Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) (30 page)

It was then that
Vaile thought maybe he could actually be D’Angelo’s friend if the circumstances
were different. ‘Is that all?’ Vaile asked, standing up.

‘No. Sit down,’
he commanded. Vaile sat, although every instinct in his body told him not to
obey. ‘I just had Grey in here,’ he started. ‘She says she wants to stay on as
your partner permanently. You interested in keeping her?’

Vaile wasn’t
surprised often, but Larissa seemed to have a knack with it. She
still
wanted to work with him? After Vaile recovered from the shock of that
statement, he said, ‘Yeah.’

‘Why?’ his boss
asked, his eyes sparkling with mischief. Vaile wanted to wipe the smirk away
with his claws, but swallowed the rage and settled his wolf.

‘She’s a good
cop. She anticipates me, knows what to ask, when to ask it. She knows exactly
what needs to be done, and does it.’

‘So,’ D’Angelo
said smugly, dropping his feet onto his desk and pushing his chair back to
stretch out his legs; his arms behind his head. ‘The great Vaile Wolfe has
finally found a partner he likes. If I’d known you’d only tolerate women, I
would have sent one to you earlier.’

Vaile’s face
remained impassive. He knew there was only one woman he would have made such concessions
for, but he wasn’t about to admit that to his boss. ‘Can I go now?’

‘Sure,’ he said,
waving a dismissive hand in his direction. ‘Try to crack this case. I’m
counting on you, Vaile.’

‘You got it,’ he
replied, slamming his boss’s door shut behind him. Larissa glanced up at the
sound, quickly dropping her eyes back to her computer screen after meeting his.

‘Tox screen has
come in for the other two victims,’ she said as he sat down at his desk.
Leaning back in his chair, he looked past the padded partition to look at her
profile. He had a flash of them making love again, and he wanted to clear all
the stuff on her desk off with one sweeping gesture then pound into her to get
her to scream for him again.

‘What were the
results?’
Negative for drugs. Negative for alcohol
, he thought.

‘Negative for
drugs. Negative for alcohol,’ Larissa said, looking back at him and biting her
lip like she could read his damn mind. He cleared his throat and sat forward
again. Clicking open his emails, he opened the last report from the ME. It
turned out that Scott Green—the last Vic—had been drained of blood too, but
only after his chest had been carved up. Vaile scrolled down further. Official
cause of death:
Exsanguination.

‘So,
where do we go from here?’ Larissa asked. She had rolled her chair over to his
side of the partition. The whole thing still looked like a vamp case, but there
was nowhere else they could go until they found out who this mysterious woman
was.

‘We
need to find out who this woman is, the one who keeps showing up at each murder
scene.’

Larissa
nodded. ‘How about checking out the surveillance tapes from the club?’ she
suggested. Now why hadn’t he thought of that before now?

He
smiled. ‘Perfect.’

They were on their
way back to “The Imp and Impaler”; their fourth trip in as many days. Vaile
pulled into the club’s staff car park at the back of the building and got out.
He banged on the solid steel backdoor, waiting for Suleman to open up. He knew
he’d be there. The bastard ate and breathed his club. A few minutes passed
without so much as a peep from inside until finally a rumpled looking
Victoria—the “waitress”—opened up the door. She was holding her corset up
against her chest, but thank fuck she still had her skirt on.

‘Hi,’
she drawled, eyeing Vaile appreciatively.

‘Where’s
your boss?’

‘Still
in bed,’ she replied, biting her painted lips playfully.

‘Wake
him up. We need to talk to him.’

Victoria
eyed them both curiously, sniffed and turned around. Guiding Larissa in first,
Vaile followed, letting the metal door slam shut behind them. With any luck it
would get Suleman’s ass out of bed faster. Vaile stalked down the hallway
towards his office, pounding on the closed door once there. Suleman appeared a
few seconds later—naked—and looking damn proud of himself. Larissa gasped and
spun around to face the wall of the hallway behind them.

‘Put
some fucking clothes on, Suleman,’ Vaile growled.

