Two more flashlights turned on, illuminating the room better. Layla blinked. She’d been able to see in the dark for so long that she sometimes forgot what it was like to need lights to see.
“I could probably make it out of here by morning,” Jayson said. “But we can’t leave until we find Dylan’s girlfriend.”
She did a double take. “Girlfriend?”
“You didn’t tell her about Anya?” Dylan’s eyes narrowed. “What the hell were you two talking about all this time if it wasn’t Anya?”
Layla had to resist the urge to flash her eyes at him. “Other things,” she said. “Now, tell me about Anya and how she ended up missing.”
Chapter 7
“Layla’s going to be okay.”
Ivy wished she could be as sure of that as Landon. Despite how good her sister had looked in training, Layla wasn’t ready to be in the field alone. Now, thanks to Jayson’s selfish and irresponsible decision, she was in the middle of a war-torn country. If Jayson were there right then, Ivy would have decked him.
Okay, maybe not. But she was still mad as hell at him. If something happened to Layla…
“Come on,” Landon said, interrupting her thoughts. Turning off the engine, he reached over to take her hand. “The faster we wrap this thing up with Thorn, the faster we can get over to Ukraine.”
Fat chance of that, Ivy thought. Even if she hadn’t smelled the unmistakable stench of death the moment she and Landon got out of the black SUV, all they had to do was follow the crime tape to the group of detectives and crime scene techs clustered together on the shore of the Potomac to know things with this investigation were only going to get messier. Braden Hayes was standing off to one side talking on his cell phone.
“Is it the shifter?” Landon asked as he fell into step beside her.
If they’d been anywhere else but at a crime scene, Ivy might have smiled. She’d had partners before Landon, and none of them would ever have considered asking that. Because no one before Landon had taken the time to learn and understand what she or any other shifter was capable of. It was one of the many reasons she loved him so much.
“No,” she said softly. “The victim isn’t female either.”
She and Landon made their way through the crowd of onlookers there to gawk and flashed their Homeland Security badges at the uniformed officer guarding the crime scene. He glanced at the badges, then held up the tape so they could duck underneath.
Hayes’s eyes narrowed when he saw them. Ending his call, he shoved his cell phone in his pocket and intercepted them before they got within ten feet of the body. “The DHS make it a habit of checking out every floater who washes up on the shore of the Potomac?”
Landon returned his gaze calmly. “Only those who seem to interest a very particular Metro PD burglary detective.”
Hayes frowned. “You two following me or something?”
“Hardly,” Ivy said. “Our computers flag certain things from the Internet, newspapers, TV, and radio—including the MPD police channel. When your name popped up saying you were headed to a crime scene with a dead body, we thought it might have something to do with the theft at Thorn’s place.”
Hayes stared at her in amazement. “That’s either the most efficient use of government assets—or the creepiest. Either way, I think those conspiracy people out there worrying about Big Brother watching them might be onto something.”
“What’s the deal with the floater?” Landon asked, changing the subject.
Hayes hesitated, then motioned them forward with a jerk of his chin. She and Landon followed him over to the body lying on a plastic sheet ten feet from the edge of the river. Ivy knew from experience that the longer a body was in the water, the more its natural scent was washed away. Since she could still pick it up, that meant the guy hadn’t been in the water for very long—three or four hours at the most.
The detective nodded to the medical examiner crouched down beside the body. “Give us a minute.”
The woman eyed Ivy and Landon for a moment, then nodded and walked off, leaving them alone with Hayes.
“Joggers found him early this morning,” Hayes explained. “The officers who responded thought it might be a mugging, but he still had his license and wallet on him. When his name popped up as a known fence of stolen jewels, they called me.”
Ivy crouched down beside the dead man, wincing as she saw how badly he’d been beaten. Despite being in the water for hours, there was no mistaking the bruising, swelling, and abrasions on his face. Someone had worked him over good. She surreptitiously leaned in a bit closer, hoping to pick up a trace scent of whoever had beaten him up, but couldn’t pick up anything. While the victim’s scent still lingered, everything else had been washed away.
“Damn,” Landon breathed. “It looks like someone went at his fingers with a meat cleaver.”
Ivy looked at the man’s hands—and wished she hadn’t. Someone had hacked off his fingers with a sharp-bladed instrument. At first, she thought the killer had done it to hide the victim’s identity, but that didn’t make sense, since they hadn’t taken his ID. They hadn’t taken all his fingers either, but instead cut off one or two segments from each. Whoever had done it looked like they’d been trying to inflict as much pain as possible.
“Someone cut off his fingers to torture him,” Hayes said as if reading her mind.
At the detective’s soft words, Ivy looked up to see him regarding the dead man sadly.
