Hot and Haunted (11 page)

“I just have a sensitive nose.”

“Don’t tell me, you work a K9 unit?”

“Ah, no.” He flashed a self-deprecating smile. “Dogs and I don’t exactly get along. I’m with the FBI. Special Agent Aden Brewster.”

“And you’re here to take over my case?” She scowled.

“I was hoping we could work together. A little interagency cooperation? Sharing our resources?” He raised a brow, looking very innocent and boyish. She supposed that face worked on his mother and the women he dated, but he could save that for them.

“That always turns into a pissing match about jurisdiction and headlines. I want to catch this fucker and throw away the key. There’s a reason I’m a marshal. I prefer to work alone.”

“So does that mean you’re not going to check out the officers’ station and the trapdoor? Because that’s where I’m going.”

“You can tag along, but I doubt you can keep up, Agent.”

“I’ll match anything you’ve got.”

Which led Miranda to wonder if he could match her
everywhere.
Especially the bedroom. Or the back of his government-issue, black Expedition. Maybe in this conference room, bent over the table . . . She’d like to see him try—oh yes, she would. From the way he carried himself and reacted to the situation, all the while keeping pace with witty banter, she could already tell he was competitive without being overbearing, confident without being cocky. Those traits made for good lovers.

She looked up at him, and, for a moment, Miranda got the distinct impression he knew exactly what had gone through her mind. As if he could smell desire on her like she was some bitch in heat.

He’d obviously taken the same courses on body language and micro-expressions she had. There was no magic there, no telepathy. He couldn’t smell her need on her. He was just a man who was more observant than most, and she just needed to get laid.

She searched for some witty response, but the intensity on his face made her mouth go dry. Miranda moistened her lips, and his focus centered there, his scrutiny almost like a caress itself. Miranda found her voice because this had to be about the job instead of her pussy.

“Then I suggest you prove it. The clock is ticking.”

Chapter Two

T
HE SWEET-SOUR STENCH
of necrotic flesh, animal musk, and mildew struck Miranda with a physical force when they opened the hatch in the officers’ station. She wished she’d brought her Vick’s to dab under her nose.

“There’s something dead down here,” Brewster commented before stepping down into the space. “Maybe a couple mice?”

Miranda followed him down, surprised by how well lit it was and how new everything looked. Circuitry and wires were prevalent, but everything had a place, orderly and clean. The mechanism that controlled the cell doors sat against a far wall, neat as a pin.

Upon first inspection, there was no visible reason for the smell.

“If he dug a hole somehow, it would’ve been over multiple visits. These walls are concrete and steel.” Miranda scanned the small space again, her eyes lingering over every detail. Something caught her attention by the door mechanism—a strange set of grooves in the wall. They looked like claw marks. She pulled on her gloves and splayed her hands against the five furrows carved in the solid concrete. Miranda could fit two of her fingers in the space between each groove.

“Amazing how belief affects our abilities, don’t you think?” Brewster asked her.

“Meaning?”

He splayed his hand as she had before across the furrows, the marks aligning with his digits when they were spread as wide as they could go.

“Meaning, our boy has clinical lycanthropy, among other things. Like schizophrenia. He actually believes he’s a werewolf. Look at what he did to the wall with his bare hands. Forensics found these same marks in his cell.”

She’d seen the marks in his cell and had read his file, but she snorted. “Jim Jones believed he was the messiah, and I don’t see any Coke morphing into Pepsi, or water into wine.”

“Actually, Jones was an admitted atheist and has been quoted as saying that the best way to control people is through religion. So, he isn’t someone by which to measure that statement. But while there was no Coke into Pepsi at Jonestown, there was Kool Aid.” She could see the curve of his cheek as he smiled while he continued to inspect the grooves.

“
Actually,
” she tossed back, “it was FlavorAid. Grape, to be precise.”

“And the poison of choice?” he asked, as if it were a game show.

“Cyanide.” As a certified monster hunter with degrees in criminal justice and clinical psychology, it would be a sad day if she didn’t know her case files. Especially about something like the Jonestown massacre, where a charismatic cult leader convinced nearly a thousand people to take their own lives.

“You win.”

“I always win,” Miranda informed him.

“That’s what I’m counting on.” He felt along the back side of the wall but came back empty-handed. “Because right now, we’ve got nothing.”

“I don’t think Bancroft was lying.” Miranda scanned the room again.

“About Webster’s leaving through here or about wanting you dead?”

“All of it. He believed every word he told me. There has to be something here. Especially since there are marks on the wall corresponding to those in Webster’s cell. He wanted us to know he was down here.” She shivered as a blast of cold swept over her. “This building is only two years old. It shouldn’t be drafty.”

