Family

by Crissy Smith

  Kieran nodded. He already knew that. Jackson had built an empire and he deserved everything he’d accomplished. The years they’d spent together as prisoners hadn’t been kind to either of them. Still, they’d survived and made something of their lives.

  “All I care about is who I can trust,” Dakota stated. “I trust you, Jackson and Alex.”

  “Thanks, Dakota.” Mitch wiggled happily. “We trust you too.”

  Kieran shook his head as Dakota laughed. This was their team. Their friends who would always come when needed. Yeah, he might have been born into a shit family, but he wouldn’t trade his chosen family for anything in the world.

  Chapter Six

  The suite next to theirs had been turned into a conference room and the main point of contact. Dakota wanted to question how Jackson had put everything together so fast, but she wasn’t really surprised. Jackson did what he wanted and she just needed to be happy he was still letting her run the investigation.

  Besides, after Caspar had shown up and had words with Jackson, she didn’t feel like going up against the aggravated Walker, anyway.

  Jackson had casually admitted that the room next to theirs was empty and they could get tables and more boards in quickly. That way Kieran and Dakota’s space was still their home. The less scents Dakota had to deal with in her residence, the easier her jaguar felt. She appreciated how Jackson recognized that.

  Caspar had wanted them to return to the office, but with the crime scene a block away this was where Dakota wanted to be.

  Hell, she even had a monitor that was hooked up with Dean’s lab so she could see him working in the lab and ask questions as he received results. All in all, it was a fucking badass set-up. Dakota normally hated to be stuck inside when she could be out in the field. Kieran was even worse, but this time Dakota needed to be careful and keep researching. Dean would find what there was to help the investigation on the scene. Dakota needed to find that elusive clue that would lead her to cracking the case.

  “You doing okay?”

  Dakota didn’t turn from the window as Kieran stepped up behind her, his reflection in the tinted glass. “Sure.”

  “Come on,” Kieran urged as he wrapped his arm around her. “Talk to me.”

  She didn’t know what to say, though. Dakota was tired and she was also ready to move on with her life. To spend time with Kieran and her friends. But she knew that things were never going to change. Being in the Organization ensured that as soon as this investigation was over, there would be another one, then another. It didn’t matter how tired she was, Dakota had work to do. She always would, until she was behind a desk filing reports from other agents who had taken her place.

  “Dakota?” Kieran tightened his hold.

  She shook her head. There were too many people in the room who could overhear. Plus, what would it matter if she did complain? There was nothing she could do to avoid her fate.

  A few agents in the past had tried to escape the Organization and their duty. Each one had been brought back and gone through reconditioning. They had never been the same after whatever had been done to them.

  “Dakota,” Dean interrupted through the monitor.

  She turned, kissed Kieran’s cheek then walked back to the screen. “What’s up?”

  “Kieran said there were five people involved?” Dean asked.

  “Yeah,” Kieran answered for himself.

  “I think there were six,” Dean said.

  “Why?” She peered at the monitor, trying to make sense of the data screening over Dean’s shoulder. But this wasn’t her area of expertise.

  “There were no fingerprints,” Dean said. “They either wore gloves or cleaned up after themselves. But I did find saliva on the victim.”

  “Saliva,” she repeated. What the fuck?

  Dean wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Yeah, I think… Jeez, I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I think they licked the blood off the victim after they made the cuts.”

  “That’s gross,” Remy said, popping up behind them.

  “There’s more.” Dean cleared his throat. “There were faint traces of semen.”

  “They raped him?” Dakota asked.

  “No,” Dean corrected. “I think someone ejaculated over his body.”

  Okay, that was creepier that the saliva. “I didn’t see anything in the other investigation files about that.”

  “There isn’t.” Mitch spoke up. “I’ve read the older cases three times today and there was nothing on the other victims. Not saliva or semen. In fact, the previous bodies were bathed and cleaned for the rituals. The last lab tech did find a trace of soap he suspected was used. He tried to trace where the soap had been purchased, but it was one of the most common brands. Just everyday household soap.” Mitch passed Dakota the file.

  Dakota flipped through the lab reports, not really reading the words. She trusted Mitch. “So why is this time different?”

  “I don’t know,” Dean confessed. “I’m just giving you the facts right now. You need to decide what they mean.” He grinned at her.

  “Bastard,” she teased.

  “Hey! I’m letting you have all the fun,” Dean responded.

  “Appreciate it, buddy,” she snarked. “Now get back to work.”

  Dean sent her a sharp salute before turning his back and returning to his laptop.

  “What do you think this means?” Remy asked.

  Dakota opened her mouth to tell him she didn’t know when Kieran spoke.

  “It’s not the same people,” Kieran stated.

  She jerked her gaze over to her lover. “What do you mean?”

  “We’ve been assuming that the crimes are all connected. That they’ve all been done by the same group of people,” Kieran said.

  Dakota nodded.

  “I don’t think they are,” Kieran told her.

