by Lena Loneson
When his other hand joined in and slipped below her panties, moving unerringly to her clit and flicking it with expert precision, Noire shuddered to climax. Pressing her lips together as her body shook, she whimpered, keeping her voice low, and his fingers rode with her to the finish. Pleasure fluttered outward, from the depths between her legs down her thighs, up across her stomach to the tips of her nipples. Warmth built in every part of her body, and the stretch of her back that was pressed to his chest felt alive and trembling with electricity even between the barriers of their clothing. He was so close that she could swear she felt the buttons of his uniform pressing into her spine.
If she fell from the ferry railing right now, she could probably float to safety on joy alone.
She was still gasping as he removed his hands, zipped up her jeans and smoothed her hair back. He turned her around again and smiled. “So, I never got your name.”
“That was amazing.” Noire blushed. “Sorry. Probably shouldn’t have blurted that out.”
“It’s okay. I’m pleased to hear it.” His voice seemed oddly formal now that it wasn’t growling in her ear.
“Just—I should probably repay the favor first.”
He shook his head with an exaggerated look of regret. “Wish you could, but we’re about forty-five seconds from shore.”
“Oh!” She looked down and sure enough, the islanders and tourists below were gathering their things. She held onto the Mountie as the ferryboat docked with a sudden thump, nearly throwing her from her feet. She didn’t want to leave the boat. She didn’t want to leave him.
“I’m Noire Pelletier,” she said, answering his earlier question. “Please call me Noire.”
“And Cam works for me.” His gaze ran from her toes to the top of her head in a sudden possessive motion. “Black,” he translated her given name. “Named for your hair or your eyes?”
“Neither. When I was born, my hair was blonde and my eyes were blue. They stayed that way until I was four. Mom said my dad picked the name—it was the color of the sky when he delivered me. The storm was so bad Mom had me out in a watchtower in the middle of the forest.” Noire was babbling now. She had no idea how to introduce herself to a man who’d just had his fingers buried deliciously in her pussy.
It seemed Constable Dawson—or Cam, rather—was equally flustered. “Which forest?” he asked.
“Uh, Algonquin Provincial Park. Born and raised, and now it pays my rent.”
The Mountie’s eyes narrowed in thought. “You’re the park warden, aren’t you? The one who identified bites on the last body. I read your report. Black bear, if I remember?”
“Yes,” Noire said. Her personal shields were up again and though her instincts urged her to trust him, human training told her to be careful. There was no reason to tell him—yet—that “the last body” had been her sister. As soon as anyone found out Noire was personally involved in the investigation, she knew her credibility plummeted. As if letting an officer of the law finger her before he knew her name really bolstered her reputation. Can I fuck up any worse?
She turned the line of inquisition around. “I didn’t see you at the last crime scene?”
“No,” he said. “Just got in from Prince George about an hour ago.”
Prince George was a small city in northern British Columbia, on the opposite side of Canada. They must really be pulling in the big guns for this case. At least he isn’t from Toronto—perhaps my little indiscretion won’t get back to the rest of the team.
She could hope.
Chapter Two
When they reached the tiny beach on Ward’s Island, the place was already swarming with detectives and crime scene technicians.
Noire hung back and let Cam greet them. She noticed that despite his relative youth (he couldn’t have been much older than thirty-five), many of the others deferred to him immediately. One detective with mocha-colored skin and a matching bun introduced him to the group. “Everyone, this is Constable Campbell Dawson of the RCMP. Dawson’s been tracking our perp through Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal.”
The others murmured in surprise. A steel-eyed man spoke up. “You’re saying this is a serial killer?”
“I believe so, yes,” Cam said, his voice deep and firm. “We’ve seen this MO in several different cities now. Young woman, skinned alive. In some cases just her back was degloved, in some cases her full body. The faces are never touched, but the bodies are marred by animal bites.”
“How do you know it’s not just a coincidence? Or a copycat?”
“There’s rarely coincidence in murder. While I may not have proof I can testify that the brutality involved in these crimes is genuine and not easy to replicate.”
The female detective who’d first introduced him spoke again to admonish the tech. “Constable Dawson was on the team responsible for bringing in Picton.”
Noire gasped when she heard this—so did many of the others. Pig farmer Robert Picton was one of Canada’s most recent, most notorious serial killers. He’d been implicated in anywhere from six to forty-nine murders, and who knew how many more bodies were out there, still buried on his farm. The case had made international news.
“Is that why you’re here?” one of the others piped up. “You think this guy is another Picton?”
The female detective spoke again. “God, I hope not. Enough speculation, folks. Get back to work.”
Noire was glad to have Cam at her side; this was all new territory for her. By the time Noire had arrived to identify Fawn’s body, her sister had already been moved to the morgue. It had been awful, but the room was sterile, metallic and somewhat removed from reality.
Fawn had been covered with a sheet and Noire had only seen her face, plus the bite wounds around her neck and shoulders. She remembered the blood still caked in her sister’s dull brown hair, and how pale Fawn was—Noire had never seen her that pale before. There’d been nothing left in the body that held even a spark of her baby sister.
