Ripper

by Lexi Blake

  “Sure, Gray. That’ll be fine. Why don’t you turn around and drop me off at home.” I had to turn off my emotions or I would lose it in front of him, and my dignity was all I had left. I could call Liv and she would help me get my car. Once I was mobile, I could continue on my own. I had that Zack guy’s number. I would call him ASAP and he’d put me in touch with Marcus Vorenus so he’d know where to pick me up tonight. I had my little black dress and it would have to do. Maybe Liv could talk me through the whole hair thing over the phone.

  I thought about anything other than the fact that Gray was dumping me after one night.

  “Sweetheart?”

  I turned to him, perfectly clear eyed. “Yes, Gray?”

  I wouldn’t take the sweetheart thing personally anymore. He probably called all of his conquests sweetheart. He probably forgot their names.

  He pulled into the cemetery parking lot. He calmly put the car in park and twisted his big body around to look at me. “I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

  “Well, you don’t have to put up with my looks if you take me home.”

  He tried to pull my hand into his, but I tugged it away. “Baby, I’m trying to protect you. Your part of the case is over. You can get out.”

  “You’re trying to get rid of me,” I stated plainly. He needed to know I wasn’t going to fight him on it. He didn’t want me. That was cool. It wasn’t. It was a gaping wound in my chest that was never going to heal, but I wouldn’t cry around him. “Not a problem, Sloane. I know the drill. Take me home and I won’t sit around and wait for your call. I have to say, the whole ‘I love you’ bit took it a little far. I would have fucked you without it and probably sooner. Go easier on the next girl.”

  “Hey,” he said, his voice an angry huff, “I don’t deserve that.”

  I wasn’t willing to argue with him. He’d tell me he didn’t mean it that way and that he really would call me. He probably would the next time he needed someone willing to play dirty games with him. He was pretty hardcore, and I bet it scared some women off. When he got hard up, he’d remember my name. He’d lie because that’s what men did and he’d get pissed off when I didn’t believe him. It was better to argue about something substantial.

  “I won’t be some clinging vine and I won’t be the vengeful ex, but I expect something from you, Sloane. If you see me around I expect some professionalism from you. I am still on this case.”

  “Your case with Helen Taylor is over.”

  I pulled out my ace in the hole. “Yes, the case with Helen is over, but I have a new boss. My case with Dev Quinn is just getting started. He gave me a large retainer last night and told me to solve this thing. I’m his new in-house PI.” I threw open the door as his eyes were widening. I hopped out. I would call someone to come get me so I didn’t have to spend another minute with him. “Why don’t you be on your way, Sloane? I’ll continue my wild goose chase and you can start looking for your next lay. Don’t worry about me. I’m sure Quinn can send a car to pick me up.”

  I slammed the door behind me and willed the tears to shrivel up before they started down my cheeks. I settled the strap of my bag across my chest and walked up to the cemetery gates. They were old and made from wrought iron. At this time of the day they stood open, welcoming visitors.

  “Kelsey!”

  I ignored the bark from Gray and hoped he would take the hint and leave. I strode into the cemetery, letting the sights, sounds, and smells wash over me. It was peaceful and heavily wooded. The headstones marked the passage of the town’s pioneers. The newest stone I could find was from the thirties. This place was more about history than real world use. It would be a place for classes to come and learn about history or art students to do those grave stone rubbings they sometimes did. At night, it would be for teens making out or trying to scare the crap out of each other. It was perfect for what our Ripper would want to use it for.

  “Don’t think you’re walking away from me like that,” Gray said, hauling me around by the elbow.

  “Stop,” I ordered and there must have been something about my voice because he did.

  The grass. It had been disturbed. There was a faint line, like something had recently driven over it. I knelt down and looked. There were two lines and they were too small and close together to be tires. I shivered as I realized what they were. Feet, splayed out as someone dragged them along.

  “He killed again last night.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Gray admitted.

