by Lyra Evans
Jackie shook her head, her lip quivering.
“Here, let me,” Sky said, moving around the bar. Connor hesitated for a fraction of a second, his grip tight on the laptop, but handed it over to Sky. Estelle’s eyes followed the laptop, her gaze meeting Connor’s for a moment before looking back to Jackie. Oliver tried to ignore the tension radiating off Connor as he joined him and Sky on the other side of the bar.
Sky typed a like lightning, his fingers travelling in a blur over the keys. He did something complicated, unclear to Oli, and then clicked enter. After a moment’s intense staring at the screen, he said, “got it. Managed to hack in. Here’s the log.”
The three of them scanned through the usage data. Leaning over a small screen, with Connor on one side and Sky on the other, Oli was painfully aware of the limited space. His chest heaved as he fought for breath, fought to stop himself spiraling. Nothing before him seemed clear anymore.
“Thank you, Jackie, you’ve been a big help,” Connor said. “You can go home now. I’ll be around a bit later to see you all.” Estelle took Jackie back out, arm around Jackie’s shoulders to support her.
“This must be him,” Oliver said, clicking on a conversation with someone named JohnnyGames. The conversation started innocent enough, Jamie remarking on the odds of their initials both being JG. It began superficial, describing themselves and vague interests, as Oliver expected with this kind of online dating. But it soon turned to deeper conversations, to concerns about ever finding love when it was difficult to talk to people in person. Jamie talked about worries that he would never be able to take his proper place as an Alpha of his pack, one of Connor’s trusted, if he couldn’t get over his anxiety about being in front of people. JohnnyGames seemed to understand, to have the same worries and feelings, but he encouraged Jamie. He talked very little of himself, like HotnFlirty77 had done with Malcolm Ryan. Mostly the conversation revolved around Jamie and building him up, getting to know him deeply.
Oliver clicked through to JohnnyGames’s profile and found it severely lacking. The photo was of a half-naked man, lying back on a lounge chair in the sun, but he was clearly cropped from a larger image. Oliver recognized it from a swimsuit advertisement from the previous summer. Beyond the photo, nothing else was on the profile. Again, even the email address was vacant.
“This has to be our guy,” Oliver said. “Same empty profile and fake photo. He’s catfishing victims through Ember.”
“And not just any victims,” Sky said, straightening. Oliver stood up took, casting him a look. Connor’s expression of controlled calm did not change. Sky looked between them, then gestured to the magical shade blocking Jamie Grace from view. Oliver dropped it. “You must have noticed. The victims are both dead ringers for Oli.”
Oliver shifted and shook his head. “That’s just—”
“Coincidence?” Sky asked. He rolled his eyes. “Come on, Oli. You know better than that. This guy is organized, careful, criminally sophisticated…he’s not picking these guys for no reason. He’s got a type, and that type is clearly you. He’s sending a message with these murders.” Sky shook his head and crossed his arms. “I think there’s a very real possibility, what with the evidence so far, that you might be the ultimate target for him.”
Throat dry, Oliver found his breathing shallow and stilted. As though the air had been sucked from the room, he forced his lungs to take in more than was natural. Connor glanced at him, his thoughts suddenly clear on his face. At least to Oli. The way Jamie Grace was posed was no accident, no coincidence.
“Why target Oli in Logan’s Court, though?” Connor asked, sidestepping the information Sky couldn’t have about the scene.
Sky licked his teeth beneath his lip. “Maybe they saw the news and figured this was the best place,” he said, and Oliver shut his eyes, his body cold again. The fucking article was going to haunt him forever. “Maybe he knows Oli spends a lot of time here and thinks it’s a convenient location.” Sky’s gaze travelled between Connor and Oli, the distance between them jagged and yawning. His eyes lingered on Oli’s neck, at the edge of the hem of his sweater. Fighting the urge to touch the collar beneath the fabric, Oliver turned away. “If what the papers say is true, anyway.” Sky grew stern. “We need to find a safe place for Oli to stay until this guy is caught. Maybe arrange a protective detail, or he can stay with me—”
“He is staying with me,” Connor said sharply, his tone leaving no room for argument. Oliver glared at Sky, cheeks burning. “Oliver is fully able to protect himself, but failing that, I am more than capable of protecting him.”
