our identification badges. He logged them into his computer and waved us on. All business here—that was evident immediately.
We approached the elevator. Hadley hit the up button and a moment later, the doors opened and we stepped in. The doors closed behind us, Hadley pressed ten, the elevator shot straight up, and my stomach leapt with it. When the doors chimed open, a sign, which read, Criminal Investigation Department was on a large glass wall.
“Hadley,” a man said as he moved toward us. He was just a man—no supernatural here. “I have readied the files in my office for you.”
“Thanks, Mike,” Hadley replied. She glanced back to me as we walked by. “That is the Special Agent in Charge of the Criminal Investigation Department.”
“Are you telling me that the vampire used glamour on every single agent here?”
She nodded, and smiled. “They think you are from the CIA following up on this case.”
The thought made me feel mildly corrupt, so I chose not to make eye contact with them. It felt a bit wrong knowing they’d all been mind-warped.
We entered the office, and Hadley closed the door behind us. There were more than ten boxes lining the wall. “Christ. These are the cases?” I gasped.
She nodded grimly. “It’s a big case. I’ll go get us some coffee,” she replied before she left the room.
“This is going to take a while,” I grumbled at Zia.
She eyed the boxes with annoyance. “Let’s get started.”
We each took a box and got to work. The first file I pulled out was of a brutal killing in Louisiana. A woman mauled to death, in what they thought was a bear attack. The second I looked at the picture my stomach turned. There was barely anything left of her. She resembled nothing of the pretty picture I had seen of her when I first opened the file.
“Here,” Hadley said, drawing my gaze to her as she returned.
She handed me a cup of steaming hot coffee. It’d been some time since I had coffee. Now, having my magic abilities to give me a boost, coffee was a thing of the past. When the smell hit my nose, I moaned in utter bliss. When I lifted the cup to my mouth and drank down the delicious aroma, I groaned deeply.
The room erupted in laughter. I glanced over the rim of my cup to see everyone watching my intense pleasure. I smirked at them. “You forget the finer things when you haven’t had them for a while.”
Kyden winked, then dug back into his box.
I put the cup down, and lifted out another file. This one was in Montana. The woman had been killed in a manner very similar to the last. A college grad abducted. After a long search, her body was discovered in the bush brutally ripped to shreds and declared a homicide. With little evidence, and no leads, the case was closed.
Case after case, all similar situations—young women taken, brutally murdered. “I don’t get it. How do you know these were wolf killings?” I asked Hadley.
She lifted her head from the file she was buried in. “Call it a hunch.”
“A hunch, huh?”
She nodded. “When I started looking back at unsolved murders, I began to find a connection between them all. All the young women were killed so brutally.”
“Yeah, I see that,”
File after file that was the method of death. Very little remained of them. “I’m confused.” I said, looking back at the file. “I thought the Council was always contacted when a wolf kills?” Needing my earlier question answered, I no longer cared if I was going to look silly. I needed to understand this better.
“They are,” Hadley answered, drawing my gaze back to her. “But that is what is so unusual with these cases. There was no evidence of a wolf doing this.”
“Ahh…sorry, but someone’s throat missing is a pretty clear indicator,” I remarked.
“You would think so, but that is not how we do things.”
I glanced at Kyden. “It’s not?”
He shook his head. “The Detectives will only contact the Council if there is a lingering scent at the scene.”
“Oh,” I said, my mind made quick work of absorbing that information. “I hadn’t thought of that. I figured in vamp cases the fang marks were a pretty clear indicator.”
He nodded, being patient as he always was. “Of course, those cases are easier to determine, but without the assistance of Haven or Zia, wolf cases are discovered only by the scent left there.”
“Even if their throat is ripped out