  I rolled my eyes. He really did want me out of the loop. So much for our grand partnership. He was out of luck. I stood up and followed the line. Here and there I got the faint impression of a footprint in the ground where the grass was thinner. It wasn’t a sneaker because the print was flat, but I would bet it was a man’s foot. I walked along and Gray followed me silently. I followed the trail up a small hill and into a secluded part of the cemetery. No one could see us from the road.

  “Kelsey, I can smell something,” Gray said, stopping me.

  “What is it?”

  “Decomp,” he replied. “My senses are better than yours. At least my nose is.”

  “There’s a fresh body here?”

  “More than one,” he replied grimly. “Though only one is really fresh.”

  Despite his protests, I headed up the hill. When I got to the top, I searched around and there it was. In the far back, I could see where the ground had been disturbed. He’d tried to pat it down, but nothing could fully cover it up.

  “Here,” I said, standing over it. “We dig here.”

  Gray already had his cell phone in hand. “This is Lieutenant Sloane for Nicole Ward. Hey, I got a weird one for you.” He gave this Nicole person our present address. “Bring along whatever you have for soup. Yeah, one partial and several decomposed wolves. Thanks.” He shoved his phone in his back pocket. “The forensic specialist will be here in fifteen minutes. Don’t touch anything. She’s an expert with supernatural cases.”

  “I’ll try not to damage your evidence with my fumbling, Sloane,” I said acerbically as I forced myself to be content with looking around. There was another place that looked like it had been recently disturbed.

  “I don’t deserve that, either,” he said in a gruff voice. “Where the hell is this coming from, Kelsey? You’re acting like a scorned woman, but I haven’t scorned you, quite the opposite. I love you. I’ve already told you I fully intend to marry you, so what’s up with the hell hath no fury act?”

  “You have a funny way of showing your affection, Sloane.”

  “My name is Gray,” he insisted. “You can’t go back to last names just because you’ve decided you’re pissed with me and you can’t lie about working for Quinn because you want to set me off.”

  “I can do whatever I want, Sloane. You want to shove me off at my brother, fine, but don’t expect me to walk away like some obedient little woman. It ain’t happening. And I’m not lying about Quinn. I have a lovely check for twenty-five grand that I intend to cash at my earliest convenience.” I walked a couple of yards to the other pile of earth. It was well trampled down and little shoots of grass were starting to come up.

  “What the hell did you do for twenty-five thousand dollars?” The question was ground out of Gray’s mouth, and I could see his eyes getting dark. He clenched his fists at his sides.

  “Nothing, yet.” I have to admit I enjoyed the fact that I could have some sort of effect on him. I was mad. Shouldn’t he be, too? “Tonight, I’m going to the vampire club with Marcus to talk to the original gangsta himself. Quinn is letting me into the club so I can interview the vamp who claims to be Jack the Ripper. Then I’m supposed to check in with my new boss tomorrow.”

  “You aren’t going anywhere, Kelsey.” His hands shook. Strangely, it didn’t make me any less reckless. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. Well, he wouldn’t physically hurt me. “If you don’t want to stay at home with Jamie then you can hole up at my place, but you are off this case. You will not be go
ing into that club. I forbid it.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s not dangerous, Sloane. No one’s going to bother me. Marcus explained it all and he set up our cover. After last night, everyone thinks I’m his mistress so they’ll back off.”

  The tree next me sort of exploded as Gray shoved his fist through it. I managed to hold my ground and when he looked at me with red-tinged eyes, I shook my head. “I thought we weren’t contaminating the scene.”

  “Fuck the scene,” he snarled and got into my space. “What did you do with that vampire?”

  “I walked around with him and I talked to him,” I explained. I didn’t let the halfling back me up a single inch. “He introduced me to some people and they drew incorrect conclusions. He treated me like I had a brain in my head. I liked him.”

  “Yeah, you like him? Get to know him fast because I swear I’m gonna kill him,” Gray said. “I’ll rip his heart out and then we’ll see how he feels about sniffing around another man’s woman.”

