by Gwen Knight
“Erica Marsters was found within a mile of Humming Creek two weeks later, buried beneath the foliage. Unlike Barbara, Erica’s body showed signs of a struggle. Had it not been for her eyes, the two cases might never have been connected.” Shane’s face crumpled. “DNA was found beneath her fingernails. It was a match.”
Sky forced herself to swallow the bile rising in her throat. “To the samples from my windowsill?”
Shane nodded. “Unfortunately, this person isn’t in the database, so even though we know it’s the same person, we don’t know who he is.”
“You should have warned me,” she whispered. They’d spoken on the phone this afternoon in the airport. He’d insisted she wait for an escort, but had he said why…
“Sky, the last thing I wanted was to upset you any further.”
“She had a right to know, Mr. County Mounty.” Harley crossed the room. “The moment the DNA came back as a match, you should have been on the wire alerting anyone and everyone. Now, you have a serial killer on your hands.”
The world pitched to the side, and Sky reached out, her hand colliding with the desk for balance.
“Hindsight is great, and all that,” Shane grumbled.
“Lack of experience, is more like.”
“Enough,” Wyatt grumbled. “No point crying over it, now.”
“Why the eyes?” Sky whispered, interrupting what she was sure would lead to another pissing contest. Her attention skipped to each of them, but none seemed willing to speak up. “Why?”
“We don’t know,” Shane finally answered. “It’s hard to say. Some murderers like to collect… souvenirs.”
She shuddered, her mind taking a giant leap to a dark room teeming with gouged eyeballs stored in preservation jars. “You know what, forget I asked.” She pressed a hand to her churning stomach.
“Tell us about the third body.” Wyatt led the conversation down a separate path.
“Jody Anne Davidson, our most recent, and by far the most violent case.”
Sky stared at the third picture. Another beautiful woman, forever memorialized in a photo, stared back. Her lush lips curved in a gentle smile, her dark blue eyes shimmering with laughter. Absolutely breathtaking, and Sky felt her gut twist when she realized that the woman’s family would never lay eyes on her lovely face again.
“We called Wyatt in when we found Jody Anne. The marks on her torso suggest he’s losing control. Having an alpha on the team is—”
“Convenient,” Wyatt returned with a snarl.
“What marks?” Sky brought the conversation back on target. She wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the answer, but she had to know what they were dealing with. She couldn’t hide in the dark anymore.
The room fell silent until finally Harley said, “Show her. She deserves to see.”
“No,” Wyatt ordered, the clipped word echoing through the room.
“Alpha, she deserves to know what’s happening,” Harley urged in a softer voice. “If we don’t prepare her, any number of things could go wrong. She has to understand the magnitude of the situation.”
Wyatt faced him, his eyes hard.
Sky’s wide eyes bounced between the two of them. Harley stood two inches taller than the alpha, yet lacked the intimidation Wyatt conjured with his pinky finger. There was no doubt in her mind who would win in a fight, and it seemed Harley knew it. Former fed or not, he would obey his alpha.
Sick of the grandstanding, Sky planted her hands onto her hips and faced Shane—the only human in the room. “I decide what I can and cannot handle. Answer my question, now.” The men weren’t the only dominant wolves in the house. Perhaps it was time for her to show them she was made of more than sugar and spice.
“Skylar—”
“Shane. Now.” Yup, she was beyond angry. Regardless of her emotional state, he had no reason to keep such a thing hidden from her. Not when she was top-of-the list for this psycho.
Shane’s eyes flicked to Wyatt’s, and Sky bristled. “No one asked the alpha,” she snapped.
“If she’s so desperate to see, let her.”
There was a challenge in his voice, one that stiffened Sky’s back. They didn’t think she could handle it. And here she thought she’d been doing well. Resigned, she gave a terse nod and waited as Shane dug the photographs out of the folder. No matter what condition the body was in, she wouldn’t retch, or so she told herself.
Shane withdrew the photo and laid it flat on Wyatt’s desk. A shredded woman took shape before her eyes, the flesh on her chest sliced to ribbons. The first sharp breath didn’t come from her; in fact, it came from Axel, who until that moment had held his statuesque position near the desk.
