Sadie Hart (16 page)

He tweaked a nipple between his thumb and
forefinger, and the breath she’d been holding slid out of her in a
low moan that he breathed in, and then he proceeded to kiss her
until she couldn’t stand any more, and the only thing that held her
up was the hand that slid around her back and pressed her to
him.

When he pulled away, Ollie wanted nothing
more than to drag him back. Instead he nipped over her bottom lip,
eyes on hers, wolf to wolfhound. “Let’s go eat, Ol. And stop
regretting the fact that you didn’t die. Because one night very,
very soon, I don’t want to have to stop with a kiss.”

Caine turned her back in the direction of
their forgotten picnic before she could ask him why he stopped now.
The answer, she realized, lay somewhere in the unreadable scrutiny
of his eyes, eyes she couldn’t seem to understand but which
understood her so well.

Whispering against her ear, one hand still
around her waist, Caine proved again how well he read her thoughts.
“Not here, not where the ghost of someone else haunts you. I want
you guilt free, Holly.”

He nipped her neck. Possessive.

“Mine.”

Chapter Twelve

Ollie kicked
the vending machine in the Enforcement office, trying to bully it
into yielding the candy bar she’d already paid for. “So you’d be
going undercover?”

“In a lion pride,” Sawyer said, reaching up
to give the machine a good shake. “Lennox is still working out the
details with the Arizona alpha, but Enforcement hasn’t exactly gone
out of its way to broadcast that they hired a lion-shifter as a
Hound.”

Sawyer gave the stubborn machine another
shake, Ollie kicked it one last time for good measure—and the candy
bar finally tumbled to the bottom of the machine with a solid
thunk. “About damn time,” Ollie muttered and snatched it up,
peeling back the wrapper with practiced ease. “What would your
assignment be?”

“Serial killer.”

“Damn.” From one to the next. It was never
ending. One right after the other. There was always going to be
someone out there hacking up victims. She caught sight of Sawyer’s
face, the same knowledge running rampant in her friend’s eyes, and
Ollie felt her shoulders slump. “How many has that one killed?”

“They’re not sure. Somewhere around five
known victims. But they know it’s a lion, suspect it’s from one
particular pride, but the Hounds haven’t been able to get shit on
the case. Whoever it is, they’re too careful, and they don’t leave
much behind on the scene. But they think sending someone in
undercover might get them the lead they need.”

“Good thing you’re a chick.” There was no way
another male would be let into a pride, but a female? Especially if
they moved Sawyer in close to her heat cycle, no pride male would
turn her away. Not with a body like that. Ollie shook her head.
“Just don’t get your ass killed.”

“I haven’t decided if I’m taking it or not.
Everything is still under discussion.” She shrugged, suddenly
looking unsure of herself. Hesitant.

Ollie clapped her on the back. “Hey. You rock
at this job.”

“And this could be my way to really make a
difference, do something no one else can.”

“And if you choose to take this one, girl, I
have no doubt that you’ll do something none of the rest of us could
ever even dream of doing. Besides, you survived a rogue Hound
turned killer, grew up in a pride of lions with more members than I
can keep track of, most of them your older brothers. What’s one
lion after all that?”

Ollie’s phone rang and she turned aside to
answer it. “Holly Lawrence, Shifter Town Enforcement.”

A familiar male voice spoke. A human cop,
she’d worked with him a time or two. “Holly, this is Detective Dan
Carwell. Think I have a body for you.”

That was never what she wanted to hear. She
pinched the bridge of her nose. It couldn’t be the Hunter, but then
again the Hunter wouldn’t be the only shifter to kill a person in
Idaho. “What makes you say that?”

“I know it’s not your normal time schedule,
but your office registered a missing persons report on a Lydia
Marks?”

Damn. The full moon wasn’t even for another
four days.

He’d never killed early.

Stomach twisting, Ollie reached for her
jacket, juggling her cell as she slipped the leather on over her
shirt and holster. She waved to Sawyer, and the lioness snapped to
attention, following her down the hall. “Who’s on scene now?”

“I am. Few rookies in the beginning. The
moment they saw the ID on the body they called for backup.”

“Where?”

