Her Lone Wolf (17 page)

“Dick is a…well, a dick,” she said. “If he hadn’t been able to use that against us, he would have found something else. And as for doing something like that again, it’s not going to happen. You’re too smart for that.”

Clayne was silent as he thought about that. She waited for him to argue, but then he smiled. “Thanks. You always know what to say to keep me straight.”

“That’s what I’m here for,” she said.

“You’re here for a hell of a lot more than that.” He leaned over and gave her a hard kiss. “Come on. Let’s go make sure this son of a bitch doesn’t kill anyone else.”

Tony and the rest of the task force were in the command center trying every angle to find the serial killer. While they’d been gone, someone had replaced the phone Clayne had ruined with a new one.

Tony did a double take when they walked in. “I thought you’d be passed out somewhere,” he said to Clayne.

“We just talked,” Danica told him.

Tony lifted a brow. “Huh. Must have been some talk.” He studied Clayne appraisingly. “I haven’t seen you this chill since you got here.”

Danica leaned over to look at the computer screen, pretending to be interested in whatever Tony’d been working on before they came in. Her partner was more perceptive than most men, but she didn’t think he could tell she and Clayne had slept together simply by looking at them. Not that she cared if he knew, but still…

Thankfully, Clayne changed the subject. “What do we have on Joshua Vender? Any link to the previous victims?”

Tony shook his head. “Not that we can find.” He glanced at where Carhart was standing in the front of the room, then lowered his voice. “Carhart hasn’t officially come out and said he supports the idea of looking for the Hunter’s potential victims, but he sent out some field agents as well as detectives and uniforms from Sacramento PD with the list we came up with. If they’re lucky, they’ll stumble on the killer when he tries to grab his next victim.”

Danica saw Clayne’s mouth tighten and immediately knew what he was thinking. It wouldn’t be lucky for anyone involved if ordinary, everyday cops tried taking down a shifter. But instead of suggesting they go out and join the search, Clayne surprised her by saying they should try a new tack and focus on how and where the killer had grabbed his victims.

“I know it’s a long shot,” he said. “But right now, I’m willing to try anything.”

Clayne tossed his pen down on the table with a muttered oath. “That asshole is going to grab someone in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours and I’m sitting here wasting time.”

He got up and walked over to stare out the window, not even bothering to suppress a growl. Danica cringed, but luckily no one noticed it. Or if they did, they probably figured it was Clayne just being Clayne. They had the resources of the FBI, as well as state and local law enforcement. How the hell could they have nothing to go on? Of course, the FBI didn’t know about the shifter angle. But the DCO did, and they hadn’t come up with anything, either.

Danica had just turned back to the file in front of her when movement in the doorway caught her attention. She looked up to see Beth standing in the hallway, a smile on her face and a huge paper bag bearing the logo of her catering company in her hand. Danica’s stomach growled as the aroma of Italian food hit her. Over by the window, Clayne turned, his nostrils flaring appreciatively. Danica nudged Tony and jerked her chin toward the door.

He turned, his eyes widening when he saw his wife. Jumping to his feet, he went out to meet her. Danica couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she hoped it had something to do with the bag of food in Beth’s hand. Tony came back a few minutes later, a sheepish look on his face.

“Beth figured we’d forget to eat, so she brought lunch,” he said. “Do you and Clayne want to take a break?”

Danica grinned. “You know I never pass up Beth’s cooking.” She glanced at Clayne, who nodded.

“Sounds good to me. I could use something to eat.”

At the appraising look Beth gave Clayne when they walked into the hallway, Danica suspected dinner might have been an excuse to get a peek at him. She knew it for sure when her friend turned to her after she made the introductions and silently mouthed the word
wow
.

“I think there’s an empty conference room around here somewhere,” Tony said.

He started to lead the way but his wife stopped him. “Let’s eat outside instead. The weather’s beautiful.” When Tony frowned, she added, “Come on. I think it would do all of you good to get out of this building and away from the case, if only for a little while.”

