Rogue Wolf by Paige Tyler
Chapter 12
Trey pulled his Jeep into a parking space at the institute but didn’t turn off the engine right away. Instead, he sat there with the AC on, wondering if coming here had been a good idea. Connor had suggested it, so probably not.
Trey and Connor had spent a good portion of the morning cleaning weapons at the SWAT compound and talking about his conundrum with Samantha. Connor kept pushing the trust your instincts and believe in your soul mate angles, while that little voice in the back of Trey’s mind continued to warn him that Samantha was likely playing him for a sucker.
But Samantha was his soul mate, even if she didn’t know it, which meant he needed to come up with a way to talk to her. While that might sound easy, it was going to be the toughest thing he’d ever done. If he messed this up—or waited too long—there was a good chance she might expose all the pack’s secrets.
He’d been stuck in an endless loop of second-guessing himself when Trevor had come into the armory and told them that the Butcher had struck again. Taking that as a sign he needed to go talk to Samantha, he had headed to the institute, hoping to come up with what to say to her on the drive over. Twenty minutes later and here he was, sitting in his pickup outside her office still wondering what the hell he was supposed to do.
Cursing under his breath, Trey hopped out of his truck and headed for the entrance. He was so busy thinking about how to broach the subject of soul mates with Samantha that he almost missed the sound of raised voices coming from her office. Trey recognized Hugh’s voice at the same time he picked up the man’s scent and that of the other ME he’d met before, Nadia. It was obvious from his tone of voice that Hugh was angry.
“If Louis had given me this damn case, the Butcher would have already been caught and people would be commending this institute for its performance instead of laughing at it. You weren’t ready for a case this big, Samantha, and you never will be. If you were better at your job, you could have pegged that scene this morning as a copycat faster and saved everyone a lot of time and energy.”
Hearing someone bad-mouth Samantha filled Trey with a rage he couldn’t remember ever experiencing. It hit him so hard he felt his claws extend, could taste his own blood on his tongue as his fangs tore through his gums. Knowing there was no way he could show up in Samantha’s office like this, he stopped a few feet from her door, fighting to get his inner wolf back under control. He’d had full control over his werewolf side for years, so this shouldn’t even be happening, but the mere thought of his soul mate in danger was enough to unleash the beast in him.
“Hugh, you’re an idiot. If Louis put you on the Butcher case, you would have been fired already,” Nadia said sharply. “Being a good brown-noser doesn’t make you a good medical examiner.”
Trey was surprised Nadia had come to Samantha’s defense. Finally getting his claws and fangs back where they belonged, he walked into Samantha’s office. She was standing in front of her desk, arms crossed and a perturbed look on her face. Catching sight of Trey in the doorway, she smiled, relief in her eyes.
Hugh turned to look his way, heart suddenly beating nervously at the expression on Trey’s face. Maybe the ME had picked up on the fact that Trey would like to rip Hugh’s face off right now.
Mouth tight, Hugh threw a glare at Samantha, then stormed out.
“Don’t let him get to you,” Nadia said, reaching out to rest her hand gently on Samantha’s arm, giving it a gentle squeeze. “He’s a jealous asshole who knows you’re better at your job than he is every day of the week. If you need help on the Butcher case, let me know. I’m more than willing to slip in and do a little work off the books. Unlike Hugh, I can live without the recognition. I just want this bastard caught.”
Nadia gave Trey a smile as she left, saying it was nice to see him again. The woman’s expression seemed legit, but he couldn’t be sure. When he gave Samantha a questioning look, she shrugged.
“Hugh was being his usual self, trying to shoehorn himself onto the Butcher task force again, and I guess Nadia decided to take the honey instead of vinegar route to get on my good side. While I appreciate what she said to Hugh, I’m still not sure I trust her motives.”
Trey was about to agree with that assessment, but before he could say anything, Samantha stepped forward, her arms coming up to loop around his neck as she pressed her body to his, her face buried against his chest. He heard her breathing deeply as she squeezed him tight, and he found himself wondering what she thought of his scent.
“How are you doing?” she asked. “I’ve been worrying about you ever since you left last night.”
He wrapped his arms around her waist, holding her close and burying his face in her silky hair, breathing in the scent of cherry blossoms and spring rain. It brought a sense of calm he hadn’t even known he was lacking.
“I’m okay,” he said, “Better than I probably have any right to be, honestly. I have you to thank for that. You kept me sane last night and I’ll never be able to thank you enough.”
“You don’t have to thank me at all.” She smiled up at him in a way that lit up his whole world. “You here to get the latest on the Butcher?”
He grinned. “Actually, I really just wanted to see you. But the rumors that you’d been called out on another body dump gave me a good excuse to come over here. Did I hear Hugh say something about it being a copycat?”
Samantha sighed as she walked around her desk and sat down. Trey followed suit, dropping into the chair in front of her desk, feeling inexplicably cold without her arms around him. It occurred to him then that she looked more tired than she had when he walked in, and he chided himself for keeping her up so late last night.
