Skye's Trail

Detective Rico Santana knew there was going to be hell to pay. One way or the other, there always was when she was involved. If not from Rivera, his captain, then from the unrelenting ache in his cock and the lack of sleep that always followed any encounter with Skye Delano.

Carajo! He lusted after her. Maybe if he fucked her, it would get her out of his system.

Rico gritted his teeth against the need he could already feel building, the anticipation. Now he was sorry he'd brought along backup. If he just had some time alone with her he'd...

Shit. He needed saving...from himself. Fucking Skye would be professional suicide-maybe even personal suicide. Rico had a feeling that once would never be enough with her.

He hit the turn signal and eased the unmarked police car toward an empty parking space. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cia Caldwell's tight disapproving frown. She was the newest member of the department, and as far as he knew, she'd never had any personal contact with Skye. She'd heard the stories though, and read the captain's file.

His mistake was calling Skye from the bullpen. When he'd looked up, Detective Caldwell was standing next to his cubicle. "Rivera is going to ream you," she'd said before the phone had even hit its cradle.

"It'll be dark soon. They're not going to find those kids without Skye's help."

Cia squared her shoulders. "I'm going with you."

A ripple of anger shot through Rico. He didn't need a babysitter.

A flash of sanity followed. Yeah, maybe it'd be better.

The captain was going to be pissed enough. At least this way Rivera would see it was all about finding the kids-not about finding an excuse to see Skye again.

Carajo! How could he be so hard when right now the only thing he should be thinking about was two missing kids?

Rico parked the sedan in front of Skye's apartment complex. Caldwell had her door open before he could even turn off the engine. He grimaced and looked down at the bulge in the front of his pants. "Wait here," he said.

Caldwell's mutinous expression let him know what she thought of his order. But he was the senior detective and she was new.

He got out of the car, heart beating and cock throbbing. Every time he saw Skye the lust that rolled through his system made him think of standing in front of a wave of molten lava.

Rico braced himself as he took the stairs up to her apartment and rang the bell. It was going to be worse this time. He knew that. Always before he'd seen her at a crime scene or the station. He'd never been alone with her in a place that might lead to something physical.

The cop in him said he was crazy to go into this situation without backup. The man said he was a fool not to try and fuck her.

When the door swung open, Rico knew he couldn't keep denying what his body was telling him. Shit. Everything about Skye whispered of sex and dark mystery, danger. She was beautiful temptation, silver-blonde hair and jet-black lashes framing hypnotic pale blue eyes.

In that second he didn't care whether the rumors about her were true or not. She was a fantasy. His fantasy.

Rivera had warned him off her after the last search, when the perps responsible for kidnapping a couple of kids had turned up dead. The captain had told him more as a friend than as a commanding officer that a personal relationship with Skye could be the end of his career.

Rico was a cop first. Came from a family of cops. Above everything else, that's what he was, what he'd always wanted to be. A cop.

So he'd kept his distance. Avoided her. Until now.

Now the only thing he could think about was pressing her back into the apartment and taking her against the wall. On the floor. Eventually in the bed.

Carajo! The things he wanted to do to her, the things he wanted to let her do to him, actually shocked him.

She half-smiled and it was like a fist around his dick, the ache was so bad. "You came quick," she said and his heart jumped at her choice of words. He wondered if she'd guessed how badly he wanted her. Fuck, he'd be lucky if he lasted one stroke before shooting his load into her.

For a minute all he could do was stare into her eyes. He thought he saw desire in them but he wasn't sure if it was real or imagined. All his cop instincts failed him when he was around her.

He tried to focus on the reason he was here. The kids.

It helped-some. "Are you ready?" he asked.

Skye studied the raven-haired cop standing in front of her. She could feel the lust pouring off of him, could read the fantasies even without delving into his mind.

Her body craved his, had from the first moment they'd met.

It'd be so easy to get involved with him.

So easy but so dangerous.

So very, very dangerous.

She stepped out of the apartment and locked the door behind her. "Ready."

* * * * *

There were still plenty of police cars present when they got to the search site. Without getting out of the car, Skye could sense the frustration and fatigue and worry that hovered over the group of cops.

