Skye's Trail (25 page)

“The Armstrong case?” Skye asked and watched as his face closed off, as he braced himself against thinking about the case. “But I can help you. You can help me. The cases I’m working on are connected to your case.”

Rico didn’t know what to do with her offer. He wanted to bring whoever killed Brittany Armstrong to justice, but he knew that Rivera wouldn’t want him to share any information with Skye. His chest went tight thinking about the captain. He needed to tell Rivera about this thing with Skye. It wouldn’t stay hidden for very long.

“I can’t tell you anything without talking to the captain first,” he finally said.

Skye was warmed by his answer, by the underlying willingness to try and find a way to compromise. “Do you have a copier here?”

He blinked at the change of subject. “Yeah. In my office.”

She pulled the ID of the man she’d gutted out of her jeans and handed it to Rico. The faint stink of foul, evil-cursed blood floated along her senses, more memory than reality. “His scent was in the woods along with Brittany’s.”

Rico’s face tightened. “How did you get this?”

“We struggled and I took it.”

“When?”

“Yesterday. When I got back from LA. He was waiting for me, along with another man.”

“Why didn’t you call me!”

“Gian found me first.”

Rico’s body tensed. The cop in him warred with the man.

It was like navigating through a minefield. There was more going on here than she wanted to tell him. Maybe more here than he could handle right now.

He chose to stay on safer ground. “You’re sure he was in the woods with Brittany Armstrong?”

Skye’s mind ranged back to the scent of two men—the witch’s servants—and to the vampire fledgling that she’d killed. They smelled the same, as though the magic that controlled them also stamped out their individuality. There’d been five people with Brittany, probably the three fledglings and the two servants. The man Gian had killed hadn’t smelled of tainted blood. “His scent was there,” she told Rico. “Tell the captain that if you find out who this man hung out with, you might find the killers.”

Rico looked down at the driver’s license. The name was probably fake, but he could scan the picture in and see if he got a hit. Fuck. It was a lead. Something to bargain with. He started to put the ID in his pocket then figured he should treat it as evidence. Maybe they could even take a few prints off of it. When he headed for the kitchen to get a baggie, she said, “I want a copy of it to show around.”

“No.” The word was an automatic response, but as soon as he said it, he knew he meant it. If this guy had already attacked her once, there was no way he was going to make it easy for her to go against him again. Maybe this was why Gian hadn’t wanted her to leave Fangs. His mind shied away from thinking about what he shared with the other man. Instead, Rico braced himself for her fury. When it didn’t come he stopped and turned back to her.

She stood with a bemused expression on her face, as though she was torn between being mad and laughing. Amusement won out. She shook her head and strolled over to him, winding against his body like an affectionate cat. “Having mates is going to take some getting used to.” She pulled his head down and rubbed her nose against his before biting his lip in a small warning. “I’m going to let you get away with this—for now.”

The tension eased from his body. Fuck, he loved this, the feel of her body against his, the challenge of her. She made him feel alive, complete.

“I’ve got to get to the station. You can stay here if you want.” He frowned at the thought of her going back to her apartment. Fuck. It galled him, but maybe he should take her back to Fangs. On the heels of that came a question he should have asked before this. Cop intuition tightened Rico’s gut. “Where’s the Harley?”

“I’m not sure.” Her eyes flickered to the ID Rico was still holding. “After the scuffle, I ran. There wasn’t any time to try and get to the Harley.”

“You think he took it?”

“Maybe.” She half-smiled. “Too early to report it stolen if that’s where you’re going.”

Rico didn’t want to agree with her, but in the end he did. He could circle back to this later, maybe take her down to the station and make sure she stayed long enough so an artist could do up a composite of whoever had been with the guy who’d attacked her.

Shit. What he really wanted was for her to stay here, safe, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen.

“You can borrow my truck.” His gut did a little summersault. The truck was his baby. “You can drive something other than a bike, right?”

Her eyebrows rose and he wanted to kiss the challenge right off her face. “Okay, right. Let me bag this, then I’ll show you the truck.”

The truck was a monster. Gleaming black metal and enough power to pull a house, but it was the bed that caught Skye’s attention. Long, covered, with plenty of room to carry a couple of coffins.

* * * * *

Rico’s gut tightened when he walked into the bullpen and saw the captain sitting next to Caldwell’s desk. Fuck, he couldn’t sit on the information Skye had given him, but he wasn’t ready to talk to Rivera about her. Shit. He didn’t even know what he was going to say. The captain was half older-brother, half-uncle to him. Not really family, but close enough.

Rivera and his father had grown up in the same neighborhood, gone into police work a few years apart, and still got together and played poker together once in a while. Telling the captain that he was involved with Skye was like a dress rehearsal for introducing her to his family.

Dread settled like ice in Rico’s gut. He’d rather look down the barrel of a gun than face that. Even if Skye wasn’t who she was, curiosity would get the better of at least one of his siblings and they’d do a background check on her. Not that they needed to go any further than the file Rivera had.