‘Am
I making you uncomfortable, Detective?’ he asked in a teasing voice. ‘I can do
whatever I like. This is
my
club.’

‘Whatever,’
Vaile waved the guy off. ‘We need access to your CCTV footage.’

One
of Suleman’s dark brows arched. ‘I only have two cameras that actually work.
The others are dummies.’

Vaile
gritted his teeth. ‘Fine. Show me what little footage you have, then maybe we
can stop your customers from being bled to death and carved up like Christmas
hams in
your
club.’ Sarcasm was thick in his voice.

Victoria
twitched her way over with a packet of cigarettes. Suleman took one and lit it
with the offered flame, blowing the smoke into Vaile’s face. ‘Fine,’ he said,
turning to walk into his office again. They both followed, watching Suleman
disappear behind one of the three black, heavy-looking doors along the far
wall.

Suleman’s
office was decorated in a style that could only be described as a cross between
crack den chic and a hunting lodge. He had big game animals hanging from the
walls; lions mounted in attack poses on zebras and a huge grisly towering over
the room. His desk was a mess of papers and piles of money. The carpet was old;
wearing through in the heavy traffic areas and it needed to be torn out
completely before it could be deemed “clean”. And littered amongst the green on
his desk were used needles, a bent spoon and empty bottles of Jack.

Suleman
was back, brandishing a jewel CD case in front of him. ‘This is the footage
from in front of the bar and from the front of the club for the past week.’

‘What
about the VIP area?’

‘My
clients deserve the right to privacy back there. Whatever happens behind the
velvet curtain stays behind the velvet curtain.’ With a sneer, Vaile reached
for the case, but Suleman jerked it back suddenly. ‘I get this back,’ he
demanded.

‘You
get it back when I say you fucking get it back.’ Vaile snatched the case away
from him and left.

Back at central
command, Larissa and Vaile sat in the small, dark video room set up at the end
of a long, empty hallway. They were up on the fifth floor—a floor that housed
all the surveillance the police undertook. Vaile opened up the drive on the
computer and clicked into the footage for the bar. Looking at the different
dates and time stamps, he selected a file about one hour before the first
murder scene was discovered on Friday night.

They
watched the footage for a few moments.

‘There,’
Larissa said, pointing to the screen. ‘That’s him. That’s Aaron.’

And
sure enough, Aaron Mills was standing at the bar with the girl they’d
interviewed at the scene. Aaron was leaning in close to Cherry, asking her a
question close to her ear. She nodded, smiled and walked towards the bar. Aaron
turned to look over the railing into the second level of the club. Vaile ran
the tape forward a little. Cherry returned with the drink, they talked for a
while before Cherry sat in his lap. Vaile couldn’t see what was going on, but
no clothing was being removed, so it was still PG.

Vaile
was looking for this dark-skinned woman the witnesses claimed to see sniffing
around shortly before the guys ended up dead, but he didn’t see her once. Going
back to the home screen, he clicked into the front of the club footage, playing
it from three hours before Aaron was killed. They saw Aaron coming in with
Cherry. They were part of a larger group—all women.

This
time Larissa hit the fast forward button. The images zipped past; white faces,
dark clothing—piercings. Vaile’s spine straightened when he saw a couple of
mara
with their sire brandings peeking from under the dog collars they wore to blend
in with the clientele. Then he saw her—the dark-skinned woman. Her face was
hidden in the shadows, but the unmistakable glow of her eyes gave her away.

‘See
that?’ Larissa said, rolling the tape back a few seconds and pausing it. She’d
freeze-framed the woman standing in the shadows. Her eyes were a bright
sulphur-yellow. ‘They’re those TrickedOut lenses. They change colours under
black lights.’

Vaile
pressed his lips into a hard line. They weren’t contact lenses. She was a wolf.
She was the wolf he’d smelt on the bodies, but he couldn’t get a clear view of
her face. ‘Go back to the bar footage—see if we can’t pick her up leaving the
club after the murder.’

Larissa
nodded, clicking back to the home page and loading the front of bar footage.
The time stamped section she selected was around the time the body was
discovered.

