Under Her Skin (3 page)

I was late to work the next morning. I hadn’t slept well, and that was after staying up an extra hour to compose and email a report to Gloria.

I had finally decided, after much tossing and turning, to try to ignore what had happened with Kade Nevala. Still, I couldn’t help returning over and over again to the way my body had reacted to his touch. Responding so eagerly to his kiss had been an aberration on my part, and I was going to assume that the doctor was having some sort of mental breakdown. My other option—the one that, as a counselor, I knew I should take, was to report him to the hospital.

The idea of reporting him made me anxious, though. If I had understood Emma correctly, then the hospital worked with other shapeshifters. And Nevala had said I wasn’t possible; I could only assume that he knew what I was even before I shifted. If he had any doubts, they had been erased.

I didn’t drift off to sleep until the sky outside my window began to lighten.

I was still mostly asleep when my home phone rang. I didn’t use it often, preferring my cell, but I kept it in case cell service went out and someone needed to reach me.

“Morning, sunshine,” my boss Gloria sang out.

“You got my report, right?” My voice was blurry.

“Yep. Printed, signed, and filed. But the DA has called a special meeting about a new case. All hands on deck. I’ve got coffee brewing, so put on your happy face and come on in. You’ve got ninety minutes.” She was far too cheerful, but the idea of a new case piqued my interest. I needed something to turn off the repeating clip of last night running through my head.

“Any idea what’s up?” I asked.

“Nope. The quicker you get here, the sooner we’ll find out. So hurry up.”

Without new-case details to distract me, I continued to obsess about Nevala and his revelations all the way through taking a quick shower, pulling on a business-like skirt and blouse, giving my face the barest dusting of powder and lip gloss, and driving to work.

The last thing I wanted was anyone else knowing about me. I worked hard to ignore my animal side. I shifted as rarely as possible—although I could shift whenever I wanted to, I had learned to keep it down to about once a month. At that point, I had to find a time and a place to let that side of me free. It wasn’t connected with the moon or anything, but if I didn’t shift on my own, my body would do it without my consent. I had gone out to my parents’ ranch just two weeks earlier and spent the day sunning my snake-self on a rock. I shouldn’t have to change again for another two weeks.

The fact that I had shifted last night worried me.

Hell. Everything that had happened last night worried me.

Would Kade Nevala keep my secret? Could I trust him not to tell other shapeshifters about me? Should I try to find out more about them? About him?

No. I would just ignore the entire situation. I pulled into a spot in the almost-full parking lot of the CAP-C and checked my makeup in the mirror.

No one else could know what I was.

It was safer that way.

I was safer.

I swung out of the car and walked into the building, feeling better than I had since I’d left the hospital the previous night.

Until I walked into the boardroom and came face-to-face with Dr. Kade Nevala himself.

I stumbled to a stop and took a step toward the door, but backed into Detective Moreland, who was just coming in.

“Careful, Lindi,” Moreland said, steadying me with one hand while he held his coffee cup up high with the other.

“Oh. Sorry,” I mumbled, still plotting to make my escape.

“You remember Dr. Nevala from the hospital last night?” Moreland asked, his voice genial.

Dammit. There goes my chance to leave unnoticed.

I stared hard at Nevala. “I remember.”

“Please,” Nevala said. “Call me Kade.” He stuck out his hand and smiled, a twinkle in his golden eyes. I hesitated, but realized that several of the other people in the room were watching. I reached out to shake his hand. My fingers had gone icy cold—or maybe they just felt that way compared to the burning heat of his own.

“Hi,” I murmured, retrieving my hand as quickly as possible. I moved around the conference table toward Gloria, as if I needed to speak to her. In fact, I did need to talk to her, had been planning to do so when I walked in the room, but at that moment I couldn’t for the life of me remember why.

My boss looked up from some papers she was riffling through. “Oh, good. Lindi’s here. We can get started.” There was a murmur as everyone shuffled to seats. I took one about halfway down the table from Gloria and was irritated, but not entirely surprised, when Nevala … Kade … moved to sit next to me. A moment later he leaned forward and surreptitiously slipped my phone into my lap. I looked away from him.

“Hi, everyone,” Gloria said. “First of all, I want to introduce our new board member, Dr. Kade Nevala.” He waved from his seat. “Dr. Nevala has graciously offered to act as our medical specialist. He’s a pediatrician at Kindred Hospital and is already working with Lindi on last night’s case.”

I clenched my teeth. He wouldn’t be working on any other cases if I had my way.

“Okay. Lindi and Daniel, bring us up to speed on the Camelli case before we get to the new stuff?” Gloria leaned forward with her elbows on the table and looked at us expectantly.

I let Moreland talk first. The board members listened carefully. The local District Attorney, Jason Barker, and his investigator, Scott Carson, took notes. By the time Moreland was done giving the basics of the case, I was calm enough to speak—as long as I didn’t look in Kade Nevala’s direction.

“I believe Emma Camelli,” I said. “I think she was being abused. She openly admits to having killed her father—”

“Stepfather,” Nevala interrupted.

“Stepfather,” I said. “Okay. Stepfather. Even more likely, then.”