He relayed the address, and Ollie snapped her
cell shut just as she slid into her car, Sawyer easing into the
passenger seat beside her. Peeling out of the parking lot, Ollie
dialed Brandt, cursing low as it took her brother multiple rings to
pick up. Lennox had the day off for her ultrasound; she’d left
Brandt as alpha in her stead. “We may have another body. The cops
on scene found Lydia Marks’s ID on the body.”

“Hey,” Brandt said, voice low. Firm. “Don’t
get hooked on a theory yet. We might have it all wrong. The Hunter
might not have even been the one to pick her up—her disappearance
and now death could still be unrelated.”

She knew that, but something in her gut told
her it was the Hunter. There were plenty of other shifters in
Idaho, anyone else could have done it, but deep down, Ollie already
knew the culprit.

“Still,” Brandt continued. “I’ll call Lennox
and pick up your wolf.”

Sawyer tilted her head, eyebrows lifted; her
lion’s hearing obviously picking up the conversation, but Ollie
just shook her head. They so weren’t having this conversation
now.

“You just get to the scene and see what you
can find out.”

Ollie nodded. “We’ll know the moment I’m
there.”

She turned the car up onto a dirt road,
weaving through the forest. “Shifters can’t kill clean. There’s
always at least a scent behind. I’ll know if it’s him.”

Because she’d never forget the smell of him,
the look of him, the way he talked and breathed. It was all burned
into her brain like the mark of a branding iron scorched into her
scalp. One sniff and she’d know. Hanging up the cell, she tossed it
into the cup holder.

“So—” Sawyer started and Ollie rolled her
eyes.

“Two dates, that’s all it’s been. He’s not my
wolf.”

“But you liked him enough to see him a second
time.”

Oh, she had. More than enough. They were
already planning their third. Caine Morgan, wolf or not, made her
feel comfortable, at ease. When she was with him, she forgot she
should be stressing over the next person to die. Then again, maybe
if she weren’t with him Lydia Marks would still be alive.

“Yeah, I did. Can we just drop it?” Her voice
came out testier than she’d meant, sharper, and Sawyer flinched,
glancing out the window.

“Sure. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

And now she felt like the world’s biggest
ass. Ollie bit her lip and swallowed back the urge to let out a
frustrated growl. Sawyer had just been doing what friends do, and
she’d gotten all huffy about it. “Sorry.”

Ollie angled the car around a bend as the
dirt road broke into a large circle. Police cars were already on
scene, and now a handful of Enforcement vehicles as well, all
parked haphazardly around the perimeter. Ollie jammed the car into
park and hopped out, inhaling the rich pine air in deep gulping
breaths, scenting.

“Ollie! Sawyer!”

Ollie recognized the Detective Dan Carwell,
who was standing between two pines at the edge of the dirt circle.
He waved them over, so she picked up to a jog, hurrying past the
pair of bloodhounds already shifting to see if they could get a
track. She recognized the bloodhounds as members of her pack.
Brandt must have been quick to get them here already. She glanced
around for her brother, but when she didn’t see him, she honed in
on the sandy-haired detective in front of her.

“Since when do you cover shifter crimes?”

Dan grinned at her, his mustache nearly
burying the bottom of his nose with the movement. “Since a pair of
hikers called her in, not knowing what she was. The rookies on
scene saw her license and called me. Figured it was the work of
your serial killer.”

“What makes you say that? Besides the
ID.”

“She was torn up pretty nasty by a good-sized
animal. My guess? The claw marks look too small to be a lion. And
I’ve seen enough werewolf attacks, looks about the right size.”

Ollie nodded but clamped her jaw shut,
glancing towards Sawyer to see the other woman’s eyebrows drawn in
a slightly puzzled frown. Werewolf attack, she could buy that. But
the Hunter had never killed with tooth and claw before. He
preferred clean kills, a gunshot every time. His shots were always
at close range, and he didn’t miss. He always started as an animal
for the hunt, for the chase, but the moment he caught them, he
shifted.

The trail had read the same on every case.
He’d proved it once again when he’d killed Rosalie Myers. It was
why the larger shifters had never had a chance. They couldn’t fight
a bullet. He didn’t even have to use silver. A shot through
something vital and an ordinary bullet worked just as well. Unless
he wanted to draw it out.

