InsistentHunger (22 page)

Clearly there was more than one railing that the demon
hadn’t bothered to take down, but did he really care about profiling Monagas or
her or anything that the real Brady cared about?

Brady turned around and looked at her. “Are you coming?”

Paige shook off her morbid thoughts and headed after him.
“Yeah. And if anyone sees you, I fully plan to pretend you’re a figment of
their imagination.”

“I’m not going to let anyone see me,” Brady said with a
derisive snort. “Trust me, the phrase ‘run like hell’ is my new mantra. Right
now, though, the only running I want to do is running this bastard down. Just
don’t kill him quick, Paige.”

She stopped. It hadn’t even occurred to her that she wasn’t
going to be able to arrest Monagas, but Brady was right—they were going to have
to kill him.

Brady kept right on going like he hadn’t noticed her sudden
discomfort. “I want to find out if he knows anything about demons or if he can
tell me why I got pulled into this. If I’m stuck in the middle of some sort of
demon gang war, I’d like to know before I wake up with a horse head in my bed.”

“That was the mob, not a gang,” Paige said absentmindedly as
she trotted to catch up to him. God, she hated people with long legs—or even
normal-sized legs. Her short legs were not cut out to keep up with people.

“Still, I’m not happy being in the middle of crap I don’t
understand.” Brady sounded more coherent and a lot angrier than Paige had heard
from him since he’d shown up at her house. Either the extra food had given him
more energy or the demon was settling in to the new house.

“I know how you feel,” Paige said with a sigh as he darted
ahead again and raced toward the backyards. She definitely knew how he felt.
There was a whole lot of crap she was stuck in the middle of herself, and for
the first time since she was eight years old, she didn’t know how she was
supposed to get herself out of it.

Chapter Fifteen

“Paige!”

Paige trotted to the back of the old ranch house with
aluminum siding flaking off in long sheets. The back screen had been popped off
and she stuck her head in the dark hole. “Brady?” She knew Brady wouldn’t let
her walk into a trap, but she hoped he was keeping in mind that as a human she
really didn’t want to get bit by some rabid raccoon.

“In here,” he called. “He’s been here.” Paige could feel
adrenaline start to flow and her mouth went dry. She slid the safety strap off
her weapon and took a deep breath in preparation. She would do what she had to
in order to protect this community and Brady. She could have a nervous
breakdown later.

Paige climbed awkwardly through the window and found herself
in a dim hall with seventies flowered wallpaper peeling away from old plaster.
Brady’s voice came from the right and she turned and followed the hallway,
trying her best to ignore the smell of cat urine and age. No one had lived in
this house for a very long time.

“He was here.” Brady held up an empty box of Kentucky Fried
Chicken. The bright red and white lettering hadn’t even dulled yet. It couldn’t
be more than a few days old. Probably. Paige was not normally involved in the
forensics part, so she couldn’t say that for sure.

“Do you think he’s still using this place?”

Brady shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Why?” Paige looked around and saw a nest made out of old
dusty pillows and a rough blanket. Most of the fast-food trash was gathered
around a plastic crate near the window and beer bottles were lined up on the
fireplace mantle. It was a disgusting mess, but she wasn’t sure it was an
abandoned disgusting mess.

“Because the toilets don’t work and he was not
very…um…fastidious.” Brady gestured toward the corner and Paige’s stomach
turned as she realized that the suspect had used it as a toilet. Well, the lab
guys would have a lot of DNA. Now she just had to figure out a way to call them
in. The worst part was that the whole house smelled so bad that she hadn’t
specifically noticed that mess. “The pile hasn’t been used in three or four days,”
Brady said.

“I do not want to even think about how you know that.”

Brady grimaced. “It smells old.”

“It just smells—period. How can you tell whether it’s old or
not?”

He made a face. “I just can.”

Paige studied him for a second, but as far as she could
tell, he was being serious. “As far as superpowers go, the ability to identify
the age of shit by smell is not terribly impressive. I’d suggest you keep that
superpower to yourself,” she suggested.