When she’d noticed the marks on her sister’s face and chin, which the medical examiner had tried to hide with makeup for the identification, Noire had recognized them immediately. Black bear. It was what made this case so strange. Fawn’s body had been skinned, she found out later, which was obviously the work of a human. But the teeth that had savaged her neck were clearly animal.
Noire held it together long enough to explain to the medical examiner that she was a park warden with a background in animal biology, and thus qualified to deal with and identify animal attacks. They had taken her contact information for follow-up, which was how she’d received the second call today.
It wasn’t until she’d gotten back to her hostel that Noire had let herself break down in tears. In the morgue, Fawn wasn’t Fawn anymore—she was evidence, cared for by the police, a sort of puzzle to be solved.
Seeing another woman’s body, naked and discarded on the beach, was something different entirely.
She’d taken a swim off the Ward’s Island beach before. She remembered it as a small but lovely little spot out of the knowledge base of tourists. In autumn there had been a scattering of island residents with their dogs, and backpackers with canoes. The locals were always friendly and the water was surprisingly warm—well, for Canada, anyway. Noire and Fawn spent many a day there in university, taking the ferry out to the islands for a little peace and quiet, wading along the beach or jumping in for a quick dip after class. For the afternoon, you could almost forget you were in one of the biggest cities in Canada. For Noire, it was the only thing that had kept her sane.
Now it was nearing ten p.m. and in November that meant full darkness, aside from the permanent glow of lights that reached the islands from downtown Toronto. The islanders remained indoors, she supposed, not eager to play crime scene tourist when the crime happened just outside their quiet homes.
The detectives were decked in street clothes, likely called in after regular duty; the crime scene techs wore latex gloves and carried instruments No
ire didn’t recognize. The high-tech nature of crime scene investigation didn’t interest her and actually completely confused her. She was there for one official reason only—as an outside consultant to determine whether this attack was animal or human.
Of course, her personal reasons went much deeper. Noire wanted to find Fawn’s murderer. And she wanted to kill him herself. If offering her expertise as wild animal expert helped her get close to the investigation, great. She wouldn’t turn down the opportunity.
But that didn’t mean she was comfortable with it. The woman’s body was splayed on the sand, right at the break between dry sand and rising tide. She was completely naked. Her blonde hair fanned out around her like a halo. Her face was buried in the sand and beyond the hair, Noire could see nothing of her humanity.
The body was stripped entirely of skin. What was left of the poor woman looked like raw hamburger meat.
Was this what Fawn had looked like, under the sheet?
She supposed so. The cops wouldn’t be crying “serial killer” if the modus operandi wasn’t the same. Constable Campbell Dawson certainly wouldn’t be here if this were a run-of-the-mill opportunistic killing.
“Excuse me, ma’am?”
Noire looked up and into the warm eyes of a detective.
“I’m Detective Jim McFall of the Ontario Provincial Police. Constable Dawson says you’re the park warden we’ve been waiting for.” He was smiling beneath wrinkles and white hair. Noire liked the man immediately.
“Yes sir. Noire Pelletier, park warden in Algonquin. There are some bites you wanted me to look at?” She kept her voice steady.
“Are you gonna be okay?”
His concern was touching. At the same time she wondered if her inexperience was really that obvious. Part of her wanted to run straight to Cam, ask him for help, but he was deep in discussion with a crime scene tech. Keep it under control, Noire, she told herself. “Oh yes. Sorry. I’m good.”
She let Detective McFall lead her to the body. Up close she could see sand stuck to the woman’s raw flesh. She swallowed back bile. Noire would not puke in front of a bunch of cops. She would extra not puke in front of a Mountie who had recently fingered her to orgasm. Certainly she’d shown enough unprofessional behavior for the evening.
“Looks like she was definitely killed by a human monster rather than the animal kind, but check out these,” Jim pointed.
An Asian detective nearby spoke up, “She’s got bites all over her neck and shoulders. Never seen anything like it. Can you tell us what the fuck is going on here?”
“I’ll take a look,” Noire said, and she crouched down, sinking into the cool sand. She balanced on feet and knees and felt the knees of her jeans grow damp. She prayed this was water from the lake and not the woman’s blood, but she didn’t look down to check. Her eyes were focused on the woman’s left shoulder. Shallow gouges marred the flesh that remained, ripping upward toward her neck and face.
“Anyone have a measuring tape?” Noire asked. One of the techs handed it to her. She pulled the tape out and lined it up against the dead woman’s neck. “Five centimeters, just about,” she murmured. Realizing the implications, she pressed a hand to her mouth. She didn’t want to scream.
Cam left his own discussion farther down the beach and moved back to her. “What is it you’ve got, Noire?” he asked. She noticed a few looks exchanged between the detectives. Cam cleared his throat. “Warden Pelletier and I met on the ferry out here and had, uh, some time to discuss the case.”
As she stared at the bites, Noire felt Cam’s warm hand on the back of her neck. He effortlessly moved into a crouch next to her. “What is it?” he asked. “You okay?”
