Layla and Andy both jumped. “Me! Me!”
“All right. If you’re good, he might let you sit in the police cruiser. If you’re really good, he might even share some of the blueberry pie he’s hiding in the break room.”
“Mommy, please?” asked Layla. “We’ll be good.”
Elaine nodded. “Okay, but you need to listen to everything Sergeant Dixon says. We’ll be back soon.”
The kids sprinted toward the officer, and they disappeared into the station, talking a mile a minute to the sergeant.
Drew turned to them, his face serious again. “There’s something you need to see. Road trip time.”
They followed Drew to a police cruiser parked in back of the station. Connor held open the front passenger door for Elaine and then sat in the seat in back. Drew started the car and drove the quiet streets of Lake Gemini.
“We’ve located Hill’s house,” he said. “It’s registered to a Jinny Corcoran.”
“What’s her connection to Hill?” asked Connor.
“She’s his sister. Hill was born Dwayne Royal Corcoran. Hill was his mother’s maiden name.”
“Okay,” said Elaine. “Can Jinny help us?”
“We haven’t located her yet, but we did find some other women at the house. Unfortunately, none of them are talking.” Drew turned down a side road leading to a new development just outside Lake Gemini. As he completed his turn, he glanced at Elaine. “I don’t want to alarm you, but what we found at Hill’s home is the worst crazy-ass shit I’ve ever seen in all my time on the force. You don’t have to go inside if you don’t want to.”
“No, I need to see it.” Elaine sat up straight. “I need to know what we’re up against.”
“Okay, just be aware when you see something like this, it stays with you.” Drew turned the corner into a cul-de-sac of large homes with pristine gardens. “Royal Hill left his home in a hurry, and he didn’t care about leaving things behind. I think we’re dealing with someone who has completely lost the plot. A part of him, no matter how small, probably looks forward to getting caught. If you ask me, that makes him very dangerous.”
They drove for a time. With each block they passed, the houses grew more opulent. Having grown up in a modest neighborhood, Connor regarded the homes with a touch of disdain. In his eyes, they seemed ostentatious with their unnecessary winding driveways, pillars, and statues of lions out front.
Before they even parked near Hill’s mansion, Connor would have recognized it from the cruisers lining the road in front of it. It was one of these custom-built, artsy-fartsy, colorless buildings with strange angles. It looked more like a mausoleum than a home.
They were given protective booties and warned not to touch anything. Once they were properly attired for a crime scene, they headed inside, past the officers guarding the entrance. One breath told Connor the police men and women on the case were all shifters as well. Drew would have assigned the case carefully, relegating his human constables to other cases.
Once inside the massive foyer, Connor grasped Elaine’s hand and they followed Drew upstairs.
“As you know,” said Drew, “I wouldn’t normally invite civilians to a crime scene, but this is different. Like Elaine said, as shape shifters, we all need to know what our enemies are made of. I’ve tried hard to manage the needs of both the shifter and human communities. Our people are dealing with different challenges, and law enforcement has to shape itself around those challenges. For that reason, we sometimes take steps humans wouldn’t understand or condone, but it’s for everyone’s safety.”
Connor knew what Drew meant. As shifters, they didn’t always have the luxury of throwing a criminal in jail. Sometimes they had to kill. When they’d gone after August Crane and his Alpha Brethren, it hadn’t been for the purposes of trying to persuade Crane to give up his evil plans. They’d needed to make sure those plans never came to fruition.
“I believe Royal Hill is slaughtering our people,” continued Drew, “and I suspect he’s been doing it for a long time.” They headed down a hallway and up another set of stairs, pausing outside a closed door. “I want to be clear. We will not be pursuing Hill with the aim of incarceration or rehabilitation. There will be no trial. When we find him, we will put him down.”
Elaine and Connor nodded.
Drew put his hand on the doorknob. “We’ll be seeing dead bodies, all Caucasian females. There’s no blood anywhere, but you might still want to brace yourselves.” He opened the door.
Connor squinted as a beam of light shone in through one of the large windows. He blinked and focused his vision.
There were women, dead women, on pedestals. Posed like mannequins in a ladies’ dress shop, their unseeing gazes made every cell in his body revolt in disgust and horror. For a moment, he just stared as the seeds of future nightmares implanted themselves in his brain. He tried not to breathe, but his sense of smell was too good, and the faint odor of chemicals and fear turned his stomach. They all looked alike, blonde with glassy blue eyes. There were differences here and there, owing to bone structure and height and weight, but otherwise, as a group, the resemblance was startling.
The worst part of all was they all looked like Elaine.
He turned to her. She stood still, her face framed in sadness.
“Do you know who they are?” she asked Drew.
He nodded. “We’ve been able to identify them all, thanks to fingerprints. For the most part, they’re prostitutes. Most are shifters, but there are a couple of humans. One’s a teacher who went missing a year ago. The one on the far right is the daughter of a local pastor. He thought she rebelled and ran away. Clearly, she ran into Royal Hill somewhere on her travels.”
When Drew walked over to a table at the far end of the room, Connor took the opportunity to bring Elaine into his arms. She was shaking. He ran a hand over her hair, aching to absorb her sorrow and bring it into his body. If only it was possible.
