Her Lone Wolf Page 18

  Chapter 9

  Kendra thought one of the analysts might actually kiss her when she showed up with a tray of hot coffee and a box of fresh donuts from a twenty-four-hour bakery as a thank-you for coming in so early.

  Using the information Clayne and Danica had come up with, they searched through the database until they found suspects who matched the profile. Kendra was on her way to her office after uploading the list of names and addresses for Clayne when she noticed John’s door was open. She stopped, knocked twice, then walked in, figuring he’d want an update.

  Besides, if she ever hoped for her boss to see her as anything more than a glorified secretary, she needed to show him she could do other things for the DCO. Like track down serial killers.

  John looked up as she entered. “Kendra, you’re in early. What’s up?”

  Kendra quickly explained about Clayne’s phone call and the information she helped find.

  “Excellent work.” John gave her an approving smile. “I appreciate you going above and beyond like this. Have you called Clayne yet?”

  “I just uploaded the data to the server.”

  John glanced at her over the rim of his coffee mug. “Are Foley and Hightower back from that mission?”

  Kendra frowned at the change in topic. “They got in yesterday.”

  “Good. I want them positioned in Sacramento for cleanup duty.”

  Clayne was going to love that. He and Foley didn’t work well together. “Sure thing.” She chewed on her lip. “You know, now that you mention it, maybe I could go with them and help out.”

  John froze, the mug halfway to his mouth. “Help out?”

  “Yeah. You know, in case they need…help.”

  He sipped his coffee, then set down the mug. “I know you want to get involved in fieldwork, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t the kind of work you’d be interested in.”

  “Sure it is.” Actually, it wasn’t. From what she’d heard, cleanup duty could get messy, and she wasn’t really into messy. But she was committed now. “I could be a real asset to Foley and Hightower out there.”

  “You’re more of an asset here.”

  “But—”

  “Foley and Hightower aren’t going out there to help Clayne and Danica work the investigation. They’re going out there to make this shifter disappear after Clayne and Danica catch him,” John said. “In some ways it can be the toughest part of a mission like this. Foley and Hightower won’t even know whether the rogue shifter is alive or dead until they show up on the scene. And when they get there, they’ll only have a short period of time to deal with the situation—we’re talking minutes in some cases. That requires experience.”

  She felt like she was having a conversation with her dad. He knew best, and that was that. “What better way for me to gain experience than by watching Foley and Hightower?”

  “Not this time, Kendra.”

  He turned his attention to the computer, putting an end to the conversation. Kendra wanted to argue, but what would be the point? John wouldn’t change his mind, and if she pushed too hard, he might never let her in the field. She tried hard not to stomp in frustration as she walked down the hall to her office.

  She called and woke up Hightower and told him that he and Foley were going to Sacramento. She glanced at her watch as she hung up and saw that it was a little past six thirty. That donut she’d eaten hours ago was long since gone. No wonder her stomach was growling.

  Kendra usually drove to the cafeteria, but the weather was so beautiful she decided to walk instead.

  She was at the corner waiting for the traffic signal to change so she could cross the street when someone jogged up beside her. She did a double take when she saw Declan. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, the latter of which was soaked in sweat and stretched so tightly across his broad chest that it hugged every muscle—and he had a lot of them. Damn, his biceps were huge.

  Had Declan always been this buff? Of course he had—he was six feet five inches of bear shifter. Perhaps the better question would be, why hadn’t she noticed how ripped he was before? Because she’d been too busy crushing on Clayne to notice anyone else. But now that she finally had noticed, she had to admit he was hot—in that gentle giant kind of way.

  The summer breeze caught her long, blond hair, whipping it around her face, and she reached up to tuck it behind her ear. Declan followed the movement with his sky-blue eyes. Or at least she thought he did—he had sunglasses on, so she couldn’t be sure.

  “Just starting your run or finishing up?” she asked.

  He took a long drink from the water bottle in his hand. “Finishing up.”

  Finishing up, huh? Maybe she should ask if he wanted to grab breakfast with her after he showered. Or before. She’d never particularly considered sweat sexy, but Declan MacBride made it work.

  But the light changed before she could say anything. Declan gave her a nod, mumbled something about having a good day, then took off at a run, leaving her to admire his great ass while she followed at a much slower pace.

  There was a time not long ago when Declan would have been the one who invited her to have breakfast. Or lunch or dinner or even out for a cup of coffee. And every time he’d asked, she turned him down, silently praying he’d figure out she wasn’t interested. It was just her luck he’d get the memo right when she realized what she might be missing out on.

  She shook her head. Really batting a thousand today, Kendra.

  * * *

  It took longer than usual for Clayne to wake up. Which wasn’t surprising since he’d had two mind-blowing orgasms last night and was currently curled up in bed with the amazing woman who’d given them to him.

  What the hell woke him up anyway? Then he heard it—a loud, insistent ringing coming from somewhere in the apartment. His phone. He lifted his head and blinked at the small, red digits on the clock beside Danica’s bed, trying to focus on them. Four o’clock. Crap, they hadn’t been asleep for more than thirty minutes.