Beth was right, Danica thought as they walked over to the picnic area behind the building where a lot of agents, including her, ate lunch. It was nice outside. The fresh air would do them good.

As Beth set everything out on the table, a few of the other agents on the task force who knew her—and her famous cooking—came by to say hello and help themselves to her lasagna and homemade garlic bread.

Danica couldn’t help but smile as she greeted each of them with a warm hug. It wasn’t difficult to see why everyone loved Beth. She was like a ray of sunshine in the middle of this brutal case. Everyone had a bounce in their step to go with the plate of food in their hand when they left.

As Clayne got up to get a second helping, Beth sat down beside Danica. “I take it that things have worked out between the two of you?”

Danica looked at her in surprise. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

Her friend grinned. “Honey, you’ve been walking around with a forced smile on your face since you moved to Sacramento. The one you’re wearing now is the real deal. Plus, you have a blush to your cheeks that only comes from the sun—or really great sex. And since you spent the whole day inside, I’m betting it isn’t the sun.”

Danica laughed, her face coloring. She should have known Beth would figure it out.

Beth nibbled on a piece of garlic bread. “What’s going on with the investigation? Any closer to catching this psycho?”

Danica took a sip of water. “Unfortunately, we’re stuck waiting around until the guy makes a mistake that’ll lead us to him. Until then, more innocent people are going to end up dead.”

Beth frowned. “How long before he makes a mistake?”

“It’s impossible to say,” Clayne answered. “The smarter they are, the longer it takes. And this guy is damn clever. He’s killed six people in the span of a month, and we don’t have a clue who he is, who he’s going to grab next, or when.”

Beth took another bite of garlic bread and chewed slowly. “How does someone just wake up one day and start killing people?”

Good question
, Danica thought.

“They don’t,” Clayne said.

Tony paused, a forkful of lasagna halfway to his mouth. “They don’t?”

Clayne shook his head. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of this before. Beth, you’re a genius.”

“I am?”

Beside her, Tony frowned. “Clayne, I’m not following you.”

“We know this psycho didn’t start killing this neatly and cleanly last week, right? The bastard’s done this before.”

“Yeah, the profilers already thought of that,” Tony said. “They looked for similar cases after the fourth murder, then again after the fifth. They didn’t find anything. These murders don’t match any others.”

Clayne grinned. “That’s because they didn’t know what to look for.”

Danica returned his smile. But the DCO did.

* * *

Clayne knew it was crazy, but he actually felt a little guilty about leaving Tony out of the loop. But since he couldn’t tell the fed about the DCO or what the hell a shifter was, he didn’t have much choice. Tony’d given him a bewildered look when Clayne said he and Danica needed to check something out, but he hadn’t asked any questions. He simply told them he’d cover for them with Carhart, and get police protection on the potential prey. Since they’d had to go back and add targets they’d originally thought weren’t challenging enough, the list of men who had AB blood now had more than fifty names on it. Clayne didn’t like the idea of abandoning that lead, but they just couldn’t wait around any longer and hope to catch the Hunter the next time he went after a target. The shifter had already shown he was willing to adjust his target set to avoid fitting a pattern. They just had to hope the DCO would come through with a name.

Clayne considered heading to Danica’s place to wait for the DCO to call, but decided that would probably be a bad idea. Two minutes after walking in the door, they’d be in bed for another round of hot, sweaty makeup sex. And while he wouldn’t mind that one damn bit, they needed to focus on the case. Which was why he was sitting across the table from her with a hard-on at the Starbucks down the street instead. Crap, the woman even made drinking her nonfat latte sexy.

He checked his watch to give himself something else to do besides fantasize about Danica taking off an article of clothing every time she took a sip.

“It’s only been a couple hours since you talked to John,” she said.

“I know.” He picked up his coffee and took a swallow. “I should have had the DCO look into the animal-attack angle before, dammit. If I had, maybe Vender would be alive instead of lying on a slab in the morgue right now.”

