The man who answered was knotted up for work.
Standing behind me, Gabe said, “I’m Gabe Wagner. Thank you for agreeing to talk to me.”
The man stepped to the side. “You said you’re criminal profilers with the FBI?”
“Yes, sir,” Gabe said. “We study the behavior of the unsub—that’s short for unidentified subject—and generate a profile for the local police departments.”
Gabe left out the part about how we were actually interns and profile
paranormal
“unsubs.” The subject in our first case was an
adze.
That’s a vampire from Africa that changes into a firefly and preys on children. Up until I joined the PBAU, I’d been of the mind-set that vampires and their ilk didn’t exist. Hell, even as I was chasing the
adze,
I was sure the killer was just your run-of-the-mill psychotic Homo sapien.
I was wrong.
Now with this case, we didn’t have a clue yet whether we were dealing with a homicidal human being or something else. Alice Peyton, our unit’s chief, aka the boss, explained that our department would be given any case that
might
involve a paranormal creature—be it a demon, vampire, ghost, whatever. The cause of death in this case was the trigger. The BAU tossed our unit the bone. Now it was up to us to figure out what was really going on.
The man looked at me.
I offered a hand. “Sloan Skye. I work with Wagner. Profiling.”
“Pete Sprouse.” The man shook my hand. “I’m happy to help. Tell me what you need.”
Gabe pulled a small notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped to a blank page. “Sir, can you tell me about your wife’s friendships? Do you know who she was interacting with on a regular basis?”
“Um, sure. But what’s that have to do with profiling her killer?”
“As we investigate a crime,” I explained, “we not only profile the killer, but we also profile the victim. In order to find your wife’s killer, we need to understand why he picked her.”
The man’s expression darkened. “I understand.”
“Let me assure you, anything you tell us will be held in confidence. None of it will be shared with anyone not directly involved in the case.”
He didn’t speak right away, and I wondered if he was going to shut down for good. But, thankfully, he didn’t. “My wife doesn’t have much of a social life. She’s a quiet person. Prefers being home. But she does have one friend, Shannon Kersey. She lives two doors down. The two of them do a lot together. They were even going to the same obstetrician. Shannon just had her first child a couple of weeks ago. We were ...” His lip quivered.
His pain stirred me, but I did my best to remain professional. With plenty of sympathy in my voice, I said, “I’m truly sorry for your loss. It was a terrible tragedy. Which is why we are so determined to catch this guy.”
Sprouse took a couple of seconds before continuing. “There’s something else the two of them were doing together,” he said quietly. “They were both having sex with Shannon’s husband. I found out the day before she ... I found out, and I was so fucking mad. So hurt. I slept on the couch part of the night. Maybe if I hadn’t—if I’d slept in our bed the whole night—maybe she’d still be alive.”
“Was she dead when you joined her?” JT asked.
“I don’t know. She might have been. I didn’t check. Then again, who would? I assumed she was sleeping.”
“You can’t blame yourself for this,” I told him.
“I can’t
not
blame myself. It was my fault. The affair. Everything. I was pushing her too hard, blaming her for our problems.” He dropped his face into his hands. “None of that matters anymore—now that they’re gone. I lost them both.”
You are not a pawn in the chessgame of life, you are the mover of the pieces.
mover of the pieces.
3
After Sprouse melted down, Gabe and I quietly thanked him and excused ourselves. We said very little during the drive and retreated to our separate cubicles to do some more digging into Victoria Sprouse’s and Katherine Jewett’s lives. The rest of the team was nowhere to be seen.
By six o’clock, I was hungry, grumpy, frustrated, and ready to call it a day. After hours of searching the Internet, I had nothing to tie our two victims together. And I just knew, deep in my gut, that we were working against a tight deadline. This guy was prolific. I was not looking forward to hearing he’d killed again.
But there was some good news. My car was ready, thank God. I would be self-sufficient, with my own mode of transportation—none too soon.
JT came strolling into the unit as I was dialing the number of a taxi company. He gave me a just-a-second index-finger lift, told me he’d drive me to the dealership in a few, and hurried toward Brittany’s “Cave of Wonders.” Less than a minute later, he emerged with a huge grin on his face. Of course, I was hoping that beaming smile meant he had good news.
“Did she find something?” I asked him when he eventually made his way over to me. I was packing up for the night. He seemed to be ready to go; his laptop case was slung over one shoulder.
Standing with one shoulder resting against the edge of my cubicle wall, he shook his head. “Nope.”
“No?”
“Not yet. But she’s still digging.” He patted my shoulder. “Don’t worry. She’ll find something soon.”
He was still grinning like a goon.
What was up with that?
“JT, this guy killed two women in forty-eight hours.
‘Soon’ isn’t going to cut it.”
