Rogue Wolf by Paige Tyler

Chapter 16

“Trey, it’s Samantha,” she said into her cell, knowing how stupid it was to drive with one hand and operate a phone with the other. But she needed to talk to him about what she’d found. Unfortunately, she got his voicemail. “I stumbled onto something really big with the case I need to talk to you about it. Call me as soon as you get this.”

Samantha almost said I love you before hanging up, but then chickened out at the last second. Yeah, maybe it was too soon for that. She should probably wait to see if they made it past the part where she confessed to stealing his blood and sending it out to a private lab for testing.

As she drove through the well-maintained streets and fancy homes in Westover Hills, Samantha began thinking she had the wrong address. When she reached the house taking up the entire end of the cul-de-sac, she was even more sure she’d taken a wrong turn. With its stacked stone walls and turreted roof, the three-story structure looked more like a castle where a king would live than a house belonging to a chief medical examiner.

She pulled her car into the broad driveway and stopped, staring up at her Louis’s home in disbelief. Even with the light streaming through the leaded-glass windows on the lower floor, “dark and foreboding” was the best way to describe the house. Not that it wasn’t beautiful. It simply wasn’t the kind of place she’d ever want to live.

Getting out of the car, she headed for the front door, taking in the manicured lawn and impeccable flower beds. She knew Louis came from money—or at least that’s what the rumors around the institute were—but if the man could afford a place like this, why the hell did he keep working? Especially as county medical examiner.

She rang the doorbell and waited, praying he was home. If he wasn’t, she’d have to go with her backup plan—going to see the task force lead detective or Chief Leclair. Truthfully, she wasn’t comfortable with either one. She didn’t know the lead detective well enough to refer to him by anything other than his title. She didn’t know his first name and couldn’t remember his last name. And while she’d at least talked to the chief a time or two outside of the Butcher case, the woman had always struck her as overwhelmingly busy and not very interested in the thoughts of anyone not wearing DPD blue.

It didn’t help that Samantha had no idea how well her theory would be received. The idea that Hugh was either the Butcher or working directly with him was a little out there. Especially when the only evidence she had at the moment was that two of the body parts she’d recovered had come from corpses that had been on his examiner’s table. It’s why she wanted to talk to Louis first and see if she was completely off base. If he found her ideas sane and reasonable, the task force would be more likely to take them seriously.

She lifted her hand to ring the doorbell again when the front door opened. Louis stood there in the entryway wearing a Mr. Rogers cardigan, clearly surprised to see her.

“Samantha! What are you doing here so late?”

“I discovered something disturbing about the Butcher case and wanted to talk to you first before I told anyone else.”

Louis’s expression quickly became all business, and he opened the door wider, motioning her forward. “Of course. Come in and we can talk.”

Samantha stopped inside the large foyer, completely awed. The circular space was breathtaking, open all the way up to the third floor, with lots of marble and gilt edges, beautiful curving stairs leading to the floors above. But the most unexpected find were the gleaming suits of armor positioned on pedestals all around the perimeter of the room, each holding a weapon that looked real as hell to her.

“Forgive my taste in home decor,” Louis said with a laugh, motioning toward the suits of armor. “My family name has historical roots in sixteenth-century Italy, hence an obsession with antique armor and weapons from that time. Feel free to look around if you wish, or if you prefer, my study is ahead and to the left. I have to take care of something I was in the middle of when you knocked.”

Samantha spent a few moments looking at all the armor and weapons but was too distracted to pay them any attention, so she instead headed for the arched doorway Louis had pointed out.

The study was as nice as the entryway, with antique furniture and shelves loaded with leather bound books. While she waited for her boss to take care of that thing he’d been in the middle of, Samantha looked around. Taking in the books, paintings, and the glass case filled with more edged weapons and a handful of extremely modern handguns and rifles, she was pretty sure this one room was worth more than her whole apartment.

One particular painting on the back wall behind the desk caught her attention. It was extremely well done, depicting Louis with a teenage boy and a pretty, dark-haired woman. The boy was obviously the son she’d heard about that had died years ago. The woman in the painting must have been his wife, but Samantha had heard rumors they’d gotten divorced a little while after that.