  He crawled out of bed as quietly as he could, then stumbled out of the bedroom. Where the hell had he left his phone?

  Clayne followed the irritating noise out to the living room and found his phone in the front pocket of his jeans, which for some reason were on the floor behind the couch. How had they gotten there?

  He checked the display to see who it was, then put the phone to his ear. “Hey, John.”

  “I know it’s early out there, but I figured you’d want McDermott’s address as soon as possible.”

  Clayne grunted an affirmative as he walked back into the bedroom. Danica had wedged herself into a half-sitting position in bed and was busy shoving her hair out of her eyes as she looked up at him sleepily. Damn, she looked sexy in the morning, he thought as he climbed in beside her.

  The sheet had fallen down past Danica’s belly button, and Clayne was torn between what to focus on—her beautiful breasts or that taut stomach of hers. She solved the dilemma by pulling the sheet up under her arms and sticking her tongue out at him. Then she pointed at the phone.

  “Kendra and the intel techs came up with three possibles,” John said. “She sent you the addresses via secure drop already. Intel says the chances of one of them being your guy is eighty-three-point-six percent.”

  Clayne thanked his boss for the info, then tossed the phone on the nightstand.

  “How the hell do they come up with that kind of probability?” he asked.

  Danica threw back the sheet and jumped out of bed. “I’m sure they can show you the math if you’re that interested.”

  Right then, all he was interested in was watching her perfect ass as she walked out of the bedroom, but they had to get moving. She came back a few moments later, carrying her clothes. She held up her panties—or what was left of them—and shook her head.

  “You have no idea how much these things cost, do you?”

  The panties had a few rips in them, thanks to him. But as far as he was concerned, that only made them sexier.
He grinned as he went into the living room to grab his clothes. “Not my fault you wear such flimsy panties.”

  She gave him an exasperated look as she walked over and dumped the panties in the trash can. He came back in time to see her pulling another pair out of the dresser that looked exactly like the ones he’d ripped. He wasn’t sure what she was complaining about. He’d buy her a whole drawer full of panties if she let him.

  He yanked on his jeans, enjoying the show as she pulled on her bra and panties. He could watch her get dressed all day. Maybe after the mission was over, he’d do just that. She could slowly pull everything off, then put it all back on, over and over. Well, maybe not all of it. He’d mostly prefer if she pranced around the place in her underwear all day, her hair all tousled like it was now.

  As they raided the fridge a few minutes later, he asked if they should give Tony a call and let him know what they’d discovered. But Danica was against it.

  “If the killer goes all shifter on us in front of Tony, what are we going to do then?”

  Good point.

  They headed to the first address on the list, a rental in the name of Jacob Garcia, in the hills west of Vacaville. Clayne was glad Danica had GPS in her car because the place was off the freaking map. As she navigated the small roads that ran through the low mountains, Clayne read the information Kendra had dug up on the three possible suspects. There wasn’t much, which was part of the reason they’d come back as suspicious.

  “All three names popped up in the system within the past two years,” he told Danica. “Kendra said there’d been a lot more, but they focused only on the men who fit the parameters we gave them.”

  She glanced at him. “What else do we have on these guys?”

  Clayne scanned the report. “Recently issued driver’s licenses, registered vehicles are vans or SUVs, and they all have hunting licenses.”

  They were still discussing what the three suspects had in common when Danica pulled up in front of a Spanish-style home tucked into the trees at the end of a long canyon road. The place looked well-maintained and pricey. Clayne didn’t want to be caught stereotyping a serial killer, but he crossed the guy who lived here off the list before they got out of the car. The place just didn’t have the right feel to it.

  But he and Danica did their due diligence and checked out Jacob Garcia. It took them all of thirty seconds to figure out the man wasn’t their guy. For one thing, he didn’t smell like a shifter. And for another, the guy had a serious limp and walked with a cane. No way this guy could chase down prey. Had he done something illegal? Probably, especially since he’d gone to all the trouble of creating a fake identity and living under an assumed name. But he and Danica were after a serial killer and didn’t have the time or inclination to get bogged down in whatever Garcia’s situation was.

  The second address, rented by a Douglas Lister, was all the way over to the southeast of Sacramento, in Columbia. With the normal city traffic, it took more than an hour to get there. Danica pulled off into the woods a few hundred yards short of the house.

  “What do you think?” she asked.

  Clayne peered through the trees at the house. A simple one-floor, craftsman-style home, it had a red brick fireplace stack on one side and a big, plate-glass window in the front. While it might have been cozy and charming at one time, now it looked dilapidated and in need of some serious TLC.

  “I think it’s exactly the kind of place a psycho shifter could get comfy in.”

  Clayne stepped out of the car, his claws extending on their own. Danica took out her weapon, training it on the house.

  “It’s him,” Clayne growled.

  His canines slid out as the smell of cat shifter assaulted his nose. Score a point for the nerds at the DCO. Got it right in two. Douglas Lister was definitely Ray McDermott. They’d brought the game to this asshole’s front yard now.