Their attention was simultaneously drawn to the door mechanism. It was four-by-four, large enough to conceal a hole for a man to fit through, but it was heavy. Webster wouldn’t have been able to move it by himself.

Or so she thought. With an animalistic grunt, the FBI agent shoved it over about two feet and revealed a gaping hole in the floor of the small room. Miranda peered down into the darkness and saw that the walls of the space weren’t made of dirt, but of stone.

The hole opened into some kind of cave.

“That’s where the new cooling system was supposed to go, but when they dug deeper, they found the cave,” an officer said from behind them.

“And they never bothered to seal it up?” Miranda demanded.

He shrugged. “It usually takes four men to move that thing and the cave just drops off after a hundred feet. Ugly. No one would survive the fall.”

“Call your supervisor and get forensics back down here, Officer,” Brewster said as he slipped down through the passage.

Miranda dropped down after him, and he caught her, his hot and hard body a welcome insulation against the frigid air. In the dark, she could barely make out his features, except for his hazel eyes. They seemed to reflect the thin glow of light from the room above, making them look more a light amber brown than green.

“I’ve got you.” His hands burned her through her clothes where he touched her—her skin on fire for more, but she stepped out of his grasp to do her job.

The stench was worse down there, and she wanted to bury her face in his neck so she could only smell his aftershave, but she forced herself even farther away from him and flicked her flashlight on.

They moved slowly, mindful of the officer’s description about the drop-off, until Brewster’s large hand closed over hers and pulled her over to the right side of the passage.

“Look at this.”

There, written on the wall in chalk next to another set of grooves, was the phrase:
Little Pig, Little Pig, let me in.

“He’s confusing his fairy tales now. First it was ‘Red Riding Hood’ and now it’s ‘The Three Little Pigs.’ Of course, there is the insulting correlation of pigs to law enforcement,” Miranda said.

“I think that’s exactly what he meant.”

Something crunched under her foot as she stepped forward. Miranda panned her flashlight down and saw a pile of animal bones. She picked one up carefully. It appeared to be a femur with deep scores up and down the length. Teeth marks.

“Webster certainly knows how to set the stage.”

“You’re right. He wants to tell you something.” Brewster nodded.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. It’s not just any female who’d be his Little Red.” He flipped his flashlight down the wall, and what Miranda saw there, scribbled over and over again in that same white chalk, made her blood run cold:
Miranda.

“This is good then,” she said, her voice strong and sure. “Because that means he really does want
me
to find him. He’ll be engaged playing this game with me rather than killing anyone else.”

“Surely, you see now why you can’t go this one alone?”

His words prickled, and it was on the tip of her tongue to deny she needed any help. Miranda knew how to handle herself, but he was right.

“Hey, I have no doubt you’re fully capable,” he continued. “I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t. But if you’re going to use yourself as bait, you need backup.”

“I know, damn it.” Although she liked that he didn’t even try to dissuade her. She sighed. “So the officer said this cave ends in a drop-off. Into what?”

“I can hear water.”

Miranda couldn’t hear anything but crept forward with him as they moved toward the sound. Suddenly, Brewster’s arm slammed into her chest, his large fingers closing over the ball of her shoulder pushing her back against the wall.

The floor of the cave was simply gone. If she’d taken one more step forward, she would have hurtled down into the darkness below.

“Shit, he wasn’t kidding.” She inched back, keeping to the wall, and Brewster followed behind her.

“There was water down there, with a fast current. I could hear it crashing against the banks. I’m sure it empties into the Missouri.”

“That’s a long drop, and there was no way for him to know how long he’d be underwater. He could’ve drowned. We need to get a team of divers down there.”

“Do you really want to wait for a team of divers to tell us they can’t find a body, or do you want to keep looking?”

“I didn’t say I wanted to wait. He had to have made some kind of arrangements or put a plan in place before he left. There has to be another clue to where he went if he did survive.”

“That’s not necessarily the case. He’s schizophrenic,” he reminded her.

“Right, but he wants me to find him, remember?”

“He may believe that you just know where to go. He may have had hallucinations of speaking to you, or interacting with you in some way.”

“No.” She shook her head as they made their way back toward the opening. “The rest of this was too methodical.”

“A method to his madness.” He ended the sentence on some diminutive or generic endearment that sounded a lot like, “red.”

“What?”

“I said a method to his madness.”

“No, after that.”

“Nothing.”

“It sounded like you called me red,” she accused.

“No. You’ve got red on the brain. And the acoustics in these places can be weird.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t like it. From him or anyone else.”