“I asked for the x-ray upgrade, but they were out of them.
Just think, if I could’ve gotten that superpower, I could have…” He didn’t say
anything, but he looked her up and down to make it perfectly clear what he
would be using x-ray vision to check out.

Paige pinned him with a glare. “We’re working here.” The
awkward, flirty side of her partner hadn’t shown up in a while and she really
wasn’t prepared to deal with it now.

“Working.” Brady cleared his throat. “Right. I’m on it.”

Paige studied Brady curiously. For someone who claimed to be
working, he was still spending a lot of time looking at her and then pretending
to not look at her.

It was getting harder and harder to remind her body that she
had made a firm commitment to not sleep with Brady. After all, she wanted sex
and he wanted sex and it was getting harder to remember why they weren’t having
sex.

If nothing else, she should just keep in mind that she
didn’t want sex here. First, it would be disgusting, and second, it would
provide some very disturbing evidence when Forensics finally did find this
place. There were some places that she just did not want her DNA showing up.
This was near the top of that list.

Paige wandered over to the dirty and frayed curtains and
pushed them aside. She had a clear view of Grant Street. “Look familiar?” she
asked Brady.

He walked over and looked out the crack in the curtains.
Paige realized her mistake the second his body was pressed close to hers. She
could feel herself getting warm and she shivered as a bead of sweat slid down
her spine. “Is that our third crime scene?” Brady asked, seemingly oblivious to
her reaction. Either that or he was turning into one hell of a good actor.

Paige swallowed and forced herself to focus on the case.
“That’s where someone grabbed the third girl.” She nodded toward the white
house down the street. The woman had just been leaving her aunt’s house late
one night when the rapist grabbed her. The aunt had moved in with family in
Tallahassee, but Paige could see the brightly colored flowers in their wooden
barrels on the aunt’s porch. They were starting to wilt, and the house looked
empty now.

“So he’s using the same MO as in Memphis?” Brady asked.

“That’s about the only piece of luck we’ve caught in this
case. So now we know how he’s spotting the girls, we just have to find his new
lair.” Hell, if the profiler had half a brain, he should be able to have the
patrol officers canvass the abandoned houses and find the new place without her
getting involved. But calling him in meant admitting she had run a rogue
investigation and it meant patrol officers canvassing abandoned houses without
knowing that their suspect was a vampire.

“Paige, does that look familiar?” Brady turned just enough
to lay a hand on her shoulder.

Paige peered out through dust-streaked windows and saw a
blue sedan cruising slowly down the street. It was the sort of nondescript
vehicle that wouldn’t even attract her attention under normal circumstances,
but there had been too many references to a blue sedan for this to be a
coincidence.

“Go get my car,” Paige said, tossing him the keys. “I’ll
take the front.” She moved through the rubble of the living room, kicking a
McDonald’s bag out of her way as she went for the front door.

Brady was already gone, his movement so silent that his
absence surprised her. The front door opened onto a small enclosed sunroom and
Paige had to fight rust and years of dirt to get it open. Whoever had been
squatting in this place definitely used the back. Paige eased her way out on
the porch and pulled her weapon.

The blue car stopped and Paige looked around to see if Brady
was pulling her car around yet. If their suspect took off, she couldn’t chase
them down by foot, that was for damn sure. The driver-side door came open, but
the nearest streetlight was a block away and the long shadows distorted everything.
She couldn’t identify the driver’s features. She had no idea if this was
Monagas or some factory worker coming home after a very long shift.

One of the screened panels on the sun porch had rotted away
and Paige eased out and onto the lawn, using the trunk of a pine tree to hide.
The driver moved toward the center of the road. Paige had only seen a mug shot
of Monagas, so she couldn’t say whether it was him or not. However this man’s
silhouette looked familiar as he moved cautiously forward.

Paige eased around the trunk of the tree and pulled her
weapon. “Hunter?” Surprise pulled the word out of her before she could edit
herself.

The figure stopped and looked at her, and even in the dim,
slanted light of the distant streetlamp, she could see Hunter’s familiar face.
“Silver?” He sounded as confused as she was.

