Beneath a Darkening Moon (31 page)

S
AVANNAH ENGAGED THE
hand brake, then crossed her arms over the steering wheel as she stared up at the old walking trail. Despite the sun flaring against the golden aspens, the trail itself lay wrapped in a darkness as complete as the clouds gathering above.

It couldn’t be Ike lying dead up there in that darkness. It couldn’t be.

But what was she going to do if it was? She’d sent him after Denny, despite Cade’s protests that he was too inexperienced. If Ike was dead, then she was responsible, as surely as if she’d loaded the gun and pulled the trigger.

“You okay?”

Cade’s voice was soft, full of an understanding that almost unleashed the tears building inside.

She nodded, licking her lips as she battled for control. She was a ranger, damn it, and she would continue to act like one, no matter who was up there.

“Grab your coat.” She wrapped a shaking hand around the handle and opened the door. “Bad weather has a habit of coming in fast.”

He nodded, getting his coat and the crime scene kit
from behind the seat as she climbed out of the truck. The wind blasted around her with icy sharpness, filled with the scent of the oncoming storm. They had to get up there before the rain hit and destroyed any lingering evidence. She zipped up her coat, but the sound of a truck engine coming up the hill behind them made her spin around.

It was a red truck she recognized. Ronan’s. And Steve was sitting beside him.

“Shouldn’t he be in the hospital?” Cade asked, limping around to stand beside her. His shoulder brushed hers, and warmth jumped between them. She fleetingly wished he’d stand closer. Wrap an arm around her shoulder and enfold her in his heat, because right now she was chilled to the bone—and it wasn’t because of the weather.

“Yeah, he should,” she replied, as Ronan climbed stiffly out of his truck. She raised her voice a little. “So why isn’t he in the hospital?”

“Because he has no intention of twiddling his thumbs in bed while madwomen are running around trying to murder his workmates and best friend.” Ronan shrugged into his leather jacket, his face pale but determined. “These bitches are mine.”

“You and Cade have a common goal, then. Fitting really, seeing you’re both so goddamned stubborn.”

A grin teased Ronan’s lips as his gaze went to Cade. “She could teach both of us a thing or two about stubborn. You know that, don’t you?”

“So I’m beginning to discover,” Cade said dryly, then touched a hand to her spine. The heat of his fingers soaked through the jacket and swept across her skin like fire. “We’d better get up there.”

“So says the three-legged wolf who should also be in the hospital,” she muttered, but she knew she was only delaying the inevitable. She snagged the crime scene kit from him and slung it over her shoulder. “Steve, you want to grab the cameras from the back of Ronan’s truck?”

“You carry cameras in the back of the truck?” Cade asked as they began to make their way up the trail.

“Specially made locked compartment,” Ronan answered. “They’re mine rather than the department’s. I’m a would-be photographer in my spare time.”

“Really?” Cade’s voice held a note of surprise. “What sort of cameras do you use?”

Savannah couldn’t help smiling as the two men conversed. Other than her sister, they were the two most important people in her life. Given all the hostility Cade had thrown Ronan’s way yesterday, the easy way they talked now was something of a surprise—and a welcome one. But had anything really changed? Or was it simply a matter of common interest breaking down the barriers? After all, while she might love Cade, she knew nothing about his life or what he did outside his job—though he’d once told her his work
was
his life. But a man who lived for his work didn’t go on alcoholic benders and smash up his place when a woman walked out of his life.

It was, she thought, a rather telling reaction to the feelings he’d refused to admit at Rosehall.

The trail ahead turned sharply to the left. If the hiker who’d found the body had his facts right, they’d find the victim not far ahead.

Her stomach began to churn even harder, and she found herself praying that it wasn’t Ike, that it
was somebody, anybody, else. Which wasn’t entirely fair, because that somebody else would have family, friends, and loved ones just like Ike did.

When she found the twisted pine the hiker had mentioned, she hesitated. Then she determinedly swept aside the drooping branches and kept on going. And there, on the dirt and rotting leaves not far off the trail, was the naked body of a man. She stopped, her gaze sweeping his mutilated, spread-eagled body before coming to rest on his face.

It wasn’t Ike.

