That was probably true. She shook her head as Louis asked to be connected to the lead detective for the task force. How bad was it that her boss knew the full name of the task force lead when she didn’t?
“I called Trey…Officer Duncan, but got his voicemail, so I left a message for him to call me back,” she said. “I didn’t think this was the kind of thing you leave on someone’s voicemail.”
Louis nodded, waving his hand when Samantha was about to ask if she should call Trey back. “The head of the task force just picked up.”
Samantha leaned back in the chair, listening as her boss explained everything she’d discovered. He covered it in detail, answering what seemed like an endless list of questions. She couldn’t help but notice he kept using her name over and over, making sure the detective knew she was the one to get credit for this discovery. It was difficult to put into words how much she appreciated this.
After another minute or so of conversation, Louis hung up, a smile on his face.
“The police are heading to Hugh’s place to pick him up.” Louis leaned back in his leather office chair. “They’re also sending someone over to take your statement.”
She nodded. She would rather have headed over to Trey’s place, but it made sense the cops would want to take her statement. She was a little surprised they hadn’t asked him to go to the station to do it, though.
Getting to his feet, Louis moved around the desk to sit on the edge, gazing down at her with kind eyes.
“I’m glad you came here and told me all of that,” he said quietly. “It completely destroys my established timeline, but it could have been so much worse.”
Samantha frowned, trying to understand what Louis was talking about. Apparently seeing the confusion on her face, her boss picked up the rest of his thought.
“Unfortunately, it’s going to force me to do some things earlier than I would have preferred, but it would have been much worse if you’d told anyone what you’d discovered. That would have ruined everything.”
Samantha straightened in her chair, alarm bells going off.
Hugh wasn’t the Butcher.
Louis was.
Crap.
Suddenly, a hand came around in front of her face and slapped a wet cloth across her nose and mouth. She struggled immediately, trying to stand up, then clawing at the hand over her face when that didn’t work.
But whoever was behind her was incredibly strong and held her down like she was a little kid. Louis stepped in then, grabbing her flailing hands and shoving them down to the arms of the chair. Her heart felt like it was about to explode in her chest even as her mind recognized the ether-like odor of chloroform.
Everything started to get fuzzy then, her last thoughts of Trey and wishing she’d told him she loved him on that phone message she’d left.
***
“Are we seriously about to Skype with someone from STAT on the top level of an uptown parking garage?” Trey asked as he watched Connor boot up his laptop. “Isn’t this some kind of security violation? Couldn’t our conversation be hacked and show up on TMZ or something?”
“STAT loaded an encryption program on my laptop,” Connor said with a snort, not bothering to look up from the screen of his computer. “Yours, too, by the way. Something tells me even the NSA would have a hard time eavesdropping on this call.”
Before Trey could say anything, the echoing squawk of tires on concrete caught Trey’s attention, and he turned to see Trevor’s blue Ford Thunderbird coming up the ramp to the top level of the parking garage. Hale was sitting in the passenger seat of the beautifully restored classic, looking as confused about the last-minute meeting as Trey was.
“What the hell is going on?” Hale demanded as he stepped out of the convertible and strode toward them. “Trevor and I were at a club in the middle of talking to a cocktail waitress who’s sure she saw Ramiro Cordova Sunday before last, then we got your text telling us to meet you here ASAP.”
“Sorry about that,” Connor said, still focused on the laptop sitting on the hood of Trey’s Jeep. “But STAT sent me a link for a Skype meeting. Said it was urgent.”
“I hope so,” Trevor said, coming over to join them. “The waitress was going to talk to the manager about letting us see some of the club’s video footage. She’s pretty sure that soul-sucker woman was in the club around the same time as Cordova.”
Around lunch, STAT had finally come through with the identity of the desiccated body they’d found at the McCommas Bluff Landfill. Ramiro Cordova worked in the financial district as an investment analyst. Unlike the previous two victims, Cordova had only lived in the Dallas area for about a month or so. Trey guessed that was why it had taken STAT so long to come up with a name for the guy.
The four of them had spent most of the evening driving around the uptown club district, trying to find someone who might have seen Cordova. Trey and Connor had struck out, but it seemed that Trevor and Hale might have gotten lucky.
Since Connor was still busy setting up the Skype connection, Trey pulled out his phone to send a quick message to Samantha. He wanted to let her know that he was probably going to be late tonight and that it might be best if he met her at her place. Even if they didn’t do anything more than fall asleep in each other’s arms, that would be fine with him.
Trey immediately disregarded the handful of sports and news updates, homing in on the phone message from Samantha. The music in the last club they’d been in had been so loud he hadn’t even noticed his phone buzzing. He could only assume she’d called to say she finished up at the institute and was heading out.
He didn’t bother moving off to the side to play the message, since his pack mates would hear it anyway. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything to hide. One sniff at the preserve last night and all three of his teammates had known he and Samantha had slept together.
