“I think they’re more likely to be distracted by Davey’s infection and Cam’s arrest. At least for the time being.”
“As they should be. That’s definitely the headline. Emphasis on the part where we caught the bad guy. Speaking of which, Titus is on his way, and I’d like to have some concrete information about Yvette before he gets here. But you text me if anything changes with Davey.”
Vance nodded. “Of course. I won’t leave her side.”
I peeked into my bedroom, and my heart ached at the sight of my sister lying so still on the bed, gel ice packs lining her legs and one arm, the other hooked to an IV hanging from a metal stand.
“I’m doing my best for her,” Spencer assured me from the chair he’d pulled up to the mattress, where he was taking her pulse from one wrist.
“I know. Thank you. I’ll be downstairs for a few minutes, but Vance has instructions to let me know if anything changes.”
Spencer nodded. “Give him hell.” Then he turned back to Davey, and I headed downstairs.
“I hear you,” Bishop was saying as I pushed through the swinging doors into the dining area. “But what I don’t understand is why we should believe a single goddamn world that motherfucker says. He’s an admitted murderer.”
“He hasn’t actually admitted to murder,” I said, as Jace and Austin twisted to face me from the booth opposite Bishop. Where their only real task for the past half-hour had been to keep him out of the basement. “During the first interview, he admitted to seven counts of intentionally infecting a human woman—one more than we even knew about—but his goal wasn’t to kill them.” Which Bishop knew.
“And his MO for each of them was the same,” Austin added. “A single scratch on the hand or arm, delivered as he bumped into them on the street, after identifying and stalking them for days. He says most of them didn’t even register the scratch at that moment, and none of them identified him as the source.”
“And you believe him?” Bishop growled. “All of you?”
Jace sighed. “We’re going to talk to him again, but so far, I see no reason not to.”
“The records are right there in front of you, Bishop.” I pointed at the notebook where Cam had kept fairly meticulous hand-written notes, including names, dates, places, and pictures printed from social media and paper-clipped to the pages. “Yvette is not there.”
“He could have ripped out her page.”
“Why just hers?” Austin’s voice was so calm and steady I marveled at the effort. He’d lost Yvette too, but he didn’t get to be the furious, vengeful one. Over the past week, I’d come to realize that was because he felt almost as obligated to protect Bishop from himself as to avenge Yvette’s murder.
Which kept him on the steady and rational—though no less determined—end of their quest for justice.
“I don’t know why he’d rip out Yvette’s page! Why the hell would he keep such incriminating notes, anyway?” Bishop demanded, clearly frustrated that he had no way to refute our point.
“Because he didn’t think of it as a crime,” Austin explained for at least the third time. Not because Bishop couldn’t understand, but because he didn’t want to. He couldn’t stomach the idea that the bad guy we’d caught might not be the one who’d murdered his wife. That all our effort could offer him no closure. “He considered his ‘work’ to be a medical experiment he was conducting for all of shifter-kind, and he kept notes like an official record. Or as close as he could get, considering his somewhat basic understanding of scientific principles.”
“He wanted to be able to replicate any successes as closely as possible,” I added.
“Which is why you’re the first entry in this book?” Bishop flipped to the front, where my own picture stared out at me, clipped to a page just inside the cover. “It looks like he spent nearly three years trying do what his dad managed.” He tapped the word “success” where it was written in capital red letters at the bottom of my “entry.”
“Yes, that’s why.” I swallowed the mortifying discomfort I felt at the sight of myself—of my deepest trauma—documented in some psycho’s demented journal, as if I were a lab rat in a cage. “And Yvette’s not in that book,” I repeated.
Personally, I was starting to think he should be grateful for that.
“Then why the living hell is shedead?” He pounded on the table, then flinched at the pain clearly shooting through his shoulder, even after Spencer had removed the bullet and sewed up the wound. And shot him full of antibiotics.
I’d gotten a similar treatment, minus the bullet removal. And it hurt alotmore now than it had an hour ago, since the shock had worn off. As had the painkillers.
“I don’t know. And I’m sorry that I’ve failed you,” I said as I settled onto a chair near their booth.
Bishop sighed. “You haven’t—”
“But I’m working on it,” I assured him. “Wewillcatch Yvette’s killer. I just don’t think that’s Cam. And I don’t think you do either.” We’d been over and over the evidence.
Bishop scowled. “I want to talk to him again.”
“You can come down with me,” I said. “But just to listen. I promise I’ll ask everything we all want to know, but that’s my job, not yours.”
“Fine,” he grumbled.
