by Paige Tyler
Clayne almost groaned again, except this time it had nothing to do with physical discomfort. No doubt John was talking with one of the hundreds of powerful people he knew about inserting him into someone else’s operation. He hated working with other federal organizations, but that’s exactly what was in store for him. And from what John said, he’d be leaving ASAP. So much for the beers and hot tub.
John hung up and walked over to sit in the wingback chair adjacent to the couch. “There’ve been five murders out in Northern California,” he said as he handed Clayne a manila folder. “The FBI has assembled a standard serial killer task force, but our intel indicates we may be looking at a rogue shifter at work. Maybe even a hybrid.”
Clayne frowned. He wasn’t usually assigned the rogue shifter cases. He wasn’t sure why. Possibly because most people at the DCO considered him just a hop, skip, and a jump from being one himself.
“Why aren’t you sending Tate and his team?”
Bringing in rogue shifters was one of their specialties. Over the years they’d brought in ones who’d gone nuts and started killing people, apparently like this one in California, but also ones who were scared and didn’t understand what was happening to them when they started shifting. Tate Evers and his guys were good at knowing how to handle shifters. Clayne wasn’t much good at anything but the nuclear option when it came to that kind of thing.
“What? You have a date you don’t want to miss?” John asked.
Clayne shifted on the couch, trying to find a more comfortable position. “Tate’s team is just better at this stuff, that’s all.”
“Maybe so, but they’re busy.” John held up his hand. “Before you ask, Ivy and Landon are in Japan. And Tucker and Ramsey are both still in the hospital recovering from their last mission. You’re the only agent I consider qualified and available for this kind of job. This shifter’s already murdered five people, and I need someone who can track him down before he kills again.”
“How about Lucy? If you want someone killed, she can do it.”
John shook his head. “She’s busy with something else.”
Clayne sighed. Damn. She was perfect for a job like this.
“Kendra has you booked on a flight out of National. It leaves in two hours,” John continued.
“Who’s my team member?”
God, he hoped it wasn’t Foley. Or even worse, that asshole Powell.
“No one. You’re going solo on this.”
That was a first. The DCO always sent a norm along in case the shifter part of the team got compromised and had to be taken out. They must be stretched even thinner than he’d thought.
“I’ve gotten you assigned to the task force as a liaison with the Department of Homeland Security. The director of the FBI here in DC knows I’m inserting you, so he’ll cover for you as much as necessary.”
Clayne wondered if the guy had any idea who John was really assigning to the task force. Probably not. Plausible deniability and all that.
“Got it.”
“Oh, and one more thing,” John said as Clayne started for the door. “The director asked that you be as discreet as you can.”
Clayne almost laughed. John knew who he was sending on this mission, right? He didn’t do discreet.
But he gave his boss a nod. “They’ll never even know I was there.”
Chapter 2
Clayne stifled a yawn as he sat back in his chair and surveyed the conference room in the FBI’s Sacramento field office. Thanks to the time change, he’d gotten there early enough to make the scheduled afternoon task-force briefing, but between the o’dark-thirty start that morning for the training exercise and the flight out from the East Coast, he was dog tired. If it wasn’t for the caffeine he’d been mainlining since getting off the plane, he probably would’ve been asleep right in his chair.
He sipped his coffee, watching people filter into the room and take their seats. A few of them glanced his way but didn’t come over to introduce themselves. He ignored them and reached for the folder John had given him. He’d already reviewed the case file on the plane, but it was either that or sit there and try to figure out who was FBI, who was from the state’s Bureau of Investigation, and who was Sacramento PD. And he didn’t give a rat’s ass.
As he opened the folder, his shifter senses suddenly heightened. He didn’t know why, but damn, he felt twitchy. Like he’d left the stove on at home. But he hadn’t turned his oven on in forever, so it wasn’t that. He swept the room with his gaze to see if someone was giving him the evil eye, but no one was looking his way. And since he was sitting in the back corner of the room, he didn’t have to worry about anyone behind him. Maybe he was just more exhausted than he’d thought.
He dismissed the funny feeling and started reading. Over the past month, the killer had kidnapped five men in the Sacramento area and torn them to shreds. The coroner had mistakenly called the first three murders animal attacks. Looking at the photos, Clayne could see why. And if the bodies hadn’t been found within the city proper, maybe he’d cut the coroner more slack for the error. But when three bodies showed up on your slab, all killed in the same manner with similar ligature marks around the ankles and wrists, even the most incompetent coroner should be able to see those men hadn’t been savaged by an animal. At least not the four-legged kind.
The first two bodies had been discovered at construction sites, while the third had been found on a loading dock behind a convention center, and the fourth in an alley behind a club. Even though the file didn’t have any details on the fifth murder, Clayne was willing to bet it’d been a body dump as well. Most wild animals Clayne knew didn’t go to that kind of trouble to cover their tracks.
The coroner was obviously an idiot. It was bad enough he’d missed the body dump angle, but he should have at least noticed that none of the victims had been fed on. No wild animal goes crazy and kills without taking a nibble here or there.
