Authors: Paige Tyler
Kendra tried to place the name as she sipped her coffee.
Oh, that’s right.
He’d been Landon’s second-in-command back in Special Forces and was currently rehabbing from a devastating injury at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda. He was super sweet and cute as hell, and while he’d gotten around with a cane at the wedding, it looked like every step was pure agony.
“Tell him I said hello.” Kendra put her coffee mug down. “And stop worrying about those doctors. We’ll track them down.”
“I know.” Ivy gracefully got to her feet. “And you think about what I said.”
Kendra wanted to ask which part of their conversation Ivy was referring to, but had a sneaking suspicion she knew it had something to do with going out on date with the DCO’s teddy bear.
* * *
It might have been the endless procession of experts Senior Agent Carhart had lined up to brief them on the task force’s investigative approach that had him dragging, but Clayne suspected it had more to do with the lack of sleep he’d gotten the night before. After dinner, he’d used the hotel’s workout facilities for two hours in the hopes he’d wear himself out, but instead, he’d lain in bed staring up at the ceiling in the dark, alternating between being pissed off at John for manipulating him into working with his ex-partner again and being furious with Danica for pretending they didn’t have a history together. More than once, he’d almost packed his things and gotten his ass on the first flight out of California.
But regardless of how he felt about Danica and the messed up situation he was in, there was still a psychotic shifter out there killing humans at an alarming rate. As much as he wanted to, he couldn’t leave until this was over.
Even if he’d gotten a good night’s sleep, he’d still be tired of this endless talking. He’d been sitting there for three hours listening to people who’d never left the safe, comfy confines of their offices tell them how to catch a killer.
The profiler from the FBI was the worst. The guy looked like he was twelve, for crying out loud. Clayne wondered if he’d ever seen a murderer outside the pages of a college textbook. His deeply insightful addition to the investigation? The killer was likely a male between twenty-five and forty-five who hated his father. Well, that was useful. Clayne could walk around the streets of Sacramento asking middle-aged men if they liked their daddies.
After the profiler finished, the forensic expert took his turn at the podium. He didn’t have a lot to say, either. This killer hadn’t left anything behind beyond common dirt and a few tiny pieces of forest mulch. There was nothing to lead them to where the actual murders had occurred—other than somewhere in the woods of Northern California—and no hairs, fiber, trace material, or DNA that might give them a clue where to start looking for the killer. At least the forensic guy was able to confirm that all the victims had sustained some kind of debilitating injury to their hamstring or Achilles prior to their deaths. Which meant Clayne had been right about the hunter angle.
Clayne swore under his breath. He’d just handed the feds their first lead, and they all sat around and stared at each other. It was aggravating as hell and he couldn’t suppress a growl. The female agent from the state’s Bureau of Investigation turned around to give him a startled look. He bit his tongue and smiled at her. Apparently, his smile must have been just as terrifying because she quickly turned back around.
Damn. He had to get a grip on himself. He’d be the first to admit he wasn’t the most patient guy, but he usually didn’t let petty bullshit like this get to him so quickly. After being in the DCO for six years, he was used to it. He did a few head rolls to relax and caught a whiff of Danica’s scent.
This was definitely one of those times he hated having a superior sense of smell. He’d been subconsciously attempting to push her pheromones to the back of his mind from the moment she’d walked into the room, but it was no good. While he’d been successful in keeping his human half from obsessing on the scent, his animal side had been taking it in the whole time.
After everything she’d done to him, the smell of her body still had an effect on him. It was like they’d never been apart. If anything, her scent was more powerful than it had ever been. He found himself taking those small, short breaths to capture even more of her delectable fragrance.
He bit back another growl. He shouldn’t be reacting to her like this. After everything she’d done to him, he should hate her. Her scent should make him physically ill. But instead, it made him remember things he didn’t want to. Things he’d wished now had never happened at all. Like walking into his boss’s office at the DCO that day four years ago and finding her waiting for him.