“Maybe,” Danica agreed. “Or maybe not.” When he scowled, she added, “It’s one thing to look for a shifter who’s blatantly killing people. It’s another to dig through every animal attack in the country to see if they were really murders instead. No one at the DCO thought of it, either. We were all looking for murders with this exact MO, not a shifter mauling his victims as he learned how to hone his technique. This isn’t your fault.”

It was his fault, but since he didn’t want to get into an argument about it, he didn’t say anything. He felt so damn stupid. Thank God Beth had said what she had or he’d still be thinking like a cop chasing a serial killer rather than a shifter going after another shifter. Instead of scouring old case files looking for murders where the killer had hunted his victims, then ripped out their throats and took their teeth for trophies, they should have been looking for animal attacks.

His phone rang, interrupting his mental ass kicking. He checked the call display, then thumbed the answer button. “Tell me you got something for us, John.”

“I just sent you some files,” his boss said.

Clayne looked around the coffee shop. The place was empty and the teenaged barista had her iPod blaring in her ears so loud even Danica could probably hear it across the room, so it wasn’t like anyone was going to hear. He and Danica could have sex right there on the floor and the girl probably wouldn’t have noticed, but he didn’t want to take any chances.

“Hang on while Danica and I go someplace more private,” he said to John.

The only place private was Danica’s car. When they were both seated inside, he grabbed his laptop from the backseat and handed it to Danica. He’d never been good with computers and downloading stuff, especially from the DCO’s website. The thing was a maze of passwords, folders, and acronyms.

“John sent us some files.”

“What’s your password?” she asked.

“Your name,” he told her.

She blinked. “You never changed it in two years?”

“I haven’t used the site since…well, you know.”

Since she’d left. He couldn’t say the words. He didn’t want to remember that time in his life ever again.

Danica shook her head, her fingers dancing over the keys. A moment later, she had the files downloaded and open. The first several were newspaper articles about a series of animal attacks in Colorado two years ago. Clayne took the phone off mute and put it on speaker so Danica could hear. “Go ahead, John. We’re looking at the newspaper articles.”

“Intel came up with over a hundred major animal attacks in the United States over the past ten years. After eliminating the obvious ones, they were left with three deaths in Colorado,” John said. “The DCO looked into them when they first happened, but dismissed them because they looked like obvious animal attacks. The victims were completely mauled, and there was even a witness to one of them. It didn’t look like a shifter kill the first time around.”

According to the articles, three men—two late-night joggers and a hiker—had been killed on the trails outside Boulder. While mountain lion attacks were rare in Colorado, they weren’t unheard of, so when the bodies showed up, the local authorities had jumped to the obvious conclusion.

Clayne frowned. Three deadly attacks in a three-month period would be a statistical fluke, but three attacks with no survivors? That wasn’t a fluke; that was planning.

“When we went back and pulled copies of the medical examiner’s reports, it wasn’t difficult to figure out the wounds had been inflicted by a shifter,” John continued.

“John, you said there was a witness?” Clayne shot Danica a look. “Did you see any mention of a witness in the articles?”

She shook her head.

“The articles are in chronological order,” John said. “Read the ones with the most recent dates.”

Danica scrolled down and found two articles that detailed the last attack and the witness who’d stumbled out of the forest just in time to see the mountain lion mauling the victim. The man told the cops who’d responded to the scene that the animal had run off. But even more significant than the gory details of the last attack was the description of the witness and how he’d heroically tried to save the victim, getting blood on his own clothes in the attempt to save the hiker’s life. Wasn’t that convenient?

“Here’s a picture of the witness.” Danica pointed to a photo of a man in a plaid shirt with long, sandy blond hair and a beard. “Says his name is Ray McDermott.”

Clayne couldn’t say for sure the man was a shifter simply by looking at him, much less the shifter they were looking for, but the size was right.

“Based on McDermott’s information, the cops tracked down a big mountain lion and killed it,” John said. “No one else got attacked, so case closed.”

“What do we know about this guy?” Clayne asked.

He could hear John’s fingers clicking on the keyboard over the phone. “It’s in one of the files I sent you. He grew up in foster homes, dropped out of high school, made some bad decisions, and ended up in prison.”