Hunter glanced at something off to the west, and before
Paige could say anything or even gather her thoughts, he turned and raced back
for his car. Tires squealed and smoke rose as the old blue car struggled to get
away from the curb fast enough.

Paige brought her weapon up, fully expecting a full-on
assault from some direction. It took her a second to realize that Brady was
charging toward the car. Her vehicle was nowhere in sight, but Brady’s lips were
pulled back in a snarl and his strong legs were covering the distance inhumanly
fast. Paige’s heart leaped into her throat as she saw the raw power hidden
under Brady’s skin.

“Brady!” she yelled after a second.

He didn’t even slow down. With only a quick glance in her
direction, he continued to charge after the car. Hunter hit the end of the
street, turned right and accelerated. Brady cut across a lawn, darting between
two trees and leaping toward a fence. His leap took him so high that his foot
caught the top of the six-foot fence and he propelled himself into someone’s
backyard. A dog started barking madly.

Shit! Paige turned and ran for her car. Yeah, she knew Brady
was more than a little pissed at Hunter’s shitty trick, but she definitely
didn’t want anyone ending up dead. Deader, anyway. She got to her car before
she realized Brady had her keys. “Shit, shit, shit, shit.” Paige got on her
knees and felt around under the car for the little magnetic box where she kept
her spare.

This endless series of disasters and frustrations was
starting to annoy her. And when she got annoyed, she tended to make sure that
everyone else was as miserable as she was. Now she just had to find her idiot
partner and share the misery. And hopefully she could get there before either
Brady or Hunter ended up dead. Pulling the spare out of the little box, she got
in and started the engine. At the first intersection, she realized how very
screwed she was. She had no idea which way they’d gone. Praying, Paige picked a
direction and hit the gas.

Chapter Sixteen

By the time the dawn stained the dark sky, Paige’s eyes felt
scratched and her whole body ached with a need for sleep, but worry kept her
from driving home. She also couldn’t keep driving around town hoping to
randomly find Hunter and Brady. Glancing at the clock, she pointed her car
toward the station and hoped like hell that she got there without hitting any
pedestrians.

The parking lot was half-full when Paige pulled in and
parked in her normal spot.

“Paige?” She turned to find Alex staring at her with more
than a little concern. He stepped forward, raising his hand as if he wanted to
offer some comfort, but something in her expression made him drop it back down
to his side. “No offense, but you look like shit. Are you trying to get a
referral to the shrink? Because if you aren’t, I really suggest you call in
sick and go get some sleep before the captain sees you.”

“I don’t need sleep,” Paige lied. But what she really needed
was to find her moron of a dead partner and then kill him deader. After a
million lectures about backup, he’d gone off on his own and he hadn’t even
bothered to call. When she found him, she was going to take his phone and shove
it so far up his ass that he was going to cough up microchips. She hadn’t been
this angry since her mother’s death. Paige stopped, closed her eyes and tried
to gather a few emotional reserves.

Alex moved closer. “Seriously, Paige, you’re starting to
freak us all out with this shit. Go home. Go get drunk. Go out to the woods and
shoot at trees. Go sign up to talk to the shrink—I don’t care, but do
something.”

Paige opened her eyes and looked at Alex. He was a good man.
Why hadn’t she ever noticed what an incredibly good man he was? Most of the
time, she thought of him as one half of the Alex and Veronica comedy hour as
they annoyed the life out of each other.

A better question was why hadn’t she noticed what a good man
Brady had been before he’d died? Why couldn’t she stop thinking of him as Brady
now that he was dead? Questions spun through her brain like spiders leaving
behind silk that tangled in her thoughts. Yeah, she needed therapy. First she
had to find a therapist who would talk to her about dead people without signing
the commitment papers.

“I know, Alex. Trust me, I do know that I’m a little off
balance.”

“A little?” Alex reached out slowly and almost tentatively
put a hand on her arm. “Silver, you’re the biggest badass in a station full of
badasses, but you’re coming apart at the seams. Go home before the captain sees
you and puts you on leave.”