Adrian Phoenix - Beneath the Skin

“No,” his partner, Merri Goodnight, murmured from just behind him. He heard the whisper of suede against his windbreaker as she leaned forward to look into the murder room. Caught a faint whiff of cloves. “Not according to what Abano told me. The kid only saw the perps. She didn’t know about her dad.”

“Abano? The fed in charge of the scene?”

“You mean the fed that was in charge of the scene?” Merri replied dryly. “That’d be him.”

“No doubt he’s one unhappy camper at the moment.”

“Given that the vic’s one of their own, that’s putting it mildly.”

“Yeah, well, wonder how he’d feel to learn that some of his own might be involved in the killing,” Emmett murmured. “The feds’ll be even unhappier when they realize we’re shutting this crime scene down altogether.”

Controlling and sanitizing the situation. A clean wipe. Scraping clinkers into the furnace to watch them burn, as his granddad used to say. No matter how you put it, the result was the same. Events were being altered at best and erased at worst.

A necessary evil in his line of work.

From the front room, Emmett caught a low murmur of voices from the TV that no one had turned off, hoping to catch the result of the Garcia-Dowd middleweight championship bout and the latest sports scores while processing the scene. No more police radio static or low, irked mutters.

The Bureau’s people had vacated along with the Seattle PD’s people. Hell, maybe they had all gone to a local tavern to brew up a booze-fueled bitchfest about the Shadow Branch’s glory-stealing theft of their case.

But nothing was ever what it seemed to be. Especially here.

Emmett stepped into the room, carefully avoiding the spatters of blood marring the cream-colored carpet near the threshold. He caught a faint whiff of piss just under the blood reek.

“ETA for our cleanup crew is ten minutes,” Merri said. “Gillespie’s supposed to drop by with instructions from HQ.”

“Wonder what’s taking so long? Usually Gillespie’s first on scene.”

“HQ probably put the chief on hold while they were busy trying to figure out who to smear the sticky, gooey blame on. Once they have that figured out . . .”

“Heads are gonna roll,” Emmett agreed. He allowed his gaze to rove around the room, ticking off each item he saw as normal or not, a mental what’s-wrong-with-this-picture game that he played at each assignment. Hell, not just at assignments or crime scenes anymore. He found himself doing it everywhere he went—at Safeway, the mall, in a movie theater, picking up the kids from school.

Gun on the carpet against the north wall, a Smith & Wesson—not normal.

Desk with neatly parked chair—normal. Black, four-drawer file cabinet—normal.

Opened gun safe containing a single box of ammo—probably not normal.

And the late Alberto Rodriguez sprawled on the carpet in a drying pool of his own blood—well, hell, not even close to normal.

But normal had nothing to do with what had happened in this house.

“Abano and his people have no clue about vampires,” Merri said, as though reading Emmett’s mind. But he knew she hadn’t; that was an issue they’d hashed out years ago. “They think Rodriguez was killed by multiple slash and stab wounds to the throat. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to enlighten them.”

Emmett chuckled. “They wouldn’t’ve believed you anyway.”

“Not at first,” Merri said, a smile quirking at the corners of her mouth. “You didn’t either, as I recall.”

“Still don’t,” Emmett drawled.

Merri folded her arms across her chest, slung her weight onto one hip, and arched an eyebrow. “Uh-huh. Don’t make me prove it to you, Thibodaux. Again.”

Emmett shook his head, smiling. “Once was enough, thanks.” He pinched up his trousers at the thighs, then crouched down beside Rodriguez’s body. The man’s ruined throat had been pierced and torn by sharp teeth.

“Not the neatest work I’ve ever seen,” Merri said, her voice pitched low, and now right beside him. After five years of working together, her speed and stealth no longer startled him. Most times, he even forgot what she was.

“Looks to me like one outta control vamp.” Emmett glanced up at his partner.

Merri tilted her head, her dark brown eyes studying all that remained of Special Agent in Charge Alberto Rodriguez, husband, father, Bureau man. “Young vamp, maybe. Or hungry as hell.” She shifted and glanced back at the doorway and Emmett followed her gaze.

High-velocity blood spatter speckled the doorway’s wood frame and the peach-colored wall beside it. “Looks like Rodriguez got one good shot off, though,” she said.

“He did.” Emmett agreed.

Merri nodded at the gun on the carpet. “For all it was worth.”

“So what stopped the vamp from killing Rodriguez’s daughter?” Emmett said. “Why didn’t he snatch up that kid and drain her dry?”

“Good question.” Merri crouched down beside Emmett and he smelled spice and cloves from the cigarettes she smoked. “And I think I have the answer.”

“Yeah? Let’s hear it, then, Goodnight,” Emmett said, his voice a low drawl, a little bit of Louisiana creeping in underneath his words. “You gonna tell me this vamp’s got a soft spot for kids?”

Merri shook her head and her straightened black hair, gathered and glossed into a high and neat ponytail, swung like a pendulum across her shoulder blades. “Nope. Someone else shot him again.”

“Yeah? Who?”

A smug smile curved Merri’s rosy full lips. She lifted her hand and displayed a small, slender dart pinched between two fingers. “One of the other perps dropped the vamp with a trank gun. I relieved Abano’s techs of the one they’d bagged while processing the scene. But they missed finding the dart in the carpet.”

Emmett grinned. “I knew there was a reason I kept you around.”

“Because I’m a better field agent than you’ll ever be?”

“That’d be it.”

“Truth, brothah,” Merri said, then chuckled, the sound warm and throaty. She slid the dart into an inside pocket of her black suede jacket. “Makes me wonder what else they missed.”

“Truth, sistah. I’m guessing tons, but it doesn’t matter. It’s never going to court.” Emmett rose to his feet, his knees creaking with the movement. An annoying new voice in the body-choir his joints, tendons, and bones had orchestrated ever since he’d turned forty. A body-choir that sang loud and strong when it rained. Given that he lived in Seattle, the singing was almost year-round and lusty as hell.

Looks like all those years of karate sparring are catching up with me.

“Do we know for certain that feds are involved in this?” Merri asked.

“HQ just said it was possible and to keep everything hush-hush until the perps were positively identified,” Emmett said, offering a hand up to his partner.

Merri snorted. “When isn’t something hush-hush?” She grasped his hand, her dark brown skin bleaching out his hard-won tan, and he pulled all five foot nothing of her up onto her booted feet. “It isn’t called the Shadow Branch for nothing.”

“Sing it, sistah. Wanna bet that even the director’s dumps are classified?”

Merri shook her head. “Man, that’s nasty. What’s the matter with—” She straightened, her hand sliding free of his, her alert posture reminding Emmett of a hunting dog on point. She swiveled smoothly to face the doorway. “Our people are here.”

Emmett heard the front door open, then click shut. A cold draft of air swept into the room and goosebumped his skin. He heard the squeak of wheels underneath the background noise of the TV, felt the thud of footsteps coming up the hall.