‘Kick
it back a few more minutes,’ Vaile rumbled, sitting forward in his chair. He
could smell Larissa more easily this way. He wanted to drown in her scent while
making love to her again. And then he started to wonder what she tasted like.
He’d been too juiced to take his time worshipping her body before, but next
time he would.

He
swallowed a growl. The stupid cocksucker that he was wasn’t going to get
another time. He’d fucked it up for himself. He sighed. Still, he had his
memories and a pretty vivid imagination. He looked at her from the corner of
his eye; enjoying how the light from the screen played in her green eyes.

Larissa
set the tape to play and they watched as the same woman hurried from the club.
This time, the camera caught the back of her head revealing neat cornrows.
Vaile’s wolf bristled. He only knew of one wolf with cornrows and yellow wolf
eyes. He clenched and unclenched his jaw, eventually saying, ‘Pull up the tape
for Luke Baker and Scott Green. See if you can find that woman again—see if you
can’t get a proper shot of her face.’ He stood up, clenching his hands into
fists.

Larissa
looked at him. ‘Vaile, what’s wrong?’ Concern etched little lines around her
mouth. He wanted to reach for her and erase them for her. He turned towards the
door, palming his phone in his pocket.

‘I
need to make a phone call. I’ll be back in a minute.’ He left before she could
ask questions. He hated lying to her. Walking a few paces down the hallway, he
punched in Rhett’s number and held the phone to his ear.

It
rang eight times before voicemail picked up. ‘Rhett. It’s me. We have a
problem. Call me back when you get this.’ He snapped his phone shut, slumping
against the wall. Leona was the murderer. All the evidence was there. Now all
he had to figure out was why.

‘Indi not with you?’ Jerry had
asked Rhett when he’d arrived at work. Jerry looked … happy—for probably the
first time since he’d started working at the café.

‘Ah, no. She’s
sick.’ He covered the lie with a cough. ‘She didn’t call you?’

Jerry shook his
head. ‘No, she didn’t. Maybe I should

call her now.’ He reached for his
phone, and Rhett panicked.

‘No, wait. She’s
probably sleeping.’

‘What’s wrong
with her?’

‘A cold, I
think. Maybe it’s the flu. All she needs is sleep. I’ll check up on her on my
way home after my shift.’ He didn’t feel easy lying to Jerry about where Indi
actually lived now, but it wasn’t his place to tell him. That was up to his
sister.

‘She must have
caught it when I saw her out walking on Saturday night,’ Jerry said with a
shrug. Rhett felt his blood pressure shoot up. He still couldn’t believe she’d
been so reckless, especially with the threat of vampire attacks rife in Hell.
His jaw clenched; his hands balling into fists. Why couldn’t she have just done
as she was told?

Because she
never will,
said a voice at the back of his head.

‘Rhett, can you
clear that table for me, please?’

Rhett blinked.
‘Sorry?’

Jerry pointed at
a table over Rhett’s shoulder. ‘Clear that table for me?’

At around lunchtime, Rhett took his
break. In the storeroom, he overturned a milk crate and sat down with a pizza
he’d bought from a little place across the street. He was just taking his first
bite when there was a knock at the door.

‘Come in.’

The handle was
pressed down, and a dark hand edged around the corner of the door. Rhett’s wolf
bristled at the intrusion.

‘Leona,’ he
growled. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’

‘Your boss,
Jerry, said I could find you back here,’ she mumbled, keeping her eyes cast to
the floor. ‘May I come in?’

All the
self-abasing behaviour was getting on Rhett’s nerves. ‘Come in,’ he snapped,
putting down his pizza to get into a better position in case it came to a
fight. Leona stepped inside and closed the door softly.

‘Thank you for
seeing me.’

‘What the fuck
happened this morning?’ he asked, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

Her black eyes
darted nervously to his. She licked her lips. ‘The Seer was there. I … I can’t
be seen speaking to you. She deals with Marcus more than any other alpha on the
east coast.’

Rhett’s eyes
narrowed. ‘Why?’ If Marcus was seeing the Seer, something was going on.