Wolves of Haven: Lone (10 page)

Akia gave a small wave. “I figured
as much. Fae, Rafe, stop dicking around and let him up so we can
eat. I’ve been up for hours and am ready to crash.”

“Aw, do we have to?” they
complained in unison before letting the young man up.

The family gathered around the
large dining room table and waited for Varg and Beowulf to join
them. Akia sat between Connell and Faelan, just as she had done
when she lived there, and eyed the platters filling the center of
the table; stack of rare steaks, barbecued ribs, glazed pork chops,
grilled vegetables, and baskets of fresh rolls and slices of bread
with mounds of sweet cream butter and jars of honey ready to be
spread on them.

When Akia’s stomach growled, Faelan
chuckled and grabbed one of the baskets of rolls and handed it to
her. “Eat, your growling is going to scare the kid.”

“Shut up,” she complained before
shoving an entire roll in her mouth.

Faelan sighed. “If only I could
find a man that can do that with something meatier than soda
bread,” he said.

Akia gave him a look. “Really?” she
mumbled with her mouth full.

He simply smiled wide.

Beowulf joined them, taking a
moment to kiss Akia on the top of the head in passing, before
taking his seat at the head of the table. “Where is Varg?” he
asked.

“Patrolling the perimeter,” Rafe
said. “He’ll eat later, alone.”

Thank god,
Akia silently huffed; dealing with Varg was the
very last thing she wanted to do that evening.

Beowulf nodded. “Very well, let’s
eat.”

Like starving animals, most of
those seated around the table stood and hastily started loading
their plates, piling them high with food.

Louvel chuckled, leaning back with
a glass of wine in hand, watching his nephews and niece silently
fight over the food. “It has been much too long since we have had
dinner theater,” he commented.

Seff shook his head, not amused in
the least, and flipped the newspaper in his hands over and
continued reading the world news section.

“Believe it or not, I missed this,”
Beowulf said then applauded when Akia stabbed Connell in the hand
with a fork when he tried to steal her pork chop. “Connie, you will
never learn. What is that, three hundred times you’ve been stabbed
by your baby sister?”

Connell continued to growl as he
rubbed his hand, glaring at his sister.

Akia smiled as she ripped a big
bite off of the pork chop in her hand then chewed with her mouth
open just to spite him.

Louvel roared with laughter. “Just
like the first time we had dinner as a family. Only this time she
is holding her own and is heavily armed.”

Seff growled under his breath.
“Don’t encourage them. It will not end well with the Inspector when
he discovers that they pulled one over on him.”

“What do you mean?” Ulrik asked
before shoving an overly large bite of steak in his mouth. “What
did they do?” he asked with his mouth full.

Faelan threw a roll at him and it
bounced off of the young man’s forehead. “Manners!” he scolded,
talking with his mouth full before smiling.

Beowulf shook his head. “Tonight
there will be no talk of the Stray. This is the first time that we
have been a family in over a decade, thus we will enjoy it.
Daughter, this is your new little brother, Ulrik. Louvel has taken
him under his wing and pulled him back from the darkness and
shadows of his past, creating the,” he paused and cocked an eyebrow
when he saw that the blue haired young man had barbeque sauce
dripping down his chin and a rib in each hand, “picture of class
and refinement that you see in front of you today.”

The young man smiled wide as he
continued to chew.

Akia nodded. “Pleasure, I’m sure.
Shop talk can wait, Father, but I’m honestly on the verge of
crashing. I worked a fifteen hour shift then rushed home to change
for the awards banquet, which I was forced into going to…didn’t get
any sleep, and just as I was ready to pass out in the bath, Varg
called, and I dropped everything; nearly forty hours without sleep.
Do you really want to risk an unannounced visit from
Eve?”

That stole everyone’s
attention.

“Father,” she whispered, silently
pleading with him.

Beowulf nodded. “Understood.
Tomorrow we’ll catch up,” he assured her and she nodded her thanks.
“Your room is just how you left it, even left the bed unmade just
as you left it,” he teased.

Suddenly her appetite was gone, and
it felt as if the food she just ate was about to come back up. It
was a struggle to breathe, her palms were sweaty, and the room
started to feel overly hot and as if the walls were caving in on
her.

“Not happening,” Faelan said,
throwing his thick arm over Akia’s shoulders and pulled her into
him. “I haven’t gotten to have girl time in a long, long time, and
now that little sister is home, she’s going to tell me all about
Boston and the hot men on the force before she passes out. Slumber
party!” he beamed.

Akia nodded. “Slumber party is
exactly what I need,” she managed to say with a forced smile. “I’m
going to take a shower and make a couple of phone calls while you
clean up. Bring up some of those desserts I know you spent hours
making today?”

He kissed the side of her head.
“Anything for you, Sis.”

“Hey,” Damian said, turning the
water to the shower off with one hand while holding his cell phone
to his ear with the other. “Is everything okay, Latria Mou?” he
asked; he had been waiting for her call.

Akia sighed. “No, not really,” she
eventually said after a long stretch of silence before popping a
pill in her mouth.

He wrapped a towel around his waist
then headed into the bedroom. “What’s going on? Is your father
okay?” he asked, greatly concerned.