Sky’s chin trembled, but she snapped her eyes closed and drew in a steady breath. No, the room was not swimming, and no the temperature had not spiked. It was all in her head. And she could control that. “Was he…” Her voice wavered and she cleared her throat, determined not to fail herself. “Was he in wolf form when he did that?”
“I don’t know, but if I understand correctly, some werewolves can control individual body parts.”
Wyatt grunted his assent.
“It’s possible he only shifted his hands, querida,” Bale murmured from across the room. “But he’d need to be an alpha to possess that level of control.”
“Did he—” Sky choked on her words and pointed toward the picture. “Uh, did he...violate her?”
The silence in the room was answer enough. Her knees buckled and she dropped into Wyatt’s computer chair.
“The other two, as well?”
“I’m sorry, Sky.” Shane’s palms curled over her shoulders, his reaction her answer. “But I swear, this guy won’t lay a finger on you.”
She flicked another glance to the image, her clammy palms curling into tight fists at the sight of Jody Anne’s ruined torso. He’d raked his claws down her length, shredded her from neck to groin. She noticed something odd, and pressed a fist against her mouth to keep from losing what little food she’d eaten all day.
“Sky?”
She squeezed her eyes shut and forced her gaze away. “That’s my nightgown she’s wearing.”
“What?” Shane’s hands vanished from her shoulders as he scrambled to snatch up the photo.
The front of the slip was ruined, but she knew her own blue satin negligee. She’d bought it at the insistence of a friend, all the while knowing no one would ever see it. She was far too invested in her career to let a man slip into her life.
“How do you know?” Wyatt’s deep voice rumbled behind her.
Her wolf ached for comfort, even if it meant leaning into him and taking whatever he could provide. Instead, she straightened in the chair and pointed to the image. “Down toward the thigh. I spilled a little bleach on it when I was doing a load of laundry.” Her eyes narrowed in on the colorless spot. It’d broken her heart when it had happened. “Must have made her put it on while he was in my house.”
The others fell into a stunned silence, and Sky took that moment to glance at Wyatt. Violence brewed in the golden depth of his eyes, his mouth a ferocious line that promised retribution. Such a fierce stare might have terrified her, except for once, Sky found herself on common ground with him. Emboldened by the realization, she didn’t argue when he pulled her out of the chair and drew her flush against him, the tips of his fingers settling against her waist.
“I vote we waste this guy,” Harley suggested.
So preoccupied by the photo, not a single one of them had noticed the slight change between Sky and Wyatt, and she was content with that. She succumbed to her need and leaned into him, holding this newfound camaraderie close and using his strength to bolster her own.
“There is no vote,” Wyatt snarled against her, his grip tight. “The fucker’s dead.”
Chapter 10
A polite knock rapped against the kitchen doorframe. Focused on the amber liquid swirling within his glass, Wyatt grunted an invitation.
Harley cro
ssed the room and dropped onto the stool next to him. “Those reporters are bloody annoying.”
Wyatt nodded. “They’ve been calling me every hour, demanding an exclusive with Skylar.”
“Parasites. They’re camped out in the street, waiting to get a few candid shots of the werewolf advocate and the alpha.”
Wyatt groaned. “That’s what they’re going to call us too.”
Harley chuckled. “I did, however, just get off the phone with my contact in the bureau.”
“Great. What do we know?” Wyatt demanded.
“What? No ‘Thank you, Harley, for going out of your way to find this information’?”
Wyatt’s lip curled over his teeth.
Harley blew out a harsh sigh and draped his arms over the table. “All right, I’m going to ask you something, even though you’re probably going to kick my ass. Just remember that you like me and it would piss you off if I died.”
“That’s debatable.”
“You’d weep,” Harley informed him. “I don’t doubt it.”
“Ask the fucking question,” he snarled.
Harley drew in a deep breath. “Here goes. What’s going on with you? You’ve been a sour apple the past couple of days, and you and Sky have been actively avoiding one another.”