Rico took a deep breath and did what he had to do. He pulled the bagged driver’s license out and dropped it on Caldwell’s desk. “This is one of the people who was in the woods with Brittany Armstrong. Name’s probably fake, but the picture’s accurate. If we’re lucky, we may pull a print.”

Rivera was too good a cop not to jump immediately to the point Rico wanted to avoid. “How’d you get this?”

“Skye Delano.”

Cia’s mouth went tight with disapproval. The captain’s hand twitched and Rico knew that Rivera was fighting the urge to cross himself. He used to do it every time Skye’s name was mentioned, but after a couple of the guys started mimicking the behavior, Rivera stopped doing it.

“We’ll talk later,” the captain said, his voice making it clear that the discussion wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Rico felt his gut twist a little tighter, but he didn’t look away. It was time he faced up to this. He’d made his choice.

The captain stood and picked up the bagged ID. “I’ll get the techs working on this. If something breaks, I’ll have them call you. In the meanwhile, follow up on Caldwell’s lead but don’t get in too deep.” He looked at Caldwell then. “This is your angle, but if it looks like the civilian may get hurt, do what you can to intervene. The last thing we need is another killing like Armstrong’s. We got off lucky that none of the newspapers got a hold of it.”

Caldwell nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Keep me posted,” the captain said before striding out of the bullpen.

Caldwell’s chilly disapproval washed over Rico even as she pushed a fax toward him and brought him up to date. “This is Marina, the girl I told you about. There may be others, but she’s the only one I’ve been able to get close to online. She’s from LA. Pacific Palisades to be exact. Her father is a wealthy lawyer, her mother a dedicated socialite. Probably started the Goth thing as a way to get attention.” Cia grimaced.

“She’s supposed to go to Fangs first, so she can see for herself that vampires exist. After that she’s supposed to go to Bangers where she’ll be ‘tested’, whatever that means. If she passes, then she’ll start the initiation process. That’s the same drill Brittany went through—or close enough. I talked to one of the detectives in Virginia yesterday. They were able to recover some files she’d deleted. She was supposed to go to Fangs first, then Bangers. There wasn’t anything about being tested before she was initiated, but it’s still close to the same MO. And the threads leading her from public chat rooms to very private chat rooms are almost exactly the same—like the same people who trolled for Brittany are trolling for someone new.”

Rico didn’t want to admire Caldwell. He’d rather stay pissed. The captain had saddled him with her and right from the start she’d done her best to keep him away from Skye. But fuck, this was good work, most of it probably done on her own time.

“This is a great lead,” he said.

Caldwell’s face lightened. “Thanks. You ready to go?”

“Yeah.” Rico’s chest tightened and the mark over his heart burned. Gian would be waiting at Fangs. Rico didn’t know how he knew that, but his gut told him that he was going to meet Skye’s other mate tonight.

* * * * *

Old vampires didn’t need to sleep in coffins, but for fledglings who’d not mastered the magic necessary for survival, coffins were essential.

The knowledge came from Skye’s past. From a barely remembered conversation with her mother’s mate, Sabin. It made her heart ache that she was still gathering bits of information, trying to piece together her life before… Even now she didn’t remember how she’d been separated from her mother and fathers.

Details that should have been engraved in her soul, a part of who was, remained illusive. But at least it was coming back. When the time was right, she would start searching for her family.

Skye parked Rico’s truck and got out, her quick strides carrying her across the asphalt parking lot and to the funeral home’s main entrance. She didn’t need to look at the sky to know that sunset was approaching. She could feel it on her skin, in the way Gian’s power was building.

As she entered the funeral home, a dark-suited man stepped forward. “May I help you?”

Skye didn’t hesitate. She trapped him in her eyes. “Have any coffins left here in the last twenty-four hours?”

A struggle took place across the man’s features and victory shot through Skye at the hint of compulsion that she could feel in his mind. The fledgling’s touch was no match for her own.

Skye let him fall deeper into her own eyes and repeated the question. His features cleared. A movie played out in his mind and she saw Amy’s glowing eyes as she’d held the man enthralled.

“Yes. Two of them.” His words were matched with more images. This time of him loading the coffins into a hearse and driving them to a storage unit. Jen was waiting there. Skye paused the memory in order to examine Haley’s younger sister. She was flush with a blood feeling, but nervousness poured off of her. The man slipped the coffins into the storage unit and turned to leave. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the witch, but it was just a fleeting impression.

Skye probed harder, making sure she was seeing the truth. She could sense the warmth that preceded the sun’s rising along his skin, his sudden urgency to get back to the funeral home, the compulsion to forget about the coffins. She let him drop from her eyes, leaving only a vague memory that she’d been here but hadn’t found what she was looking for.

* * * * *

“There she is,” Caldwell said.

Rico studied the girl who’d just joined the line of black-clothed, body-pierced kids waiting to get into Fangs. How could Skye stand to hang out here?

“You know what really gets me about this?” Cia asked, but didn’t wait for Rico’s response. “Most of these kids have it made just by being born into families with money. All they have to do is keep their noses clean and do okay in school and their lives are set. Most of them probably were given cars at sixteen and already have a college fund set up for them. But instead they do this to themselves.”