Sky’s expression shifted. “You don’t seem to have done a very good job of protecting your pack so far,” he said coolly.
Connor lunged, his face contorted, lips pulled back over a maw of razor-sharp teeth. His snarl was vicious and threatening, but Oliver threw himself between Sky and Connor, holding Connor back. Connor jerked in Oliver’s grasp, his eyes fixed on the Fae.
Finally, he gathered himself up, pulling away from Oliver. His fangs disappeared, his mouth back to normal. The cold, distant mask slipped back into place, the only evidence of his fury the fire in Connor’s bright blue eyes. Adjusting his shirt, Connor shrugged and ran a hand through his hair, swiping it out of his eyes.
“I’ve got pack duties to see to and a grieving family to visit,” Connor said, his tone cold and empty. “I trust you’ll be fine in my absence.”
Without waiting for an answer, he walked out of his own club, leaving Oliver gazing after him, wishing he could stop him. Oliver swallowed the sagging pain in his chest and let the anger bubble up, becoming white hot and searing.
“Your boyfriend needs a sedative,” Sky said, and Oliver rounded on him.
“You need to watch your mouth,” he snapped. “Next time I won’t get in his way.”
Eyebrows arched to the ceiling, Sky considered him. “Got you trained, has he?” Oliver nearly lunged at Sky himself, his jaw tight, his fists balled, but Sky folded. He closed his eyes and shook his head, holding up his hands. “Sorry,” he said and seemed to mean it. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m just,” he breathed out long and low, a sad smile drawing on his lips. “I’m worried about you, Oli.”
Chest tight and barely breathing, Oliver stepped away from Sky. “Yeah, well, you gave up that right the day you left me.”
Chapter 10
It was several hours before Connor returned. By the time he did, Oliver was wrought to tension, like a spring-loaded arrow, ready to fire at the slightest trigger. Wolves had been by to collect Jamie Grace’s body once Oliver sent word, via Celeste, that they were done with the crime scene. He conjured another stretcher, remarking on how, when he’d learned the spell at the Academy, he’d though he would never need to use it. Forensic techs and medical examiners performed these kinds of spells back in Nimueh’s Court. Police officers only knew the spells for emergency cases. Like these, he supposed.
Jamie Grace was pulled out by a procession of Wolves, in Wolf form, as though he was a sick passenger on a dogsled. The six Wolves that pulled him off were each as beautiful as Connor in his Wolf form, but not quite as large. Though Connor was nearly the size of a small bear, these Wolves were much closer in size to their wild counterparts. With fur of varying shades—grey, black, brown, and spotted white—they might have been a wild pack were it not for the magical harnesses tethering them to the sled. Only their size and the keenness in their eyes, the lingering humanity, gave them away.
Once they’d gone, Oliver spent the rest of the morning performing the same magical tests on the evidence he’d collected from Jamie Grace as he had done for Malcolm Ryan. To much the same end. The bullets bore no sign of handling, no fingerprints or epithelial cells, no trace evidence to identify the shooter. The striations were a match to the previous bullets, but without a gun to compare them to, those were hardly a lead. The collar was the same make as the last, its origin indeterminable. If this was a serial case, if the killer was intent on more
victims, then he probably purchased the collars in bulk. Possibly even over some time. There would be little way to use them as a way to trace the killer, though financial records might be useful at trial. If there was a trial.
The blindfold was about as useful as the ropes, the only unique detail about it being its Fae origin. But blindfolds were hardly uncommon, and given the lack of tag or mark of a maker, it was another dead end.
Instead of evidence to consider, Oliver only had a massive gaping hole, an empty spot where Jamie Grace’s body once was, and where, not a day earlier, Oliver himself had lain sprawled at the mercy of Connor’s touch. His thoughts flushed with the constant reminder of their game, of Connor’s mouth on him, his hard cock inside him, Oliver crying his name. And now the horror cutting through that memory—the image of Jamie Grace on display, dead and sightless and very much a message. A message to Oliver, it seemed. Saying what?
You’re next?