“Jamison was killed in a car accident several years ago,” Louis said from behind her and Samantha turned to see him standing in the arched doorway, gazing up at the painting she’d been studying. “I’m sure you knew that already, though. But the fact that my wife divorced me less than a year later is probably something not as widely known. Not that I blame her for leaving. I was an inconsolable prick after my son’s death and gave her no reason to stay.”

Samantha couldn’t help but feel badly for Louis. He’d gone through a lot of tragedy. “I know saying this doesn’t mean much, but I’m sorry for your loss.”

Louis nodded, continuing to gaze up at the painting for some time. Then he seemed to come back to himself, walking across the room to move behind the desk and take a seat there. “Thank you for that. And thank you for waiting so patiently while I took care of that other issue. But I’m sure that you didn’t drive all the way out here at this time to night to talk about my family. You mentioned discovering something about the Butcher case?”

Samantha took a seat in one of the two fancy armchairs in front of the desk. “I have good reason to believe that Hugh is the Butcher. Or at the very minimum, is working directly with the killer.”

Louis lifted a brow. “I think you’d better tell me everything—and I do mean everything.”

Taking a deep breath, Samantha laid it all out for him—the body parts she’d identified from Hugh’s staff briefing, the paperwork trail the assistant ME had left showing that Aiden Bridges and the John Doe had been cremated, her theory that Hugh was helping to make sure the Butcher case was never solved and that he was conducting some kind of macabre experiments using cadaver parts, trying to reattach them to other bodies. She told Louis everything she knew or suspected, no matter how insignificant she thought it might be.

Louis sat there speechless for what felt like five minutes after she finished, and Samantha wondered if she’d screwed up and thrown in too much conjecture when all her boss wanted was the facts.

“To say this is bad is the understatement of the century,” he finally said, and Samantha could almost see the wheels in his mind turning as he considered the various ways this could play out. “But I think you’ve found the Butcher.”

Before she could say anything, Louis reached for the fancy French phone on the corner of his desk. “Have you told anyone else about this yet? You might have put them at risk if Hugh figures out you’ve told them. At this point, I doubt there’s anything left the man wouldn’t do to cover up his crimes.”

That was probably true. She shook her head as Louis asked to be connected to the lead detective for the task force. How bad was it that her boss knew the full name of the task force lead when she didn’t?

“I called Trey…Officer Duncan, but got his voicemail, so I left a message for him to call me back,” she said. “I didn’t think this was the kind of thing you leave on someone’s voicemail.”

Louis nodded, waving his hand when Samantha was about to ask if she should call Trey back. “The head of the task force just picked up.”

Samantha leaned back in the chair, listening as her boss explained everything she’d discovered. He covered it in detail, answering what seemed like an endless list of questions. She couldn’t help but notice he kept using her name over and over, making sure the detective knew she was the one to get credit for this discovery. It was difficult to put into words how much she appreciated this.

After another minute or so of conversation, Louis hung up, a smile on his face.

“The police are heading to Hugh’s place to pick him up.” Louis leaned back in his leather office chair. “They’re also sending someone over to take your statement.”

She nodded. She would rather have headed over to Trey’s place, but it made sense the cops would want to take her statement. She was a little surprised they hadn’t asked him to go to the station to do it, though.

Getting to his feet, Louis moved around the desk to sit on the edge, gazing down at her with kind eyes.

“I’m glad you came here and told me all of that,” he said quietly. “It completely destroys my established timeline, but it could have been so much worse.”

Samantha frowned, trying to understand what Louis was talking about. Apparently seeing the confusion on her face, her boss picked up the rest of his thought.

“Unfortunately, it’s going to force me to do some things earlier than I would have preferred, but it would have been much worse if you’d told anyone what you’d discovered. That would have ruined everything.”

Samantha straightened in her chair, alarm bells going off.

Hugh wasn’t the Butcher.

Louis was.

Crap.

Suddenly, a hand came around in front of her face and slapped a wet cloth across her nose and mouth. She struggled immediately, trying to stand up, then clawing at the hand over her face when that didn’t work.

