by Paige Tyler
“If this woman—Nicole Arend—disappeared, why hasn’t her name shown up on the missing persons database?” Dr. Mills asked over her shoulder.
Since the ME seemed like the kind who could sniff out bullshit almost as fast as Gage, Alex decided he’d better be straight with her and explained their theory about the missing college girls and how they thought the crimes were being covered up.
The doctor stopped to swipe her card again at another door, then turned to look at them. “That’s a pretty serious cover-up you’re talking about and not something I’d expect SWAT to be involved in.”
“It’s not a cover-up yet, just a theory,” Alex clarified. “And that’s what it will stay if you can’t confirm this girl is Nicole Arend.”
They walked into a room with a lot of those morgue freezers you see in all the TV shows. Mills looked on a list attached to the wall, then walked over to one of the doors and opened it. Inside was a zippered white body bag with a clipboard resting on top. She reached for the zipper and started to tug it down, but then stopped to look at both of them.
“You two sure you want to do this?” she asked. “It’s definitely not as gruesome as that mess of a body that blew himself up in June, but it’s worse than the dead Albanians SWAT tangled with a few months before that. It’s even worse than those organized-crime types that all had their throats ripped out after getting in a showdown with you guys at the airport last year.”
Dr. Samantha Mills seemed to know an awful lot about SWAT, especially the stuff that involved a lot of people getting messed up. Realizing she was waiting for an answer, Alex nodded.
Mills pulled the bag’s zipper down far enough to expose the girl’s face. The blood had been cleaned off, but it was still as hard to look at as it had been before. There wasn’t a single inch of her that wasn’t covered with cuts, scrapes, and deep bruises. Damn, she’d really been worked over.
Alex pulled out the photo of Nicole that Becker had gotten from the RTC student records and held it up beside the body bag. He didn’t need to match the face to the picture, because the body’s scent matched the one he’d smelled in the dorm room, but he had to make it look good for the ME.
On the other side of the body, Mills nodded thoughtfully. “I can see why you might think this could be the same girl. The bone structure is identical. It’s definitely close enough to justify getting her dental records. That should tell us for sure, even with all the postmortem damage.”
“Postmortem?” Alex frowned. “Are you saying all this was done after she was dead?”
Mills nodded. “Yes. Small blessing, I guess. Nearly all the damage you saw when you found her was done well after her death. The chief ME is still in the process of doing the full examination, so nothing is final, but if you ask me, this looks like a ritual killing.”
“What kind of ritual?” Remy asked.
“I have no idea,” she admitted. “But what else do you call it when a girl’s been tortured and has organs missing?”
“Missing?” Alex asked.
“Her heart and one of her kidneys are gone.”
Alex felt queasy at the thought. He hoped Lacey never had to hear about any of this.
They left Nicole’s picture with the doctor, along with as much personal information as they had on the girl. As Mills led them back up to the front of the building, she agreed to call Alex the moment she was able to confirm the ID.
Dr. Mills smoothed a stray tendril of long blond hair back into her bun, her face grim. “If you’re right, and this girl is only the first of five college girls who have been kidnapped, we could definitely have a serial killer on our hands.”
Chapter 14
Leo lifted his head from his paws the moment Lacey and Alex walked in the door, an expression on his face that could only be described as hopeful. But when he saw that Kelsey wasn’t with them, the look faded from his furry face, and he put his head down again. Lacey knew the feeling. She wished she could deal with it the same way he did. It certainly would have made her horrible day better if she could have gone to bed and acted like it had never happened.
Four hours ago, the dead woman she and Alex had found the other night was positively identified as Nicole Arend. An hour after that, missing persons connected all the dots with the information Alex and his SWAT teammates provided them and announced that Kelsey, Sara, and Carla had officially joined Abigail on the list as missing, like Kelsey hadn’t been missing before, only misplaced.
Minutes later, the story hit social media and the TV news circuit. A little while after that, someone from Councilman McDonald’s office asked Lacey and Alex to come downtown for an impromptu press conference.
Lacey didn’t believe getting up in front of a camera would help find Kelsey, especially since pictures of Abigail Elliott had been on TV for two weeks, and it hadn’t done them any good at all. But Alex had said that getting word of Kelsey’s abduction out to the public was a good thing, that it might catch someone’s attention and trigger a memory that could lead them to her.
In a word, the news conference had been awful. The entire event turned out to be nothing more than an orchestrated PR event. First, they’d dragged Alex up to the raised platform at the front of the room and positioned him between Councilman McDonald and an older man in a dress blue uniform who turned out to be Chief of Police Randy Curtis. The chief talked first, throwing some praise Alex’s way for the work he’d done finding the link between the five missing girls, but mostly taking all the credit for himself and his department.