Sky, meanwhile, had mostly kept silent, letting Oliver alone to work. He spent the time wandering Black Moon, arms crossed over his chest, his sharp eyes taking in every angle of the crime scene and the club as a whole. What he was looking for, Oliver wasn’t sure. Sky was even less forthcoming about his methods than Oliver tended to be with other officers. He had a sense of things, of murder and violence, that Oliver had to force himself to get. Sky understood killers differently than other officers or agents. It was probably what made him so good at what he did.
Oliver remembered the first time he’d watched Sky at work—his green eyes narrowed over a staged crime scene at the Academy. His red hair was so ostentatious to Oliver, too bright and bold and daring in comparison to all the other recruits in their drab colours and sedate hairstyles. Sky had no interest in drab or sedate. None at all. Even his recruit’s uniform, a set of navy slacks and pale blue button up, to be worn to standard every day, looked somehow stylish on Sky’s lean frame.
It had taken Sky only a few moments to parse out the scene, pinpoint the cause of death and even hazard a guess at motive. And he was spot on. Right away, he saw the mussed clothing on the victim, the shot to the heart and the resulting bloodstains blotting out the bruising on her neck. He saw the diamond earrings and the jade ring on her hand—both valuable objects—which stood in contrast to her purse’s scattered belongings, the missing wallet. It wasn’t a mugging gone wrong. It was a rape and murder, meant to look like something less sinister. And she knew her attacker. The shot to the heart was point blank—there were muzzle burns around the wound—but she had no defensive wounds.
“How do you know it’s rape then?” the instructor had asked. Sky smiled, completely unfazed, and Oliver thought that was the moment he knew he wanted Sky.
“There’s blood under her fingernails that’s not hers,” he said. “She tried to get him to stop choking her, probably scratched his hands or forearms, so she didn’t want it, didn’t like what he was doing. But she let him get close enough that he didn’t need to subdue her. She knew him.”
Top marks. In every class. Oliver matched him, of course, but it never came as naturally to him. He found the evidence, figured out the crime, the motive, the actions. But he never understood the why. Why do something so horrific? Why hurt the innocent?
“He hated her,” Sky had told him about that first case, that rape-murder. “He thought he had a right to her, but she wasn’t interested. He hated her for rejecting him romantically and decided he’d have her anyway. Then no one would.”
And once he’d said it, it made sense to Oli. He knew it was true, was frustrated he hadn’t figured it out on his own.
“You will. You’re so much more capable than the rest of the idiots in our class,” Sky had said, and his eyes blazed with his faith in Oli, with his fierce determination and his hunger. And Oliver believed himself because Sky did.
“I know that look,” Sky said suddenly, his fluid words piercing Oliver’s memory like a dart to the neck. “Fond memory?” Sky asked, his eyelashes a thick fan low over his eyes.
Oliver clenched his jaw. “Not anymore,” he said, standing up to move away.
“Oli—” Sky said, reaching out for him. Oliver dodged the grasp and spun on Sky.
“Oliver,” he said sharply. “Only my friends call me Oli.”
Eyes dark, smile fading, Sky lowered his head slightly and stepped back. “Yeah, I deserve that,” he said, and Oliver barely understood the words. In all the versions of this meeting, this conversation that he’d played out in his mind, never had he imagined Sky accepting Oliver’s anger as deserved. Never had he pictured Sky as penitent.
“You deserve worse than that,” Oliver shot, shaken. He turned away from the Fae to stare at the empty centre of the club, the place where Jamie Grace had been. Heart pounding like a war drum, Oliver tried to push aside his feelings and his pain. He tried to divest himself of the Oliver who’d cried for three days, who refused to leave his apartment for a month. He’d worked so hard to bury that Oliver, to bind him in anger and lock him away beneath layers of bad memories. That Oliver was dead and gone, lost to the irreparable damage Sky had done.
When he put that Oliver away, he became this Oliver, the one who went out and trawled for guys in seedy gay bars and had sex in dingy bathrooms and back alleys. The Oliver who fucked someone new every other night and never gave them real names and never saw them again. The Oliver who was plastered on the cover of the Daily Spell. The one who didn’t believe in Fated love, the one Connor had had to convince when every fiber of Oliver’s being was begging for Connor, yearning for him.
