Grimm - The Icy Touch Read Online Free PDF

and we’ll talk.”
    It took her a couple of minutes to make up her mind, and work her way up the shaft and out of the hole. Back in her human form she was a stocky little woman with a wide face, just faintly badger shaped; there was a white streak in her black hair. She wore a dirty raincoat, jeans, sneakers. Her hands were mucky from clawing at the dirt walls, fingernails caked in mud. A brown leather purse dangled from a strap over one shoulder. She was almost hyperventilating with fear as, wide-eyed, she looked back and forth between Nick and Hank.
    Her voice quavered as she asked, “You’re both really police?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Hank said gently, showing her his badge.
    “How do I know you’re not... not bad cops. Bought out by those people?”
    “Which people, Mrs. Clement?” Nick asked.
    She hesitated, and gnawed on a soiled knuckle.
    “Those men from the organization,” she said eventually.
    “You know what the organization was called, ma’am?”
    “I don’t know—Buddy said something about ice.”
    “Ice?”
    She nodded, and her lips quivered. “Buddy...”
    “You know how he died?” Nick asked. “What caused the burns?”
    She pursed her lips, as if she was afraid to say it.
    At last she whispered, “Daemonfeuer.”
    “What’s that?” Hank asked.
    “You remember that fire-dancing case?”
    “Yeah. I knew there was something hinky in that one. It was a Wesen?”
    Nick nodded. “Fire breather.” He looked at Mrs. Clement. “How’d your husband run afoul of a Daemonfeuer?”
    “It wasn’t exactly like that. The Daemonfeuer was working for someone else. The organization.”
    “Some kind of... enforcer?”
    Ruby Clement glanced past him at the place where the wooden enclosure became a hurricane-fence gate. Maybe worried someone might be out there on the street, watching and listening.
    “Yes. Buddy and me, we always stayed on the right side of the law. Always! One of these people asked Buddy to do some special underground engineering, at a construction site. Well, that’s what Buddy does, so he thought it was just another job. But when he got there they wanted him to tunnel up under a warehouse of some kind. They want to put a hidden underground entrance, like a trapdoor, too, so they could go into this warehouse without anyone knowing. And—they wanted him to join their organization and... They said he had no choice.”
    She began wordlessly crying, shaking her head, covering her eyes as if that would blot out the memory of her husband’s face melting in dragon fire.
    “And he said no,” Nick said, softly. “And they sent the Daemonfeuer—to make an example of him.”
    “Please. I can’t stay here. They’ll come for me next.”
    “Did he mention any names?” Hank asked, putting a reassuring hand on her arm. “Anything that can help us?”
    She shook her head. “He didn’t tell me anything else. He said we had to hide and... he dug this place out till we could think of something else...”
    “Where was this warehouse?” Hank asked.
    “Gresham Industrial Park, he said. A drug warehouse. You know—pharmaceutical drugs.” She looked toward the gate again, lips compressed thin with fear. “I don’t like to be out in the open like this. They could be looking for me. Oh God, I don’t want to die like that. It was so awful. It breathed fire on him and burned him and he screamed and his eyes...”
    “I don’t think they’re looking for you,” Nick said, “or they’d have been back by now. You have any relatives you can stay with?”
    “Yes. I have a sister in Woodburn.”
    “I’ll have a policewoman come and give you a ride down there. You’ll be all right, Mrs. Clement. I’m sorry about your husband. We’ll do what we can to... bring them to justice.”
    “How can you? Without telling people? I mean— without telling them about... Wesen?”
    “We have ways, Mrs. Clement...”
    * * *
    As Nick and Hank walked into Portland Police headquarters, Hank asked,