Her Lone Wolf (20 page)

Danica was right. He put on the latex gloves she gave him, then shuffled through the stack of pictures while she went through the dresser. To him, they looked like the kind of surveillance photos a private eye might take. But they weren’t of cheating husbands or philandering wives. Instead, they were of the men McDermott had murdered. And some he hadn’t yet had a chance to kill.

“Why hasn’t McDermott come back here since killing Vender?” Danica asked as she opened the closet. “Did he think we were getting close?”

“Maybe. Or maybe he got spooked when he realized another shifter was on his tail.”

“You don’t think he left town, do you?”

“No. He likes playing this game with me way too much to skip out.”

Clayne tossed the photos on the dresser and picked up the notepad beside them. He flipped through it, frowning as he realized it was a dossier to go with each of the men in the photos. McDermott not only had names to go with faces, but every other personal piece of information you could possibly think of. This wacko had been planning his kills for a long time. And from the list of names and faces, he was just getting started.

Danica tapped one of the baby food jars. “Why didn’t he take his trophies?”

“I don’t know,” Clayne admitted. “That part doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe he figured he could always get more.” Danica turned to survey the room. “Do you think it’d be worthwhile sitting on the house in case he shows up?”

Clayne set down the notebook. “I don’t think he’s coming back here, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

She took out her cell phone. “I’m going to call this in.”

“You know that once you give them McDermott’s name you’re putting every FBI agent and cop who gets anywhere near McDermott at risk, don’t you?”

“I don’t think we have choice,” she said. “If we don’t find this guy, we’re as good as giving him a free shot at his next victim. McDermott could be out there getting ready to kill someone else right now.”

She was right, of course.

While they waited for the feds to show up, they checked the house one more time, looking for anything that might give them an idea as to where McDermott had gone.

“Look for anything that might give anyone a clue that he’s a shifter while you’re at it,” Clayne said as he looked through a pile of old mail sitting on the kitchen counter.

Danica frowned. “Exactly what am I looking for?”

“I don’t know. Just look for something that screams cat shifter.”

“Like what? A human-sized scratching post?”

Clayne’s mouth twitched. Somehow, he didn’t think it’d be that obvious.

By the time Tony and Carhart showed up with half the task force and a CSI crew an hour later, he and Danica had already gone over the house twice. If there was anything there to find, they’d have found it.

Clayne wasn’t too surprised when Tony didn’t come over to find out what was going on. Clayne couldn’t blame him. They’d essentially cut him out of the case at the most crucial moment. Danica was going to have to do some damage control to repair that bridge.

Carhart descended on both of them the minute he walked in, a scowl on his face. “What the hell do you mean not keeping me in the loop about something like this? You never mentioned you even had a lead, much less a prime suspect.”

Clayne would have told him to go piss up a rope, but Danica merely gave him an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, sir. We thought it best to follow up on the lead first before involving you.” She lowered her voice as if she was afraid someone might overhear. “I didn’t want to embarrass the Bureau if anyone discovered what kind of angle we were pursuing.”

“What the hell are you talking about, embarrass the Bureau?” he asked, automatically lowering his voice as well.

Damn, Danica was good at this manipulation stuff. Sometimes it wasn’t fair how easily she could control the average man.

“Sir, we knew the task force had all the traditional bases covered, so we decided to look at the case from a different angle,” she explained. “We wanted to make sure you and the FBI maintained plausible deniability if our idea proved wrong and the press learned about it.”

Carhart eyed her thoughtfully. He was probably trying to figure out if she was feeding him a load of crap or not. But if there was one thing people like him understood and valued, it was covering the boss’s ass.

“I understand.” He surveyed the living room. “What’s the story on this guy? I want to know who he is and what led you to him.”

Danica gave him a sanitized version that was pretty close to the truth—at least a version of it. And she did it with a straight face that Clayne could never have managed.

Ray McDermott had witnessed a mountain lion attack in Colorado a few years ago and what he’d seen had apparently unhinged him. Ray had moved to the Sacramento area after that and changed his name to Douglas Lister. Along with his new name, he had a newfound urge to hunt people.