And why are you so happy?
“I realize that. Which is why I’m going to come back tonight after I drop you off. I’ll work all night, if I have to.”
“Well, okay.” Still didn’t explain why he looked as juiced as a kid who was going to Disney World. But maybe that was none of my business.
No, it definitely wasn’t my business. If he wanted me to know, he would tell me.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
“Give me five.”
“Will do.” He strolled to his cubicle, which was kitty-corner from mine, and disappeared behind the half wall. I finished packing my computer. My cell phone rang just as I dropped it into the deepest pocket—of course.
I answered a fraction of a second before it clicked to voice mail. “Hi, Mom.”
“Sloan. Where are you?”
“At work.”
“Your father and I need to talk to you. Can you meet us tonight?”
“I suppose. But I need to go to the dealership first. I had to get a new battery. Give me about an hour.”
“Fine. We can meet at Giovanni’s.”
“Giovanni’s?”
Giovanni’s was one of the finest restaurants in all of Maryland. And, of course, one of the most expensive. A couple of weeks ago, neither Mom nor I would have been in any position to have dinner at a place like that. Mom had been scraping by, living mostly on long-term disability—she’s schizophrenic. I’ve been going to school for years, making ends meet by working some of the worst jobs imaginable.
Everything changed last week, when my father—who we’d thought was dead for the last twenty years or so—came back to life. Actually, he hadn’t come back to life. He’d just come out of hiding. But that’s another story for another time.
All that to say, Mom could tell her jerky landlord, who’d threatened to kick her out last week, to kiss her ass. And I wouldn’t have to pay him off anymore to keep him from tossing her out on said ass.
“See you in an hour.” I clicked off as JT rounded the bend to see if I was ready. He had me at the dealership within fifteen minutes. After thanking him, I watched him zoom away; then I went inside to pay the bill to get my car back.
The price of a car battery ... ? Holy effing Jesus.
I cursed the entire drive to the restaurant. But before I went inside, I slicked on a little lipstick, tidied my hair, and pasted on a happy face. A polite hostess escorted me to my parents’ table. Dad jumped up and gave me a fatherly hug. Mom’s hug was jubilant too.
Something was up.
I sat before they dropped the bomb.
Dad’s smile was bright enough to blind a girl. “Some wine?” He offered a bottle.
Sounded like a good idea. “Sure. Thanks.” I held my glass as he poured. I resisted the urge to chug. “Nice place. What are we celebrating?”
My parents exchanged exuberant grins. They looked like a couple of little kids who’d just found out that Santa
was
real. That was twice today. JT had looked much the same way. What was with all this gleefulness? It wasn’t natural.
“We’re getting married!” Mom finally exclaimed. She thrust her left hand at me, displaying the ginormous rock sitting on her ring finger.
“Married? Aren’t you already married?”
“Not legally,” my father said. “James Skye is technically dead. And so, the marriage between James and Beverly Skye is null and void. My legal name is now Irvine.”
“Oh, I guess that makes sense.”
“I want you to be my maid of honor,” Mom proclaimed.
I wasn’t as enthusiastic about that as Mom was. After all, being maid of honor meant I would have to help her with all the planning. That would involve time. And work. And as much as I didn’t want to disappoint Mom, because I really did love her, I wasn’t in a position to do work now. I had a job.
A demanding job.
Our first case, last week, had me working undercover, around the clock. I had to assume that wasn’t a fluke. There would be no time left for china shopping or wedding rehearsals.
But ... but I couldn’t break her heart.
“Sloan, you will be my maid of honor, won’t you?” Mom asked.
“Sure, Mom.”
My mother actually squealed like a girl. Then she flung herself at me, giving me a bouncy hug. “It’ll be so much fun, Sloan! We’ll be like BFFs. We can go cake tasting, and dress shopping, and pick out stuff for my registry. Oh, and you get to plan my bachelorette party!”
“Sure. Fun.”
Not.
Just the thought of it made my head spin. Once I extricated myself from my mother’s tight embrace, I went about draining my glass. Dad refilled it. “So how big of a wedding are we talking here?”
“I’m estimating we’ll have a private ceremony, with maybe two hundred guests,” Mom said.
“But the reception will be bigger,” Dad said. “The queen will be expecting an invitation, of course.” That was the queen of the elves. Dad was 100 percent elf. And he also happened to be the head of the queen’s security force and army.
“The queen?” I drained my wineglass a second time.
“Yes, and all her family will expect invitations too,” Dad said. “You know, she has a fairly large family. She herself has birthed almost a hundred offspring.”
“That many?” I forced down a few curse words and turned to my mother. “Have you thought about hiring a wedding planner?”
