by Milly Taiden
“Who is it?” Trent asked, still watching her.
“The girl that went missing before Lisa Summers has been found. Gina Torres. Freshman. Same school. Looks physically different than Summers.”
“What are the circumstances of her death?” She finally found her voice, although it was hard to get the words out from under the iceberg chilling and numbing her throat.
“I’ve sent the pictures we have to your secure emails along with the file.” The sound of paper shuffling filled the line.
She opened her mouth to speak, but Trent got his words in ahead of her. “How was she found?”
Brock’s somber tone was the only noise inside the small motel room. “We got a tip. Like I told you both before you left, I had a feeling Summers was not victim number one. If I’m correct, it was probably Gina. Someone called it in to 911. She was left in a public place. The placement of the body mimicked that of Summers. Open arms and legs, displaying the scars and bruises, completely naked.”
“You mean she was being shown off just like Lisa?” Erica replayed the crime scene shots in her head. Her mind whirled with questions and visions of Lisa Summers. “Do we know yet if they had anyone in common?”
“Too soon to tell. We just got the call about an hour ago. You both know what to do. You can go see the body in the morning. For now just get some rest.”
Erica removed the phone from speaker and placed it by her ear, knowing Brock have some other personal questions. Questions she didn’t want Trent listening in on.
“Are you okay?”
Brock had always been that way with her. Since she had met him on her first day in the academy, he’d taken her under his wing. She’d been scared, but he’d introduced himself and had never been far way, helping her cope with the new environment. He taught her she could count on him, even if it had taken her years to realize how honest he was, how much of a friend he was. She’d always wanted to be part of the bureau, but being in Brock’s team was better than any job she could have imagined.
“Calmate. I’m fine, Brock. I’m a big girl you know.” She grinned, knowing he always got a kick out of her saying that. “I can take care of myself. Now stop worrying so much, it’s not good for your health.”
She didn’t look at Trent but knew he was listening to her side of the conversation.
Brock sighed. “Don’t overdo things, please. I’ll speak to you tomorrow.”
She shut the phone, sprung to her feet, and made a beeline for the door. Once there, she removed all traces of emotion from her face, which was incredibly hard, and turned to Trent. “I’m tired. We’re up early tomorrow to see Torres’s body, I need to sleep. Thank you for coming to see me, but as you can see—” She swung the door open, holding the handle in a death grip. “I’m fine. Good night.”
Trent took his sweet time standing up and strolling toward her. Each move made his muscles ripple, his body calling, inviting her to feel his strength again. He stopped right at the entrance, their bodies just inches from each other, and said nothing until she glanced up at him. Her body tensed, waiting—no, hoping—that he’d make a move. He dipped his head until they were breathing each other’s air, until her body temperature skyrocketed.
“This isn’t the end of us.”
His vision strayed to her lips. She held her breath, already picturing him kissing her and saying to hell with her words.
“This is only the beginning.”
He walked out at the same leisurely pace.
It took her a moment to realize she was standing there like an idiot.
“There is no us!” She threw the door. Estupido! Men always had to make things difficult by causing havoc with a woman’s emotions and body.
All her hormones were still racing through her, flushing her with desire from the kisses and touches he’d given her. Every pleasure cell had liquefied and travelled down to her shorts. She jumped on the bed, punched a fist into a pillow, and growled. How the hell was she supposed to get any sleep like this? And she hadn’t even packed her vibrator. Dammit.
After another cold shower and some manual stimulation, she turned up the pathetic air conditioning until there was a decent breeze. Then she finally fell into a fitful and uncomfortable sleep.
Chapter Three
The next morning dawned bright, hot, and humid. She sat in the backseat and prayed for a break in the case as they headed to the morgue. Sipping on her iced coffee, she glanced out the window. Her mind replayed everything she knew about the victim while she scanned the passing trees, small businesses, and dense forest. It was easy to ignore both men in the front, talking sports and general things she had no interest in. She yawned.