It was Denny.

Relief ran through her, swiftly followed by anger. Denny might not have been anyone’s favorite kid, but he
had
been a kid, and he deserved better than this.

The three men stopped on either side of her. “Shit,” Ronan said softly. “Denny.”

“Yeah. Still getting bad breaks, even in death.” She hauled the kit off her shoulder and unzipped it. “So where the hell is Ike if Denny is here?”

“Hopefully not a hostage.” Ronan glanced at her. “Have you contacted Search and Rescue? It’s not their usual type of rescue, but still—”

“I know. And Steve did.”

Cade squatted on his heels, his expression pensive as he studied the scene before them. “This is different than the other two murders. This isn’t a ritual, just a killing.”

Her gaze jumped back to the body and, for the first time, she saw the differences. “No stone ring.”

“And while his penis and scrotum are sliced away, they didn’t remove his heart,” Ronan added. “We have a different killer.”

“Or a copycat,” Cade said grimly.

“It can hardly be a copycat when we’ve kept the murders out of the newspapers,” Ronan retorted. “And none of us has let the cat out of the bag.”

“It’s not a copycat,” she said softly, staring at the body. For an instant, it almost seemed like she could feel Denny’s struggle for life, taste that moment of stark horror when he realized what was going to happen. Could smell the thick smell of citrus and cigarette smoke as cold steel slid into his spine and pain flared like fire …

Then the sensations slid away and she shuddered.

“It was the same killer,” she said, glad her voice showed no sign of the shakiness growing inside, “only she doesn’t believe in the ritual. She just needs the thrill, the blood.” She hesitated. “It was Candy who did this.”

Cade looked up at her. “What makes you think that?”

She hesitated again. “Clairvoyance, instinct … whatever you want to call it. It hits at the weirdest times.”

“But it’s usually always correct.” Ronan turned around to grab a camera. “So, if this is the same killer, why the ritual on the other two?”

“There are at least two killers, not one,” Cade answered, his gaze returning to the body. “The other murders were a lure to get me here. This looks almost incidental.”

Savannah handed Steve the crime scene tape, then crossed her arms, trying to warm the chill from her body as Ronan began taking shots of Denny. “While
I’m pretty sure both Candy and Lonny are involved, who is the third person? You can’t mean Anni.”

“Why not? If she’s seeing Candy regularly, then she’s a suspect.” Cade glanced up at her again. “But I wasn’t talking about her. I meant Nelle.”

Savannah frowned. “Nelle’s not in Ripple Creek.”

“You can’t be sure of that. As you said, it’s been ten years. She could have changed beyond recognition.”

Ronan moved around the circle to get shots from the other side of the body. She followed carefully, scanning the ground as she walked, looking for prints or anything else that would lead them to their killer.
Killers
. “Maybe, but Nelle wasn’t involved in the Rosehall murders.”

“Why are you so sure of that?”

“Why are you so sure that she was?”

He raised an eyebrow as he rose and walked toward the body. The leaves covering the ground crunched softly with his every step, like the faint crunching of bones. She shivered.

“Because I’ve always believed Jontee wasn’t working alone.” He squatted beside Denny’s body. “As I’ve said before, if he wasn’t clear-minded enough to run the day-to-day operations of Rosehall, how would he be able to run something as meticulously planned as the murders? Nelle handled the day-to-day stuff, so why couldn’t she have handled the darker operations as well?”

She squatted beside him. “Because she didn’t have any darkness in her.”

He raised his eyebrows. “And Jontee did?”

She hesitated. “Not in the beginning, but toward the end, yeah, he did. He certainly seemed to be growing
more frustrated and angry over the last few weeks that I was there.”

“Maybe because someone else was controlling his actions.”

“I don’t know. I mean, if someone
did
have control over him, wouldn’t I have noticed it in his thoughts?”

“Not if you weren’t looking for it. You were eighteen, remember, and looking for sexual adventure, not bloodshed and darkness.”

But she’d found
them
regardless. She rubbed her arms to ward off a growing chill. “As far as I’m aware, Nelle wasn’t a telepath.”

“Which doesn’t preclude the possibility that she was. It could just mean that she was clever enough to disguise it from you.”