“You’ll most likely get a call from
an annoying and inept Inspector from the Haven Police Department,”
she mumbled.

Damian groaned; that was never the
start of a good conversation. “What’d you do?”

“Stumbled into the middle of a
serial killer investigation,” she said as if it was obvious, and he
laughed, thinking she was kidding. “The perp is trying to disguise
each kill as if they’re animal attacks, taking one out of the
Kodiak Killer’s book.”

That stole the mirth from him.
“You’re serious?”

“Sadly, yes. The bodies are being
dumped on the beach just outside of my family’s estate,” Akia
explained as she made herself comfortable in Faelan’s oversized
bed. “Possibly it was a counter forensics measure initially, or
simply a body dump of convenience since the first was accidental,
that was more than obvious, but now I fear that it’s personal.
Father or the family is being targeted.”

Damian pushed his hand through his
wet hair in frustration; if they were targeting her family that
meant they were targeting her, and that he wouldn’t permit. “How
many?”

“Five that have turned up,” she
said. “The most recent was discovered less than forty-eight hours
ago, that was when Varg called.”

Softly he snarled under his
breath.

“The perp has a taste for the kill
now,” she continued as she absently twirled a damp lock of her own
hair around her fingers.

Damian shook his head; he knew
where this was going. “Progression?” he asked.

“Escalating quickly,” she said,
sounding exhausted. “From point of first kill to most recent, is
countable in weeks. Time between kills is getting shorter with each
victim. I fear that if he continues at this pace, he’ll have a
victim or more a week, and that’s only because he’s learned to keep
them alive for fun before he breaks his toy. The fourth was captive
for approximately five days before breaking… Something doesn’t feel
right about it,” she admitted, finally speaking her concerns aloud
to the one person she trusted and respected more than any other in
the world of criminal justice.

He sighed, kicking himself in the
ass for not going with her to Haven since she needed him in more
than just the physical sense; she needed his expertise as well.
“I’m listening,” he said.

“The first three were sloppy,” Akia
said, struggling to explain what she saw in front of her when it
pertained to the case, but no one else apparently saw it. “The
fourth, the jump from savagely attacking without a sense of purpose
to the refinement that the fourth presented, was much too quickly
of an escalation for the perp. He went from toddler with a loaded
gun, in a sense, to a kid with a knife, then a teenager with a
hatchet, to a master with patience, knowledge, and skill. That
rapid escalation doesn’t make any sense, and it shouldn’t be
possible…unless he got guidance.”

Damian’s eyes widened. “The most
recent?” he asked, taking notes in his head and fighting the nausea
that nearly had him doubling over.

“Gruesome even for my experience,”
she admitted. “I’ll text you a picture of the three Does, but it
won’t be helpful for the fifth; he took his frustration out on the
body. If guidance was suddenly given, the teacher was apparently
absent for the temper tantrum that ensued.”

“Understood,” he said.

“Can you run the info through
missing persons for me?” she sheepishly asked.

“Why not have the locals do it?”
Damian asked, suspicious.

“One; I don’t trust the Inspector,”
Akia admitted. “He was much too easily swayed to allow me on the
case, on my vacation mind you, and to supervise the
suspect.”

“And who is the
suspect?”

She groaned. “The less you know the
better, at this point.”

His free hand clenched into a fist,
and he fought to keep from growling at her because she apparently
didn’t trust him with the information.

“The fifth, he didn’t get to have
his fun with her, so he’ll strike again, and soon.”

“What happened? Was he
interrupted?” he asked, his inner-detective rearing its head,
trying to push the thought of her not trusting him from his
mind.

“Heart gave out from an underlining
medical condition that the perp apparently didn’t know about, which
is amusing on a sick and twisted level since she reeked of
medication… Heart condition; cause of death was cardiac arrest,”
she explained, catching herself much too late. “When he tried to
use the synthetic adrenaline to revive her, as he was taught, it
didn’t work. There was fracturing of the ribs, what I’m assuming to
be from chest compressions. None of the other victims had them. I
had the M.E. swab around the mouth for DNA… I think he gave her
mouth to mouth.”

That wasn’t normal, they both knew
it, and a killer trying to revive a victim that prematurely died at
their hands was very troubling.

“This is only the beginning,” she
said what he was thinking.

“Sexual assault?” he
asked.

“Negative.”

That was unusual for such
aggressive crimes.

“Victimology?” Damian
pressed.

“Throw a dart at a board of
choices, and you’ll hit it,” Akia dryly said. “First victim was a
white male in his fifties; second a dirty female in her forties;
third Hispanic male in his sixties; fourth and fifth females, one
Asian and the other black, early thirties and barely twenty. The
third, fourth and fifth haven’t been identified; the second was a
local hermit that no one ever saw, the first was a truck driver
from Alberta; no next of kin for either. The first two each had a
prior, so they were in the system. The three Does are clean, not
even immigration records.”

Damian sighed in resignation and
grabbed a pen and pad from the nightstand. “Profile on the latest
victim?” he said, readying himself for a long night.

“African female between seventeen
and twenty-two; five-five, one-ten; brown eyes, natural black hair
that had been professionally relaxed,” she said, going down the
checklist in her head. “Hands were long and slender for her size,
and soft, but the tips were callused-”

“You’re thinking a musician,” he
said.