But whoever was behind her was incredibly strong and held her down like she was a little kid. Louis stepped in then, grabbing her flailing hands and shoving them down to the arms of the chair. Her heart felt like it was about to explode in her chest even as her mind recognized the ether-like odor of chloroform.

Everything started to get fuzzy then, her last thoughts of Trey and wishing she’d told him she loved him on that phone message she’d left.

***

“Are we seriously about to Skype with someone from STAT on the top level of an uptown parking garage?” Trey asked as he watched Connor boot up his laptop. “Isn’t this some kind of security violation? Couldn’t our conversation be hacked and show up on TMZ or something?”

“STAT loaded an encryption program on my laptop,” Connor said with a snort, not bothering to look up from the screen of his computer. “Yours, too, by the way. Something tells me even the NSA would have a hard time eavesdropping on this call.”

Before Trey could say anything, the echoing squawk of tires on concrete caught Trey’s attention, and he turned to see Trevor’s blue Ford Thunderbird coming up the ramp to the top level of the parking garage. Hale was sitting in the passenger seat of the beautifully restored classic, looking as confused about the last-minute meeting as Trey was.

“What the hell is going on?” Hale demanded as he stepped out of the convertible and strode toward them. “Trevor and I were at a club in the middle of talking to a cocktail waitress who’s sure she saw Ramiro Cordova Sunday before last, then we got your text telling us to meet you here ASAP.”

“Sorry about that,” Connor said, still focused on the laptop sitting on the hood of Trey’s Jeep. “But STAT sent me a link for a Skype meeting. Said it was urgent.”

“I hope so,” Trevor said, coming over to join them. “The waitress was going to talk to the manager about letting us see some of the club’s video footage. She’s pretty sure that soul-sucker woman was in the club around the same time as Cordova.”

Around lunch, STAT had finally come through with the identity of the desiccated body they’d found at the McCommas Bluff Landfill. Ramiro Cordova worked in the financial district as an investment analyst. Unlike the previous two victims, Cordova had only lived in the Dallas area for about a month or so. Trey guessed that was why it had taken STAT so long to come up with a name for the guy.

The four of them had spent most of the evening driving around the uptown club district, trying to find someone who might have seen Cordova. Trey and Connor had struck out, but it seemed that Trevor and Hale might have gotten lucky.

Since Connor was still busy setting up the Skype connection, Trey pulled out his phone to send a quick message to Samantha. He wanted to let her know that he was probably going to be late tonight and that it might be best if he met her at her place. Even if they didn’t do anything more than fall asleep in each other’s arms, that would be fine with him.

Trey immediately disregarded the handful of sports and news updates, homing in on the phone message from Samantha. The music in the last club they’d been in had been so loud he hadn’t even noticed his phone buzzing. He could only assume she’d called to say she finished up at the institute and was heading out.

He didn’t bother moving off to the side to play the message, since his pack mates would hear it anyway. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything to hide. One sniff at the preserve last night and all three of his teammates had known he and Samantha had slept together.

Trey listened as Samantha’s soft tones filled his ear, once again a little stunned at how his body reacted to the mere sound of her voice. But then he forced himself to focus on her words, a little worried when she started talking about stumbling onto something big that she needed to talk to him about. The fact that she asked him to call the minute he got a chance had his heart rate spiking.

But when he called her back, the phone ended up going to her voicemail. “I got your message, but I guess you’re busy with something.” he said after the beep, telling himself there was nothing to worry about. If Samantha had been in trouble, she would have said so in the message. “I have no idea when I’m getting done tonight, so I was thinking about heading to your apartment later. I know we talked about you coming to my place instead, but that might have to wait. Call or text me to let me know you got this and that you’re cool with me dropping by, even if it’s late.”

He almost screwed up and said the L-word right there at the end but bit his tongue in time. Samantha hadn’t said it, so he needed to chill out and let this thing develop in its own time. She might feel the soul-mate connection happening, but he couldn’t expect her to understand the feeling yet.

Shoving his phone back in his pocket, Trey turned his attention to Connor’s laptop to see a woman with long, blue hair on the screen. Okay, that wasn’t a look he expected from a covert federal organization.

