“The first of his victims, and which is what tipped the FBI off that he might be involved, is his cousin. His first cousin, to be specific.”
“That is disgusting!”
“Yeah. This whole case is disgusting.”
“Just for the record, I did not need to be paid to look into this one. If this is even remotely true, I would have done this one on the house for the sheer enjoyment of wringing the bastard’s neck between my hands.”
“For some reason, you’re not the only one.”
Eleven
I have more than two problems.
We stopped at a motel once on our way back to my home, and we spent the time working. Sebastian made use of his upper connections to ferret out more information on Stefan Loureni while I reviewed the information we had. It turned out the week at the spa hadn’t changed much of anything beyond solidifying Loureni as the top suspect.
We wouldn’t have been able to work until the last day of our retreat anyway. Half of the information we needed had been submitted on our final day in Cincinnati, which meant we would have been waiting around with our hands tied. Despite the mountain of circumstantial evidence surrounding Loureni, the CDC couldn’t make an accusation without more proof—and the government couldn’t approach an angel with an accusation, either.
A team of ten investigators from various branches of law enforcement came to the same basic conclusion. They believed Loureni held significant responsibility for the murders, but none of them could find any proof. Finding the proof was my problem, and I expected I’d be finding proof by following the pattern and seeing what happened while Sebastian went insane trying to figure out how to keep me away from a serial killer when my job required me to get close and personal to put an end to said serial killer.
Our motel room became a cage of lion containment, and when I wasn’t trying to piece together information on my target, I admired him while he paced. His soft huffs and growly grunts amused me almost as much as his roars.
According to his scent, he was torn between anger and lust, a state I’d suffered through most of my adult life. “There is a solution to both of your problems, Mr. Mane.”
Sebastian halted. “What solution, and which problems are you talking about? I have more than two problems.”
“You want to fling me onto the bed, and you’re mad because I’m a competent woman you can’t contain in a velvet-lined box. You want to contain me in such a box, because you are a lion, and lions get protective around their mates. Only an idiot goes after a lioness if she has a lion around. I’m the safest lynx on this planet even when I’m hunting a serial killer. This guy requires his victims to be alive, Sebastian. Sure, he could do some pretty reprehensible things to me, but that’s something I could survive. That’s a risk I’m willing to take because there are probably two women who need us to save them. The timing is about right if the pattern continues.”
He stopped, inhaled, and released his breath. “Okay. You’re definitely right on the first part. My virus is spiking, which it has been all week. Yours, on the other hand, seems to be happy and not spiking.”
I considered my dual nature, the other part of me I never quite fully controlled. Ever since Sebastian had made it clear he wanted me, she’d been content, pleased with my personal drive to secure our hold on the lion. “We’re in general agreement with our situation, so she’s happy. She doesn’t feel a need for anything to change, so she’s pretty stable—more stable than usual. But you said she has to change my blood type, so she’s probably busy trying to figure out how to make your virus do what she wants. She’s bossy like that, and she likes how busy I keep you in bed. She doesn’t have to encourage me on that front. Your virus probably just wants to stage another takeover, and he, just like you, loves my purrs.”
“Yes, we do. My virus particularly enjoys discovering new ways to make you purr, the varying degrees in which we can make you purr, and how long I can extend a single purring session. Alas, instead of practicing my various purr-inducing techniques, we need to make a plan to deal with this serial killer. This severely annoys me. Tomorrow, I have to prance you out