Hunter's Trail

After I got over that, I realized I’d breezed past the important part of the story. “Wait, so you took Dashiell’s deal?”

Jesse flinched. “You sound surprised.”

“No, I just . . . I mean, are you okay with that?” I asked, very carefully. Who says I can’t learn diplomacy, I ask you. “I mean, helping me with crime scenes?”

“No,” he admitted. “It seems like the lesser evil at this point, but it’s not really sitting right with me, either.” He wasn’t meeting my eyes, and his shoulders were stiff, his expression troubled. “Maybe we’ll manage to catch the guy before he kills again, and I won’t have to . . . you know.” He glanced at my face and then looked away again.

“I’m sorry,” I said lamely, and Jesse gave me a tight nod in acknowledgment. That explained why he was being so weird—happy to see me one minute, resentful the next. I wanted to lean over and hug him, to tell him that it was going to be okay and he was doing the right thing by helping me. And in theory, I even believed that. The Old World had to stay hidden, period, and what I do is necessary for that. But I also understood that Jesse had just crossed a line he’d never imagined himself even touching, so I just changed the subject. “So . . . where do we start?”

Chapter 10

“We start where we always start,” Jesse said, his tone suddenly professional and relaxed at the same time. Back on familiar ground. “With what we know.”

“What do we know?” I asked promptly. I know a cue when I hear one.

Jesse pulled out his smartphone and touched the screen in a few places. “I stopped by the station on my way here to make some excuses,” he said, eyes intent on the phone. “While I was there, I took a look at the missing persons reports, on the off chance that I could get a hit quickly. We got lucky.” He held the phone up to me, showing me a picture of a young woman, blonde and healthy, grinning playfully at the camera as she tried to pull a big orange cat away from her chest. The cat’s claws were entangled in the woman’s cardigan sweater, and she looked like she’d just finished laughing or talking to the photographer. I recognized the slight hook to her nose and the smattering of freckles. “Would you say this is her?” Jesse asked, though it was obvious that he believed it was.

I nodded. “Who is she?”

“Leah Rhodes, twenty-nine, a marketing associate at a plastic bottling company in Torrance,” he recited. “Reported missing yesterday morning by her roommate. She didn’t come home Tuesday night.”

“Huh. Was she . . . outdoorsy?” Werewolves rarely attack humans, but when it happens it’s almost always because a wolf is threatened by a human presence in the wild. I had also heard of humans being infected by werewolf magic on purpose, but it was always a last resort, so I added, “Or terminally ill?”

Jesse shook his head. “Not really, and no. Plus, she called the roommate as she was leaving work, said she would be home in twenty minutes.”

“So why her?” I mused. “And why like this?”

“That’s what we have to figure out,” Jesse said sensibly. “Tell me about the scene.”

I paused for a second to order my thoughts. “Well, she was killed by a werewolf, and Will said it wasn’t one of his. She died close to Will’s house, or maybe in a vehicle. The wolf—I’m sort of thinking it was a he, though I guess it could be a lady wolf too—ate her insides.” I wrinkled my nose. “And she had a number one carved into her back. Wait . . . have you found a body with a number two on it?”

Jesse shook his head. “I called my friend in the forensic pathology department; she’s going to put out some feelers and get back to me. But the ME’s office gossips like a middle school cafeteria, so Glory would probably have heard by now. Anything else?”

I remembered the woman’s untouched face and shredded clothes and body. “It was some kind of message,” I added.

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, there was that number on the body, like he wants us to know this wasn’t the last time. Plus, a werewolf dumps a body on the alpha’s doorstep? That sounds like a challenge, doesn’t it?”

“Could be,” Jesse noted. “But it could be practical too. If you were a werewolf, and you killed someone—either accidentally or on purpose—and you knew that Will Carling had someone on retainer to get rid of evidence . . .” He shrugged. “Maybe it just seemed like the easiest way to dispose of a corpse.”

“Maybe,” I said dubiously. Jesse’s theory was probably as likely as mine, but there was just something about that girl, and the brutal way she’d been killed and dumped that was almost . . . gleeful. Like “look what I’m getting away with!” It was . . . taunty.

“What else do you know about werewolves?” Jesse asked. “I mean, could this be about . . . I don’t know, territory or something?”

“I don’t know that much. I don’t think it’d be territory-related, because a wolf that wants to be the alpha has to fight the alpha for dominance. They wouldn’t gain anything from dumping a body at his house.” I fiddled with my knee brace, scratching around the edges while I thought. “Other than that . . . I know that they can’t change very often, unless they’re alpha or beta. The rest of them don’t really have the strength.”