Rogue Wolf by Paige Tyler
Chapter 1
Dallas, Texas
“Man, I hope they’re wrong about someone dumping a body out here,” Officer Connor Malone murmured as he moved through the heavily wooded area ten yards to Senior Corporal Trey Duncan’s left. Fellow SWAT teammate and werewolf Corporal Trevor McCall was another ten yards beyond Connor, while Officer Hale Delaney was a bit farther out, bringing up the end of the search line. “I mean, dumping a body anywhere is sick, but this place is way too beautiful for crap like that.”
Trey agreed with his blond teammate. The Trinity River Audubon Center was part nature preserve, part public park along the southern side of the county. In the distance, he could hear the drone of vehicles speeding along the Interstate 20 belt loop, but for the moment at least, the area he and his pack mates were in was quiet and tranquil.
That would all change if they found anything. In a heartbeat, a place usually known only for its slow-moving streams and mist-shrouded walking trails would immediately be overrun with cops and crime scene technicians looking for clues to help them identify the person the local papers had tagged as “the Butcher.”
While the name of the latest serial killer to terrorize Dallas might not be original, it was unfortunately devastatingly accurate. Four bodies had been found over the past week and a half. Or more precisely, parts of four bodies had been found. In each case, the corpses—all men—had been found dumped in wooded or remote locations missing their heads and both hands. The theory was that the killer was mutilating the bodies to make it harder to identify the victims. If that was the plan, it was working, because the Dallas Police Department had yet to put a name to a single one of them.
Four bodies found with hands and heads removed was morbid and depraved enough, but unfortunately, there was more. Each victim was also missing at least one other body part—the right arm in the first case, right leg in the second, both lungs in the third, and on the body found two nights ago, several whole sections of skin had been missing. The DPD had tried to keep those details secret until they had a suspect, but somehow, it’d leaked out and the media had been running the Butcher storyline nonstop ever since.
“Did you hear what happened to make them think there’s a body out here?” Hale asked as he dropped to one knee to look under some thickets near the edge of the stream that served as the leftmost boundary for this part of the search grid. Tall and muscular, he had dark-blond hair and blue eyes.
Trey could have told him there weren’t any remains to be found under there. If there were, they’d be able to easily pick up the odor. But even by normal human standards, Hale’s nose was bad. Compared to the other members of the pack, their fellow werewolf couldn’t smell anything at all. That’s why he tended to trust his keen eyesight for everything.
“Something about an older couple out here walking their dog, I think,” Trevor said as he waited patiently for Hale to finish looking under the brush. There was a time when everyone in the Pack used to rag on Hale about his nose, but now, they all felt bad for him.
“Yeah, that’s it exactly,” Connor said as Hale stood and rejoined their line moving through the woods. “But you missed the best part. It turns out the couple’s dog ran off while they were here, and when the poor guy finally came back a few hours later, he was covered in blood. They assumed he was hurt, so they took him to the vet. When the vet figured out the dog was okay and the blood wasn’t his, she ran a precipitin test, then called the PD first thing this morning when she confirmed it was human.”
“No wonder Chief Leclair pushed to get so many volunteers out here searching.” Trevor ran his hand through his dark hair. “If the dog was loose for hours, there’s no telling where he was when he found the body. It could be miles from here.”
Trey didn’t comment and neither did his pack mates. They searched in silence for a while until Trevor spoke again.
“So, how’d your date go last night, Connor?”
If they had been close enough, Trey would have fist-bumped Trevor to thank him for coming up with something to talk about besides the mutilated remains they were out there looking for.
“In a word—a disaster,” Connor said, tilting his head back to sniff the morning air like he’d picked up a scent. But whatever it was must not have been all that interesting because he continued, “Seriously, it was the worst date ever.”
Trey was fairly sure his pack mate was exaggerating. He’d seen Connor and the nurse talking a couple weeks ago after Connor had gotten roughed up during a confrontation with a drunk man on a bulldozer. Connor hadn’t been hurt—he was a frigging werewolf after all—but a reporter had seen the blood, so a trip to the hospital had been mandatory. Which meant Trey had been forced to watch her and Connor flirt for nearly an hour as she’d taken her time cleaning his injuries. There’d definitely been a spark there.
“Come on,” he scoffed. “It couldn’t have been that bad.”