“So noted.” His hands spanned her waist again, and he lifted her up into the light.

She was very aware of the proximity of her bits to his face and scrambled from the cave up into the circuit room, then scurried up the ladder into the officers’ station—all the while imagining what else he could do with his great strength and that position. Her slit clenched, and she was suddenly wet for him. Christ, but she wanted him.

He followed her up and gave her that same look he had before, like he knew what she was thinking. His nostrils flared, as if he was sniffing the air—her. Almost as if he could smell her need. The idea made her hotter, made her wonder what he would do if he could. Would he call her on it? Taunt her? Or would he use that great strength of his to hold her up while she wrapped her legs around his shoulders with his tongue lapping at her. She bit her lip and pushed the image out of her head. The job had to come first. Then Miranda could worry about coming herself. In fact, after they had Webster back in his cage, Agent Brewster was going to be in for the ride of his life.

“I’ve set up a command center at the hotel. You wanna go get cleaned up, and we’ll start again on the paper trail? I’ve had transcripts of his visits sent over.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “The coffee’s better.”

“So, you already assumed I was going to say yes to working with you.” She eyed him.

“You said you always win, Marshal, and your record proves it. Do you think I would have left your cooperation up to chance? I’ve already been on the phone with your boss and his boss.”

“Why even ask me then?”

“Because I wanted you willing.”

“You seem ready to take me any way you can get me, Agent Brewster.” She pursed her lips.

His gaze traveled the length of her body, the appraisal like a rough caress. Her nipples tightened, and she crossed her arms over her chest to hide her reaction.

“That is one hundred percent correct. I will take you
any
way I can get you.”

Chapter Three

H
IS WORDS ECHOED
in her brain over and over again on the ride back to the hotel.

Any way I can get you.

Miranda’s slit throbbed as she imagined all sorts of ways he could get her. If she hadn’t just been in a place that was crawling with hepatitis alphabet soup, she would have pulled over to the side of the road and had her fingers in her cunt, bringing herself relief. Then she could have been on about her business.

The knowledge intruded on her fantasies of him. No, she wouldn’t have fucked him in the conference room. Or against the wall or anywhere in the prison. She knew what lived on every surface in the place: MRSA, hepatitis, crabs, gonorrhea and only God knew what else. That was a splash of cold water to all of her heated thoughts.

But rather than cooling her lust, her fantasies changed.

He could have bent her over the hood of a squad car like a perp, ass in the air and feet spread wide apart, drilling into her from behind, his big hands filled with her breasts. On her knees between his powerful thighs, his hands fisted in her hair guiding her descent down his cock. Even back at the hotel, in his room—her room, the closet on the way up the stairs . . .

Oh Jesus, but she wanted fuck him.

Miranda clenched her thighs more tightly together, desperate for relief. Above all, Miranda was a practical creature, so she surrendered. She pulled over onto a deserted dirt road, and after being quite liberal with the hand sanitizer, got out her iPhone. She slipped it into the neoprene sleeve and activated the iVibe app before tucking it into her panties with the edge of the phone against her clit.

The soft vibration was usually only enough to tease her, but she was so hot for Aden Brewster, she thought she’d break into a million pieces.

She closed her eyes and strained against the device, seeking more and more stimulation as her mind drifted back to fantasies of the sexy agent. Miranda wondered what he’d be like as a lover. Would he be gentle and attentive or demanding? It didn’t matter, this was her fantasy, and she could pose him like a real-life Fuck Me Ken doll.

Miranda imagined he’d come into her hotel room, and he wouldn’t ask her if it was okay that he was there. In fact, he wouldn’t speak at all. He’d just push her naked down into the bed; his hard cock digging at her softness would be the only communication they needed. She imagined he had a big cock, thick and tall just like the rest of his heavily muscled body. Miranda wanted it to be too large for her, wanted it to stretch her, fill her. She wanted Aden Brewster to push her past her limits all around—she wanted to know she was being fucked by someone more powerful, stronger than she was. She wanted to feel like she was at his mercy.

And she wanted him to have none.

She pistoned her hips forward, moving into the vibrations of the iPhone until she shuddered in a delicate release. It wasn’t the white-knuckled, screaming-in-tongues orgasm that Miranda needed, but it was enough to get her by for a while.

She took a few moments to clean up and right herself before continuing on to the hotel. It was a good thing she’d handled her needs because she didn’t even get a chance to go up to her room.

Miranda arrived the same time Brewster did, and they’d just stepped through the doors of the hotel when an excited tech pounced on them, waving a package in his hand.

It was addressed to Miranda at the hotel.