Then they pulled Lacey and Abigail Elliott’s mother—Sheryl—up to the podium. They weren’t asked to say anything as the councilman flashed pictures of Nicole Arend and the four missing girls up on the screen behind them. McDonald asked for help in finding them, but to Lacey, it all sounded horribly similar to the news flashes she’d heard before, except now there were more girls missing, one of whom was dead. She prayed with everything in her that Kelsey didn’t end up the same way.
Just when Lacey thought it was over, a man in a suit stood up and introduced himself as a detective from the homicide division. He talked about taking over the case and about the task force he was putting together. While he made promises about finding the killer-slash-kidnapper and the girls, Lacey got the feeling the detective was far more interested in catching the killer than in rescuing the girls.
Things had gone downhill after the reporters left. Lacey had been talking to Sheryl while Alex had been up on the dais with McDonald, Curtis, and the detective. Whatever they were saying, it wasn’t making him happy. She’d seen his eyes get that reflective flash she’d always thought was a trick of the light. Then she’d realized that both his hands were dripping blood. His claws had come out, and he was squeezing his hands into fists to hide them, which was making his palms bleed.
Mumbling an apology to Sheryl, Lacey had hurried onto the dais and taken his arm, saying she wasn’t feeling very well and asking him to take her home. That had snapped Alex out of whatever haze he’d been in, and he led her out of the building. His claws had retracted back to normal by the time they got to his truck, though he had to use a rag from under the seat to wipe off the blood.
It didn’t seem like Alex had wanted to talk on the drive to her place, so Lacey hadn’t said anything, but now that they were back in her apartment, she couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. She glanced at him as she scooped some dry dog food into Leo’s bowl. At the sound, Leo trotted into the kitchen.
“Are you going to tell me what got you so upset at the press conference?” she asked Alex as she opened the fridge.
She didn’t feel like eating, but she’d figured out over the past few days that Alex needed food—frequently. She scanned the shelves, spotting the covered casserole that Wendy must have dropped off that morning while they were out. Lacey pulled off the foil and revealed beef and black bean burritos smothered in red sauce.
Lacey couldn’t help noticing that they still seemed to work well together in the kitchen, even though everything had changed between them. “Yeah, besides that.”
Alex’s eyes flashed gold for a moment, and he let out a little growl. By rights, it should have freaked her out, but for some crazy reason, it didn’t. Was she really getting used to this whole werewolf thing?
“It was that prick from homicide. He told me that he was taking over the investigation, and that SWAT assistance was no longer required.”
She frowned. “But they wouldn’t have a case without you and the other guys from SWAT.”
“Tell me about it.”
Lacey chewed on her lower lip, remembering the sensation she’d gotten that he was more about finding the murderer than Kelsey and the other missing girls. “This guy knows what he’s doing, right?”
Alex shrugged. “I don’t know a lot about him…except for the fact that he’s one of Chief Curtis’s pet detectives. He runs around inserting himself into every case that might have high visibility. Curtis backed him up. He doesn’t want SWAT to have anything to do with the investigation.”
Her heart began to beat faster. “But we’re still going to keep looking for Kelsey too, right?”
Alex put gentle hands on her shoulders. “We’re going to keep looking for Kelsey until we find her. I won’t let anyone get in our way.”
Lacey gazed up at him. “Do you think Kelsey is still alive?”
“I do,” he said.
She was surprised by how much comfort those words gave her, and she found herself leaning into him. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have his big, warm hands on her.
His hands.
Crap!
She reached up to grab them, then flipped his hands palm up, expecting to see four deep puncture wounds in each. Instead, there were only some light pink marks that couldn’t even be called scratches.
“Your hands were bleeding when we left the press conference,” she said. “How can they possibly be healed up already?”
He laughed and carefully pulled his hands away. Then he reached over her head and opened the upper cabinet beside the stove, taking out two plates. “I guess that’s something Everly hasn’t gotten around to telling you yet. Werewolves heal faster than regular people. Simple puncture wounds usually heal up in a couple of minutes.”
The nonchalant way Alex said those insane words should have shocked Lacey, but she supposed she was past that. Maybe she was finally coming to terms with the bizarre world she suddenly found herself living in.
Over the past few days, she’d spent a lot of time with Everly and Wendy. They’d both tried to get her to accept that knowing werewolves were real didn’t necessarily have to be such a big deal. She could understand why Everly was so invested in getting her on board, but she was a little shocked that Wendy had bought in so easily.
Still, she had to admit that she’d gotten to the point where she could truthfully say that Alex and his pack mates—God, she felt ridiculous saying that—weren’t monsters. But it was still a lot to take in all at once. None of that had kept her from being curious, though.
“There are some things that Everly didn’t want to tell me about. She said they should come from you instead. I guess this is one of those things.”
Alex nodded and went back to getting the stuff out for dinner while she got them iced tea to drink. She carried their glasses out to the coffee table in the living room. She hadn’t been able to eat at the kitchen table since Kelsey disappeared. It just didn’t feel right eating there without her sister.
