t
let it show. “No.”
    “ All because Miss Piper
believes you’re Matron Fawn’s killer,” Ethos said. She shook her
head. “Tsk, tsk. Speculation can really turn a person.”
    I ground my teeth. “Just get to the
point of this conversation.”
    “ We want to help you get
your brother back.”
    I froze in my seat. “Why?”
    Logos rubbed her pregnant belly and
Ethos patted the head of the sleeping fawn in the car