Bless The Beauty - By Stacey Kennedy Page 0,4
was off about him, which only added to my suspicion that whatever we were about to be faced with was a tragedy. “He looks tense,”
I said quietly to Chase.
Chase nodded but said nothing as his brows furrowed and his gaze stayed focused on Mike.
Quickly, we made our way through the main part of the office and it was exactly what I expected to find at this time of night—empty. Only our team worked the night shift. Sure, other teams were on call for different departments, but the Criminal Division was usually the only ones who walked these halls once the sun went down.
Our team consisted of me, the interrogator, Mike as the man in charge, and Chase as his second-hand man. The final member of the team was Nick who dealt with all the forensic work, which only confused me.
We were all specialists in our chosen field. Of course, none of them knew that I was only good at what I did because I held the ability to warp a human’s mind and will the truth from them. Hell, being a vampire had to have some perks and I wasn’t going to waste such an ability. Even Chase didn’t know.
The less he knew of my vampire abilities the better. I liked being as mortal as I could around him, besides the fact that I needed to drink his blood to survive.
Just as I cleared the door into the strategic room, Nick—the forensic wizard and whom I considered family—sat at the wooden table, waiting. It was partly why I loved this job. I could have that closeness only received from a family without the ties. If I had to walk away, I could. Not that it was something I hoped to do, I was happy here.
“How do you look so damn sexy in the middle of the night?” Nick asked me with a grin. His short black cropped hair made his pale skin almost glow. His equally dark eyes examined me with suspicion as his thin lips melted away to nothing in thought.
I laughed flirtatiously as I flipped my hair over my shoulder. “What can I say? When you’ve got it, you’ve got it.”
Of course, to mortals I did look beautiful. It was a way to lure them, although, I never resorted to such measures to feed from them—or hadn’t in a very long time, I should say. I took the blood I needed to survive only from the willing. Always. Which happened to be Chase and he could take it. He loved red meat.
Nick just laughed then glanced over at Mike as he said, “A situation has come up.”
He began handing out the files. “Milwaukee, Wisconsin law enforcement has a serial killer they’ve recently arrested, Chad McKinney.”
I flipped open the file to see a young blonde woman who was obviously dead, if the blue face had anything to say about it. But that was only what struck me first. The longer I looked, the more it became obvious this woman was clearly on display. Everything about the position she was found in was on purpose. Her golden locks lay perfectly around her face. She had freshly applied makeup on her lids and cheeks. Even her cherry red lipstick appeared moist.
“He wanted them found,” I said aloud.
When I looked up, Mike confirmed my thought with a nod. “He left them in very open spaces and didn’t conceal their bodies.”
“Either he is really stupid,” Chase’s eyes burned with the thought of a hunt, “or incredibly smart.”
Nick flipped a page, his nose buried in the file. “Looking at this, I’d say it was the latter.”
I agreed but kept it to myself as I moved to the next photo. The redhead was in the exact same position, right down to the very same shade of lipstick. It didn’t take rocket science to know all the pictures would be the same. I flipped back to the first picture to examine the minute details in the hopes of finding something.
Silence filled the room as I became lost in the picture. I could assume the others had followed suit, since the only sounds in the room were our deep breaths. Not that I needed to breathe, but I liked to. It might scare the mortals to see a person who can hold their breath indefinitely.
There was a reason these men were part of the team. They excelled in homicides, as did I.
Chosen and trained specifically to understand the disturbed mind of serial killers.
Moments passed before Chase broke