“Did it hurt when you dug your claws into your palms?” she asked as she walked back into the kitchen.
Alex shrugged. “Yeah, but that was the idea. I was hoping the pain would get me to focus on something other than what that jerk from homicide was saying so I wouldn’t shift right there in front of them.”
Her jaw dropped. “That could have happened?”
He leaned back against the kitchen counter, resting his hands on either side of him. “I hate to admit it, but yeah. That guy was being a jackass, and sometimes when I get mad, or fired up, or worried, my inner werewolf can come out on its own.”
Lacey leaned back against the opposite counter as she considered that. “You mean like it did at Bensen’s junkyard?”
“Yeah. Exactly like that,” he said softly.
In the silence of the kitchen, the microwave dinged. Alex grabbed the potholders she kept on a hook near the stove and took it out. She took her time using a spatula to get the steaming food out of the casserole—one burrito for her and two for him. Alex reached over and took the spatula out of her hand, adding another burrito to her plate and two more to his. Then he carried both plates into the living room before she could complain.
“Were you mad at the junkyard?” She glanced at him beside her as she picked up her knife and fork. “Is that why you shifted?”
He cut into one of the burritos, not looking at her. “No, I wasn’t mad.”
She waited patiently for him to say more.
“We had Bensen’s junkyard under surveillance. Supposedly, he’s moving drugs through one of his properties,” Alex said, still staring down at his plate. “When I saw you on that surveillance camera, stumbling around in the dark about to get yourself killed, I kind of lost my mind. I’d had uncontrolled shifts before, like you saw at the press conference, but that night at the junkyard, I shifted further than I ever had in my life.”
A crappy feeling slid down her throat to settle uncomfortably in the pit of her stomach. But at the same time, she felt another sensation too, one she was sure she’d never felt before. “Because you were worried about me?”
“Because I was terrified.” He turned his head to look at her. “You could have died in there. I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
“So you came and saved me, even though you knew I’d see you as a werewolf?”
He turned his attention back to his plate. “I didn’t have a choice.”
But I did.
They ate in silence for a while. The burrito was very good, hot and spicy, just the way she liked it. Wendy wasn’t usually quite so adventurous in the kitchen.
While the food did a good job of distracting her for a bit, it wasn’t long before that recriminating voice in her head stepped up and pointed out that Alex had been forced into shifting because she’d been stupid. And in return, she’d treated him like a monster.
Suddenly, she didn’t really like herself very much.
Deciding she wasn’t hungry anymore, she placed her plate on the coffee table and sat back on the couch.
As the quiet started to stretch out longer and longer, she felt the connection that had been developing between them start to fade, along with that funny sensation in her chest. She didn’t want either of those things to go away.
“Can I ask you something?” she asked softly. “If you don’t want to answer, I completely understand.”
“Go ahead.”
“How did you become a werewolf?”
Alex took a bite of the third burrito on his plate. “Everly didn’t tell you?”
Lacey shook her head. “All she told me is that werewolves are born with a gene and that it takes a traumatic event to trigger the change. Usually something bad.”
He took another bite of burrito, then set his plate down on the table and leaned back on the couch next to her. “It happened when I was a cop up in Rochester. I got a call for a noise disturbance in a residential area. Since it was right after the Fourth of July, I assumed it was some kids messing around.”
His face took on a distant look, like
he was replaying that night in his head.
“When I got to the address, the neighbor who reported the noise wasn’t really sure what he’d heard or where the sound had come from. I wasted some time talking to him before I heard a noise coming from the home across the street, then pissed away another few minutes checking around the outside of the house like an idiot.”
Lacey wasn’t sure she wanted to hear the rest of this. She had the feeling it was going to be even worse than she’d imagined.
“If you haven’t figured it out yet, the house belonged to Jessica—the girl in the photo you saw at my place,” he continued. “She and her parents were victims of a home invasion. An old guy and an eighteen-year-old kid broke in. We never really figured out why they’d done it or why they’d picked that particular house. The kid was a runaway and had been missing since he was eleven. We never ID’d the old guy. By the time I stopped screwing around and got into the house, Jessica’s parents were already dead. I got upstairs just in time to stop the two psychopaths from killing Jessica and her dog, but in the process, I got shot twice. If I hadn’t been a werewolf, I would have died.” He let out a derisive snort. “Considering how badly I screwed up, I probably should have.”
Lacey’s head was swirling with emotions at the thought of Alex getting shot. She now realized that those barely discernable scars she’d seen along his rib cage when they’d made love really had been as terrible as she’d thought. The idea of him being hurt so badly twisted her insides up in knots so intensely she thought she might be ill. She was still trying to figure out why she was reacting this way when she finally comprehended what he’d said.
“What do you mean, how badly you screwed up?” she asked. “You saved that girl’s life.”
Alex gave her a wry smile. “I might have saved Jessica, but her mother most likely died while I was out on the street, wasting time.”