“What’s wrong, Villa? Man, you look like shit!” Ramirez said from the driver’s seat. The laughter in his voice only added to her misery. Great, now they were going to turn her into the butt of their jokes.
Not bothering to reply, she lifted her hand and extended her middle finger. She was too tired to tell him to fuck off. A loud smack drew her attention.
“What the hell was that for?” Ramirez complained, rubbing a hand over the back of his head, a deep frown creasing his forehead.
“She does not look like shit.” Trent growled, turned toward her, and winked. “She looks like Sleeping Beauty.”
“Yeah, um, I don’t remember Sleeping Beauty looking like she got run over by the prince in the story.”
Slap. Her lips quirked, and a smile broke free. She knew what Trent was doing, and she appreciated him for it. Fatigue beat at her muscles. However, she was so horny that if Trent let her hump his leg, she’d find the energy from somewhere.
“What the hell? You know I’m the one driving. Cut it out. I’m sorry, Villa. You know I still think you’re hot.”
Slap. Erica swallowed the laughter threatening to choke her.
“Now what?” Ramirez protested. “I said she looks hot!”
“I know. That’s why I hit you.” Trent sounded annoyed.
“Oh man, you’re in deep shit, bro. Seriously, I know you like her and all, but are you blind? Poor Villa might be hot but she looks like she hasn’t slept in a week.” He grinned at her through the mirror.
“Boys, if you make me pull out the ruler someone is getting spanked.”
“Me!” both men yelled at the same time.
She rolled her eyes and smiled. Her lids dropped closed, and she let the two men’s complaints over who should get spanked lull her to sleep.
The sound of harsh breathing filled her ears. Darkness was thick around her, driving her fear, curling around her gut and settling in with a heavy knot. Someone screamed. The sound so painful, so filled with agony and anguish, that tears filled her eyes. She raised her fists and beat at the wooden wall in front of her.
“Let me out!” Lisa Summers screamed. “Please!”
“Erica!” Trent’s voice seeped into her subconscious, pulling her from the dreaded darkness of her dream. Something shook her, hard. She blinked her eyes open and saw Trent’s worried brown eyes. “You’re fine, sweetheart.”
He pulled her out of the Jeep and into his arms.
What the hell just happened? “I know I’m fine. What’s wrong with you?”
He glanced down at her with a frown. “You were screaming to be let out.”
They were parked in front of the Main Street store next to the police station.
Ramirez strolled out of the store with two bottled waters, stopped, and handed one to her. “Jesus, Villa. If this is how you get when you don’t get enough sleep, I don’t want to see you when you break night. Your eyes are all raccoon-like. You’re zombie movie material for sure.”
She glared at him “Que chistoso. Real cute.”
She drank the water, but after a few sips she stopped, remembering they were about to go look at another body.
Trent watched Erica walk into the morgue like she was on death row. Her face was pale, and her lips were pursed. She curled her nails into her palms. He frowned. Had she don
e that before? He couldn’t recall if her nerves had been that obvious the previous day. Fear came off her in waves. Ramirez, ahead of them, opened and held the door. His need to protect her, from whatever it was making her scared, made his animal pull at the skin cage. It was hard for him to breathe and took him a moment to calm his wolf and focus on the body. Her gaze fastened on the metal table holding the body of Gina Torres.
“I need a moment alone with the body.” Her words were soft with a mild wobble to them.
Maybe he was examining everything she did with too much interest. She stared at the sheet-covered lump, waiting for them to do as she requested.
“I’m going to get some details from the front desk on her address. If we’re here it must mean she lived nearby. From what Deputy Owens stated only people who live in this area would have been brought here. There’s a bigger precinct with a large morgue one town over. Maybe she and Lisa Summers knew each other.” Ramirez said and walked out.
