Free Anita Blake 18 - Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton

going to take your orders,” I said.
    “Would it really bother you if I killed him?” Nicky asked.
    I finally realized that this problem, whatever it really was, wasn’t going to be settled by guns at the table. I stopped worrying about keeping an eye on both of them and just looked at Nicky. I gave him the full weight of my unfriendly gaze.
    He blinked the one big blue eye I could see. “Nice look. It really has me quaking in my boots,” he said.
    “You haven’t seen anything yet,” I said.
    “Tease,” he said, low.
    Ahsan was back at the table. He wasted smiles on me and I was torn between wanting him away from the table and warning him. “Can I take drink orders?”
    “No,” Jacob said, “we got called back to work, so no time for lunch. Just give us a few minutes to fill Anita in on the problem, and you’ll get your table back.”
    He nodded, put his tablet away, and flashed me another brilliant smile. I tried to give one back, but knew my eyes didn’t hold it. I couldn’t pretend that well. He left us alone, and he would tell the rest of the wait-staff to avoid the table.
    “Show me the pictures,” I said.
    Jacob spread his suit jacket carefully with two fingers and reached in just as gingerly with his other hand to lift out a cell phone. It was another one with a large screen like Bennington had had for his wife’s pictures.
    “If you do anything violent, we will hurt some of these nice people,” Jacob said.
    “I’ll rip the hot waiter’s throat open, just for you,” Nicky said, almost a whisper, and smiled while he said it.
    “I’m more practical, Anita. I’ll hurt whoever is close,” Jacob said.
    I nodded. “The foreplay is getting tiresome, just show me.” But I didn’t like the buildup; it promised that whatever they were going to show me would be bad. My pulse was speeding up, but the lioness was not hurrying toward the surface of me. She was afraid; afraid of these men, these lions. She was attracted to male werelions, never afraid. What was wrong with these two that she could sense?
    Jacob made the screen light up, pressed something on it, and said, “When you want to see the next picture, just slide this with your finger.”
    The first picture was of Micah, Nathaniel, and me on the sidewalk holding hands; laughing. The next picture showed Jason leaning in from just behind us, me leaning back listening. We were all smiling. The next picture was a bad angle, and too far away, but it showed us at the booth in this restaurant the day we all came in together. I watched the pictures of that lunch slide across the screen.
    “Is there a point to this?” I asked.
    “Keep going,” Jacob said.
    I went back to the screen and found pictures of Micah driving, going into office buildings, going into the television station for an interview. The next images were of Nathaniel going into Guilty Pleasures at night for work, going down the alley where the dancers’ entrance was, then daylight and going in to practice the new dance routine on the stage without customers. Jason was in some of those shots. Jason going into the club at night and driving his new car around town. Jason parking at the Circus of the Damned parking lot, and pictures following him all the way to the door.
    I swallowed past the pulse that was trying to come out my throat, and gave a cold, blank face to them. “So you’ve been following my boyfriends, what of it?”
    “You’re almost to the end of the pictures,” he said.
    I kept sliding my finger and moving the pictures. I saw Micah walking down the sidewalk, toward an office building. I knew he had meetings all day. But this time there was a picture, then a picture of the camera used to take it; same street, same everything, but a second camera taking an image of the other camera. Then the next image was of a rifle, a very nice sniper rifle. The next image was back on Micah, and the last shot was of the camera and the rifle side by side.
    “Is that it?” I asked,