“My name is Davina De Merci. I’m a consultant for STAT,” she was saying. “Sorry for the short-notice call, but we finally got a hit on the creature that has been leaving those desiccated bodies out there and thought you’d want to know right away.”

Trey almost laughed. “Having personally gotten my ass handed to me by this thing, I think I can answer for everyone when I say that yes, we’d like to know what we’re up against.”

Davina smiled. “If it helps, it was your accurate description of the creature that finally helped us identify her. If not for that, we’d still be looking.”

“Well, since I can’t help but see the creature’s face every time I close my eyes, it’s not like I’ll ever be able to forget what she looks like,” he said dryly. “So, what is this thing we’re dealing with?”

“The creature is called a vita lamia, which in Latin is roughly translated as life vampire.” Davina said, leaning in closer to her laptop camera. “They’re believed to be even older than their traditional vampire cousins who survive on blood. They are also extremely rare, which is part of the reason it took me a bit to figure out what you’re dealing with. A lot of smart people out there insist the vita lamia are nothing more than fairy tales.”

When Trey and the other members of his pack stood there staring at the screen, Davina apparently figured out she was rambling and pulled up with an embarrassed expression.

“So, right…vita lamia,” she picked up again. “As the name implies, they survive on the life force of other living entities. It doesn’t necessarily have to be human life, but apparently, we taste the best and provide the most nutrients.”

“Yay for humans, I guess,” Connor said. “If these things suck the life out of their victims, why haven’t we found more desiccated corpses like these last three?”

Davina shrugged. “Well, like I mentioned, these creatures are extremely rare. There are likely no more than two or three in the entire northern hemisphere. For another, according to the material I was able to find, most vitas survive by taking tiny amounts of life force through casual contact, like a handshake, a hug, or a kiss, even a light touch on the arm is enough. It’s not dangerous, and the person being fed on never realizes it. In fact, they don’t feel anything beyond a slight bit of exhaustion.”

Trevor frowned. “If these creatures normally nibble instead of gorge themselves as a way to avoid detection, why is this one draining people dry? Is she trying to get herself noticed?”

“All I can assume is that this woman is either newly created or untrained,” Davina said. “And before you ask, I don’t know a thing about either of those subjects when it comes to a vita. It’s also possible she’s simply become addicted to the life force she consumes. This happens with regular vampires sometimes. They develop a bloodlust and can’t stop themselves anymore.”

“Okay, let’s assume we’re dealing with a vita with impulse control issues,” Trey said. “How do we take her down? When I fought her, the wounds healed almost instantly. If vitas are related to traditional vampires, does that mean they have the same weakness? Will our werewolf life force be like acid to them?”

Davina shook her head. “I have no idea. But considering how completely different vitas and traditional vampires are, I don’t think I’d wager my life on the idea that a werewolf’s life force would be toxic to this one in the same way your blood is toxic to vampires. It’s been my experience that most creatures are rather fond of their heads and their hearts. Go for those first, and if that doesn’t work, good luck. Either way, let me know how this turns out. I’d love to be able to add more details to my library on these creatures.”

It was Trey’s turn to frown. “That’s it? No other advice to give on how to deal with this creature that nearly killed me the first time it touched me?”

Davina gave him a small smile before shrugging. “If she nearly killed you the first time she touched you, then maybe next time, don’t let her touch you.”

Before Trey had a chance to say something snarky in reply, Davina reached out to turn off the connection, leaving the four of them standing there on the top level of the parking garage, feeling no better off than when they’d started.

***

“I’m sure I’ve seen the woman you’re looking for around here several times,” the cocktail waitress said while the manager and a member of the club’s security staff shuffled through endless file folders on the computer, looking for video clips from the Sunday before last. “She only comes in on the weekends, usually late in the evening, close to last call. She’s definitely a one-night stand kind of woman. I saw her dancing with Ramiro, and let me tell you, they were getting friendly real fast.”

Trey and Connor had gone back to the club with Trevor and Hale, since the one they’d been at earlier had been a complete bust. The waitress Trevor had mentioned was still there and had introduced them to her manager. While she seemed extremely confident about seeing Cordova and their soul-sucker suspect, the manager did his best to lower expectations, pointing out that the club had thirty different security cameras. Even if Trey and the others only focused on the last hour or two of the night in question, that was still going to be a lot of video footage to go through.

