Shadow of Doubt - Hailey Edwards Page 0,76

I breathed out, “Animals.”

A few cats, a dog, a possum, and small furry bodies that might have once been squirrels decomposed in a hole worn smooth around the edges. He’d had the presence of mind to dig under a bush to conceal them, but he hadn’t bothered to cover them with dirt, and other animals had been feasting, as evidenced by the various pawprints from the local wildlife.

“Why switch from animals to people?” That was a big leap. Huge. “These appear to be older kills, but they’re smaller. Decomposition would be faster. What do you think?”

“I agree.” Midas stepped up beside me. “These predate the bodies from the park. The ground kept them cooler, and the bush kept them out of direct sunlight, slowing down the process.”

“Practice or simple hunger?”

“Hunger,” Midas decided. “Animals store food this way. It’s natural.”

I didn’t say a word, but I felt my face rearranging its expression.

“Natural for us,” he clarified. “It’s nothing I haven’t seen in gwyllgi whose beasts are ascendant.”

“He left his cache of victims in water.” I recalled the bizarre factoid about raccoons washing their food that had popped into my head when I first saw them. “Statement or preservative?”

“The water is too warm this time of year for it to preserve meat.” Midas flinched when he said it, but I knew what he meant. A layer of distance helped more than the mild insult to the dead hurt. “He meant for those bodies to be found. He left them in a public park, stacked them like a cord of wood. Eventually, if he hadn’t called us himself, someone would have investigated the blockage.”

“I agree.” I mulled it over. “Okay, the animals came first, as food. He likely hunted them while he was learning the area. He wouldn’t have wanted to draw too much attention to himself until he was certain his mother was here.”

“Once he had confirmation,” Midas continued for me, “he started enacting his plan.”

“He’s been taunting her.” I could almost hear him. “Look what you made me do.”

“He wants to turn her conscience against her.”

“He wants her to surrender to him.” An oily sensation writhed in my gut. “He could have taken her from the shelter. The age of this cache proves he was already in the area when you brought her home with you. He was playing with her, letting her think she had gotten away. When you showed interest, offered her a support network, he set his plan in motion. He couldn’t risk her revealing herself. He would assume your pack would covet her for her gwyllgi blood and double down on protecting her.”

“You’re good at that,” he remarked. “Getting in his head.”

I wasn’t in his head, but I had Ambrose in mine, and his thought process had given me keen insight into the criminal mind. “Bonnie filled in a lot of blanks for us. It’s hard not to draw a mental picture.”

“I can see why Linus felt confident enough to leave you alone in the city with this case.”

Pleasure at the compliment unfurled through my chest, but motion caught my eye, and it drained away just as fast.

Ford stood with his back to us, gazing in the direction of the house, or maybe he was looking at his truck. He had a hand in his pocket, and he was jingling his keys like he was ready to go or wondered why he was here at all.

Midas caught the drift of my stare and remembered Ford too. I could tell by the way he took a large step away from me and refused to meet my eyes, no matter how long I stared at him.

As much as I wanted to point out I was single and could talk to whomever I wanted, I read the building tension between the two men and hated I was the cause. The fact Midas wanted me to be aware I was hurting Ford by not paying him my full attention stung. Fine. If that’s how he wanted it, I could shut down this… Crush? Fixation? Infatuation?

After all, I wasn’t the one who marked him. Accidental or not, he had marked me.

“I want to make sure there are no more surprises waiting for us out there,” I told them. “I’m going to follow the path, see where it ends, mark his likely points of entry into the section of the park where he made his cache.”

Tired of the puffed chests and grumpy faces, I didn’t wait to see if either or both decided