Wyatt lifted his attention from the glass and leveled Harley with a murderous stare.
“Yup, regretting asking already. Remember…I’m your favorite.”
Harley wasn’t entirely wrong. It’d been two days since he’d brought Sky into his house, and it’d been a living nightmare. Seemed the Fates were getting a kick out of torturing him. He’d sworn to keep his distance, and instead, the bitches kept throwing them together. Felt like any time he went anywhere, there she was. If it wasn’t the kitchen or the game room, then it was the hallway. Yesterday he’d woken up early to sneak in a shower only to find she’d had the same thought. There he’d stood in the washroom, forced to smell her shampoo and body wash. Needless to say, the towel rack hadn’t survived his anger. Everywhere he fucking went, she was there. As though his wolf needed another reason to howl.
He had no intentions of discussing this with any of them. “What information did you find?”
With a sigh, Harley reached for the scotch bottle between them and poured his own glass. “You know, I’m not an FBI agent anymore. Going to them for trivial things like this really doesn’t look good on me. A little appreciation—”
Wyatt’s snarl echoed through the kitchen. He lifted the crystal to his lips and tossed back the scotch. “Do not make me ask again.”
“There really wasn’t much to find. No priors, no arrests, hell, the woman doesn’t even have a speeding ticket under her name. One of my buddies put in a few calls to Sky’s university. Seems she’s rather popular among the faculty and student body. She’s not the first werewolf to seek out post-secondary education, but she is the first in her field. Her Master’s is in whatever the hell Werewolf Sociocultural Evolutionism is, and she’s currently working on a Ph.D. in some other werewolf shit. I don’t know, man, it was a lot of fancy words, and my brain isn’t big enough to comprehend them all.”
With a sigh, Wyatt spun the glass in his hand.
“I was given a courteous warning, though. The feds will be sending someone to check this out. Three deaths—”
“Makes a serial killer.”
Harley’s head bobbed. “They won’t bother us, much. They’ll want a statement from Sky, but they’ll mostly be Shane’s headache.”
“Sky’s given Shane her statement. That will suffice.”
“Uh—”
Wyatt shot Harley a sharp glare.
“Right.” Harley reached for his cell. “I’ll give them a head’s up, not that they’ll listen. Meanwhile, I think our best lead is her old pack.”
“And the sheriff,” Wyatt said.
“Shane?”
Wyatt nodded. “The calls and letters stopped once he moved in.”
“So? Maybe he scared the pervert off.”
“You ever known an alpha werewolf to give up on something they want?”
Harley shot Wyatt with a sardonic stare. “Gee, let me think…”
Wyatt growled. He didn’t want to think about his own problems right now. “Watch yourself.”
“The sheriff is human, remember?”
He shrugged and poured another drink. “Wouldn’t be the first time a werewolf has played human. It takes effort, but it can be done.”
“What a conniving bastard,” Harley said, sarcastically. “He starts with the phone calls, then starts hand-delivering creepy letters. But that’s not enough. No, he’s so obsessed with her, that he actually jerks off on her window-sill—which, gross. Not exactly the way to a girl’s heart. Then, when she seeks out help, he offers his assistance. But wait, there’s more. The guy actually moves into her house…and,” Harley fed him wide eyes, “maintains a platonic relationship. What a bastard. Of course, we can’t forget that during all this, he’s pretending to be human.” He gave a slow clap. “This guy is my hero.”
Wyatt shook his head.
“You just don’t like the guy.”
“Sure don’t,” Wyatt agreed. “Doesn’t change my mind, though. You agree it’s a possibility?”
“Well, sure.” Harley stressed the word. “He could be hiding that he’s a werewolf. He could be obsessed with Sky, but then why wouldn’t he try something with her? I’m sure they spent many quiet nights together.”
Wyatt clenched the glass, the glass cracking at the edge.
“Ease up there, boss. Plucking glass out of flesh isn’t fun.”
He forced his fingers straight.
“If you like the girl, why not do something about it?”
He let out a ragged snarl. “Back off.”
