Once we were parked, I cautiously got out of the car, sniffing the air and straining my ears. These assholes had guns—no reason to be careless. Felipe did the same, getting out of the truck and crouching as we walked around. I smelled hibiscus, dandelion, and old piss from a dog that had marked its territory at least three days before. I could hear the flitting of bat wings above us and an owl hooting a half mile away. Nothing else. Whoever had left the car was long gone. Why did they leave it right here? There was no way we wouldn’t find it. Even if they’d pulled it off the road five or six feet, we probably would have missed it.
“Wanna take a look?” Felipe asked as he stood to full height.
I nodded, walking toward the car. Even though no one was around, something felt wrong. Another scent tickled at my nose. It was faint. A human, but…distant…or fading? Had a human been in the car with them? Was I smelling the residual scent? Pheromones that had been left behind?
“Do you smell that?” I asked.
Felipe glanced at me as he was getting ready to peek in the driver’s side door. “Human?”
“Yeah. So it’s not just me?”
“Nope, it’s there. Fainter than the smell of shifter. Maybe they stole the car from a human. Could that be it?”
I didn’t like that explanation; it didn’t alleviate the feeling of wrongness to the situation. The closer I got to the car, the stronger the smell got. Felipe checked the front seats, and I looked at the bench seats in the back. The car was totally clean. I caught the pungent sour smell of gunpowder, but nothing else.
“Back hatch?” Felipe asked.
“Sure.”
Felipe hit a button on the hatch door and it rose automatically. In the darkness, I never would have seen it, but the dome light illuminated whatwas there. Felipe leaped back. I stood stock still, gritting my teeth and growling. A body had been stuffed into the trunk. A man, his eyes dead and sightless, stared back at me. His mouth hung open in a look of shocked pain. Thick black bruises circled his throat where I could see he’d probably been choked to death.
Now I knew where the smell was coming from. The smell of a dead human. A human who’d not been dead long enough to start stinking. I’d scented the fading remnants of life.
I looked back at Felipe, who was already on the phone. I frowned. “Who are you calling?”
“The cops, bro.”
I hated talking to the cops. It never seemed to go well. There was an undercurrent of anti-shifter racism in the police force. I figured it was based in fear. We were stronger, faster, and more powerful than any human. It made us very difficult to deal with from a police perspective.
But I looked back at the body and knew Felipe had made the right call. I turned away from the awful sight of the dead man.This felt like a setup. Had Javi’s guys dumped the body here on purpose, knowing we’d come across it? As crazy as it sounded, it had thefeelof truth.
Felipe hung up the phone and shoved it into his pocket. “They have a cruiser nearby. Probably one of the ones who responded to the shooting.” He glanced back at the corpse and winced before turning away. “Christ, man. What is this?”
“An attempted frame job from the looks of it,” I said.
“Wait…seriously?”
I nodded. “It’s not for us to take the fall. The cops aren’t that dumb, but it will get us on the police radar. Make life difficult. That’s my theory, anyway.” I could hear a siren in the distance getting closer.
Felipe ran a hand through his hair. “Well, should we run? Get out of here?”
I shook my head. “No. We did nothing wrong. Besides, they’re already here.” I gestured back up the road. Red-and-blue flashing lights exploded the night sky as a police cruiser crested the hill and came toward us.
The car pulled up and two guys got out. Felipe and I knew how things like this could go, so we both raised our hands to show we weren’t a danger to them. The cop from the passenger seat had a hand on the butt of his pistol as he came forward. It was all I could do not to roll my eyes.
The cop who’d driven the car looked much more at ease and nodded to us. “I’m Officer Duggan, this is my partner, Officer Keck. Are you the gentlemen who called the emergency line?”
“Yeah. We were driving and saw this SUV. Doors were hanging open, so we stopped to see if they needed help and found the body,” I said.
Officer Keck raised an eyebrow and looked behind me toward the SUV. “And just what the hell were you two boys doing out so late? Couple of shifters like you? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“No sir, just out late,” I said.
“You boys been drinking?” Keck asked, stepping closer.
“Bryce?” Duggan said with a snap of irritation in his voice. “We’ve got a dead body to worry about. I think that’s the most important thing. Call the station, tell them to send a crime-scene unit out here.”
Keck eyed me for another second before turning to go back to the car. Duggan gave me an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Anyway, can I get your names? Then we’ll try to go through a timeline.”
