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Ripper(93)



He lowered his head and kissed me, long and slow this time.

I could feel where he’d nicked me. It was a little sting on my right hip. It would bleed briefly and then fade away.

Bleed. It would bleed because I was alive and that was what living things did. We bled. When we’re wounded, when we’re flayed open and laid out, we bleed.

I pushed at Gray and he was the grumpy one then.

“What?”

“I know how Joanne is different. I figured it out.”



* * * *



“So all the other girls had burn marks on their wrists and some even across their arms,” I explained to Marcus as he drove the Bentley through the streets of Dallas.

Night had fallen and we were on our way to the vampire club. My body still hummed with excitement. It was partially the aftereffects of sex with my superhot demon lover, but there was also the thrill of the hunt. I could feel it. I was getting closer, and those pictures had given me another clue. I knew how Joanne was different and it was far more than her species.

“They struggled,” Marcus pointed out. His melodic accent seemed even more intimate in the close confines of the car. “It’s only to be expected.”

“But Joanne Taylor’s arms aren’t burned at all,” I finished triumphantly.

The vampire slid me a curious stare. He seemed very interested in my thoughts on the case, and I got the feeling he was endlessly fascinated with what I was going to say next. He seemed to genuinely enjoy arguing points of logic with me. “Joanne was a doe. Perhaps she simply didn’t struggle at all.”

“Not buying it, Vorenus.” I enjoyed arguing with him, too. Since that moment I figured out what I’d been missing, I’d been filled with the most delicious energy. It practically burst out of me and Marcus had been so amused by my pacing and talking to myself and the wild hand gestures I make when talking things through that he hadn’t noticed we were running late until Gray had pointed it out with a sour look on his face. Despite Gray’s wariness, Marcus and I had been arguing back and forth in a thoroughly pleasant manner ever since. “First, even a simple little doe will fight for her life. Second, Jo Taylor had a backbone. No question about it, girlfriend had a pair, if you know what I mean.”

Marcus laughed as his hands expertly steered the big beast of a car. “I have no idea what you mean, but I like the way you say it.”

“Hey, that’s enough of that,” Gray growled from the backseat.

I turned around and rolled my eyes at my grumpy boyfriend. He was completely against me having anything whatsoever to do with Marcus. I needed him to understand that besides friendship, I had zero designs on the vampire. Hell, I could barely handle the man I had. I wasn’t looking to take on another.

“So why do you think Joanne is different?” Marcus asked blandly.

“There are many reasons she doesn’t fit the pattern, Councilman. For one thing, she’s the only non-wolf.”

“Wolves are much more common than any other wereanimal,” Marcus pointed out.

“Secondly, she’s the only one of the victims who was buried separately.”

“All the wolves were buried in a single grave,” Gray affirmed.

“Jo was buried separately. He took care with her. She was the only one who was buried with her jewelry. All the other girls were completely stripped down with nothing left to help identify them.” Now for my grand finale. “And I believe she was dead before he cut her open.”

“Why do you believe this, Kelsey?” Marcus didn’t argue with me. He merely wanted to know how I had drawn my conclusions.

“Because of the lack of blood,” I explained. “If you look at her pictures, compared to the rest of them, she doesn’t bleed. There’s bruising around her neck and that tells me she was probably strangled to death before she was taken to the warehouse. The bruises are already visible. It also explains why the silver didn’t burn her the way it did the rest.”

“Because dead girls don’t fight back,” Marcus concluded grimly.

Gray shook his head in the back seat. “All this time I was paying more attention to the other pictures for the simple fact that they were more violent. Kelsey comes in and proves that the least violent of all the kills is probably the one that will tell us who the killer is.”

I took enormous pleasure at the pride in his voice. “He knew her. He liked her. He didn’t want to kill her, but he had to.”

If I was right, my list of suspects was somewhat short. I wanted to start with Professor Peter Hamilton.

“Did you have relations with that girl, Councilman?” Gray asked his question in that Western, all-lawman twang he got when he wanted the truth.