Hunter's Trail

Silence. Then Will said, “You’re sure it’s them?”

Jesse considered that for a second, and said, “With the taller one, I’m sure. With the shorter one, I’m ninety-five percent.”

“How did they die?” Will inquired. There was a note of hope in his voice, and for a moment Jesse thought the alpha was asking for details over the phone, which seemed out of character. But then he understood: Will was hoping that Drew and Terrence had been hit by a bus, or drowned accidentally, something like that.

“Well,” Jesse said, glancing back toward the crime scene behind him, “it wasn’t a nice quiet stroke in their sleep.”

“Okay,” Will said, disappointed. “I gotta think about this. Thanks for the call.”

“Wait!” Jesse protested. “You’re not getting it. Two dead, and it’s after sunrise.”

There was another long silence, and Jesse checked his phone’s screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. “Will?” he said.

“Dammit,” Will said with feeling. “We’re not set up for this. LA is not supposed to be a place where this kind of thing happens.”

“What do they do in other places?” Jesse asked, trying to keep his voice reasonable. “You guys have stayed hidden for an awfully long time. How does it work?”

“Different things, in different places,” Will said tiredly. “Corruption, more murder, tighter control on everyone. That’s not going to help us right now. But I don’t have Dashiell’s contacts. He’s kept them from me in case—well. You’re just going to have to stall until sundown, and let Dashiell throw his weight and money around.”

Stall. Right. That was just what Jesse wanted to do right now. He’d agreed to this whole deal so he could stop deceiving his fellow cops, but saying so wouldn’t help right now. “Fine,” he said, working to keep the snap out of his voice. After a moment’s thought, he added, “Hey, Will? Have you ever heard of . . . your kind of people . . . being killed, looks kind of like a mauling, but their lower jaws are ripped off?”

There was a sudden crash on Will’s end of the line. Jesse had heard the sound before, and knew Will had dropped the phone. He waited, mystified, for the alpha to return to the line. “Pick up Scarlett,” Will growled. His voice had changed, becoming deeper and more terrifying. “Meet me at Dashiell’s in an hour.”

“I have to tell them something here,” Jesse protested. “Besides, it’s after sunrise—”

Will cut him off. “One hour!” he roared, his voice barely human. And the line went dead.

Chapter 26

Jesse left the crime scene without a word to anyone, even Glory and Runa. He hated looking like a flake in front of Bine, who was expecting a report, but it seemed like a better option than lying to her face.

He drove straight to Scarlett’s. She didn’t answer her phone on the way over, so he was prepared to wait on her doorstep for quite a while, knocking and ringing the bell. To his surprise, though, she answered the door a few seconds after the first knock. She looked tired, but she was dressed in a clean thermal shirt and clean yoga pants, her hair damp from the shower, a piece of peanut-buttered toast in the hand that wasn’t steering her cane. “Couldn’t sleep,” she explained around a mouthful of toast. There were dark smudges under her eyes, which stood out against the paleness of her skin. She’s pushing too hard, Jesse thought guiltily. Swallowing, she added, “I saw the missed call. I was gonna call you back after breakfast. What’s up?”

“You . . . don’t look so good,” Jesse said tentatively. “Have you seen your doctor lately?”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. “I’m fine, Cruz. Well, I’ll be fine as soon as we find this asshole and I can spend a whole week icing my knee. Now, what’s going on?”

Ten minutes later they were heading toward the freeway on-ramp in Scarlett’s van. She had insisted on taking it because, as she pointed out, Will hadn’t actually said whether or not there would be a crime scene to clean up. Jesse hadn’t argued with her because he suspected it was easier for her to get in and out of the van with her swollen knee. And because she had let him drive.

Murders or not, the morning was lovely. The smog that had hung heavy over the city the day before had lightened just enough to let sunlight filter through, and the last bits of gorgeous sunrise colors were still fading as Jesse drove east toward Pasadena. It was early in the morning on New Year’s Day, so traffic was blissfully light. For a moment Jesse felt tension lift from him as he cruised down the empty freeway, crossing the lines of shadow created by the palm trees that grew along the side of the road. Damn, he loved this stupid city. He hated it too, once in a while, but he’d never live anywhere else.

He told Scarlett about the two dead bodies in the cemetery, and Will’s weird reaction. When he’d finished, Jesse asked, “The thing with the jaws, does that mean anything to you?”

Scarlett frowned in the seat beside him. “I think . . .” She shook her head. “You know when you can almost remember something, but it’s just not quite there? I feel like Olivia said something about jawbones once, but I just can’t remember the context.”

“Maybe it’ll come to you if you stop trying to remember,” Jesse suggested. “Do you know why we’re meeting at Dashiell’s instead of Will’s or the bar?”