  “They have to be,” she argued. “The symbols, the way the bodies are found, how they start with animal rituals and move on to humans then shifters—”

  “I know.” Kieran held up his hand. “But there has to be another explanation. The only ones who would be able to know the details would be shifters or another paranormal.”

  “Right,” she agreed.

  “But why would a shifter sacrifice another shifter?” Kieran asked.

  “For the same reason a shifter attacks another?” Remy questioned. “We deal with that almost every day.”

  “True. And I can’t explain it, but my gut is telling me that this is something different. We’re on the wrong path,” Kieran said.

  In all the time they’d been together Dakota had never not trusted Kieran. She wasn’t going to start now. “Okay,” she said. “So where do we begin?”

  Kieran shuffled his feet. “I don’t know.”

  Dakota laughed. He looked like a little boy who’d just done something wrong.

  “If I’m not right, I could be holding back the investigation,” he continued,

  “And if you’re right, we might be able to actually solve this case before someone else dies,” Dakota pointed out. She gestured to a blank white board. “That one, we need to put only the information we know about this case. Forget anything we’ve read from the other files. Just facts about the Vegas rituals.”

  “I’ll do it.” Mitch hopped up from where he’d been sitting on the floor. “I’ve read the notes most recently.”

  “Good. Thanks.” Dakota turned to Remy. “We need to re-interview Damon. This time listen to what he has to say about ritual sites and not what we think we know.”

  “I’m on it,” Remy said.

  “Go now,” she ordered. “Gabe and Dare should still be there. Get them to help. I’ll call Damon as soon as I can and talk to him.”

  “What about me?” Kieran asked.

  Dakota pulled him back toward the window where they wouldn’t be in front of the monitor. “I need you to be completely honest with me and yourself. Can we trust James? What is your gut telling you?”
<
br />   He pressed his lips together before finally nodding.

  She stomped back over to the monitor. “James?”

  The human agent appeared in front of where Dean was working.

  “Meet me and Kieran back at the scene. I want to take another look. This time with a new set of eyes. You haven’t been inside, right?”

  “No, I haven’t,” he answered.

  “Good, just concentrate on this scene. Nothing else.”

  “I can do that,” James told her.

  “Good,” Dakota said. “We’ll see you there.” She turned to Kieran. “Let’s go.”

  He was already headed toward the door. Dakota fell in step behind him until they’d exited the room and were heading to the elevator.

  “Thanks for trusting me,” Kieran whispered.

  Dakota slipped her hand in his. “I always will.” She squeezed his fingers.

  The elevator door opened and they stepped inside.

  As soon as the doors had closed, he turned to her.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said.

  Dakota’s stomach churned. The look on his face was full of regret. “Okay.”

  “While you were at the office yesterday, I was downstairs. I met up with Alex and we grabbed a cup of coffee. He had to leave, so I decided to sit at one of the tables. There was a young girl there.”

  Dakota stumbled back against the wall. No, no. Kieran wouldn’t betray her like that.

  “She came up to the table and sat. No one talks to me. You know that. But this girl…she just sat down and began to talk.”

  Why was he telling her this now? Dakota was about to be sick. Kieran had turned so she could only see his profile. She wanted to beat him with her fists, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  “I know I should have told you before, but I didn’t know how. I kept telling myself that when the time was right I’d confess, but you were working this case—”

  “Stop,” she spat out. “Just stop.”

  “Dakota,” he said.

  “Don’t!” She was going to shake apart.

  “No!” he roared. He grabbed her then yanked her forward. “Never!”

  Tears were falling.

  “Baby.” He cupped her face. “Look at me.”

  She raised her eyes to meet his. As soon as Dakota processed what he was telling her, she was going to kill him.

  “I would never cheat on you,” he stated. “Never.”

  “What?”

  “Who. Your niece,” he blurted out. “Your niece was at the hotel looking for you. Or she found you and couldn’t approach. Scared, I guess. Anyway, she asked me to tell you. But there was so much going on and I didn’t know how to bring it up.”

  Dakota sagged against her lover. She was absolutely going to murder him. After she could breathe, that was. “You didn’t sleep with her?” She just had to make sure.

  “Fuck, no,” he growled. “I can’t believe you’d even ask me that.”

  “I wouldn’t have twenty minutes ago. Before this conversation.” She pulled out of his arms before punching him in the chest. “You fucker! What the hell?”

  “Ow! Shit, that hurt.” Kieran rubbed his chest.

  “Why would you even talk like that?” she yelled. “I thought you’d slept with someone else.”

  “I get that now,” Kieran bitched.

  She was so pissed off that she went to hit him again until someone cleared their throat behind them. Dakota whirled around and came face to face with Alex.

  “You’ve already scared off everyone in the close vicinity, but I would prefer not to have to clean blood from the carpet,” Alex said.

  Damn it, the elevator had reached the ground level and Alex was holding the door open. She growled at Kieran, her jaguar close to the surface, then stalked out on to the main floor of the hotel. “Sorry.”

  Alex nodded. “Completely understandable.” He glared at Kieran. “I only heard the last bit, but I suspect Kieran deserves whatever you do to him.”