“We’ll have the rape kit back soon?” Gloria looked at Nevala for confirmation, then continued when he nodded. “In the meantime, we’ll schedule her for counseling sessions here. Jason? Scott? Where will she be?”

“She’s in the hospital through tonight,” Scott said, glancing down at his notes. “We’ll get her moved through family court tomorrow, see if we can get her placed.”

“She can’t stay with her mother?” Nevala asked quietly.

“Not usually,” the DA said. “In most cases, we’ll keep her in custody until we can have her fully evaluated.”

“I know the family,” Nevala said in his calm voice. “I would argue for them to stay together. I know the mother would get a hotel room for them, if you want them out of the house during the investigation.”

The DA paused, then said, “Fine. Works for me. Lindi, you’ll get the information on where they land?”

“Sure,” I said, making a note.

On good days, I know that the work we do is important. The children who come to us are damaged, in pain, needing solace and closure and often justice. The CAP-C board coordinated all of those things and even when the children’s stories broke my heart, I knew that they were better off because our program existed. It was important to me to be part of this team, to work at carefully evaluating the cases that came to us.

Today, however, I couldn’t concentrate. Next to me, Dr. Kade Nevala radiated heat, and I had an irrational desire to move closer to that warmth.

I resisted the urge, refocusing on the conversation at the table and trying to take notes on the cases we discussed.

“And that brings us to the new case,” Gloria said, gesturing toward the DA and his investigator.

Jason stood up, smoothing his expensive tie down over his shirtfront as he got ready to speak. “Hi, all. Thanks for coming in on such short notice.” He nodded to me, then to Kade. At the DA’s gesture, Scott turned off the lights and hit a button on his laptop to start a PowerPoint projection. A red case-file number appeared on the screen at the far end of the room.

“Before I pull up the images, I need to warn you: this is as bad as anything we’ve dealt with here. Worse.” Jason’s eyes flickered around the room, as if gauging whether or not we were prepared.

Images from Emma’s room the night before flashed through my mind.

It couldn’t be worse than that.

I was wrong.

Scott clicked a button, and the case number slid away, replaced by another picture.

It took my mind a few moments to parse the image on the screen. It looked like a broken doll, floating in a child’s wading pool.

Jason’s voice drifted over the horrific image. “This is Candice Blake, eight years old. She was found in her family’s above-ground pool. Her arms and legs had been broken, and she couldn’t get out of the pool before she drowned.”

Click.

Several people gasped in the dark.

“Jenna Pack. A seven-year-old, kidnapped from her back yard. Some kids playing discovered her body two miles away in a wooded area. As you can see, she had been dismembered.”

Click
.

“Tasha Williams. Ten. Found hanging from a tree outside her home. Looked like a suicide until the medical examiner found signs of rape.”

Click
.

“Laura McCoy. Eleven. Disappeared walking home from a friend’s house last night. Found two hours later, shot through the head, execution-style.”

Click
.

“And last night, Charlotte Johnson was discovered strangled in a dry creek bed behind her house. ”

God. All these poor little girls.

Tears pooled in my eyes, and I closed them to shut out the images.

I had become a counselor to help protect children. Living children, not dead ones. We worked with survivors at the CAP-C. I didn’t know what I could possibly do to help with actual murder cases. I opened my mouth to ask, but Jason continued speaking. “Initially, there was no apparent connection among them. Different neighborhoods, schools, everything.” Once again, he gestured at Scott, and the investigator turned the lights back on. We all blinked a little, trying not to make eye contact in the wake of such horrific visuals.

“In the course of our investigation,” Jason said, “we discovered that all three girls had two things in common. First, they all had siblings who had been counseled at the CAP-C for one reason or another.”

“Oh, no,” Gloria breathed from her chair at the end of the table, fisting her hands on the table.

“Second, all three were patients of Dr. Nevala’s.” With Jason’s words, I flashed a glance at the man sitting next to me.

Kade’s patients?

Did that mean that they were shapeshifters?

If so, I couldn’t tell anyone.

Still … maybe three things in common.

If all of the victims had CAP-C clients as siblings … I waved a little to catch Jason’s attention. “Does that mean that we’re suspects or something?”

With an abbreviated shake of his head, Jason said, “No. We’ll clear each of you individually, of course, but I’m confident that will happen quickly. Scott will get some information from each of you. But the main reason we’ve brought this to the CAP-C is that we want help sorting through your files to identify any other potential victims.”

Gloria chewed on her bottom lip, tilting her blonde head to one side as she regarded Jason through narrowed eyes. “You know there might be confidentiality issues,” she said.

“That’s why I’m asking CAP-C to work with me on this,” Jason replied. He glanced at me. “Lindi and Dr. Nevala were at the hospital with Emma Camelli last night, when the fourth murder was committed, so barring any new evidence, I’m assuming they’re both clear.”

“Gee, thanks,” I muttered. The DA smiled at me tiredly. “So do you really think these murders are connected?” I asked.

Moreland leaned over to see me past Nevala. “That’s what we’re hoping to find out, now that Dr. Nevala brought the connection to our attention.”

This wasn’t something that Scott had dug up, then. Or the police.