Once they got to the right video files, the manager and security guy gave them a quick tutorial on how to operate the equipment, leaving shortly after that. There were only three chairs available in the security room, so Trevor and Hale took the first shift, sitting down with the cocktail waitress in front of the monitor, trying to jog her memory about where exactly she might have seen their suspect to give them a place to start.

Connor motioned Trey to the far side of the small room, the expression on his friend’s face making it obvious he wanted to have some privacy. Of course, that only meant that the waitress wouldn’t be able to hear them. Trevor and Hale could hear every word.

“Did you get a chance to talk to Samantha yet about the soul-mate thing?” Connor asked softly. “I mean, since you two have finally slept together, I thought maybe you’d told her. And gotten her to agree not to out the Pack.”

Trey glanced at Trevor and Hale, who were trying way too hard to make it seem like they weren’t eavesdropping. He shrugged. “I meant to talk to her about it afterward, but then you called telling me to get my ass to the Cedar Ridge Preserve. I haven’t had a chance to talk to her since.”

“But what about earlier today?” Connor frowned. “I thought you went to her office specifically to talk to her about being The One?”

Trey grimaced. “That was the plan, but then her boss walked in and the moment was gone. We’re getting together later tonight, so I’m hoping it’ll be the right time then.”

Connor muttered a curse under his breath. “Are you serious? How many times have we seen this blow up in our pack mates’ faces? There’s never a right time for something like this, only the wrong time, which tends to be after everything goes to hell and Samantha is running away from you in terror or spilling everything she knows to anyone who will listen. You need to just come out and tell her the truth, Trey. Before it’s too late.”

Trey knew Connor was right. But his friend acted like all Trey had to do was to tell Samantha that they were soul mates and then poof, everything would be better. What if telling her that she was The One for him—and admitting he was a werewolf—was the thing that made it all go bad? Everything was going so good with Samantha right now, even with all the lies between them. Was it really so wrong to want to hold on to that feeling for a little while longer?

“That’s her!” the waitress suddenly shouted, jumping up to point at one of the large computer monitors mounted on the wall. “That’s the woman I saw with Ramiro.”

Trey walked over to look at the monitor. There was no way in hell the waitress could have found their suspect so quickly, but he was glad for the interruption regardless. It would give him time to think if nothing else. But when he caught sight of the dark-haired woman in the middle of the paused video, he had to admit she definitely looked like the person in their police sketch, even if the image on the screen was a little blurry.

The waitress was chattering nonstop about being right until Hale nudged her out the door, thanking her for the help and promising to give her all the credit when they closed the case.

Trevor slowly moved the video forward frame by frame, trying to find a clearer shot of the woman. He found several other shots, including one where they could nearly see the woman’s entire face. With his werewolf eyesight, it wasn’t like he needed to move closer to see the image clearly, but Trey found himself doing it anyway, instinctively wanting to get the best look possible.

She looked familiar, though he couldn’t place where he’d seen her. It was only when he pictured her with her hair pulled back away from her face and wearing a hell of a lot less makeup that it hit him.

“Holy crap, I know her,” he murmured, leaning in even closer, as if that would help make the picture clearer. “She’s the woman we met in Samantha’s office. I’m sure of it. I don’t remember her name, but she was one of the other assistant MEs Samantha works with.”

His pack mates crowded around the monitor with him, looking at the woman from every angle.

“Nadia!” Hale said. “Her name was Nadia. I kind of thought she was hot in that cold-and-detached kind of way.”

Trey looked at his friend in surprise.

“How is that possible?” Connor demanded. “If you’re right and Nadia is the vita that attacked you in the park, wouldn’t you have recognized her scent?”

Trey shrugged, realizing how little Davina had really given them concerning the creature they were facing. “All I can think is that she has a completely different scent when she’s in her vita form.”

“What do we do now?” Trevor asked.

“The only thing we can do,” Trey said. “We confront Nadia and see what the hell happens.”