  “Thanks a lot,” Kieran muttered.

  “I need to get back to work,” Dakota said. She didn’t stop to wait for Kieran. Fresh air sounded good about then. She pushed out through the door and inhaled deeply.

  “I’m sorry,” Kieran said from behind her.

  Dakota nodded. She knew he was.

  “It’s just that you trust me so completely and I was hiding this from you,” Kieran told her. “I couldn’t do it any longer.”

  Hell, he hadn’t managed to do it for more than twenty-four hours. She smiled, although she remained with her back to him. Her reaction had been over the top, but that was her jaguar pushing to come out. The thought of their mate being with someone else was enough for Dakota to almost shift. Kieran belonged to her and her jaguar and no one was going to get in the way of that.

  Shifters were normally protective of their mates. Just because Dakota and Kieran hadn’t taken the final step in sealing their bond didn’t mean that Dakota wouldn’t kill for her mate.

  But that line of thought just reminded her that she could still lose him. If not to his father, then to someone else. She’d told Kieran that they could wait to have any discussions about mating until they were more settled, but she didn’t know how much longer they could go like this.

  “Dakota?”

  “I love you,” she told him.

  “God, I love you too. I’m so sorry.”

  “No, I am.” She turned and faced the man who meant everything to her. The only person that wasn’t with her because he didn’t have any other choice. Kieran chose to be with her. “I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”

  “I didn’t say it right—”

  “Stop, Kieran,” she said. “This is my fault.”

  “No, I should’ve—”

  She took two steps forward so she could grab the front of his shirt and hold him close. “I want to mate you.”

  * * * *

  Kieran stared at her as Dakota’s words echoed in his mind. He knew that was what she wanted, what she’d always wanted. Dakota’s jaguar had left him unmated for longer than anyone had expected.

  He had his reasons why he hadn’t said yes, the years of being held and tortured at the hands of shifters being only one. Kieran still didn’t think he was good enough for her. Dakota deserved so much more than a broken man who couldn’t sleep in the dark alone.

  Looking in her eyes, though, he could see how much she loved him. How she’d fight for him even if she had to fight him.

  “Okay.” The words were simple, but he meant them with all his heart. Kieran would be hers and she would belong to him. A true partnership in every sense.

  She scrunched her nose as she jerked. “Okay?”

  “Okay, I will mate with you. I love you and I’ll never leave you.”

  Her eyes filled but this time he could see the happiness that flowed from her. “I…I…”

  “Let me kiss you,” he said.

  She rose to her tiptoes then slammed her mouth on his. Dakota kissed him and it was perfect and what he needed.

  Kieran slid his hands down her back, pressing her against his body. “Mine,” he whispered when they broke apart.

  “Mate,” she said.

  “Mate,” he repeated.

  “I want to take you upstairs and do it now,” she told him.

  Kieran chuckled. He wanted the same thing. “Too bad we have work to do.”

  “Yeah.” She sighed.

  “But as soon as we close the case, we can take a few days, stay in our suite and you can bite me, claim me,” he reminded her. Okay, he was reminding himself too, since once he’d actually agreed to mate with her, he’d have everything he wanted.

  He wanted to walk around with the mating mark, so all shifters knew that he had been claimed by such an amazing woman.

  “That wasn’t nice at all,” she complained.

  “Let’s go.” He took her hand and led her across the parking lot. The crime scene was still taped off and
two uniformed police officers guarding the area. “About your niece…”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll discuss it later. Right now, we should concentrate on this investigation.”

  Kieran was certain that Dakota was putting off even thinking about her niece. He’d known how hard it would be to face that part of her life. Hell, her parents hadn’t even celebrated her birthdays or spent any time with her for the few years that Dakota had lived with them. No emotional connection. That was what they’d explained to her. How a girl of five was supposed to live with the knowledge that her parents didn’t love her was beyond him. In his opinion, they didn’t deserve to know her. Not even now. And he felt the same about Kayla.

  That young girl might want to know about the Organization, but did she really have that right? She’d been raised with a family that had taken care of her. Kayla had been given everything that Dakota had not.

  If Dakota didn’t want to deal with this new development of her family, then Kieran would do what he could to distract her. Besides, he’d kept his word. Kieran had told Dakota that Kayla wanted to see her. It was Dakota’s decision whether she wanted to follow up with the girl.

  “Why’d you want James to meet us?” Kieran asked, to get her mind back on the investigation.

  “I thought you read his file.”

  “I did,” he responded. Okay, she knew him well. “I skimmed it.”

  “As a human agent, he was sent to the FBI training academy. He also spent five years working alongside the human police force before being assigned to his last post. He has more experience on the homicide side of our case. I want him to work that angle while we look at groups that might be responsible.”

  “That’s a great idea,” he praised. Kieran was a man of action. One that enjoyed being out in the field cracking heads. He never wanted to have to sit behind a desk and be responsible for figuring out what to do next. Still, being able to work with Dakota was always a good time.

  “James should be here soon, but let’s go ahead and go inside. I want you to do a walk through and see if you can pick up anything else,” she said.