The search was winding down. If the kids were here, still alive, their chances decreased with another night spent in the woods. If they were somewhere else, the odds of being found alive dropped with every passing hour. Rico had told her that the abandoned rental car was the only lead-so far.

They got out of the unmarked police car and Skye immediately felt Captain Rivera's frown. His hand twitched in an involuntary move to cross himself. He barked out an order to Rico, "Santana, get over here!"

She half-smiled as she watched the female detective stick to Rico's side in an outward show of moral support even though Caldwell's tightly compressed lips let everyone know that she didn't approve of what Rico had done. It had been a chilly ride to the scene.

"What's she doing here?" Rivera demanded. He didn't bother to keep his voice down, to keep the censure out of it. It was no secret that suspicion still burned in his gut from the last time she'd been called in.

Rico answered, "She's here as a volunteer, Captain. The search is shutting down. I'll be off-duty and assisting her."

"I'll also be off-duty and assisting," Detective Caldwell said.

A distraught couple huddled next to Captain Rivera, their eyes swinging from one cop to another. The man was rail-thin, tall, pale as an office worker. He cleared his throat. "We'd appreciate any help we can get." The woman clutched his arm, nodding at the officers. She was much shorter than the man, rounded in a way that suggested comfort, old-fashioned motherhood.

The parents.

Skye pitied them.

Jon and Karen Armstrong had come to Las Vegas on a family vacation, bringing with them their nineteen-year-old niece and their five-year-old daughter. It was supposed to be a win-win situation. The niece was having some family problems, so the trip would give her some time away from her parents. Jon and Karen would get a babysitter. Now the Armstrongs were trapped in an incomprehensible nightmare.

They'd gone out for dinner and gambling last night, left the niece, Brittany, babysitting their daughter, Callie, in the hotel room. When they got back at three in the morning, the kid, the niece, and the rental car were gone.

Shortly after noon, the car had been located about thirty minutes outside of the city limits. The cops had been searching since then.

The Armstrongs' grief and pain rolled over Skye, chased by Rivera's angry frustration. He was in a corner and hated it. There'd be hell to pay if he tried to send her home now. Everybody watching the scene unfold knew it.

"Get on with it," he growled to Rico. "Anything goes wrong and it's your ass on the line." He expanded his glance to include Caldwell. "Both of your asses."

"Yes sir," Caldwell said.

Rico nodded.

A dog and its handler emerged from the woods. "Here's the last team, Captain," one of the cops standing nearby said.

Skye walked over to the rental car, knelt down next to the driver's door, let her senses flare out, flow backward with information. It was all part of her ability to hypnotize, only instead of applying it to others, it was self-directed. For periods of time she could become other-human in form but with the skills and instincts of an animal. The more she knew of the chosen animal, of its abilities, the closer the melding.

As the scent washed over her, she briefly let herself become wolfen. Hunter. Tracker. Unashamed predator.

The odor near the car was so strong that it burned her nostrils. Tainted blood. Rancid. Foul-smelling. Unnatural. Like the smell of death, and yet it wasn't.

The scent belonged to someone who'd been in the car. The odor lingered on the door handle, went around the car and headed toward the woods.

There were other scents around the car. A female, young, healthy. Another person whose blood reeked of something horrible. A new drug? A new disease? It wasn't cancer in any one of its numerous forms. It wasn't HIV or AIDS. Skye knew those smells too well.

All of the scents led to the woods. She followed them to the edge, found they were joined by other scents. More tainted blood. Altogether, five different people with it. Skye couldn't tell whether they were male or female. That had never happened before.

She tracked the other smells backward, stopped at the cluster of parked cars. The five people had all been here, had probably left together in another car. The healthy female didn't go with them.

Detective Caldwell moved alongside Skye. "You ready to start now? Everybody is standing around waiting."

"Sure," Skye's voice came out with a hint of humor but the detective didn't notice.

They walked back to the rental car. The parents were there. They looked at Skye with desperate hope.

"Thank you for coming," the woman said. Skye nodded, inhaled, would know which scent belonged to the mother.

The man offered a handshake, "I'm Jon Armstrong, this is my wife Karen." Skye accepted the extended hand, took his scent along with it.

Rico asked, "You ready for the inside of the car? The crime scene guys have already come and gone." Skye nodded and he opened the door.

