style="font-size:15px;"> “This guy was in a fury,” she murmured, bending to inspect the carpet. Her hand lifted over the outline, hesitated.
“Is this your first murder, Doc?”
She hadn’t heard his approach but wasn’t really surprised to hear his voice sounded from right behind her. Shifters often made no sound when they moved.
Her fingers were trembling. She balled her hand into a fist and glanced back at him. “Yes.” But not her first blood soaked scene.
For an instant, her mind flashed back to that last bloody room. She saw the man’s body, slumped on the floor. His brains and tissue were on the wall, blood surrounding him.
Her father’s death hadn’t been pretty, and sometimes, late at night, she still woke up screaming.
Emily drew in a deep breath. She had to focus on Preston, not the past.
Standing, her stare swept the room, lingered on the pictures decorating the mantel, on the chess set in the corner, on the books lining the built-in shelves near the doorway.
From all appearances, Preston Myers had been a normal guy. Completely human.
So why had he been attacked? Why had the killer chosen him?
“It doesn’t make sense,” she muttered. “SBs stick to their own kind.”
“Uh…SBs?”
“Supernatural beings.” In her experience, SBs always stayed with their own for mating, for fun, and for killing.
To cross over like this and to murder a human, to so blatantly attack—
Her gaze narrowed as she glimpsed a familiar face in one of the photos.
Hell.
She marched closer to the mantel. Snatched up the picture.
“Hey, Doc, what’s—”
Her fingers tightened around the small frame. “Have you run a background check on Preston yet?”
“My partner’s working on it.” His eyes narrowed. “Why, Doc? What do you know?”
She held up the picture. “I know that one of the guys in this picture is a demon.”
One black brow shot up. “A patient?”
“No.” She would never have agreed to treat Niol. The guy gave off black waves of energy that made her far, far too nervous. Her nail tapped just over Niol’s unsmiling face. “But I’ve met him a few times. He owns a bar near here, a place called Paradise Found.”
“Then I guess I’ll be paying him a visit.” He smiled at her. “Good thing I brought you over. You might not have gotten any more details about the killer, but you sure did just speed up the—”
“Oh, I know more about the killer,” she interrupted, frowning at him, feeling slightly insulted. What did he think she’d been doing? Daydreaming over a dead body?
He pulled out his notebook. “Then tell me.”
Emily licked her lips. “This wasn’t an impulse kill. Nothing’s disturbed. Nothing’s taken. The guy came to the house with the attack already planned out. He knew where the security cameras were, and he knew how to hide from them. That probably means he’s been here before, that he knew the victim.”
She pointed to the blood on the wall. “When there is this much violence, this much rage, it’s usually very, very personal.”
“Yeah, I figured that.” So far, Colin wasn’t sounding particularly impressed.
She dropped her hand, squared her shoulders as she faced him. “The killer had to be strong to overpower Preston. The victim was what, six foot two? One hundred eighty pounds? He would have fought back, would have fought as hard as he could.” Her lips tightened for a moment. “But then, supernaturals are always stronger than humans, aren’t they? Preston never had a chance.”
“No,” Colin agreed, his voice quiet. “He didn’t.”
When they left the house, they found a reporter waiting for them. A blond woman with close-cropped hair stood on the walkway, a black microphone clutched in her hands. A cameraman stood behind her, his face partially obscured by the bulk of his equipment.
“Detective Gyth!” The woman’s face lit with hungry enthusiasm. “Darla Mitchell, News Flash Five. I have a few questions for you.”
“Shit.” The word was a bare breath of sound, but it reached Emily’s ears, and for a second, she almost smiled at the disgust she heard.
But then Darla shoved the microphone into her face. “Dr. Drake, my sources say that you’ve joined this case as a profiler.”
“Ah…” Her sources? She’d been on the case for less than an hour. How had the woman already found out about her?
Colin stepped in front of Emily. “The Atlanta PD has no comment at this time.”
Darla tried to squirm around him. “But what about Dr. Drake? Does she have—”
Colin grabbed the bobbing microphone, leaned close, and snapped, “No comment.”
“Fine!” Darla snarled. “Cut it, Jake!”
Emily stepped to Colin’s side just as Jake lowered the camera.
A hard glare twisted Darla’s pretty face. “You can’t keep information from the public forever, you know, Gyth!”
“When I have information, I’ll give it to you.” He smiled. Okay, well, he flashed a lot of teeth. Not really a smile so much as a baring of fangs.
Darla growled at him, then spun on her two-inch heels and stomped back to the News Flash Five van.
The cameraman studied Gyth and Emily. Then he sighed. “She’s been pissed since Channel Three scooped her on the Butcher story.” His eyes narrowed on Emily. “Dr. Drake…I’ve heard a lot about you.”
A tingle of awareness skated down her spine as she stared into his golden eyes.
He was Other.
He smiled at her, and for just a second, his eyes shifted, the gold changed into a midnight black.
Demon eyes.
She felt his power in the air then. Weak, low-level power, maybe a two or three on the demon scale.
“If there’s anything I can do for you, Doctor, or if you decide that you want to talk to News Flash Five, give me a call.” He handed her his card.
“Jake!”
Sighing, he glanced back over his shoulder. Darla stood beside the van, arms crossed, eyes glittering.
“Well, guess I’ll talk to you both another time.” With