Thank God some curious reporter had started nosing around when the fourth body showed up or the governor’s office might never have stepped in and asked for FBI assistance. Who knew how many more murders would have gone unnoticed?
Of course, it would have been nice if the Bureau hadn’t spent nearly a week putting together a task force just in time to find the fifth victim. Now the other media outlets in Sacramento had gotten wind of the story and were sniffing hard. Grisly murders like this were exactly the kind of thing that got a place spattered all over the national news for all the wrong reasons. The governor would be thrilled.
Clayne looked up just as a thin, balding man in a gray suit stepped behind the podium. About damn time they got the briefing started.
“Afternoon. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Senior Special Agent Roger Carhart, and I’ll be heading this task force. We’ll get into the reason we’re all here in a minute, but we have some administrative things to cover first.”
There was a serial killer out there and this idiot wanted to talk admin crap? Clayne smothered a curse as Carhart launched into a presentation about reimbursable expenses, which forms to use for filing situation reports, how to file for overtime, where to park, which kind of gas to use in the federal vehicles and where to buy it. The list of asinine topics never ended. The guy even had freaking PowerPoint slides to go with the briefing.
After that, Carhart moved on to the task force’s command structure, then went on to introduce the members of the Bureau of Investigation, several detectives from the local PD, and a lieutenant in charge of the patrol officers assigned to the task force. Who was next, his mother?
Clayne didn’t bother remembering anyone’s name. He wasn’t going to be around long enough to need that information. He’d find this killer, figure out if the guy was a human, shifter, or hybrid, then deal with him accordingly. Without a lot of talking and thinking, and sure as hell without filling out expense reports.
He was just about to walk out and get more coffee when Carhart motioned to someone standing in the back o
n the opposite side of the room.
“Now I’d like to introduce Danica Beckett, one of the lead agents on the case. She’ll brief us on what we know up to this point in the investigation.”
Clayne stiffened at the name, sure he must have heard wrong. But then he smelled a scent so familiar, so intoxicating that he knew he hadn’t. The air left his lungs and he suddenly couldn’t breathe. He gripped the folder in his hand in an effort to keep his claws from coming out. Danica-freaking-Beckett. He felt as if he’d just been kicked in the balls.
He didn’t dare look at her as she walked to the front of the room and took her place at the podium, afraid if he did, he might completely lose it. Not that he needed to look. He knew every inch of her body from her full, luscious lips to the tiny beauty mark on her right hip, and everywhere in between. Her face had haunted him every moment of every day and night for the past two years until he thought he’d go insane.
But one memory seared hotter than all the others. When the woman he’d loved more than life itself had looked at him with cold, hard eyes and told him she never wanted to see him again.
“Thank you, Agent Carhart.”
Her voice might as well have been that of a siren’s call for all the power he had to resist it. Unable to help himself, Clayne lifted his head to look at her. She was dressed in a dark pantsuit with a blue blouse underneath, her silky brunette hair up in that twist thing she always did when she was working.
It had been two years since Danica had dumped his ass, and she looked even more beautiful than she had the last time he’d seen her. That only made it worse. It would have been easier if she’d let herself go to hell. It hurt to gaze at her. Getting away from him had clearly done wonders for her.
She nodded to whoever was manning the projector, and the screen changed from the dumbass authorized gas locations to a photo of a man with claw marks on his chest and his throat ripped out.
She slowly scanned the room, making momentary eye contact with each person as she told them about the most recent victim.
“Tom Robbins disappeared from a gym parking lot approximately forty-eight hours before his body was discovered at a warehouse this morning, but according to the coroner, he’d only been dead for six hours by the time we found the body. We have no idea where he was during those missing hours, and no idea where he was murdered.”
When her gaze met Clayne’s, her eyes went a little wide, but her voice never wavered as she described the number of lacerations the victim had sustained. Obviously, she wasn’t as affected by seeing him again as he was seeing her. No surprise there. He knew firsthand what a cold bitch she could be.
Clayne barely listened to the briefing she gave. Torn-up body with over thirty slashes ranging from minor surface penetrations to cuts all the way down to the bone. The FBI had no idea what kind of weapon had caused the wounds, but they appeared to match the previous victims. They had no worthwhile forensic evidence so far, no idea why the men had been murdered, no obvious connection between the victims, and no idea when the killer would strike again. They hadn’t even generated a profile of the killer or his victims yet.
When Danica was done, she took questions and gave detailed answers to each one, regardless of who’d asked it or how stupid it was. Clayne didn’t want to listen, but he couldn’t resist losing himself in the sound of her husky voice. The soft tones and the way she drew out certain vowels—her northeast upbringing coming through—had always gotten to him.
The longer he sat there inhaling her delicious scent, the more pissed he got. She had no right to make him feel like this, dammit. She’d dumped his ass and had made no secret about why. She’d gone out of her way to end their partnership in the most complete and total way possible. He should be thinking of all the different ways he could make her suffer, but instead he was remembering what it had felt like to hold her in his arms and make love to her. And that pissed him off even more.