  “Nice, Sloane,” I shot back. “Very caveman-like. I don’t get the righteous indignation. You’re shoving me to the side. Am I not allowed to have a life after Grayson Sloane is done with me?”

  He enunciated his words carefully. I got the feeling he was rapidly reaching the end of his patience with me. “I am not done with you. You are the most frustrating woman I have ever met. You’re going to make me pull out every piece of hair I have and damn it, woman, I won’t look good bald. Let me make this plain to you. You’re mine. I’m trying to protect what’s mine. He killed again last night and this morning I got a letter saying you’re next.”

  My mind flooded with the possibilities. “That’s perfect. I can be bait. We set me up and let him come after me.”

  He stared at me for a long moment with his mouth hanging open. It wasn’t the first time I had gotten that reaction from him. I wondered if a lot of things knocked the words out of him. Somehow I doubted it. I thought it was probably a reaction he only had to me.

  “Are you going to kill another tree?” I asked after he was quiet for the longest time.

  “No, Kelsey,” he said, a little breathless. “I think I’m gonna give you my gun and let you shoot me. It’ll be for the best. It’ll be a hell of a lot quicker than the heart attack I’ll have someday.” He took a deep breath. “That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”

  I shrugged. “Only because you haven’t been around me for very long.”

  He shook his head and before I could move away, he grabbed me and kissed me senseless. “Okay, baby, I love you. Why is this so important? Why can’t you give it up? I would feel so much better if I knew you were safe.”

  I leaned into him. I couldn’t resist this man when he touched me. I melted like butter when he said he loved me. If he really thought I was in danger, he would have come up with some stupid plan to protect me. “It’s important to me because I can do this, Gray. I can find this guy. I’m tired of hiding. You want me to come out of my shell, well, this is it. You can’t have it both ways. I can go to ground and hide and be the person I’ve always been afraid I really am or I can stop hiding and become who I want to be.”

  I didn’t tell him that he was a big part of why I needed to do this. I needed to feel worthy of him.

  I felt him nod against me. “All right, sweetheart. But I am not using you as bait.”

  “I still need to get into the club.” I pressed my luck. “You can’t kill Marcus.”

  “I find out he’s laid a hand on you and I promise I will,” Gray said.

  It was time for me to live up to my previous words. It was time to be really brave. “I like Marcus, but I don’t love him. I love you, Gray.”

  He drank the words down like a man dying of thirst. His mouth was on mine, tongue sweeping in with none of his former polish. He kissed me, pressing me against his body. “You won’t regret it, Kelsey. I’ll take care of you.”

  “And I’ll take care of you,” I promised.

  “Wow,” a surprised feminine voice said. “Big old manly love ’em and leave ’em Sloane has an honest to god girlfriend. Will wonders never cease?”

  The faintest hint of a blush stained Gray’s cheeks as he smiled ruefully at the woman standing on the hill with a large case in her hand. “Hello, Nicole. Allow me to introduce my fiancée, Kelsey Atwood.”

  He hadn’t actually asked me, but I didn’t mention that to the perky looking blonde with round glasses. Her eyebrows practically reached the sky. “Seriously? Chambers is going to win a bunch of money. The office pool had you never getting married. Wait. Atwood? As in superhot stud Jamie Atwood?”

  “He’s my brother, but, wow, you have an entirely different notion of hot than I do,” I admitted.

  The blonde grinned as she set down her enormously cumbersome pack. She looked almost too small to be able to carry it, but she did with an ease that spoke of long use. “We can’t all get someone as gloriously perfect as Sloane there. Besides, I like Jamie. He’s the right size for me, not too big, not too small. Sloane would crush me.”

  Sloane did kind of crush me, but I liked the feeling.

  “So where’s the site?” Nicole asked, looking eager to start working.

  Gray pointed down and Nicole grimaced.

  “This is about that serial case you’ve been working, isn’t it? Wolves, right?”

  “This is where he’s dumping the bodies,” Gray confirmed.