The script was elegant, flowing, and she knew immediately it was from him. In her experience, some of the most brutal fiends had the loveliest penmanship.

“How did he know you’d be here, Garrick? Don’t open it,” Aden warned. He wasn’t even touching her, and Miranda was still hyperaware of his body heat.

“The same way you knew I’d be here. This is the only hotel chain in town that the government has a contract with. He wants me to catch him, remember?” Miranda pulled out another pair of latex gloves and carried the package to the conference room Aden had appointed as the command center.

She opened the fat, cardboard envelope slowly, tugging carefully on the perforated, tearaway strip. Miranda gently dumped the contents on the table.

The Book of Werewolves
by Sabine Baring-Gould.
The Werewolf in Lore and Legend
by Montague Summers. And a Minnesota wolf-hunting license issued in her name.
The Book of Werewolves
opened to a page that listed criteria for becoming a werewolf: dying unshriven, selling your soul to the devil, being bitten not once, but three times . . . They’d been highlighted.

“Christ,” Brewster muttered. “At least we can trace the registration on the license although I doubt it will get us anywhere.”

Blood rushed through her veins, and excitement welled as inspiration struck. She’d seen something else that connected him to Minnesota. “Where’s the file with all of Webster’s contacts? Specifically, who was putting money on his store accounts in the prison?”

Aden shuffled some folders on the table and handed one to Miranda. She tore it open like a Christmas present and scanned through the lines and lines of data until she found what she was looking for. “There! October Skies,” she cried, pointing to the line item on the page. “Every month they put $500 on the books for his inmate account. The bank of origin is Alexandria, Minnesota.”

“You think he’s in Minnesota?”

“There’s something there he wants me to see. If he’s not there, something is that will lead us to him.” She pulled out her phone to Google October Skies and was determined not to blush, or even think about the fact she’d just pleasured herself with it.

“How do you know this isn’t some elaborate game to keep you busy while he makes it out of the country, and we never catch him?” Brewster asked her.

“Oh, it’s an elaborate game, that’s for sure. But he’s fixated on me and has painted me up as Little Red Riding Hood. He’s luring me to his version of grandma’s house.” She smirked. “He thinks that by luring me there, he’ll be the one to lead me from the path and into the darkness, just like the story.”

“Doesn’t it concern you how he knew you’d be called in on his case?”

“No. The modern monster is incredibly resourceful. This package he sent to the hotel would have eventually found its way to me, and I would have been called in to consult anyway. It’s not that complicated. I bet he saw me on CNN during the last case I worked with that cannibal in Ohio, and he fixated on me.” She tapped the screen to enter the Web site, then shoved her phone into Aden’s hands. “There, see? I bet he’s there.” She hadn’t meant to do that, to put her phone in his hands. She crossed her legs, remembering her fantasies, even as she fought to keep her head in the game.

“October Skies, finding the wolf in all of us.” Aden snorted as he read from the screen, but then his brow furrowed. “This is some kind of get-back-to-your-primal-self cult. They call it the Faith of the Moon. They have a commune on Lake Ida in Alexandria.”

“Then that’s where we’re going.” She grabbed her phone back to find the airport closest to Lake Ida and see what the soonest flight was out of St. Louis—and to get it out of his hands.

“I’ve got a charter on standby. We can be in the air in two hours.”

“You are so sure of everything, aren’t you?” He was sure she’d work with him, sure she’d find a lead—so sure, he’d kept a plane on standby, costing the Bureau an ungodly sum.

“No, I just plan for every contingency. How fast can you be ready?”

“Just let me get my bag.”

It didn’t take them long to get on the road, and the two hours it should have taken them to get to the airport in St. Louis was reduced to an hour and twenty minutes, with Brewster driving at top speed with the cherry and the siren on.

As they boarded the aircraft, the pilot said, “Glad to see you made good time, Agents. There are a nasty slew of winter-storm cells headed for the Midwest. If we don’t get in the air soon, we won’t be able to take off until they pass.”

Shit. That’s just what they needed, trying to hunt this asshole in a blizzard. Her first thought was what it would be like to be snowed in somewhere with Brewster in front of roaring fire with a bottle of champagne, but her thoughts quickly turned back to the monster. What would it be like to be snowed in with
him
? A horror beyond anything anyone should ever have to know. She hoped he was at the commune. Not just so she could catch him but because those people had made the choice to support him, to interact with him. They knew what he was, what he’d been convicted of, and had in essence invited him among them anyway. Miranda didn’t feel responsible for those people, and if Webster slaughtered them, that blood wouldn’t be on her hands.