“Oh, yes. All fae are fertile, of course.” Dad slid a glittery-eyed leer at my mom, and I tried to pretend I didn’t see it. “So all of her kids of childbearing ages who are married have also birthed children. And their children too. And, naturally, there will be media. The fae community just loves this kind of thing—”
“But I thought you fairy type like to keep that hush-hush,” I said, grasping at straws.
“We like to keep the fairy stuff quiet. That much is true. But Her Highness is a celebrity among the humans too, for very different reasons.”
This was just ... wonderful.
“Here’s a thought,” I said to my two extremely giddy parents. “Why don’t the two of you run off and elope? It would be romantic. Exciting.”
Mom scowled. “Absolutely not.”
“The queen would never forgive me,” Dad said. “Oh, and money is no object.”
Mom beamed.
As I drove home, images of my mother stuffing dollars into strippers’ G-strings and an insanely overdone reception—Mom wanted a horse-drawn carriage, like the British royals had—played through my mind.
What a freaking nightmare.
But it was Mom. And Dad. And even though they were both on the quirky side, I loved them both very much. I would do my best to make sure they had the wedding of their dreams.
Step one: enlist Katie’s help.
Step two: find a qualified wedding planner
yesterday.
When I let myself into our apartment, I called out to Katie, “Hey, girl, we need to hire a wedding planner.”
Dark? Why were the lights off? The shades drawn?
Rustle, rustle.
Click.
The living-room lamp snapped on.
A rumpled-looking Katie was partly reclined on the couch. A strange man was sort of leaning over her. It would seem neither was wearing clothes. Thank God there was a blanket covering most of them.
“Oh,” I said, shielding my eyes. “Sorry I interrupted.”
Katie giggled. “We weren’t having sex, Sloan. We were just watching a movie.” Katie motioned to the man draped over her. “This is Jesse. Jesse, this is my roommate, Sloan. She works for the FBI.”
He greeted me with a tip of the head. Maybe because his hands were busy. I couldn’t see them. I didn’t want to know where they were or what they were doing. “Cool. I’ve thought about joining the FBI. Heard training is a bitch, though.”
“I’m just an intern at this point, so I couldn’t say.”
“Oh.”
I could tell by the flatness in his voice that he wasn’t all that impressed. Whatever. I wasn’t impressed by him either.
“What was that about a wedding planner?” Katie asked.
“Nothing. We can talk about it tomorrow.”
“Okay. We’re watching
Scream.
Want to watch with us?”
“No thanks. I think I’ll do some work in my room. Have fun.” On the way to my bedroom, I served myself a big dish of ice cream. And I grabbed a bag of barbeque chips too. I hadn’t eaten much of my dinner. The whole wedding thing had shot my appetite. Now I was regretting leaving the leftovers with my mother.
In my room, I powered up the laptop and flopped on my belly on the bed. While I was poking around the Web, researching local wedding planners, I emptied the ice-cream bowl. And the bag of chips. I checked the clock. It was eleven. Maybe for once I’d go to bed early. I shut down the computer, set the dishes on my nightstand, set my alarm clock, and headed to the bathroom to take care of my before-bed ritual. I tried—really, I did!—to ignore the sounds of lips smacking and low moans coming from the living room. It would seem Katie and her new friend were doing more than watching the movie. Good for her! After being dumped by her ex-boyfriend, she’d sort of fallen apart. I was glad to see she was moving on.
I wasn’t glad to see I had a visitor when I returned to my bedroom.
“It’s over.” Elmer was slumped on my bed, his ugly little face a mask of misery.
“What’s ‘over’?”
“My relationship.” He sighed. “With the woman of my dreams.”
“Relationship?” I hadn’t known he was in a relationship. I thought I was supposed to be helping him find the woman of his dreams. “Who is this woman? What happened?”
“You remember, I told you I was going to try speed dating?”
I bit back a retort. “Yes.”
“Well, I met someone there. She was perfect.”
“Elf?” I asked as I pulled a detangling comb through my hair. The extensions I’d had put in last week, when I went undercover, made for a nightmare when I washed my hair. To be honest, I couldn’t even remember if I was supposed to wash it. But I wouldn’t complain if they all fell out. I was tired of them already.
“One hundred percent. Pure-blooded. And beautiful. And absolutely breathtakingly gorgeous. And intelligent.”
“So ... ?”
“She said she wasn’t ready for anything serious.”
“Hmm. How did the topic of a long-term relationship even come up? You get what ... two minutes with each person?”
“I asked her to marry me,” he said.
I swallowed a guffaw. “You didn’t.”
“Sure. I knew she was perfect. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Elmer.” I couldn’t help it—I heaved a heavy sigh. “You broke the first cardinal rule of dating. You don’t ever, under any circumstances, mention the ‘m’ word on your first date.”