  Nicole surveyed the site and got to work. Gray started to explain what she was doing and how she was doing it. Forensics for supernatural cases tended to be a lot harder than a regular case. For the most part the evidence collected was meant to be a case for the Council rather than a court of law. While the general public believed that supernaturals were myths, the government had known about them for a long time. I knew the Army made use of them. Most law enforcement had carefully selected people who would liaise with the supernatural world. Gray had the hard job of having to deal with the full Council. Gray would produce his evidence against the accused to the full Council or a single member who would then take it to the Council and an order would be written. Sometimes it was for incarceration, but often it was an order of execution. If Gray took matters into his own hands, he was forced to stand before the Council and have his kill be declared “righteous.”

  “How many times have you had to go before the Council?” I asked, never taking my eyes off Nicole’s incredibly thorough examination of the site. She had an entire chemistry set on a small folding table.

  “Three times,” Gray replied. “Luckily, I had excellent evidence and Quinn isn’t on the Council. That brother of his is, but he doesn’t seem to give a crap about righteous kills. He’s a kill ’em all kind of guy.”

  “So when you take your evidence to the Council, do you have to go through the whole ceremonial thing every time? How long do you have to wait for the full Council to sit?”

  Gray smiled and it was that lopsided grin that told me he was embarrassed by whatever he was about to say. “I have a councilman I regularly meet with. He always takes my calls and has been easy to deal with up until now.”

  “Marcus,” I guessed.

  “Yeah. He’s an incredibly smart man and very interested in justice. He’s consulted with me on a case or two. I wouldn’t call him a friend, but I certainly got along better with him than anyone else on the Council. He’s quite tolerant, if you know what I mean.”

  Except when he thinks you’re working with Quinn against him, then Marcus could be quite emotional. I chose to not bring up the subject. “So you’re willing to kill the only man on the Council you actually get along with? Won’t that make your job hard?”

  “He touches my wife and I won’t give a damn about my job, darlin’,” Gray promised.

  “I have five bodies here, Lieutenant.” Nicole was staring at her laptop screen. It was all incredibly high tech. The laptop was connected to some strange medical looking equipment. “All five of these are female and werewolves. Four are in an a
dvanced state of decomposition and the fifth was placed here sometime in the last twenty-four hours. I’ll bag that one and take it back to my lab, but from what I can tell she died from blood loss. Someone really sliced her up. I think she might be missing a kidney, ewwww.”

  “And the other site?” Gray asked.

  “Strange.” Nicole surveyed the second, smaller grave over her glasses. “Only one female and she wasn’t a wolf. It’s definitely a shifter of some kind, but I’m not sure what. I’ve collected a sample and I’ll be able to run it better at the office. My field machines aren’t as accurate.”

  Something gold glinted in the grass a few feet from me. “What’s that?”

  Nicole made sure the latex gloves she was wearing were snug before she reached down and picked up a small gold necklace that was lying in the grass. She held it up and in the light I could see it was engraved with a J.

  “Joanne Taylor,” Gray said with a sad shake of his head. His cell phone rang and he looked down. “Speak of the devil. I have to take this, Kelsey. I’ll be right back.”

  “I think you’ll find she was a doe,” I told Nicole.

  Nicole bagged the necklace in an evidence bag. “I’ll start there then. The latest victim shows evidence of being tied up. Her wrists are burned pretty badly, so it was probably silver.”

  Gray grabbed my hand. “We have go, Kelsey. Nicole, can you handle the rest?”

  “Of course,” the efficient tech said. “I’ll have my report on your desk Monday morning.”

  “Good,” Gray said and started to haul me out of the cemetery.

  “Where are we going?”

  “That was Vorenus.” Gray guided me along, his long legs eating up the distance. I ran to keep up. “He’s on his way to Helen Taylor’s. She got a package this morning.”

  “Oh, no,” I breathed, picking up the pace. “Tell me she didn’t get those pictures.”

  “She did, sweetheart,” Gray affirmed. “The entire doe community is in an uproar. We have some damage control to do.”

  We hopped into the truck and as we pulled away, something about the necklace played around in the back of my mind.