“You think she had something to do with the deaths?” Marissa said.
Butch shrugged and rubbed the heavy gold cross that hung around his neck. “I don’t trust anybody. Not at this stage of things. Although putting that into words after listening to a recording like that makes me feel like an asshole.”
“You have a job to do. You’re being professional.” She frowned. “So there were two deaths?”
“Three.” He turned to face Marissa again. “Vishous looked into the first one. It was a human. There were various reports in the Caldwell Courier Journal about it. She was found in a storage room at the club, just like the two females, and she was killed by a knife. There was no hanging her up, however. According to the latest update from the CPD, it’s still an open case. Homicide hasn’t found the killer, but that doesn’t mean it was a vampire, so it’s hard to know how that victim fits in. We either have a serial killer who is refining his technique, or there is a coincidence with that one.”
“The third female who was killed . . . her family has her remains now?”
“No.” He shook his head. “Havers is doing an autopsy on her. With their permission, thank God. When they came forward and confirmed her identity, I really didn’t want to put them through the hell of forcing that kind of thing. But they want to know who did this.”
As things got quiet, he reflected that it did not seem strange at all to refer to his shellan’s blooded brother as if the male were an unrelated third party. Havers was exceedingly competent at his job, taking such very good care of his patients and staff. But as a sibling? To Marissa?
Butch was never going to forgive that guy for turning her out when she had nowhere to go. Just before dawn.
The thing with true family, from everything he’d learned? Sometimes they shared DNA with you. Sometimes they didn’t. And given that the blood connection only went so far, the friends you chose were what made up the slack when your relatives sucked.
“Havers will do a very thorough job.” Marissa looked away. “That is one thing you can always depend on him for. He is a superior physician.”
After everything she had been through with her only sibling, she still had the class to shine some light on the positive traits the male had. But that was his shellan. She was way too good for Butch. And for that brother of hers.
Butch moved the phone out of the way and pulled her into him. “You are a female of worth, you know that?”
“You’re biased,” she whispered as she kissed his mouth.
“Are you kidding me?” He stroked her lower lip with his thumb.
“I’m a facts-only kind of man. I speak the truth and only the truth, so help me God.”
“The truth, hmm. Well, tell me something, Mr. Veracity. How does this feel?”
As her hand wrapped around a very personal and private place on his body, he closed his eyes and moaned.
Gritting his molars, he said, “I don’t know. I can’t tell. Maybe you should squeeze it a little or move things around down—oh . . . yeah . . . more of that. I think something’s coming to me.”
Marissa laughed low in her throat and nipped his lower lip with her fang. “More like coming for me, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Definitely. Always—what was the question?”
* * *
The daylight hours came and went with depressing alacrity.
At least that was what Boone thought when he glanced at the digital clock on Helania’s bedside table and saw that it was a little past six p.m.
Shit, he thought. He felt like he’d just walked through her door. “Where has the time gone,” he muttered.
Helania yawned. “We’ve talked all day.”
And yet there hadn’t been one moment that he had struggled to find something to tell her or been less than totally interested in everything she had to say. Well . . . and they had also done some things that hadn’t been exactly conversational.
“Eight minutes,” he murmured.
“Hmm?”
“I feel like all these hours lasted no longer than the eight minutes those humans spent in the shower—”
Boom! Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom . . .
“Speak of the devil,” she said with a laugh as they looked at the ceiling.
“They’re back already?” Boone groused. “Did I invoke them like an evil spell?”
“The human workday is over and their commute is short.”