“The bite marks. The last body, they were bear—a predator, not unusual, I see them on animals all the time, and sometimes humans.”
“Yeah,” Cam said. “These ones don’t look the same, though, do they?”
“You noticed?”
“I may not be as brilliant as you at the animal stuff, but it’s kinda my job to notice things.” He flashed her white teeth and a warm smile. She flushed a little and let her eyes move to the sand behind the dead woman’s hair. Right now she didn’t want to look at the body or the sexy Mountie behind her.
“Yes…” she said. “Obviously this isn’t a perfect science, but they didn’t come from a bear.”
“Right,” Cam said. He didn’t sound surprised. Noire wished they were back on the boat, far away from this insanity. Who was she to investigate a serial killer? She was completely out of her league here.
“Some of the other victims had different bites,” he said. “At first, because they’d clearly happened post mortem, we figured they were unrelated. Animals sometimes will find a body before we do.”
“They didn’t take any flesh off this body, which they would have if they were feeding.” Or Fawn’s body, she wanted to add, but Cam didn’t know the extent of her involvement in the case and she didn’t think it was prudent to bring that up now.
“Exactly.” He seemed pleased that she was following. His hand was still on her neck and it was soothing. He rubbed a thumb back and forth in a small massage. She closed her eyes briefly. But instead of a fantasy of Cam stretched out on her bed, Noire’s imagination provided a glimpse of her sister’s body. She opened her eyes quickly.
“They’re deer bites,” Noire blurted it out. Maybe if she said it fast enough, she wouldn’t have to think through the implications. How could she explain to Cam how important that fact was?
She couldn’t. It was that simple. Werewolves were pretty common in pop culture these days, but no one believed they were real. And no one would ever believe that Noire’s mousy, quiet, murdered sister had been a were-deer. A shapechanger who took on deer form once a month under the full moon, her human body screaming as her bones broke and muscles tore, reshaping themselves into a light brown deer with a white tail, skittish as the human she’d once been.
“See this?” She pointed to the torn flesh. “It’s ripped, not cut. See the jagged edges? They’re not clean, which makes me think deer. They don’t have front teeth. If you’ve ever seen a tree with the bark stripped bare by deer you’ll know what I mean. They grab the bark and rip it—they don’t actually chew it the way a carnivore might.”
“Excuse me, did you say deer bites?” The dark-haired female detective was standing over them now.
“Looks like it,” Noire confirmed.
“This is a fucking island. How did the deer even get here?”
“I don’t know.” Noire knew it couldn’t have been her sister—these were fresh bites.
“Surely one of you must have a theory?” the woman asked. “Deer bites? Really?”
Cam spoke up now, pressing his hand into Noire’s back in comfort. “Detective Wahid, could I talk to you for a minute?” He rose and pulled the woman aside.
Their voices continued in low murmurs. Noire heard her name and she thought Cam might be defending her, but she forced herself to block it out. She knew how she came across to cops—a woman who lived in the woods and knew more about animals than people. A hick. She’d encountered resistance before, even when investigating accidents.
She ran her eyes down the body, searching for more bites. She felt herself growing faint at the rawness of what was left of the woman’s skin. She had to stop thinking of Fawn. Stop thinking, stop feeling, stop reacting before she embarrassed herself or her tears dripped all over the body and fucked up any forensic testing.
Her eyes stopped at the woman’s wrist.
“Guys?” she called, her voice too loud amid the stilling November breeze. “Uh, detectives? Constable?”
Cam turned his head, eyes concerned, and she focused on him. “What is it, Noire?” he asked.
“Did one of the techs put this elastic band on her?”
“Elastic band?” Cam asked.
Detective Wahid waved a dismissive hand. “No, she was wearing that when the patrol officers found her. We thought it might
be useful but it’s just regular elastic, nothing special about it.”
It was blue. And yes, just an ordinary elastic band. It might be meaningless.
Noire pulled down the sleeve of her charcoal sweater to cover the blue elastic band she wore on her own wrist. She shook her head. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”
Detective Wahid’s eyes burned into hers. “There’s nothing else you have to tell us other than deer bites?” Her voice was scornful.
“No,” Noire said. “I’m sorry.” She heard one of the techs mutter something about “so-called experts”.
She felt Cam’s hand on her back and he leaned down, breath warm on her ear. “Ignore them,” he said. “Do you have another hour or two?”
“Uh—yes?”
“Excellent. Stay silent for a minute and trust me.”
“Okay.” Noire was surprised to realize she did trust him. Though he was only a few years older than her, he’d commanded the respect of the crime scene team almost immediately—a far cry from the way Noire had embarrassed herself with the deer bites.
She had to trust him. She had no one else left.
Noire waited out of the way as the crime scene technicians packed up their equipment and prepared the body for transportation to the autopsy site back on the mainland. Her mind kept twisting over and over about the deer bites. It couldn’t be a coincidence for them to show up on the body directly after Fawn’s death. But surely Fawn wasn’t involved in these killings, other than as a victim. And was the blue elastic band simply a coincidence?