“I’m coming too.” Trent added. He headed for the door and shut it behind Ramirez. It didn’t matter that he never walked out because Erica was still focused solely on the table. He folded his arms in front of his chest and stood quietly, watching her. The scent of the bleached corpse was nothing compared to the panic drifting from Erica. His wolf wanted out. He wanted to push her behind him and protect her, but from what?
She dragged her palms over the sides of her Bermuda shorts. His breath froze. Something big was coming, but he didn’t know what. She raised a shaky hand toward the sheet, stopped mid-way, and cursed.
“Get a hold of yourself, Erica. Hazlo. You can do this.” She said, softly.
Instinct told him to go to her. He tugged the leash on his animal and kept control. The wolf wanted near her. He waited, wondering what she planned to do next. He observed while she took deep breaths, her fear diminishing slowly. Finally, she straightened her spine and pulled the sheet back. Her arm shook before the sheet was fully off the body. He took a step, stopped, and waited to see what her next move would be. Her hand shook so badly he had a hard time not rushing to her, holding her, and easing her stress. She quickly reached out and grabbed the dead girl’s arms. She froze in place.
A soft, pain-filled scream filled the room. It took him a second to realize it came from Erica. Propelled into action, he was next to her in the blink of an eye. In the time it took him to reach her, she had started to shake like a leaf and tears began to rush down her face. Unsure of what to do, he did the only thing he could think of and pulled her away from the body.
Once she let go of the Gina’s arm, her body slumped toward the ground. Had he not been holding her already, she would have knocked her head on the floor. He picked her up and headed toward a wooden chair tucked in a corner. Shoving papers off the chair, he sat down and held her tightly in his arms. Her features took on a sickly color, and her already-pale complexion had a waxy grey tone. She really did look like shit. What he didn’t know was why.
He rocked her in his arms and called her name softly, but she didn’t respond. After a few minutes she blinked her eyes open.
“What are you doing, Trent?”
“Darlin’, if you want to get into my arms, you don’t need to keep fainting to do it. You can ask me to hold you whenever the mood strikes without going to these lengths.”
He joked to lighten the mood, but it was starting to stress him out that she kept passing out at the sight of a dead body.
She sat up and got off his lap, without saying a word or looking back at the body, and marched to the front of the building. They passed Ramirez, who she ignored. Trent shook his head at Ramirez’s questioning frown. Outside she opened the Jeep, grabbed her phone, and dialed.
“Yes, it’s Villa. Gina Torres was murdered in the woods. Not far from here, but I can’t say where for sure. It was nighttime, so it was hard to make things out, but I got the distinct impression he wore a hoodie so she couldn’t see his face. He’s big, strong, and tall. He beat, overpowered, and strangled her. And he enjoyed every minute of it. I caught the outline of his smile under the hood. She’s got more wounds then Lisa. His cockiness grew since we haven’t found him.” Her voice shook with each word. Almost as if she’d been there.
How did she know all that? Usually Brock disseminated only the helpful information to the case, never giving them the full report on what Erica’s profiling was all about. He listened intently as she continued to describe the scene for Brock. Brock only asked case-related questions, but for the most part let Erica speak.
“He really enjoyed cutting her. I wouldn’t be surprised if he added some post-mortem wounds to this one. It was so weird to hear him break out in laughter spontaneously. He seems to get a kick out of hearing them scream when he hurts them... I don’t know how, but I get the feeling he knew both women. We have to find the link.”
Trent listened while she spoke. She was back to the other side of her personality, her no-nonsense persona that everyone in the team had gotten to know and rely on. Gone was her cheeky wit, replaced by the profiler who got the job done and gave their team the edge when they needed extra help to solve a case. But he knew that the other, more vulnerable, Erica was one step away from full-blown panic. His mate needed him, and he didn’t know how to help.
She handed him the phone and strolled off to the edge of the road, staring at the trees across the street.
He jerked the phone to his ear. “Brock? What the fuck is going on?”
“Buchanan watch your mouth.” Brock ordered in a steely voice.