Connor snorted. “Trust me, it was worse.” He sighed. “I mean, dinner went fine and there was some chemistry—not any kind of serious connection, but we clicked well enough to see where it might lead—but it all went downhill once I took her back to my place and she met Kat.”
“Ah,” Trey said in understanding even as Hale and Trevor did the same.
In theory, Kat was the SWAT team’s feline mascot, but honestly the cat put up with the SWAT Pack simply because that’s who Connor hung out with. She was definitely his cat. Hell, she even followed him on their incident calls, regardless of the danger. And forget trying to keep her and Connor separated. Trevor had tried locking her in the armory to keep Kat from going out on a barricaded active-shooter situation, and the damn cat had shown up at the scene five minutes after the SWAT team, somehow having hitched a ride with a uniformed patrol officer who had no idea she was even in his car. No one had a clue how she’d done it. Suffice it to say, Trevor was her least favorite werewolf in the Pack. The look she gave him every time she saw him would melt the paint off a car. The only reason the creature hadn’t come this morning was that it was o dark thirty. Kat never got out of bed this early unless it was to watch Connor and the rest of them shower after physical training.
“What happened?” Trey asked, though he was sure he already knew. Kat had a way of letting people know what she thought of them.
“Nothing at first,” Connor said. “Kat was nowhere in sight when Michelle and I got back to my place after dinner, but the moment we sat down on the couch, she jumped up and shoved her way between us, deliberately knocked the glass of wine out of Michelle’s hands, then clawed her dress.”
Trevor snorted. “I guess Kat didn’t approve of your date.”
“You think?” Connor asked dryly. “Regardless the date was over. And before you ask, Michelle and I won’t be going out again.”
“It’s not her fault she decided to date a werewolf with a possessive cat for a pet.” Trey would have said more, but a familiar scent caught his attention. He stopped and looked left, out across the slow-moving stream.
Trevor and Connor must have smelled it, too, because they both paused and sniffed the air.
“What is it?” Hale asked.
“Blood,” Trevor murmured.
Hale didn’t bother to try to trace the scent, but simply followed them as they ran along the bank of the stream.
“How are we going to explain ending up on the other side of the stream and well outside our search grid?” Connor asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Trey told him. “I’ll come up with something believable if anyone asks. Right now, just focus on finding the source of that scent.”
They followed the trail for another thousand yards or so before the stream narrowed enough for them to leap across. Not that a normal human would have been able to do it, but that was simply one more lie Trey would have to come up with once the questions started.
The scent led them to a low-lying area blanketed with thickets and brush, the kind of place Trey recognized as perfect for hiding a body—even if getting it here would have been a major pain in the ass for whoever dumped it.
He and his pack mates stopped the moment they saw the body, staying far enough away to hopefully not trample any forensic evidence that might have been left behind. It helped that there was no reason for them to move closer to check for a pulse. Even from fifteen feet away, Trey’s hearing told him the victim didn’t have a heartbeat.
It was another one of the Butcher’s victims. The man lying in the shallow grave had been partially dug up. Probably by the wandering dog. The head and hands were gone, along with another leg. It also looked like the stomach cavity had been ripped open, but that might have been the dog’s doing, too. As a cop, and before that a soldier who’d seen more than his fair share of combat, Trey had seen a lot of dead bodies, but this was as bad as anything he’d ever experienced. This killer was sadistic as hell.
“What am I smelling?” Trevor asked, sniffing the air.
Trey took a whiff and realized there were two separate scents competing—and neither of them were blood. The first one was sharp, similar to a cleanser or disinfectant, but with floral notes, like perfume. The other smelled almost human, but something wasn’t quite right about it. He was still trying to figure out what it was when he picked up a burnt electrical odor. While the first two scents lingered on the body, the third hovered around it. As if it belonged to whoever had carried the body and dumped it here.
Trevor must have concluded the same thing because he gave Trey a worried look. “You think we’re dealing with some kind of supernatural killer?”
Trey almost groaned. That was all they needed. Serial killers were bad enough. But if this one was indeed supernatural, there might be more to the Butcher than they’d thought.
***
“How exactly did you end up finding the body on this side of the stream when you and your teammates were assigned to a grid nearly a quarter mile away from here?”