The woman found dead in Ollie’s yard. Claire
Rawson. He had bitten her, probably at the end of his chase.

Maybe it had triggered something in him?
Maybe the animal side was beginning to win out?

Maybe he’d get sloppy.

After all, he’d never killed outside of a
full moon, either.

As Dan led them into the woods, accompanied
by the crack of branches underfoot and the noisy call of a crow in
the trees, Ollie felt the sinking twist of her intuition kick in.
This was him. She could feel it all the way down to her bones, but
that just meant he’d tossed out the rulebook. Please just let him
have made a mistake.

Dan lifted up the crime scene tape and let
them into the small clearing. A woman lay in a tangle of thorny
vines, her hair matted with blood. He’d ripped into her. There were
teeth marks on her arms, claw marks all over her face; her entire
stomach had been ripped open. Ollie forced herself to breathe
slowly, rousing her inner dog to help process the scene. The scents
came sharper, stronger, but without the emotion or the swirl of
vomit in her stomach.

“Oh God,” Sawyer said and took a step back,
head tilted up towards the sky as she breathed in through her
teeth. “It is him.”

Ollie nodded, confirming the dread that had
been building in her heart ever since she’d gotten the call. The
area stunk of him, under all the heavy scent of pine, broken
leaves, and upturned dirt, was the overwhelming odor of wolf, and
not just any wolf. There was the lingering tinge of citrus and
gunpowder to him that clung to his wolf half every bit as it had to
his human half. The scent she’d never forget, not from the night in
the shack, not from nineteen crime scenes.

Damn, but he was never going to stop. There
would be victim after victim if they didn’t catch him, and nineteen
was an overwhelming number already. Ollie stared down at the
broken, ripped-open body of Lydia Marks, doing her best to ignore
the blood and the brutal savagery of the scene. There was the white
glint of bone peeking out under crimson, a cracked rib from the
impact of his jaws. Postmortem?

She swallowed. She hoped so, but that would
be for the ME to figure out. Ollie licked her lips and took a step
closer to the body, forcing herself to think past the horror of
what Lydia might have endured, and what her death meant—the
breaking of his timetable, the change in methodology. There were so
many ramifications she couldn’t afford to think about, not right
now. Right now she needed to be objective, and to look at the scene
with the eyes of a professional, not those of a guilty party.

Lydia had fought back, she thought, noting
the blood under the woman’s nails, the way her lips had curled in a
snarl. Her heart beat a little faster as she gestured to Sawyer.
“She fought back. If he’s in the system, we might be able to ID
him.”

But somehow she doubted it. Everything about
the Hunter said he’d been doing this for a long time. Longer than
any of them dared to even think. Ollie found it hard to believe
he’d ever made a mistake. Until now. Maybe.

“If only we could get that lucky,” Sawyer
murmured, obviously not holding out any more hope than she did.

Ollie leaned in closer, spotted the clump of
silver-gray fur on the ground next to Lydia’s face. Inhaling, she
sniffed delicately, and plucked the woman’s scent easily off the
fur. She’d shifted? Or tried to. If Ollie pushed back her lips
would she see fangs? Or the blunt, square teeth of a human? Would
they be white, or stained red? Her fingers itched to check. But she
mustn’t. Not until after the medical examiner had done an exam and
the scene had been completely catalogued.

Sawyer squatted down on the other side of the
body, head cocked as she took the scene in herself. “He really went
at her.”

It would have been a horrific way to die.
Torturous, slow, unbelievably violent. Ollie had once taken a trip
to Wolf Haven, a park dedicated to behavioral research on wolves.
She’d seen the way they’d torn into a hunk of raw meat, watched the
video where wolves in the wild had ripped down an elk, gutting the
poor thing while it was still alive. That had been nature,
survival.

But looking at Lydia Marks, all she could see
was the wild brutality of it. This woman had died fighting, but in
no way had it been an easy or a quick death. There’d been prolonged
agony and terror. This was nothing like a gun to the head. Ollie
rocked back on her heels and turned her face up to the sky. Thick,
dark branches crisscrossed the pale blue. Red and gold leaves still
lingered on branches, despite the fact that the majority had
fallen.