* * *
Washington, DC, December 2009
Clayne was at the shooting range when John called him in. Despite all the smoke fumes he’d been breathing in for the past hour, he couldn’t miss the tantalizing aroma lingering in the air as he headed down the hallway. It was so exquisite he stopped walking and inhaled, letting his wolf out just enough to pinpoint where the smell was coming from. After a few slow circles, he figured out it was John’s office. Hot damn.
He picked up his pace, suddenly eager to get there. Usually getting called to John’s office meant something bad was coming his way—a reprimand, an attempt at a motivational pep talk, a briefing for a mission he didn’t have any interest in, a partnership pairing that had no hope of succeeding. But if that delicious scent was coming from John’s office, he didn’t care what the hell the man wanted.
He walked in without knocking and almost fell to his knees as the full impact of the fragrance hit him. As sweet as peaches mixed with the unmistakable—and delectable—touch of feminine musk. Which meant it could only belong to the woman John was talking to. She was seated on the couch at a slight angle to the doorway, so he couldn’t see her face, but the sleek column of her neck exposed by her upswept hair made him lick his lips. Another minute and he was going to start drooling.
He’d smelled a lot of humans in his life, and none of them had come close to the intoxicating scent this woman was putting off.
“Clayne, there you are.” John rose from the wingback chair. “Sorry to drag you off the range, but there’s someone I want you to meet.”
The woman got to her feet and turned to face Clayne, and he had to force himself not to stare.
Daaaammn
. Whoever she was, she not only smelled amazing, but looked it, too. With big, brown eyes; smooth, creamy skin; and wide, full lips—not to mention one hell of a body—she was the stuff fantasies were made of. His, anyway. And though he couldn’t tell how long her dark hair was since it was up in a bun, he’d guess it reached past her shoulders. His fingers itched to pull the clip free to see if he was right.
If meeting this fine woman was the reason John had yanked him off the range, he’d have to tell his boss to do it more often.
As she walked around the coffee table and came closer, Clayne realized she was taller than he’d thought, maybe five ten or eleven. That still made her small compared to him, but at least she could look him in the eye without craning her neck.
Up close, her scent was even more powerful and it was all he could do not to bury his nose in the curve of her neck and breathe deeply. Yeah, he might want to control that particular urge.
He tried to focus on John instead, but he couldn’t take his gaze off her. There was a rebelliousness in her dark eyes and a stubborn line to her jaw he hadn’t noticed before. His gut told him she wasn’t the kind of woman who backed down from anyone, and that made her even more attractive in his book.
“Clayne Buchanan, meet Danica Beckett,” John said. “You’re going to be her partner.”
Clayne was so busy thinking how beautiful her name was that he almost missed the last part. He jerked his gaze away from her to scowl at John. Unlike everyone else at the DCO, his boss didn’t even blink.
“What the hell do you mean—partner?”
John regarded him the same way he would a dog who’d just figured out the thing he’d been chasing for the last few minutes had been his own tail. “Partner. As in someone you’ll work with on a permanent basis to accomplish the DCO mission. That kind of partner.”
Clayne clenched his jaw to keep from letting out his inner wolf and biting John’s head off—figuratively, of course. This was the tenth time the DCO had tried to set him up with a partner. And it would be the tenth time he showed them he didn’t want or need a partner.
He hated working with other people, especially humans. And while the idea of spending some quality time between the sheets with Danica Beckett appealed to him, the idea that they could be partners was ludicrous. Men couldn’t put up with him. What chance did a woman have?
“Forget it,” Clayne said firmly. “I’ve told you before that I don’t need a partner. They’re dead weight and just get in the way. And if you think that I’ll get along better with this one, just because she’s a woman, you’re wrong. It takes more than a pretty face to get the job done—or get on my good side.”
He turned and headed for the door, suddenly having an urge to get back to the range. Shooting something seemed like a really good idea at the moment. But a hand caught his arm and jerked him around. Thinking it was John, he bared his teeth, ready to snarl, only to snap his mouth shut when he saw that it was Danica.
Shit
. Most men were too busy trying not to piss themselves to put a hand on him, much less glare at him with fire in her eyes like she was doing.
