Allure of the Wolf (Seraphine Thomas Book 2) (25 page)

And then everyone started talking at once. I blinked up at the group, having forgotten they were even there, not sure why there was even a pause before they had started. I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled until they all quieted down.

I glanced between my team, Havers, and five of his people—including Agent Frank who wasn’t my favorite person. “Harris, what was with the twenty-second time-out before you all jumped me?” I demanded as I crossed my arms over my chest.

“There was just
so much
to process in what I’d heard that—I—you—
huh
?” He waved his arms around before he moved them to his hips and shook his head at me as he stared at his feet. “You can’t be alone your second full moon now that you’ve aligned with your
wolf
, Chief. It would be bad. Bad, bad,
baaaaad
.”

“Okay, I won’t be.” I shrugged. That was easy enough. “Can we talk about this later?”

“What are these wolves?” he demanded next.

“Again,
later
,” I growled, nodding to the others.

“No, I want to know this too,” Havers argued.

“You don’t get to,” I snapped, narrowing my eyes at him. “Has nothing to do with my case. Think of it as you met some Army guys asking you to help settle in Chicago because you were Army back in the day.”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “I wouldn’t call them
Beta potentials
and say they might be booking my full moons.”

“It’s rude to eavesdrop, Brian.” I clucked my tongue, batting my eyelashes at him. “Can we get to work now? There’s a dead body waiting for us.” I bit back a smile when Agent Corbin raised his hand. I’d always liked him and he’d backed me before when Havers had been a dick at a different crime scene when we’d been on opposite sides of the turf. “Yes, Eric?”

“Did you say African forest elephant shifter, Chief Thomas?”

“That’s what I’m told. Apparently she was in hiding and needs help getting to safety.”

“Wow, I didn’t even know there was such a species,” he muttered, scrubbing his chin. “I love elephants.”

“Well, if she comes to Chicago I’ll see if I can’t get you an introduction
now
that you’ve decided to volunteer—”

“
I
volunteered right away, Chief Thomas,” Agent Corbin corrected, shooting Special Agent in Charge Frank a less than friendly look.

“It seems there was a
slight
miscommunication as to who was offering to let your team shadow them,” Havers explained, rubbing the back of his neck.

I raised an eyebrow as I glanced between the three men. “Is that a fact?”

“Yes, but Frank here is volunteering as well now since it was his mistake.” Havers shot the man a look until he nodded.

“You’re a douche,” Cooper sneered at Frank. “I’ll push back getting field-qualified before I shadow you.”

“Right, because it’s better to learn from
agents
than the special agent in charge in the office,” Frank shot back, rolling his eyes as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You’d be lucky to learn from me.”

“I was an Army Ranger, dick,” Cooper snarled, his fangs coming out. “I was
shot
in combat and got caught drinking bagged blood so I could heal. That’s how I got discharged and shipped to MNSTR without any FBI training. I’m not useless. I just need the correct regs. I can get them from an agent who wants to train, not the douche who wants to screw with us.”

“I’m with him,” Harris sneered, his cheetah in his voice before he cleared his throat. “I was a cop. I know hazing and the ones to stay away from.” He shook his head and moved over by me to show solidarity. “She’s a wolf because she saved your life by no fault of her own. She takes the blame but you were her inside support.
You
should have checked with our office to see if Dorcus was a wolf. We knew he was. You never apologized. You never checked on her. Instead you took her job, look down your nose at her, and now you’re trying to derail our office from getting field-rated.”

“He was the best option to take your job? Jesus, we have better people and we’re
not
field-rated,” Cooper bitched as he stormed towards the door.

“He wouldn’t have been my first choice actually,” I called after him with a smirk. I shrugged when Havers shot me a dirty look. “What? He wouldn’t have been. You didn’t ask me. Most bosses would have. Monroe did when we promoted the five team leaders in the office.”

“MNSTR is run differently than the regular FBI.”

“Not really. We just don’t have the personnel yet. We plan to.” I headed to the door, smiling evilly when I knew that would stick in their craw.

Davis moved up next to me as did Harris who muttered under his breath, “Three, two—”

“What personnel?”
Havers barked out.

I didn’t answer, bumping fists with Davis as we entered the building. When the regular FBI joined us, I explained. “We have a bigger area to cover than you guys. You have more field offices than we do. We should have teams and presences in those same areas but we don’t. Eventually we will. You don’t think there’s other preternatural crimes besides in Chicago, New York, DC, Miami, and LA? There’s no set-up for local law enforcement. We’re
it
. That needs to change.”

“And
you’re
going to change it?” Frank demanded.

“Hell no,” I chuckled. “I’m staying in Chicago. I have a feeling it might become a hub if we do this right. We could set up our own preternatural Quantico here.”

“Oh, I like
that
,” Davis cooed, flipping her hair over her shoulder before pulling the lapels of her jacket straighter. “We do have a good selection in the area. We could get them certified as instructors. If our division had the credibility of the regular FBI, we could get other preternaturals in hiding to come over and join us. Give them a
reason
to want to be on the team and open more branches.”

“Exactly.” I had been yanking their chain really, but as I said it, there was truth to it and there
was
a need for it.

“Yeah right,” Frank muttered under his breath. “Like a bunch of slobbering dogs and leeches could do the real job without saving their friends and eating the witnesses to their crimes. Break out the claws and fangs with FBI Chief Bitch leading the charge.”

“That explains
so much
,” I purred, spinning on my heel and pushing Havers out of the way to get in Frank’s face. “You fucking
bigot
.”