“Are you saying this guy thinks he’s a mountain lion?” Carhart asked.

Danica shrugged. “We don’t know that for sure, sir, but you can see why we wanted to check this out quietly before we put it out there.”

Clayne’s mouth curved. It sounded so good he almost believed it himself.

Carhart nodded. “Good work. If it got out that the FBI was tracking down a werecougar, it could be embarrassing. Any chance this guy was involved in those attacks out in Colorado?”

“We don’t think so,” Clayne jumped in. He didn’t want the FBI sniffing around a case involving more deaths at the hands of a shifter. Although by now the DCO would have made sure those medical examiner reports were sanitized. “We checked the ME reports and they were legit animal attacks. McDermott is trying to recreate the violence he saw in the mountain lion attacks.”

“Okay, let’s get this guy’s face in every newspaper and news channel,” Carhart said.

Clayne exchanged looks with Danica. “That’s not a good idea,” he said. “If we back McDermott into a corner, he could do something crazy. Like go for multiple victims or take hostages or bolt.”

That made the fed think twice. “Okay. Then get a BOLO out to all levels of law enforcement, but do it over the phone. I don’t want someone with a scanner picking this up over the radio. And once we find this guy, I want to be on the scene when he’s taken down.” He gave Clayne a pointed look. “No more lone wolf crap.”

* * *

Tony stayed at McDermott’s house to help search for clues while Clayne and Danica went back to the FBI offices. The moment they walked into the command center, Wayne intercepted them. “The Hunter called a few minutes ago. He knows you’ve identified him and he knew you were at his house. He’s really pissed. Said that if you’re not going to play by the rules, neither will he.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Danica asked.

“No clue, but he said he’s going to change the game, hunt someone who will make everyone more motivated to follow the rules.” The profiler looked at Clayne. “He said you’d understand.”

Right now, he had no idea what this psycho was thinking. In the command center, agents were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Clayne jerked his head in that direction. “What’s going on in there?”

“The Hunter left the phone off the hook instead of hanging up. We’re trying to trace it. If it’s like before, it’s going to be useless, but we figured there’s nothing wrong with trying.”

Clayne frowned. McDermott hadn’t left the phone off the hook by accident. He’d done it because he wanted them to know where he’d been.

“Number’s coming through!” someone called out.

Clayne and Danica followed Hobson into the room. A phone number slowly appeared on the main computer screen at the front of the room, one digit at a time. He found himself holding his breath, along with everyone else, as each number emerged. The area code came first, followed by the local exchange. Then a longer delay as the last four numbers popped up, one after another.

There were still two numbers left to go when he heard Danica let out a strangled moan. “Oh God, no.”

“What is it?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, but just kept staring at the screen, whispering the word
no
over and over and really scaring the shit out of him.

“We have it,” a curly-haired tech announced. “Running the address.”

“I already know where it is,” Danica said in that same anguished tone.

Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at her. But she only continued to stare at the screen.

“Danica,” Clayne prompted.

She turned to him, her face suddenly pale. “It’s Tony’s home number.”

* * *

Clayne drove this time. Mostly because he didn’t think Danica was stable enough to get behind the wheel. He’d seen her face a lot of terrible stuff, but right now she looked about as devastated as he’d ever seen her. He’d only met Beth Moretti once, but he liked her. And now she was in the hands of a crazy shifter because her husband was working the case.

Clayne gripped the wheel tighter. He broke every traffic law on the books getting to Tony’s place—a convoy of FBI vehicles and cop cruisers behind him. When they got to the sprawling ranch house, Clayne drove right up on the nicely manicured lawn and slammed on the brakes.

The moment Clayne saw the front door was open, he turned to tell Danica to stay in the car, but she already had her weapon out and was running for the house. He swore and chased after her.

She stopped in the doorway. “Is he still here?”

He inhaled deeply through his nose, then shook his head. “No.”