Speaking of . . . “Why aren’t your guys handling this?” I asked Moreland.

“We’re looking into a number of possibilities,” the detective responded. “But cases involving children are especially delicate, and since the CAP-C grant allows for collaboration between agencies, we’re taking advantage of some extra eyes on the cases. Especially since they’re eyes with confidentiality clauses already in place.” A tiny smile flashed across his face, acknowledging the pragmatic element of co-opting CAP-C personnel for the grunt work of digging through files.

Gloria, who had been jotting notes down on the legal pad in front of her, dropped her pen down onto the table and sat up a little straighter, her curly blonde hair bouncing a little with the motion. As usual, she looked like a former beauty-queen, moved into a soft, kindly middle-age. People often made the mistake of assuming she was as sweet as she appeared. Those people often paid for their mistake when she unleashed her sharp, analytical mind on them, via her equally incisive tongue.

Our secretary, Jose, called her “a needle in a cotton ball.”

I might be the snake, but when it came to protecting children, Gloria was a viper.

I could see the calculation behind her eyes now. “Lindi, you and Kade spend today hitting the records, see what you can dig up. Start with these girls, since there won’t be any confidentiality issues. Then move to the others.” She turned to the DA. “Who’s coordinating?”

Jason tilted his chin toward his investigator and responded to the table at large. “Scott’s got everything. If you find anything at all suspicious, let him know and he’ll pull together any necessary warrants to ferret out the rest.”

“Your hospital agreed to let us dig through your patient records?” I asked the doctor.

Kade shrugged. “Not precisely.”

“Can’t you get in trouble for that? Because of HIPAA or something?”

“That’s why Gloria made me a CAP-C board member—I signed all the nondisclosure and confidentiality paperwork that allows me to see your clients’ records.” With a nod, he hefted the strap of a soft leather bag he carried over his shoulder. “And you’re not going to see any medical records that aren’t already part of your files.”

“That makes you the only person who knows everything about this case?”

“Until we get enough for a warrant, yes.”

The setup made me uncomfortable—the limited flow of information was bad enough. The fact that everything we knew was coming through the man—the creature—who had all but assaulted me the night before caused my stomach to clench.

“How are we going to do this?” I asked. There had to be some way for me to verify any claims he made.

Why had Gloria trusted him so immediately?

Had he used some sort of weird enchantment on her? Did magic even exist?

I was about to spend hours working with someone who might be my sworn enemy, and I didn’t have a clue about his abilities.

For that matter, I didn’t know much about my own abilities. My parents had taught me to be as human as possible.

I didn’t know a damn thing about being a shapeshifter.

Somehow, I was going to have to find a way to get Dr. Kade Nevala alone to quiz him.

But first, we needed to find a killer.

“I know it’s a tenuous connection, but it’s all we’ve got. We need to find a way to identify possible future victims.” Now that I was looking for it, I saw stress-lines around Jason’s eyes and mouth.

“So what can we do?” I asked, suddenly more willing to cut the man some slack. He nodded his thanks to me.

“Scott’s going to interview everyone else here so we can get you all officially cleared. In the meantime, I want Lindi and Dr. Nevala to compare notes on the victims.” He shook his head and held up a hand, cutting off Gloria as she opened her mouth to speak. “Confidentiality doesn’t survive death, Gloria. I just want to know if there’s anything in the CAP-C files or the girls’ medical records that might point us in the right direction.”

Anxious to quiz Kade about shapeshifters, I gathered up the notebook I’d placed on the conference table in front of me. I hadn’t taken any notes—quickly, I jotted down the four victims’ names. As if I would forget them. “Anything else we need to know before we get started?”

“I’d rather not contaminate your observations. But we’ll keep in touch,” Jason said. “You and Dr. Nevala should trade numbers, too—you’ll need to consult.

Dammit.

I felt Kade beside me, the heat pouring off of him reminding me of his hands against my skin, his lips slanted across mine.

When the meeting broke up, I headed toward the door, hoping to escape to my office, even for a moment.

Nevala followed me out. I stopped in the hall and faced him.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed.

One corner of his mouth crooked up in a half-smile. “Returning your phone?”

“That’s not what I meant.” I clamped my mouth shut as Scott passed us. He slowed, staring at me curiously.

“Everything okay, Lindi?” he asked.

“Fine,” I said, but my voice shook.

Scott looked back and forth between me and Nevala. “Lunch today?” he finally asked.

“Sure,” I said.

He moved on, but glanced back at us. Nevala continued to grin.

“My office. Now,” I said, my voice tight. Spinning away from him, I marched down the hall without watching to see if he followed me.

When we reached my office, I shut the door and moved around to keep my desk between us. I have two wing-back chairs that I use to talk to clients, but they’re set up to eliminate distance. I wanted to keep as much space between us as possible.

Kade looked around the office curiously. I had shelves of toy bins, books, art supplies. Anything that might help a child relax and play, and maybe even talk to me.

“This is nice,” he said, nodding.

“I don’t care what you think of my office,” I said. “I want to know why you’re here.”

His mouth quirked up in that odd grin again. “Because I’m supposed to kill you.”