The smell of tainted blood was even stronger in the closed confines of the car. It almost gagged her. She took a minute to focus, to begin the task of separating out the different scents-Jon Armstrong, Karen, foul blood times two-close in smell but slightly different, the healthy female who went into the woods, another healthy female, this one a child with a hint of shampoo-not baby shampoo but something else. Skye sorted through the scents lodged in her memory until she found the one she was looking for-Pert shampoo. There were other smells, cops, then fainter scents-rental car workers probably, or people who'd rented the car before the Armstrongs.

She stood up, stepped back from the car and nodded to Rico. He closed the door, shifting so he was standing next to the parents and the captain. A small cluster of cops was huddled with them.

The dog and handler stood off to the side. "Need a scent article?" the handler asked, part serious, part joking, in large part frustrated by lack of success. He held up a plastic bag with a stuffed animal in it. Skye's lips tilted up for a second. "No thanks."

She turned to the waiting cops and parents. "The child was never here. The niece was. She went into the woods with five other people. Two came in the car with her. Three arrived in another car. The five probably left together in the other vehicle."

The search-and-rescue dog handler scowled at Rico. "You tipped her off."

Skye looked at Rico and raised an eyebrow in question. He shrugged. "The dogs haven't been able to pick up a trace of Callie, either. They get a start on Brittany but lose it."

The woman began weeping. Her husband pulled her against his shoulder. "Are you sure Callie was never here?"

"Yes. She uses Pert shampoo. Her scent doesn't leave the car here." The woman's weeping grew more intense.

"Mr. Armstrong, is that the shampoo your daughter uses?" Captain Rivera asked.

"Yes. Yes. She's got her own little bottle of it. She's the only one who uses it." Jon Armstrong's voice was strained, tight with emotion.

Rivera sighed and gave the order, "Okay, Santana, get the civilian outfitted with a tracking unit and a radio. I'm considering you and Caldwell officially on duty and in charge of supervising the civilian. I expect you to keep me current on the situation out here. Is that understood?"

The detectives agreed and returned to the unmarked car with Skye. She strapped a leather sheath onto her leg, checking to make sure the knife it held was secure. She could feel the captain's gaze burn into her back. He'd arrest her if he could do a search and find the switchblade she always carried.

"The knife is driving the captain crazy," Rico said, standing so close that Skye could smell his aftershave and feel his body heat. She let it fill her senses, wrap around her like a warm blanket.

Skye half-smiled. "Does he want me to go in unarmed?"

Rico pulled his eyes away from the long knife. His expression was all cop. Against his will he was thinking about the last search, about the men who'd kidnapped a young brother and sister to use in their porn movies.

After the children were found the trail had gone cold...until a couple of cops from another department had stumbled on the perps. They were in a motor home parked in the desert but they weren't alive and hadn't been for days. They'd been knifed and left to rot.

Looking at the knife Rico wondered...and he didn't want to. He knew what the captain thought. Everyone knew what Rivera suspected.

She'd voluntarily surrendered the knife for testing. It didn't match the murder weapon. But she could own other knives.

Rico shook his head to clear the unwelcome speculation from his mind. He didn't want to think she could kill like that. "You know Rivera would rather you didn't go in at all," he told her.

"You asked me, Rico." Her eyes met his. "Sorry now?" It was barely a whisper, yet it slipped past his guard. His dark eyes locked to hers though she made no effort to pull him into their depths.

Rico couldn't keep his pulse from racing. When this was over... He tried to close his mind against the fantasy, against the need. "No, I'm not sorry."

Caldwell saw the look pass between the two of them. Her lips tightened until they almost disappeared altogether. "Ready?" Her voice came out more strident than she'd intended but it achieved its goal. The heated, unspoken exchange between Rico and Skye ended. Their gazes broke apart.

Skye positioned the camelback full of water onto her back then double-checked the medical supplies and power bars zipped into its pockets. Rico handed her the police tracking unit and radio so that she could slide them onto a belt around her waist.

He knew there was no point in suggesting that someone go with her. Even if she agreed, she'd soon lose them. On the last search she'd traveled miles by foot, run most of it, outdistanced and outlasted the team following her. "Check in at intervals. Okay?"

Already Skye could feel the pull of the hunt, the call to be other. "Sure."