She took a tentative step forward, then stopped again. “Is Beth…?”

Danica let the rest of the question hang, but he knew what she wanted to know. Was Beth dead? Clayne didn’t answer right away, but instead took another sniff. “I don’t smell blood.”

He led the way into the house, his gun lowered. The couch in the living room was overturned, as were the two matching chairs. The coffee table was broken in two. The rest of the room was pretty trashed, too, books and knickknacks everywhere.

Clayne stepped over what used to be a statue of an angel.

“It looks like she put up a fight,” he told Danica.

Behind them, federal agents and local cops poured in the door. They immediately split up and searched the house, hoping against hope they were wrong and that Beth was hiding somewhere in the house. But Clayne knew better. Beth wasn’t here. So while they did that, he searched the house for something that’d tell him where McDermott had taken Beth.

He was still checking out the living room when Tony ran in, Carhart on his heels. Danica hurried to intercept Tony, but she couldn’t hide the damage. The fed shook his head, mumbling something unintelligible over and over even as Danica tried to reassure him that Beth was still alive.

On the other side of the living room, Carhart was on his phone telling whoever was on the other end that one of their own was in danger and that he wanted every FBI agent and cop out looking for McDermott. Shit, he almost sounded like a worthwhile human being for once.

Clayne headed for the kitchen, only to stop in mid-stride when he heard a buzzing sound. He stopped and cocked his head, listening, but he couldn’t hear anything over the FBI agents and crime scene techs and Carhart and Tony and Danica all talking at once.

“Everyone, shut up. Now!” he roared so loud the house shook. Even Danica jumped. “Listen!”

The entire room froze, falling silent as everyone listened for something they couldn’t possibly hear with their ordinary hearing. But Clayne heard it. A vibrating cell phone. He followed the sound across the room to the sofa. The noise was coming from underneath it. He grabbed the leather couch and flipped it over on its side with one hand, not caring who saw his show of strength. He dug in between the seat cushions that had somehow managed to stay in place when McDermott had trashed the living room until he found the cell phone hidden there.

Clayne thumbed the answer button and put it to his ear. “Hello, Douglas. Or do you prefer Ray?”

There was a silence on the other end for a moment before the cat shifter laughed. “So you figured out who I am. And I always thought dogs were dumb.”

Clayne caught movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced up to see Danica doing everything she could to keep Tony from grabbing the phone out of his hand.

“You took someone you weren’t supposed to,” he told the other shifter. “What kind of hunt do you expect to get out of a woman?”

On the other side of the room, Tony almost collapsed at the words.

“This isn’t about good hunting. This is about you cheating,” McDermott said. “We had a fun game going. I grab rabbits and you try to stop me. But then you went and screwed it up. Figuring out who I am and tossing my place isn’t part of the game.”

Clayne flexed his free hand, forcing his claws to stay put instead of extending like they wanted to. What he wouldn’t give to get his hands around McDermott’s throat right now.

“So, what kind of game are we playing now?” he asked.

“The same kind we were playing before. I’m going to release my fresh little bunny at midnight. You have until then to figure out where I’m going to do it.” He laughed softly. “Something tells me you’ll work even harder this time to get there since I’ve given you such motivation. Just remember, this game is between us. If I see anyone else,
smell
anyone else, I might be tempted to end the game before we start, like I did when you brought in that park ranger and those two feds. What fun would that be?”

Clayne clenched his jaw. “How do I know she’s even still alive? This place is pretty trashed. For all I know, you could have killed her already. It’s obvious you have control issues.”

The shifter let out a derisive snort. “Coming from someone like you, that’s rich. But don’t worry, I’m keeping her safe for the hunt.”

Like Clayne was going to take this asshole’s word for it. “Put her on the phone.”

The killer didn’t answer and Clayne was half afraid the man had hung up. But he could still hear McDermott’s even breathing on the other end of the line.

“I know you have her there listening to everything you’re saying just so you can scare her more than she already is,” Clayne said. “Hell, you’re probably popping a boner right now from watching her tremble.”