I stole a quick breath and picked up his hands to examine them. There didn’t appear to be any defensive wounds; his arms and hands one of the only unblemished parts left.
What remained of his clothes told me when he’d died. He wore the same thing the night he gave me my assignment, which meant he’d turned cadaverous soon after. This whole thing reeked of a set-up. Someone was tying up loose ends, and unfortunately for Landen, that meant him. What did he drag me into?
His place gave nothing away. It reminded me of a luxury hotel room or a staged home in a realty show. Few personal belongings. I hadn’t pegged Landen as a minimalist, but then again, this might not have been his only home and his job required him to pick up and disappear at a moment’s notice. People could say the same thing about my place.
I opened a window to let some of the stagnant air out and shifted into my wolf. I sniffed the dead meat.
Wait a minute. I shook my head. The body. Landen’s body. The last thing I needed was my wolf’s instincts to kick in fully. Yeah, I might’ve disliked Landen, but I didn’t want to get snout deep into his bloody corpse because my wolf mistook it for a free meal.
My perfume still clung to Landen’s clothes. It confirmed his time of death. But underneath the putrid smell of decay was something else.
Cat.
Big cat.
My hackles rose. Padding around the room, I looked for other clues. The cat scent clung to a chair in the corner of the room and mingled with the subtle fragrance of male cologne. There was something enticing about the smell, but when I focused, the faint appeal escaped, like water slipping through fingers.
A growl escaped before I could stop it. Either a Shifter or a feline Were sat and waited for Landen to return home before killing him. Landen knew his attacker, or he would’ve put up more of a fight. Another SRD agent, maybe? His death had to be related to my current situation.
Shifting into my falcon, I flew out the window into the cool night air. The wind refreshed my body, cleaning the repugnant smell of death that clung to it, but the wind couldn’t wipe away the look on Landen’s face, nor the sinking feeling I was screwed.
Chapter Fifteen
My arm looked like a well-loved chew toy, burning and angry red as my nails dug in, scratching back and forth. Wick had injected the microchip under my skin after returning from Lucien’s and instead of feeling better with time, it managed to feel worse. Now I knew how micro-chipped pets felt. I sent a heartfelt apology to Spanky, the affectionate American Staffordshire we had when I was a kid. Easily excitable, Spanky’d practically vibrate before jumping up and freaking out our guests. Having a seventy pound “vicious pitbull” lunging at them meant many family friends avoided us at first. Once they got to know him, they realized their fear was baseless. A few tummy rubs and free range licking and Spanky’s heart would be theirs. God, I loved that dog.
“No amount of scratching will get that tracker out.”
I turned around to see Wick leaning against the door frame. There was no point in locking me in now that I had a tracker injected under my skin. Gross. It felt foreign and wrong. Worse, no amount of shapeshifting had dislodged it from its home.
Hesitating, I considered taking a knife to it. They could always inject another one.
“It itches.”
“That will go away eventually.” He sounded confident. My face scrunched up with doubt and he turned his forearm out so I could see a similar small lump under his skin.
“Eventually is too far away for my liking,” I grumbled and turned back to the laptop on the floor I lay in front of. “Has Lucien ever removed a chip from one of his tagged supes?” I asked, dreading the answer.
“No.”
“What if I deliver on my promise?”
Wick cast his gaze up to the ceiling before walking into the room. “He has claimed you. Even ordered you to remain in my house, under my watch despite the tracking chip so we can observe you better. You tried to kill his human servant. As far as he is concerned, you are in his debt.”
I huffed. The air blew my bangs off my face. “Great. Not much incentive to make good on my promise.”
“Besides your life?”
I closed the laptop and banged my head on it repeatedly—not hard enough to damage anything important, but enough that I felt better. I wanted to go home.
Lucien’s orders gave me a new goal in life—find the person behind my hit on Clint, but it also gave me something to drive toward—freedom. Once I lost it, I realized how much I wanted it back. After I paid my debt to Lucien, I planned to get the hell out of here and find something more productive to do with my life, something more than being an SRD agent. Find a real home. No more A to B.