Something else pissed him off, too. Something that made him want to get up and walk straight out of the Sacramento field office and right back to the airport: John had set his ass up. True, John hadn’t known he and Danica had been sleeping together—at least Clayne didn’t think so—but he’d known their partnership hadn’t ended on a good note. Understatement there. John had to know Clayne would rather take on a whole pack of hybrids by himself than work with his old partner again. There was no way he didn’t know Danica was on this case. John clearly wanted them working together again. But why?
Clayne didn’t know, and he didn’t care. The blatant manipulation was enough to make him unleash his inner animal right there in the middle of the conference room, witnesses be damned.
Somehow, he kept it together until Danica was finished with her briefing. The moment she was done, he was out of the room and heading for the elevator. He punched the down button with his thumb, wishing he could put his fist through the wall instead. Down the hall, feds and local cops poured from the conference room. Dammit. He’d hoped to be long gone before anyone came out. And they were heading his way, too.
Shit.
While most of them regarded him curiously, one of the suits wearing a visitor’s badge extended his hand. Clayne knew it’d be too much to hope they’d ignore him.
“Jeremy Weathers from BI,” the man said. “I didn’t catch your name.”
Because I didn’t give it, smart-ass. The words were on the tip of his tongue, but Clayne bit them back. John had told him to be discreet, and even though he felt like killing his boss at the moment, the DCO director was right about playing nice with these people. Growling at them and shoving them up against the wall wasn’t going to improve this screwed-up situation anyway. So he put on his happy face and shook the man’s hand.
“Clayne Buchanan. Homeland Security.”
Weathers’s eyes narrowed. “What’s DHS doing working a serial killer case?”
Clayne gave the man a shrug. “Just lending a hand, that’s all.”
“Does DHS think the guy we’re after is a terrorist?”
The question came from a stocky blond-haired man with an FBI badge. Where the hell was that elevator?
Clayne shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”
Senior Special Agent Carhart had joined the group and was eyeing him with the same interest as everyone else.
“If the killer isn’t a suspected terrorist, why is Homeland Security wasting its resources helping us look for him?” Carhart asked.
Clayne ground his jaw. What Carhart really wanted to know was whether the Department of Homeland Security—the DHS—was going to swoop in and take over his investigation. Kind of like the FBI had done to the locals.
“I just go where I’m told,” he said.
“Is that so?” The superior look Carhart gave him probably would have been a lot more intimidating if Clayne wasn’t a foot taller and outweighed him by seventy pounds. “What exactly do you add to the team, Agent Buchanan?”
Clayne barely suppressed a growl. He’d been willing to stick to the script and play nice like John wanted, but he didn’t need some pencil-pushing prick getting in his face because he was worried someone might steal his glory. It had been a really bad day already, and it’d feel damn good to rip off this asshole’s face.
The thought made his fangs tingle in that pleasant way they did before they elongated. He still had enough control to prevent it, but that didn’t stop him from forming a nice visual in his head of making this jerk piss all over himself in fear. Then he’d see what Clayne added to the team.
Carhart was oblivious to the ass whooping Clayne was about to lay on him, but the people around them must have picked up on the hostile tension because they were eyeing him and the fed warily.
“He hunts people.” Danica’s words effectively stuck a needle in the balloon that had been the only fun this day was going to provide. That was the second time she’d snuck up on him since he’d gotten there. He was seriously off his game. “He has the unique ability to track down bad people.”
The men and women gathered around him and Carhart turned to look at her. There wasn’t a room that Danica couldn’t command when she wanted to. Clayne used to think he was the only one she had that effect on because he’d been so in love with her, until he’d seen her do it to heads of state and foreign military leaders. It obviously worked on FBI agents, too.
Carhart frowned at her. “You two know each other? I didn’t see anything in your file saying you worked interagency with DHS, Agent Beckett.”
“We worked together a few years ago,” she answered smoothly. “I think you’ll discover Agent Buchanan is a valuable asset to the team.”
Carhart’s mouth tightened. “That remains to be seen. Since you worked with Buchanan in the past, he stays with you at all times. I don’t want anyone going rogue on this task force. I don’t care what agency he works for.”
Danica looked about as thrilled with that order as Clayne was, but Carhart strode down the hall before either of them could say anything.
The elevator doors finally opened. Damn things.
Clayne would have jumped on, but the BI guy he’d been talking to earlier beat him to it. The rest of the people waiting hurriedly crowded on, leaving Clayne with Danica and a tall, dark-haired man. Clayne waited for the man to bolt like everyone else, but he stayed where he was.
“Good to see you haven’t let those valuable social skills of yours deteriorate in the last two years,” Danica said when the elevator doors had closed. She glanced at the man beside her. “This is my partner, Tony Moretti. Tony, Clayne Buchanan.”
Moretti offered his hand, but Clayne didn’t take it. The fed studied Clayne with dark eyes, as if he didn’t know exactly what to think of him. Clayne, on the other hand, knew exactly what he thought of Danica’s partner—he hated him.