Rico saw the way her eyes changed, deepened into bottomless blue pools of color. It was one of the things that bothered the captain so much. Rico cursed himself. He should be spooked by her, not turned on. "Don't use the knife unless it's life or death," he said.

Another half-smile but no reply. She was already hunting. Rico stepped away and Skye went to the edge of the woods, focused on the stench of tainted blood. It was so strong that she didn't have to bend down to smell it. The dogs could have easily tracked it but they had no way to tell their handlers it was there.

Miles passed. Hours passed. She was not aware of either. Her sole focus remained on the stench of tainted blood. Somewhere along the way the scent of healthy female faded, became so faint that it almost disappeared. But not completely.

Occasionally the radio came to life, startling her. The intervals became more frequent as the night wore on.

Midnight came and went.

Her adrenaline began to surge. Had she been an animal she might have lifted her face to the sky and howled. She was close. Instinct told her she was close now.

The woods opened to a clearing. Here she sensed death. Felt it. Smelled it.

It was not the obvious smell of a carcass left in the open.

But more the lingering presence of a life violently taken.

She halted in the clearing. Absorbed her surroundings.

There was a partially erased circle traced in the ground. Tainted blood had been sprinkled along the edges of it. Death had come here. In this circle.

The scent trail led out of the circle, across the clearing, to a pile of rocks in a shallow ravine. The animals had helped themselves to what they could dig out. Part of an arm protruded from a pile of rocks, its skin shredded. An upper leg bone glistened, stripped clean of meat.

Skye didn't need to uncover the face to know it was the niece. Her scent lingered over the body like a disenfranchised spirit.

The radio crackled. This time it was Caldwell. "Anything to report?"

"I found the niece. She's dead."

"Do not touch the body!" Caldwell barked through the radio. "Do not contaminate the scene!" In the darkness Skye shook her head, almost laughing out loud. She'd be glad when this was over, when Caldwell could disappear back into the sea of police blue.

A second later Rico's voice flowed out of the radio. "What's the situation there?"

"I'm in a shallow ravine. The niece is buried under rock. One arm and part of a thigh have been exposed by animals. Actual scene of death took place in a clearing approximately forty yards behind me."

"Stand by while I contact the captain."

Skye knelt next to the body and examined the wrist more closely. The tear there was too smooth to be from an animal and there was very little blood on the ground. She let her senses flare out, flow backward with information. Most of the blood was missing from the body.

The hairs on the back of her neck moved away from her skin. She stood and walked to the clearing, looked at the broken circle, smelled the stench of tainted blood, and knew that whatever had transpired here, it was dark and evil. Something to be avoided.

A coyote song erupted in the distance. Joyous, excited. There was prey nearby, it sang. The hunt was on. The kill was near. Other voices joined the song, filling the night air with their excited cadence.

Skye drank it in, allowed it to flow through her then stilled as thoughts of the missing five year old filled her. Intuition or uncanny ability, it didn't matter which, she knew with certainty that the coyotes had found Callie. And that the little girl was still alive.

Once again the radio came to life. Rico said, "A team is on its way. We've got your coordinates. Stay put. We'll come in as soon as they get here."

Skye lifted the radio to her mouth. "Can you hear the coyotes?"

"Jesus, yes, it's giving me the creeps."

"They've found the little girl. I'm going to cut across land and follow the sound."

"No. Stay put. That's an order." This from Caldwell.

Skye grimaced. "I'll leave the tracking device on a tree near the body, in case you need the signal to find it."

"Stay put!" If Caldwell could have come through the radio and physically restrained Skye, she would have.

Skye ignored her. "Rico, are you there?"

"I'm here."

"I'll keep the radio. But it'll be off. I'll call you when I can. I can't risk the coyotes hearing it before I get close."

She could hear his sigh. Knew he wouldn't argue with her. This was why he'd contacted her and asked her to come to the site. This was why he'd risked pissing off his friend and captain.

"Do you think she's still alive?" he asked.

"At this moment. Yes."

Another song went up in the distance. More excited. More urgent.

"I'll be in touch." Skye turned off the radio before either of the cops could respond. She secured the tracking unit to a tree then let the sound of the coyotes fill her again, let herself sink more deeply into their world. There was little time left now, not if the child was to stay alive.