I dropped low to the ground, following the footprints toward the back door—the smell of death grew stronger the closer we got. Through blurry vision, I could see a reddish smudge on the glass and a crumpled form that I was pretty sure was too small to be an adult shifter—hopefully not a shifter at all.
Elliot moved past me, a whining growl sliding from his throat.
I wanted to tell him to be careful. To not get too close in case whoever had left it was still here. But I didn’t have words, so all I could do was growl softly.
Elliot looked back over his furry shoulder at me and let out a grunt. I hoped that meant he was saying he’d be careful. Or maybe he was telling me that he knew what he was doing. Or maybe he was just telling me to back off.
I whined a little louder, trying to get him tonotgo where he was going. Because what if they were still here? What if they were waiting for us to come back? What if the dead animal—whatever it was—was bait?
I wanted to go the other way—trace the boot prints around the side of the house, to see if there was still a car there. But I also didn’t want to leave Elliot here on his own.
When I whined again, he turned to look at me, and I backed up along next to the footprints, trying to lead him away from the back door and its dead occupant.
He looked back and forth between me and the dead whatever-it-was, and then gave in and came to follow me, letting out an unhappy sound. I turned and began to followthe footprints—finally noticing that there were multiple sets—at least two, maybe more—and that they went in both directions, as thought their owners had come around the back of the house, deposited the animal, and then went back the way they came.
I hoped that meant that they weren’t still inside the house.
The only vehicles we found in the driveway were my Cruiser and Elliot’s Tundra. I followed the footprints around to the gravel of the drive, marking where they stopped at a pair of tire tracks that didn’t belong to either of us.
I let out a yip, then turned back toward the house. I tried to remember if the front door had been locked, and hopped up onto the front porch. I’d seen dogs—and some particularly large cats—do this before, and while Elliot certainly couldn’t have operated a door knob, I was pretty sure I could.
It took a couple tries, but I did manage to get the pads of my front feet to grip the knob and turn it—and no, I hadnotremembered to lock it. I definitely needed to remember to do that from now on.
I took a deep sniff, determined that nobody else was or had been in the house, and then shifted back with a long, low groan, my whole body spasming with pain.
“Seth, baby, I’m so sorry.” I could feel Elliot’s fingers running through my hair, feel and smell his skin under my cheek.
I tried to sit up, made a strangled sound, then managed to at least lift my head. “Call Smith,” I rasped.
“Seth—”
“We need to call him,” I insisted.
I felt and heard him sigh. “Okay, but only once you can get up.”
I let him help me up, stifling most of the sounds I wanted to make to keep from worrying Elliot any more than he already was.
“Phone,” I insisted, and Elliot let out a sigh, disappearing into the house. I leaned against the wall, trying to take the weight off my left leg, which was beyond pissed at me.
Elliot returned and handed me my phone, and I hit the button to call Smith.
It was almostfive in the morning before Smith and Lacy finished up with the back porch and the unfortunate skinned possum. Smith had called Lacy in because he said I was now officially ‘too close’ to the case to touch anything having anything to do with it.
“You have got to be fuckingkiddingme,” was my response to that.
Smith had crossed his arms over his chest, his auburn hair sticking out at funny angles and his clothes rumpled, telling me that he’d definitely not been awake when I’d called him, except his voice always sounded rough and gravelly, so I hadn’t been able to tell over the phone. The bags under his eyes darkening his fair skin also suggested he wasn’t sleeping much better than I was.
“I let you keep working it before, despite the fact that you were clearly friends with the victim, because you’d helped with Gregory Crane’s murder,” he said. “But now that you’redatingthe victim, I can’t let you touch it.”
I’d growled at him, and he’d rolled his eyes at me.
“It’s going to take more than that to threaten me,” he told me.
I sighed. “I’m sorry, it’s just… Fuck.”
He reached out and squeezed my bicep. “I know,” he said, and his rough voice was gentle. “I’m going to get them,” he told me. “And stop this.”
I sighed. “And will some other assholes just take their place? Again?”