Dark hair pulled back in a neat bun, Chief Leclair regarded Trey curiously where they stood several yards away from the organized chaos that was the crime scene.
“Pure luck,” he said. “We finished clearing our assigned grid when we saw some buzzards circling this area, so we decided to check it out.”
Leclair continued to study him as if she somehow knew he was lying through his teeth. Trey hoped not.
“I see,” she finally said in a soft, noncommittal tone before glancing down at the bottom of his tactical uniform pants. “And how did you get across the stream without getting wet?”
Trey did a double take, completely caught off guard by the question. Which is probably why she’d asked it. Damn, he and his pack mates were going to have to be careful around the chief. She was a cop through and through.
“The stream narrows quite a bit if you wander down that way,” he said as casually as he could, jerking his thumb in the stream’s direction. “We were able to jump across it.”
Leclair didn’t look like she believed that for a damn second, but at least she didn’t continue grilling him about it. “I suppose we should be thankful you followed your instincts and searched this area. I doubt anyone else would have bothered to fight their way through so many thickets on a whim. Then again, it’s starting to become the norm for me to find my SWAT team in places where they’re not supposed to be. Fortunately, things always seem to go right when you and your teammates go off script.”
With that, the chief walked away, heading toward the taped-off crime scene to talk to one of the detectives from the serial killer task force. Given that no one had approached the body yet, it was likely they were waiting for a medical examiner to arrive. Hopefully, they’d get here soon and Leclair would be too focused on that to worry about him and the other members of his pack. Because she definitely seemed suspicious right now.
“Everything okay?” Connor asked as he came up beside him. “You and the chief seemed to be having an intense conversation.”
“I think we’re good,” Trey answered. “Though I’m pretty sure she knows I’m lying about how we found the body.”
Connor blew out a breath. “I figured as much. We need to be careful around her. She’s sharp.”
Trey opened his mouth to agree, but the words got stuck in his throat as a blond-haired woman carrying a heavy-looking bag with the Dallas County Medical Examiner’s Office emblem on the side approached the crime scene tape and walked directly over to the chief. Between the bag that she had to lug half a mile through the woods in the mid-August heat and the navy blue coveralls she was wearing over her regular clothes, complete with high rubber boots, Dr. Samantha Mills was glistening with sweat, some of the long, blond hair escaping from her messy bun.
Damn, she was the most attractive woman he’d ever seen in his life.
“You ask her out yet?” Connor asked casually.
Trey glanced at his buddy to see him wearing a knowing grin. It wasn’t a secret that Trey had a thing for the assistant ME. He’d done nothing to hide it from the moment he’d first seen her at the site of the SWAT team’s raid two years ago when half the Pack had fully shifted into wolves. After that, Samantha seemed to show up at every crime scene to collect forensic evidence all while looking at them sideways. Hell, just this past June, while helping them with a case, she’d openly admitted to knowing the team was playing fast and loose with the truth when it came to how they did their jobs. He and the rest of the Pack had been worried she might be onto their secret—that the DPD SWAT team was composed entirely of werewolves—but when she hadn’t exposed them, they’d relaxed a little.
Now, if only Trey could figure out how to man up and ask her out when he couldn’t even seem to talk to her without getting tongue-tied.
“I’ve been meaning to, but I haven’t found the right time to approach her about it,” he said.
Connor shrugged. “How about right now?”
Trey snorted. “Yeah right. She wants some guy to ask her out while she’s leaning over a dead body.”
“Dude, she deals with dead bodies every day, so you’re going to need to come up with another excuse. You’re a werewolf, not a werechicken. Just ask her to go out to dinner. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Trey would have laughed at the werechicken comment if this thing he had for Samantha hadn’t gone on for so long it had somehow taken on a life of its own. The thought of asking her out only to be turned down was something he didn’t even want to think about. That was why he kept putting it off. He was waiting for some sign to light up and tell him to finally go for it.
But that was stupid. There wasn’t going to be a sign, and if he kept waiting, the worst that could happen—would happen—was someone else would make a move on the beautiful, brilliant woman and he’d be left thinking about what could have been. The thought alone made Trey’s gut clench.
Dammit.He was going to ask her out—today.
But as he watched her drop to a knee beside the body and lean over to study the headless corpse, he decided he’d wait until she wasn’t leaning over a mutilated body.