  As they moved toward the house, Danica slid to the side to cover him. He knew from experience that she’d continue moving around so she could cover the back, leaving him to take the front. He hated letting her out of his sight, but with only two of them, he didn’t have much choice. It was risky, but it’d been the way they’d operated the whole time they’d worked together in the DCO.

  “Give me fifteen seconds,” Danica whispered.

  He counted to ten and headed for the house at a run, pulling his old Colt 45 out of its underarm holster. It didn’t hold as many rounds as Danica’s Glock, but the Colt more than made up for it. When he hit something with its .45-caliber, full-metal-jacketed bullet, whoever it was didn’t get back up.

  When he got to the front door, he slowed just long enough to kick it in. There was a time when Danica would have said something about warrants and illegal entry. But she’d stopped talking that nonsense a long time ago. There’d be plenty of time to discuss probable cause later—after the shifter was down

  He swept the long, dark hallway that ran from the front of the house to the back, but didn’t see anything. He darted a quick glance left, then right. Nothing. He started forward to begin clearing the place room by room, but then stopped. The shifter scent was older than he’d first thought. McDermott hadn’t been here in a while.

  Clayne holstered his gun as Danica cautiously made her way down the hallway.

  “It’s clear,” he called out.

  Danica still had her weapon out when she entered the living room. “You checked the whole house already?”

  “Didn’t have to. His scent is stale. McDermott hasn’t been here for at least a day, maybe two.”

  She put her weapon away. “But this is our guy, right? Not another shifter in hiding?”

  “It’s him,” Clayne assured her.

  They quickly searched the place to confirm what he already knew. The guy’s bedroom looked like a hunter’s cabin—except in this version, the trophies on the wall were five framed pictures of his victims. On a shelf under each photo was a baby food jar with a tooth in it. McDermott’s most recent victim was noticeably absent.

  “Don’t touch anything without gloves,” Danica told him as he reached for a stack of photos on the nearby dresser. “I know how much you hate it, but we can’t hide this from Carhart and the rest of the FBI. I don’t want your fingerprints showing up everywhere when the crime scene techs dust everything.”

  Danica was right. He put on the latex gloves she gave him, then shuffled through the stack of pictures while she went through the dresser. To him, they looked like the kind of surveillance photos a private eye might take. But they weren’t of cheating husbands or philandering wives. Instead, they were of the men McDermott had murdered. And some he hadn’t yet had a chance to kill.

  “Why hasn’t McDermott come back here since killing Vender?” Danica asked as she opened the closet. “Did he think we were getting close?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe he got spooked when he realized another shifter was on his tail.”

  “You don’t think he left town, do you?”

  “No. He likes playing this game with me way too much to skip out.”

  Clayne tossed the photos on the dresser and picked up the notepad beside them. He flipped through it, frowning as he realized it was a dossier to go with each of the men in the photos. McDermott not only had names to go with faces, but every other personal piece of information you could possibly think of. This wacko had been planning his kills for a long time. And from the list of names and faces, he was just getting started.

  Danica tapped one of the baby food jars. “Why didn’t he take his trophies?”

  “I don’t know,” Clayne admitted. “That part doesn’t make sense.”

  “Maybe he figured he could always get more.” Danica turned to survey the room. “Do you think it’d be worthwhile sitting on the house in case he shows up?”

  Clayne set down the notebook. “I don’t think he’s coming back here, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  She took out her cell phone. “I’m going to call this in.”

 
“You know that once you give them McDermott’s name you’re putting every FBI agent and cop who gets anywhere near McDermott at risk, don’t you?”

  “I don’t think we have choice,” she said. “If we don’t find this guy, we’re as good as giving him a free shot at his next victim. McDermott could be out there getting ready to kill someone else right now.”

  She was right, of course.

  While they waited for the feds to show up, they checked the house one more time, looking for anything that might give them an idea as to where McDermott had gone.

  “Look for anything that might give anyone a clue that he’s a shifter while you’re at it,” Clayne said as he looked through a pile of old mail sitting on the kitchen counter.

  Danica frowned. “Exactly what am I looking for?”

  “I don’t know. Just look for something that screams cat shifter.”

  “Like what? A human-sized scratching post?”

  Clayne’s mouth twitched. Somehow, he didn’t think it’d be that obvious.

  By the time Tony and Carhart showed up with half the task force and a CSI crew an hour later, he and Danica had already gone over the house twice. If there was anything there to find, they’d have found it.

  Clayne wasn’t too surprised when Tony didn’t come over to find out what was going on. Clayne couldn’t blame him. They’d essentially cut him out of the case at the most crucial moment. Danica was going to have to do some damage control to repair that bridge.

  Carhart descended on both of them the minute he walked in, a scowl on his face. “What the hell do you mean not keeping me in the loop about something like this? You never mentioned you even had a lead, much less a prime suspect.”

  Clayne would have told him to go piss up a rope, but Danica merely gave him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, sir. We thought it best to follow up on the lead first before involving you.” She lowered her voice as if she was afraid someone might overhear. “I didn’t want to embarrass the Bureau if anyone discovered what kind of angle we were pursuing.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, embarrass the Bureau?” he asked, automatically lowering his voice as well.