cleaner from somewhere and did the whole apartment the week after she moved out. I could smell the disinfectant for a month afterward.” Dropping her arm, she turned her attention to the body. “And that was just when I passed by in the corridor. I don’t know how he stood the reek in the apartment itself.”
Kenji stared at the dead man, trying to bring up a memory of this packmate and failing. That wasn’t unusual, not with SnowDancer numbering over ten thousand across the territory, with new people mating in and out on a regular basis. Hawke alone knew each and every SnowDancer, though they could all recognize one another by a layer of scent impossible to explain to an outsider except to say that it came from Hawke, an acknowledgment by their alpha that this person was pack.
Accepting that he and Russ had apparently never crossed paths, Kenji walked carefully around the body. “I guess he was hurt, wanted to wipe away all traces of his lover.” Kenji, meanwhile, still had the gift he’d meant to give Garnet seven years earlier, on the night Fate kicked him in the guts, left him bleeding.
His eyes lingered on her as she crouched by the body. The hood of the coveralls hid her hair, but he knew the fine strands would’ve glinted like spun gold in the artificial sunlight that illuminated the room. “Russ didn’t have a new lover?” he asked before the silence could grow too long, betray too much.
A shake of her head. “Not as far as I know.”
He hunkered down on the other side of the body. “This handkerchief. It’s feminine.” Carefully tugging at the bunched edges to open it, he found what he was looking for: a delicately embroidered A.
Garnet blew out a breath, sorrow darkening the sky blue of her eyes. “Russ,” she murmured softly, “you’ve finally managed to surprise me.” Her gaze skimmed to where Shane’s body had lain, paused. “No, it definitely can’t have been Shane’s unless they fought over it. Looks like Russ was clutching it in his hand, pressed it to his wound, and it fell from his hand when he collapsed.”
It seemed very high drama to Kenji, but again, this was a wolf they were talking about. Pressed white shirt and razor-creased pants or not, Russ had still been born with the same primal drives as any SnowDancer. He might’ve erased Athena from his home, but he’d clearly failed at erasing her from his heart.
Sound familiar, Tanaka?
No, he answered the mocking voice in his head. I never tried to erase my love for Garnet. I’ll be buried with her name on my heart.
“Lorenzo will have to check,” he said, a surge of aged emotion turning his voice husky, “but far as I can tell, Russ was stabbed once in the heart and bled out where he lay.”
“Blood follows gravity.” Garnet pointed out the dark, dark spots of blood on the carpet below Russ’s chest, as well as the thin trail of red down his side that indicated he hadn’t moved after collapsing. “Unless it was a lucky fatal stab, it seems he had plenty of time to go for help. Might be he hit his head when he fell.”
Kenji looked around, saw no evidence Russ had tried to crawl to the door. “You want me to check the part of his head that’s against the carpet?”
Garnet frowned in thought, finally said, “No, leave it. I want Lorenzo to have first go at the body. He should be back soon, unless there’s more wrong with Shane than a concussion.”
Getting to his feet with a nod, Kenji walked over to look at the knife. “Fancy hilt.” Scrolling patterns on the metal, a green jewel at the tip.
“Shit.” Garnet gritted her teeth as she came to join him, her dominance a pulse under her skin and her worry tension across her shoulders. “Shane collects knives. He’s done it for years.”
Wolf and man, both parts of Kenji wanted desperately to comfort Garnet, to take some of the weight, but he knew she’d push him away the instant he made the offer. This was her den, her responsibility. “Wolves aren’t immune to stupidity or jealousy,” he reminded her, his own jealousy a snarling monster held barely in check. “You can’t keep them safe from their own choices.”
A flinty glance, the blue of her eyes unimpressed. “You’d feel responsible, too, if this was your territory.”
“Yeah, well, being a lieutenant doesn’t save a wolf from idiocy, either.” He made