Harley gave a mock salute and then rose from his stool. Cupboard doors opened and closed as he pulled out the ingredients to make his renowned inch-thick peanut butter and jam sandwich. “It still seems to me that we should be looking into her old pack. Before her mother’s funeral, everything was all hunky-dory. Mama bites the dust, daughter goes home for funeral, and bam…got yourself a stalker. Classic.”
Wyatt arched a brow. “Really, classic?”
His third-in-command snatched a giant bite, speaking around a hunk of peanut butter. “Nah, but it sounds better than some-freak-starts-plucking-out-eyeballs, doncha think?”
“Charming. Tell me again how you’re single?”
“Why, you wanna take a spin on the Harley?” He waggled his eyebrows, his olivine eyes sparkling with amusement. “And here I thought you preferred blondes.”
“Hair color doesn’t matter to me. But I do prefer my dates without balls,” Wyatt responded dryly.
Harley choked on his sandwich, his face burning as brightly as his hair. “Nice one, Alpha. And where is our illustrious guest?”
Wyatt drained the glass. “Upstairs.”
“Not that you’re watching her or anything, hey?”
So not a topic he cared to discuss. “Top me up, will you?”
“The bottle’s a couple inches from your hand.”
“Mm, perks of being the alpha.”
Harley scoffed under his breath and crossed the room with the remaining half of his sandwich. “And don’t you just love to lord that over us.”
“Don’t like it? Challenge me at the next new moon.”
Sarcastic laughter rumbled from Harley’s throat. “Please, I like my heart right where it is, all alive and beating in my chest. I remember the last fight you were in. Gave me nightmares.”
“Good.” Wyatt lifted his hand and jingled the empty glass. “Then top me up.”
The two joined in laughter as Harley filled the glass one inch at a time.
“You’re pushing your luck, pup,” Wyatt grumbled.
“So how many more drinks till you go upstairs and woo the lady?”
Wyatt froze, his gaze locked on the shimmering glass. For two days his wolf had
been demanding the same thing. The feel of her body against his had been too good to forget, but he knew his wolves—meddlesome creatures that they were. The moment they spotted their alpha with a female, the bets were on. “Drop it.”
“The bottle? Sure.” He let it slip back to the counter. “Doesn’t answer my question, though.”
Wyatt growled. “Get used to disappointment.”
Harley sighed and plopped back into the stool, his sandwich forgotten in light of the newest conversation. “I don’t see what the problem is. Clearly, you like her.”
A disgruntled laugh scraped past his lips. “Like her? She’s the most infuriating woman I’ve ever met.” And by far the sexiest.
“You’re the only one who thinks so.”
Wyatt scowled. “What are you talking about?”
“How can someone who watches her that closely be so blind?” Harley turned, the humor vanishing the moment he caught sight of Wyatt’s face. Clearing his throat, he twisted the bottle of scotch between his hands. “Everyone adores her, especially Trinity.”
Trinity…Wyatt blinked. She was one of his submissive wolves. Interesting that a dominant female like Sky would befriend one of the weakest in his pack. Not that he minded. His pack functioned well because his wolves treated each other with respect.
“I’m serious, boss. You think we didn’t see you two clutching at each other up in your office a couple days ago? Not to mention that you both reek of frustration and desire.”
“I can’t begin to express how much this is not your business.”
“It’s all our business.” He held up his hands and instantly dropped his chin and gaze when Wyatt snatched at the bottle with a ferocious snarl. “Alpha. Think about it, all right? We all knew something was up the moment we stepped into that sickeningly sweet house of hers. You two are circling each other like alley cats, ready to tear into each other. My recommendation—”
“You’re putting your life at risk, boy.”
“—is go up there, get your fuck on, and wash your hands of each other so we can focus on the case.”
“Harley,” Wyatt barked. “Enough. I don’t want to hear another word.”
Harley’s gaze dipped to Wyatt’s clenched fist, and he nodded before taking another bite of his sandwich, cramming his gullet with peanut butter. At least it would shut him up. Wyatt stretched out his fingers and then pushed to his feet and started for the stairwell. What would it hurt to check in on her and ensure she was settling in well enough?