“I think you heard John wrong.” It was damn hard to even comprehend what she was saying because her scent was so overpowering this close. “He didn’t say I was going to be your partner. He said you’re going to be mine.”
Clayne stared. Obviously, someone had had their Wheaties this morning. What the hell was with this woman?
“John told me that you had problems working with your previous partners and that it affected team performance.” She went up on tiptoe so she was almost eye level with him. Not quite even, but almost. “Well, those issues aren’t going to hurt our team.” She smiled at him, and damn if it didn’t make his heart beat faster. “Fortunately for you, I’m good enough at my job to carry your dead weight for a while. But I won’t do it forever, so you better get your crap together.” She leaned closer, and he damn near passed out from the pheromones she was putting off. “Pay attention, wolf boy. From this moment on, we’re a team, so get used to it. Because you don’t want this pretty face pissed off at you.”
She brushed past Clayne and stormed out of the office. He stared at her retreating back in disbelief. Damn, hadn’t he been the one who was going to do that? The woman had just punked his ass in front of his boss, and all he wanted to do was chase after her.
A soft chuckle from behind him brought him back around, and he turned to see John regarding him with the same amused look he’d had on his face earlier.
“What the hell just happened?” Clayne asked.
His boss smiled. “I’d say you just met your match.”
* * *
Clayne shook off the memory to realize he had a stupid-ass grin on his face and a hard-on in his pants. Thinking too much about Danica always had that effect on him.
He smothered a snarl and picked up his pen. Maybe taking notes would help him think about something other than Danica. But Carhart was already breaking people into investigative focus groups. Another waste of time. Where the hell had this guy gotten his badge?
“Buchanan, you’re with Beckett and Moretti,” Carhart said.
Yeah, he figured that.
By the time Clayne grabbed his coffee and notepad, Danica and Moretti were already heading out the door. Apparently, they assumed he’d follow like a good dog.
* * *
“I’m going to throw up if I look at these crime scene photos any longer.”
Danica glanced up as Tony tossed the pictures on the table in the conference room they’d commandeered. Carhart had assigned them the task of profiling the victims to see if there was any connection between how they were selected. Danica knew right off the bat that Carhart considered this busywork. Her new boss was putting most of the assets on tracking the serial killer. That’s where everyone thought the big break in the case was going to come. Profiling victims was backup work, but ever since Clayne showed up, she and Tony had been relegated to the B-Team.
“You’re welcome to the witness statements from the friends, neighbors, and relatives.” Clayne sat at the end of the table with his boots propped up on an adjacent chair, a tall pile of folders in front of him that was in serious danger of toppling. “I can distill them down into four simple words: I. Don’t. Know. Shit.”
Danica knew Clayne and Tony had gone through their respective stacks twice already, but so had she. She didn’t know what they were complaining about. Thanks to them, she’d gotten stuck with the coroner’s reports. Her stack was twice as high as both of theirs put together, full of gory autopsy photos.
“Going over this stuff again and again isn’t getting us anywhere.” Tony got up and walked over to the whiteboard in the front of the room. “Let’s try something different. How about we start with what we know and see where we get?”
Danica expected Clayne to veto that suggestion with a snort and some snarky comment, but to her surprise, he told Tony it was a good idea.
As Clayne moved to sit on the edge of the table, she thought about joining in the discussion, but that meant sitting beside her ex-partner, so she stayed where she was. What the hell did it say about her that she’d rather look at pictures of mutilated people than be close to him?
After a while, even the gruesome photos weren’t enough to distract her. No matter what she looked at or read or took notes on, she kept sneaking glances at Clayne. He’d traded in a suit and tie for jeans and a button-down shirt. The material stretched tight across his broad shoulders, reminding her how muscular he was under there. As if she needed a reminder. Her hands practically ached with the need to touch him.
It was so sorry and pathetic that she should have been angry with herself for having these thoughts—especially since he obviously hated her—but it wasn’t her fault that her body betrayed her whenever she was around him. Clayne was the only man she’d ever met who could make her forget her own name just by looking at her. Which she nearly did when John had first introduced them years ago.