He yearned for Connor now, his stomach a gaping black hole, sucking in the rest of him. If he could only go back in time, twenty-four, forty-eight hours, to those long stolen days in Connor’s house, in his bed, laughing and kissing and fucking and breathing each other in. But Oliver had pretended for so long that was a dream it was now becoming one—a dream lost when he woke to the reality of his fucked up life. His reality was murder and reporters and bigoted coworkers and Sky. His reality was Connor losing friends and being unable to stop it.
His reality was looking at someone who looked just like him, lying dead and naked on the floor. A message.
“You have every right to be angry,” Sky said, snapping Oliver out of his turbulent thoughts again. He had a habit of that. “I don’t bla—”
“I don’t need your permission,” Oliver snapped, fists balled. “Or your forgiveness.”
Sky made a wounded noise, and Oliver forced himself to ignore it. “Of course not, I just—”
“I don’t want to hear it,” he said, turning back to Sky, his mind aflame with the shame and pain and fury of the days following Sky’s departure. In an instant it was all back, like a flash flood, his body wrecked from the things he told himself he didn’t feel anymore. “There’s nothing you can say—”
“I nev—”
“Am I interrupting something?” Connor asked. Oliver spun, his heart singing with the sight of him. But the cold, distant expression on Connor’s face made his heart sink a moment later. Shooting an angry glance at Sky, Oliver walked away from him, toward Connor.
“No,” Oliver said, searching for calm, for the warmth that lived between the two of them up until that morning. “How did it go with the family?” he asked, trying for understanding. Connor’s eyes were trained on Sky for a long moment, his nostrils twitching subtly. He was searching for scent, for clues of his own. The words of the Daily Spell article echoed again in Oliver’s head.
But when Connor turned to look at Oliver, his eyes softened slightly, and Oliver clutched the moment of hope as though it were his tether to the world. “About as expected. They’re in ruins, having lost their eldest. He was the only Alpha in the family. Would have made a great pack leader, one day.” Connor sighed, rolling his shoulders almost imperceptibly. He was as tense as Oli had ever seen him, and Oli’s fingers itched to touch him, to knead his neck and ease the pain. “No suspects that I can see. He was well liked and made no enemies I c
an discern.” He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair again. The simple movement was enough to tell Oli how close to the edge Connor was; he rarely touched his hair this often. “The pack is reeling. Logan is—tense. People are frightened and looking to their Alphas for strength.” He turned his back to Sky, speaking in an undertone to Oli now. “I can’t let them keep living in this fear. I need to give them something—closure for the families, hope for the living that they won’t be next, justice for the fallen.” A muscle bulged in his jaw. “I am their Alpha, their protector, and I’ve f—”
“You haven’t failed,” Oli whispered sharply, grasping Connor’s hand tightly. “This is the reality of cases like this. We are moving as fast as we possibly can.” Oliver made the decision without realizing it, reaching up and pulling Connor down into a kiss. He pressed his lips to Connor’s with intent, with all the passion and desperation and yearning he felt in his gut. He waited for Connor to yield to him, and he did. Connor sighed into the kiss, parting his lips to taste Oliver and pulling him closer. Oli felt himself lifted into the embrace, on his toes before they parted. After a breath of relief, Oliver smiled at him. “We will catch this guy. You will not fail them. I won’t allow it.”
Connor smiled, the edges of his mouth just barely upturned, and Oliver took it. Sky cleared his throat, suddenly much closer than he had been a moment earlier. Oliver and Connor turned to him, now only feet away from them. His expression was inscrutable, but Oli had the sense Sky had not enjoyed the kiss as much as Oli and Connor had.
“If you’re done,” he said, glancing away. “I believe I heard you say there were no suspects that the family could dredge up?” Connor’s expression closed again but he nodded, his hand still on Oli’s arm. Slowly, it slid down until it rested at Oli’s hip instead. Sky did not miss the shift. “It seems the killer is finding his victims via the Ember app. He’s probably otherwise unconnected to the victims, they just happen to fit his type. They’re brunette, amber-eyed, and looking for casual sex of some kind via the app.” He crossed his arms again. “If the obvious connection is their looks, and they’re meant to look like Oliver, then it stands to reason the message is for him. And given the method of choosing his victims, I think it’s probably a reasonable bet that this guy may have been one of your one-night-stands.”