“No, you listen to me.” He growled. Screw asking nicely. He wanted answers and he wanted them now. “I’ve watched her beg for help and sob as if something is hurting her two days in a row without an explanation. I won’t even go into the passing out or how pale she looks. What I want to know is what is going on, and how do I keep it from getting worse?” A sick, jagged sting knifed at his stomach. Was Erica suffering from some kind of illness? “Is she…is she sick?” The knot in his throat turned his question into a low rasp.
He could hear Brock exhale slowly on the other end of the line, as if trying to find the right words.
“No, she’s not sick or dying. All I can tell you is she’ll be fine. She just needs some sleep. Trust me. Take her back to the hotel, and make sure she rests.” Brock sighed, his voice softening he added, “Please…make sure she gets some rest. She needs it.”
Trent shut the phone and glanced at Erica. She had gone back to clenching and unclenching her fists. He finally realized she did that as a way to calm her nerves.
When Ramirez came out of the station he walked up to Trent. “So what’s really going on here?”
“I don’t know, but Brock says she’s fine and she just needs some rest. I think she might be sick, but he wouldn’t say. We’re going back to the hotel.”
Ramirez nodded. “All right, I’ll drop you off and check out Lisa Summers’s apartment again, make sure we didn’t miss anything there. Then I’ll stop by to see where Gina Torres lived. She didn’t live near Lisa, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t know each other. Who knows, I may find something that breaks this whole thing wide open.”
Trent prayed that would be soon, because if Erica got any worse, he didn’t think she’d be able to handle it. He was going to make it his mission to get her to relax without sex. His cock was in disagreement, as was his wolf, but he was going to be a good mate and help her sleep even if it killed him. When they reached the hotel he followed Erica into her room. She lifted her brows high in question.
He shrugged. “Brock told me to make sure you get some sleep.”
“I’m too tense to go to sleep.”
“Don’t worry. I’m here to help with that.”
The flare of interest in her eyes made his decision to keep things platonic for the night an exercise in self-endurance.
“What did you have in mind?” She licked her lips.
Shit. Fuck. Shit.
She needed to sleep, and his body was strun
g up tighter than a rubber band. “I’m going to give you a massage, and then you’re going to sleep.”
Yeah, that sounded even worse when he said it out loud. He was going to touch her body, her soft, curvy body, and then let her sleep? How the hell he would accomplish that feat he had no clue. But he would do it…for her. And he’d keep his wolf from pushing him to claim her already. He didn’t know why it was so important, but getting Erica back to her usual sarcastic self was his ultimate goal. It didn’t matter that she would tear him a new one with her cheeky wit; he loved that about her.
“Normally I would argue with you, but a massage sounds so good right now I can’t even say no.” She picked up a tank top and pair of cotton short from her open case. “I’ll be right back. I’m just going to take a shower.”
She sauntered off to the restroom, her sexy hips swinging with each step, and shut the door.
Trent glanced down at his aching cock. It was begging for relief. Yeah, good luck with that. He grabbed his dick through the soft cotton material of his pants and shifted it into a less painful position. After a few moments of standing there like an idiot and listening to the shower going, he sat down on the bed. And immediately jumped back to his feet.
It probably wasn’t a good idea to wait for her on the bed. No, thinking of Erica and a bed in the same sentence made it hard to remember his objective. What the fuck was his objective? Oh yeah, just a massage. Instead, the cushioned chair next to the bed called his attention. He decided that was a better place to sit…and visualize her washing every smooth curve, water sliding down her breasts, her thighs, and between her legs. Holy fuck. He was going to end up with a severe case of blue balls.
Minutes later the bathroom door opened, and Erica stepped out, her hair in a bun on the top of her head. She wore a tiny tank top and short set. His cock jerked in his pants, reminding him how much he wanted to get a taste of her. The shower had brought back some of her normal flush, leaving her with lovely glowing skin. His mate was gorgeous. She smiled and brought out a bottle of oil.