She sat down and buckled herself in and pulled the books that Webster had sent her out of her bag. What was in these books that he wanted her to know? Or was it just part of the setup and meant to set a tone, a mood for the chase? He had to know she was a logical woman, she wouldn’t believe anything she couldn’t prove.

While with his schizophrenia, it was possible he believed his lycanthropy could be proven, Miranda was having a hard time buying that diagnosis. He was too methodical, too controlled, too precise. Maybe he’d faked the symptoms of the clinical lycanthropy?

Images of the crime-scene photos flashed behind her eyes in a seemingly eternal loop. There was nothing fake about those.

She buried her nose back in the books but then laughed. “What am I supposed to take from this?” Miranda muttered.

“How to kill him?” Brewster offered, as the plane soared into the air.

“That’s easy. A bullet to the head. Kills most anything.” She read a few more sentences. “A werewolf can turn another person into a werewolf with a bite? It’s like a supernatural STD.” Miranda just couldn’t take the books seriously.

“Come on, what about being able to identify a werewolf because the poor bastard was born with a unibrow? Especially in this day and age of laser hair removal.”

She snorted a laugh. “Or your second toe is longer than your big toe?”

“Or if you’re left-handed. Then you’ll either turn into a werewolf in life, or after death you rise as a vampire. Again, it’s all about belief.”

“You seem to know a lot about this crap.” Miranda laughed again.

“I have a doctorate of crap. Or bullshit. Whichever.” He shrugged with a lazy smile. “Psychology and Folklore. Pick your flavor.”

“What does one do with a degree in folklore?”

“Work for the FBI?” He grinned.

It occurred to Miranda that on Webster’s last mug shot, he’d had a unibrow, and the thought made her shiver for some reason. Her reaction was stupid. Webster was no more a werewolf than he was a unicorn farting glitter sprinkles. Neither was real.

“Both of these men were well educated for their time. I can’t believe they wrote this drivel and expected it to be taken seriously.”

“Montague Summers wrote the first English translation of the
Malleus Maleficarum
, or
The Witches’ Hammer
in 1928. A witch hunter’s manual originally written by Inquisitors. He considered himself to be just that—a witch hunter.”

“As late as the twenties?” she said in disbelief.

“Garrick, even today there are some people in the South who still paint their window casements and doors blue to keep away the
haints.
People still keep superstitions all over the world.”

“Glad I have more sense.”

“Do you? What about making sure fellow officers stay on a desk their last week before retirement?”

“Other things play into those choices besides superstition. Like statistics and odds.”

“Lending credence to the fact most officers have beliefs about their last week,” he supplied.

“So you’re saying all superstition has a basis in fact?” Her brows drew together in consternation.

“No, but you should keep an open mind.”

“Open enough to say Dean Harvey Webster is a werewolf?”

He shrugged and leaned back in his chair. “What about Bancroft? How did he break free from steel chains?”

“PCP?”

“He was on a drug, but it wasn’t PCP. It was Dean Harvey Webster. Didn’t you see that mark on his neck? Bancroft believed he was part of Webster’s pack, for a better term. Webster gave him that bite—several times over it seems. Probably three times,” he drawled.

“Look, I’ve been doing this job for long enough I shouldn’t be subjected to a round of ‘let’s fuck with the rookie.’ ”

He straightened, a dark look clouding his hard features. “What if I want to fuck with the rookie?”

His words sparked an explosion of need inside of her, and she studied him intently before she responded—blatantly sizing him up. “Then you’re on the wrong plane. There are no rookies in residence here. Unless you’re referring to yourself.”

“No, Miranda.” His voice dropped an octave. “This isn’t my first party.”

They both knew they weren’t talking about the case. She loved the way her name sounded on his lips.

“Act like it,” she dared him.

He returned her blatant appraisal. “I am. This flight is only an hour. I don’t intend to start anything I can’t finish.”

“I’d think a man such as yourself who plans for every contingency would find a way to finish what he started in the allowed time constraints rather than refusing to leave the gate,” she taunted. “But I guess that’s why only geldings race. Stallions are too high-strung.”

“You’re information is incorrect.”

“Is it? Then educate me.” She lifted her head in defiance.

He laughed, the sound low and rich. “We took the same psych classes.”

“We did. So you should already know you’re going to lose. Remember that discussion we had about my winning streak? It applies to everything. Even sexually charged banter at twenty thousand feet.”

“You thought
that
was sexually charged?” He smirked as if to say she hadn’t seen anything yet.

“Promises, promises.” She cocked her head to the side. “Remember, I don’t believe in anything I can’t prove. And so far, there’s nothing to back up your statement, Agent Brewster.”

“Aden,” he corrected. “My name is Aden.”