“Nelle had no deceit in her.” She hesitated, but couldn’t help adding, “Not like some others who were there.”

“I was there to apprehend a killer, Vannah,” he retorted. “I could hardly be honest about
that
, given I had no idea just how trustworthy anyone really was.”

“People,” Ronan interrupted. “Argue later. Let’s find what clues there are before this storm hits.”

She glanced at Ronan and saw the hint of censure in his eyes. She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” She glanced at her watch. “Doc Carson should be here any minute. Steve, you want to go meet him and fetch a tarp while you’re there? It’ll at least protect the body and the immediate area around it when the storm hits.”

He nodded and headed off down the path. She pulled on some gloves and glanced at Ronan to ensure he’d taken the shots of the body’s position. When he
nodded, she knelt and carefully lifted Denny’s right hand.

“There are abrasions along the knuckles,” she noted. “He hit something pretty hard.”

“Hopefully, Candy.” Cade shifted a little. “Look at the jaggedness of the genital wound—it looks ripped more than cut.”

“Maybe she was in a hurry.”

He looked at her. “Or she used something other than a knife.”

She closed her eyes for a minute, battling the surge of sick images that rose at his words. “A blood frenzy.”

It happened only rarely in the werewolf population, but it was the one thing that had led to the still common human myth that werewolves became insane killers every time the moon bloomed full. Truth was, though the desire to hunt was an instinct every wolf possessed, it was one very easily controlled. It had to be, because while wolves might be stronger and faster, the human population had always vastly outnumbered them.

But just as there were humans who snapped the bonds of sanity and rationality to become killers, so there were also wolves. Those wolves were the ones who hunted. And humans, with none of the natural cunning of a wolf’s normal prey, were an easy target.

Cade looked around. “If this was a blood killing, then it didn’t happen here. There’s no sign of a struggle. Denny might have been a kid in lust, but even he would have seen the frenzy come over her eventually.”

“Yes.” She hesitated, remembering the clairvoyant
images. “But she did have a knife. She drove it through his spine.”

Cade’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t comment as he rolled Denny onto his side. The knife wound was there, just as she’d seen.

“The smell of the blood must have sent her into the frenzy,” he commented.

Ronan walked up behind her and took some shots. “If this was a blood killing, why move the body and try to make it look like the others? It would have made more sense if she’d let us think this killing was unrelated. That alone suggests the frenzy wasn’t all-consuming.”

“There are some blood takers who learn to control it over time. Or at least long enough to get somewhere where they can’t hunt humanity.”

“That still doesn’t explain this,” she said, indicating the way Denny was positioned.

Cade scratched his jaw, his expression thoughtful. “Maybe she was ordered to make Denny look like a ritual killing, but the frenzy started getting the better of her. Or maybe the approach of the hiker forced her to retreat or risk being discovered.”

“Either way,” Ronan said, “there’s going to be DNA evidence on his body.”

“And more wherever this murder actually happened.” She glanced up as rain began to sprinkle on them. The patch of sky visible through the trees was as black as coal. “That storm is about to hit. We’d better get looking. Ronan, you wait for Steve.”

He nodded and handed her his spare camera. She and Cade rose and began a thorough search of the immediate area. When they found nothing, they broadened
the search. About ten minutes later, the wind dropped, leaving the forest in an expectant hush—at least until the rain began to pelt down. The icy drops of moisture hit her hard, chilling her skin and slithering past her neck and down her spine. She shivered and flicked up the collar of her jacket, but it didn’t seem to help much. The splats of water against the leaf-covered ground sounded as sharp as gunshots, and despite the cover of the tree canopy, the world had become gray.

“Over here,” Cade called, his voice sounding close even if she couldn’t see him through the trees and the wet gloom.

She made her way toward the sound of his voice and found him squatting over a muddy footprint and a patch of disturbed ground just in front of a small cave.

She knew the cave. Most of the wolves who grew up in Ripple Creek did. Thanks to the council’s views on the whole sex-before-marriage thing, it was often in places like this that teenage wolves first began exploring their sexuality. Certainly, she and Ronan had explored in a very similar place.