“I got a call early this morning about body parts scattered around a section of the Hinton Regional Landfill off Elm Grove Road,” she said. “It didn’t take long for me to figure out they all belonged to the same victim, and since the hands still had fingers, the detectives on the task force ID’d the woman and connected her to a guy who got released from Coffield Unit less than a month ago. They picked him up immediately, sure they had the Butcher.”
Trey didn’t have to ask to know where this was going. The Butcher task force was under pressure to find a suspect, so he didn’t blame them for jumping on the first one that offered themselves up on a silver platter. “I’m guessing you had to burst their bubble?”
“Yeah.” She sat back and lazily swiveled her chair back and forth. “I took my time because I didn’t want to get this wrong, but in the end, it was obvious whoever killed that woman wasn’t our guy…either of our guys. Not only was the gender of the victim wrong, but so were the cut marks and defensive wounds. The detectives on the task force aren’t happy with me, but at least they were able to catch the guy who really killed her.”
“Was he trying to look like a copycat to throw them of his trail?” Trey asked.
“Not in a premeditated way, if that’s what you mean. He got into a drunken argument with his girlfriend and accidentally killed her, then decided to cut her up and dump the pieces at a landfill barely a mile away from where they lived. He was still trying to clean up all the blood in his garage when they kicked in the door.”
Trey winced at that image. “Well, like you said, at least they caught him.”
“Unfortunately, the case this morning only highlights the way the cops on the task force expect the Butcher case to go. Find a lead, follow it to a bad guy, arrest the bad guy. The fact that the clues I’m finding are only making this case more and more confusing isn’t helping anything.”
Trey hated seeing Samantha down on herself like this. She was frigging amazing. Didn’t she see that?
“Did you find anything new?” he asked.
She stopped swiveling in her chair and flipped open one of the folders on her desk. Turning it around so it was facing him, she spread out several photos displaying extreme close-up views of bones, muscles, and ligaments. Seeing all of it in such detail was the definition of unsettling, even if he had far more experience with the subject than he wanted to think about.
“What am I looking at?” he asked.
“These are magnified views of two of the pieces we recovered the other day,” she explained. “This one is the hand and lower arm. This one is the forearm section from wrist to elbow.” She tapped one photo, then the other. “I found evidence that the parts had been amputated and then reattached. There are pin, bracket, and screw holes along several areas on the bones. There are also suture marks along the ends of the muscles, ligaments, and tendons. If that’s not strange enough, I also found evidence of new growth and advanced healing in both the tissues and the bone. This might be a leap, but I think the parts had been reattached and were starting to heal for some period of time until something went wrong and had to be removed. The healing’s less advanced in some areas, more advanced in others, making me think the killer may have chopped off some parts multiple times and started over.”
Trey frowned, not sure what all of that meant. Then it hit him. “Wait a minute. There’s something off here. These bodies have been showing up for about two weeks, which means this killer has been doing his thing for three weeks at the most. Even if these parts you found were attached at the very start of that time frame, they still wouldn’t have shown that healing. I don’t know much about this kind of thing, but doesn’t it take a lot longer than that for bones to regrow?”
Samantha nodded. “Normally, I’d agree with you, but I found some unknown chemical substances in the tissue of the two parts in question. It’s too soon to know for sure—and I haven’t mentioned it to anyone yet—but it’s my theory that the killer has come up with a medical protocol that speeds up the regrowth process drastically.”
Trey ignored the fact that Samantha had described a medical protocol that didn’t—couldn’t—exist and focused on the implications. “So what you’re saying is that the serial killer is grabbing random people off the street, cutting parts off of them, and attaching those parts to someone else using a drug that no one has ever heard of, only to start the process over when the parts start to rot?”
She gave him a shrug. “Like I said, I haven’t mentioned my theory to anyone yet, but yes, that’s where we seem to be right now. You can see why the cops on the task force are starting to grumble. Hugh was here because he overheard the task force lead ask Louis about assigning another ME to the team.”
Shit.
There was no way in hell he could bring up the subject of soul mates now, not after the absolutely crappy day Samantha was having. She needed to be clearheaded for a conversation like that.
“That sucks,” he said. “What are you going to do?”
“Louis wants me to go over every single body we’ve recovered as part of the Butcher case and see if I can find any more evidence of reattachment, bone, or tissue regrowth. He also asked me to prepare tissue samples so our analysis lab can start trying to identify what chemical the killer has been using during these surgeries. I’ll be lucky to get out of here before the sun sets.”
“I’d better let you get started then.” He got to his feet. “If you’re not too tired afterward, do you want to get together for dinner tonight?”
Samantha stood and came back around the desk and kissed him. Despite everything going on with the investigation—not to mention the secrets they were both hiding from each other—Trey found himself kissing her back with a passion that was definitely not safe for work.
He wasn’t sure who pulled away first, since both of them groaned in disappointment. He chuckled when he saw Samantha blush. Another minute and they’d have been making out on her desk. Trey got the feeling she would have been just fine with that.
“Why don’t you come over to my place?” she suggested softly.
Trey grinned. “Sounds good to me.”
It would definitely be easier to have the conversation about soul mates in her apartment than at a restaurant, that was for sure. And by then, maybe he’d actually figure out what to say.