“What? What’s going on?” Havers demanded, grabbing at my arm. But I was stronger than him now, and he might as well have been trying to tear out a tree trunk because I was
pissed
and focused on Frank.

“We have better hearing than you,” Cooper muttered, moving up next to me to keep Harris back and actually
protect
Frank from our friend. “Your special agent in charge just opened a fucking can of worms the size of Lower Wacker.”

“Why aren’t you decking him?” Harris bitched.

“Because normally I get in trouble for fighting too much. Too much action, not talking and explaining,” I answered, smiling at Frank as I let my eyes change to more than human. But you couldn’t ever make anyone happy, so this time I was going to make me happy and play with the bug caught in my web. “Chief Havers, I request Special Agent in Charge Richard Frank—”

“He really is
dick
,” Davis snorted. Yeah, I smirked at that one too.

“—be placed on administrative leave for insubordination for calling me
Chief Bitch
and a
slobbering dog
which Cooper and Harris both overheard, and he also referred to Cooper as a
leech
.”

“Fuck, Frank,” Havers groaned as he quit trying to stop me. “Badge and gun.”

“What?”
Frank roared as he shoved me, trying to square off with Havers.

That was all I needed. I clocked him square in the jaw, smiling as he went down like a sack of potatoes before turning innocently to Havers. “Add assault to an outranking officer.”

“I’ll witness that,” Agent Corbin agreed, tapping Frank with his foot.
“Dick.”

“I like him. Can I shadow him?” Cooper chuckled, throwing his arm around Corbin. “Can we keep this human as one of ours? He’s cool.”

“No humans in MNSTR, but we can invite him to the parties,” I chuckled as Havers rolled his eyes at me. I didn’t feel bad for one
second.
Hell, the slight twinge of pain in my hand was well worth decking Frank. I’d been wanting to do that for a long,
long
time but it wasn’t worth my job.

Didn’t mean I wouldn’t take full advantage of the excuse when I had it. People could only push me or disrespect me so far, talking out their asses, before I pushed back. I was funny like that. Revenge was best served cold and just because they shouted loud and thought they were special because they
shouted
and I didn’t say anything right away didn’t mean I wouldn’t get them… And they shouldn’t be looking over their shoulder for me.

15

The rest of us continued on to the morgue as Havers cleaned up the mess with Frank. Jennings came in right after I’d knocked the man out, his eyes wide as he took in the scene. Once he’d seen our people were okay, he’d simply shrugged and hadn’t asked.

He was smart like that.

“Male, late twenties, was in the water two days, and sat in the Gary morgue five before they sent him over today,” one of the many Cook County ME’s office pathologists informed us.

“So this was our first victim,” Harris muttered as he leaned in closer.

“Correct. Gold star,” the pathologist agreed. She gestured over to the other table. “I pulled them up side-by-side when you called to say you were coming. I didn’t know we’d have a whole class though.”

“You might get more,” I apologized. “Sorry about that.”

She gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Not at all. I’ve never seen a case like this. Might get to publish off this one.” Then she waved me closer and showed me something on the shoulder. “Your bite marks are the same. The measurements are pretty much exact if you take the tearing factor into account. I consulted with a colleague of mine in Florida who’s used to seeing shark attacks, and he was confident in saying it’s the same set of teeth. They both sustained minor perimortem injuries and the majority were postmortem.”

“What does that tell us?” I asked my team, raising an eyebrow and letting them know that I expected for them to at least guess, discuss it out loud.

“That they were mostly done so the bodies couldn’t be identified?” Davis tried, gesturing to the missing hands.

“Most likely,” I agreed, glancing at the pathologist. She nodded and I looked back at the first victim. “Can you tell the order they occurred?”

“I can and I mapped them out for you already.” She handed me two separate sheets with figures marked up. “The funny thing is that the first wounds were
started
when they were standing. That’s the only way that tearing pattern could have happened with teeth.”

I stared at the sheets about one body before moving to the next. Then I handed them to Cooper. “What do you see?”

It took him a few moments, but I had a feeling he came to the same conclusion as I did with the response he gave. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

“Try me anyways,” I pushed, wanting to make sure they knew they could always come to me no matter how wild the theory. Sometimes the answer
was
crazy.

God knew the world was.

“Okay so we have enough of this guy to know he was about my height, six-two, maybe six-one depending on how he stood once he had all his intestines?”

“Good.” I moved him away from the tables, taking the sheets from him, giving them to Davis. “Tell me what you think happened.”

He nodded and glanced around, waving Harris over. “Say I’m standing at the edge of the water. Harris is the shark and he comes up from behind me, and while shifting, chomps down on my shoulder, and drags me out into the water—which explains the tearing—drowns me, and then bites off my hands to remove anything that can identify me. Maybe a few extra bites before he loses hold on me or something.”

“Almost,” the pathologist piped in. “There was water in the lungs from drowning, not just being in the water after death. But you’re missing something big.”

“Where the bites are on the body,” Davis muttered as she moved up to Cooper. “It’s a
she
.” I watched as she pretended to bite at him, having to bite
up
to get at his shoulder since she was five-seven and seven inches shorter than him. “Or a shorter than average male.”

“She gets two gold stars,” the pathologist chuckled, winking. “I asked my colleague and female sharks are bigger than male sharks. I didn’t know that. However, from the size of the tooth found, he says that if shifter sharks are anything like natural sharks, this isn’t a full-grown shark so that won’t help you.”