Fair Game

His prey were things to him, thought Charles.Livestock.

Or he was trying to turn them into things, said A

Goldstein continued his slide show. As forensics had developed, the killer’s methods of dealing with the bodies changed. Instead of leaving them to be found in some out-of-the-way place, he put them in water. Rivers, lakes, swamps – and here, in Boston, the Atlantic, trusting the water to wash away his sins, which were many.

‘There have been several changes besides his choice and number of victims,’ said Goldstein. ‘1991 had several. The torture was more ritualized, and he seemed to place more importance on it. The killings also started to move back a month. From 1975 until 1990, all of the murders happened in November. In 1991, he moved to October. And each year after that, he moved back a month until 1995, when he started killing the first of June – where he is now.’

‘If you’ll give me a list – with photos – of the victims,’ said A

Charles was fairly sure the wolves killed this year were the only ones, but it wouldn’t hurt to be certain. Besides, with a list of the victims, he could send them out to a couple of fae he knew who might be able to come up with more information on the fae victims, maybe ID a few more.

‘All right,’ agreed Goldstein. ‘We can do that.’

A

‘I’m not an expert on the fae,’ A

Heuter frowned.‘He didn’t seem to have much trouble with these. Three wolves, right? And no one saw a thing. I don’t think it’s as hard as you say. Otherwise someone would have noticed.’

A

Charles moved from behind her to the end of the heavy conference table where no one was sitting. He glanced under it to make sure it wasn’t anchored to the floor, then lifted it to his chest height while making sure it stayed level so none of Goldstein’s expensive electronics fell off. He set it down.

‘Just killing us,’ A

’

‘Magic?’ asked Singh. The Homeland Security agent had totally forgotten that his first intention had been to find out more about the werewolves. Charles found that he liked him – and he hadn’t expected to.

A

‘Holy water,’ said Pat the former FBI and now Cantrip agent.

A

‘Silver?’ That was Heuter, again.

‘Are there black marks where they’ve been restrained?’ A

They didn’t answer her question. Charles had noticed that from the 1990s victims on, the photos of the now-dead people were from the neck down, and sometimes there were no crime scene photos at all. He was pretty certain that the lack wasn’t an oversight.

‘And how,’ A

There was some more discussion, but Charles let Brother Wolf assimilate it while he observed the room. Agent Fisher was watching A

We’re not going to have to talk our way into helping with this case, he told A

Brother Wolf brought his attention back to the room, where the other Homeland Security agent, Jim Pierce, was speaking.‘What if the killerwas a werewolf?’

A

‘Werewolves eat people?’ asked Heuter, coming alert like a hound. ‘That killing in Mi

A

Being Changed turned everyone into killers. Werewolves weren’t timber wolves or red wolves who hunted only when they were hungry. Werewolves were killers – and the ones who couldn’t control it sometimes took a lot of people with them before they died.

No one looking at his mate’s earnest freckled face would ever hear the lie – unless they were a werewolf, too. His da would be proud.

4

A

Charles led the way out of the hotel and turned in the direction of the condo where they were staying. Charles, the Aspen Creek Pack, and the pack’s corporation had condos all over the place. The one in Boston belonged to the corporation. It made travel more discreet, no hotel charges, no strangers coming in to clean every day.

‘Wait a minute,’ she said.

Charles turned back. The expression on his face was exactly the same as the one he’d had when they left their house yesterday, heading for the airport so he could fly them to Seattle, where they had caught the commercial flight. But he felt so different.

When Charles had chosen to frighten all those poor people at the airport so she’d win her bet, she’d thought she’d detected mischief in his eyes. But it had been so long since he’d laughed – or teased her with his sneaky sense of humor – that she’d been afraid to hope. After all, theyhad been patting him down pretty thoroughly, something that could have ticked him off enough to growl, and the timingcould have been accidental.

And even the meeting

it had been necessary, if the feds were to believe she was the one with the information, for him to feed it to her. And the best way to do that was for him to open the bond between them. Bran didn’t want the feds scared of werewolves, and Charles, especially the past few months, was really scary.

If he were just doing it for business’s sake, he would have closed their link down when they left the hotel, but he hadn’t. And he’d touched her.

Bran, it seemed, had indeed found a cure– or at least a bandage – for his son.

‘What?’ Charles asked. Evidently she’d been staring at him too long. He reached up and tucked a flyaway piece of her hair behind her ear.

She wanted to grab his hand and hold it to her, wanted to climb into his arms and feel them close around her. But she was afraid if she drew his attention to it, he’d close her off again. So she kept her hands to herself and bounced up and down on the balls of her feet a couple of times instead. She needed to keep him off his game, keep him thinking about other things – and she had just the thing to do it with.