Seduction's Shift (26 page)

“Of course it matters.” He sighed again. “Look, Ary, I’m not trying to be your father. I just want to keep you safe.”

“But I want a life. I have to be able to lead my own life without you dictating to me.”

“I would never dictate how you run your life.”

“Really? ‘You’ll be the head of the medical center,’ ‘you go shopping with Kalina,’ ‘you use my credit card.’ Shall I go on?”

Silence again. For him to be an attorney, he had to know how to clam up when he wanted to.

“I thought you wanted to become a doctor.”

“I do. On my own terms and in my own time.”

“You needed things. I thought I was being considerate by telling you to go with Kalina and footing the bill. Most women would love to hear that from their man.”

Was he her man? A smile tickled her lips, but she clamped that bit of happiness down for a moment.

“I don’t want to owe anybody anything. I want to make it on my own here. I know I can do it.”

Nick kissed her ear. “I know you can, too, but you don’t have to. You are my
companheiro,
it is my duty to take care of you.”

He was right, Ary knew. As her mate he was charged with the duty of protecting her and their family. That most likely included buying her things, and she probably should be happy about that. But, she admitted, she had her own rebellious streak.

“When I become a doctor, I’ll make my own money,” she told him.

“I’m sure you will. But for now—” he began.

“For now, I’ll spend yours,” she finished for him. And actually, hearing herself say it out loud made it seem like a better idea than she’d originally thought.

*   *   *

“Dammit!” Caprise cursed, shaking her hand as the door swung open in front of her.

She’d called Nick a dozen times and he hadn’t answered. Probably asleep, or dead to the world. Nick used to be a heavy sleeper—either that or he was ignoring the hell out of her all those early mornings she’d tried to wake him. He’d been her role model during her teen years, the big, bad brother who didn’t give a crap what anybody said, he was doing his own thing. That’s exactly what Caprise wanted to be when she grew up—well, not the brother part, but everything else. Her life had been simple then, those days of attending private school, noticing boys, making friends with snobby girls, seeing her parents together each night at dinner. Simple. She’d naively thought it would stay that way.

And she’d been wrong.

Caprise had just broken into her brother’s house and was walking in unannounced. It hadn’t escaped her that this might not be a good idea, but she needed a place to stay. So if Nick had a female here, that was his business. She just wanted a nice hot shower and his empty couch to crash on.

Another mistake to add to her already growing list.

A strong arm wrapped around her waist, another around her neck to cover her mouth. She kicked out the moment she was lifted off the floor, but that was futile. Whoever carried her was big and strong, and, if she could rely on the genetics she’d fought for longer than she could remember, his scent revealed that he was a shifter.

*   *   *

There was a distinct antiseptic smell here. The cool temperature allowed it to stay stiff in the air, draping the entire dwelling like a blanket.

Ary’s shoes were muffled on the tiled floors. They were the cutest shoes she’d ever seen, and even though they were so not Kalina’s type, she’d had to agree that the Alegria paisley nursing clogs were adorable on Ary. And as Ary had followed Dr. Frank Papplin from the entrance of the hospital down to where they now entered the morgue, she’d seen several other employees with the same type of shoe. That made her feel good, like she was fitting in with her new environment.

They entered through double swinging doors to a small reception area. There was a desk that looked like someone should be there, but no one was. Another set of double doors were in front of them. Dr. Papplin, a tall, lithe man with olive-toned skin and tepid blue eyes, pulled a card from the extending wire clip at his waist and swiped it past a black control pad until the red light blinked green.

The doctor walked with a confident stride, his white coat billowing around him as he moved. Behind Ary were X and Nick, both silent but imposing forces. She could hear their footsteps along with Dr. Papplin’s in the otherwise quiet section of the hospital. They came to a hall that split in opposite directions, with another set of doors directly in front of them. To the left there were rows and rows of stainless-steel drawers. One was still open, and she could see that it extended to a long empty slab. To the right, the direction Dr. Papplin guided them, was an examining room with another table and cabinets with counters full of utensils.

The smell of antiseptic was even stronger in here, the air so chilly she almost expected to see her breath appear in smoky billows when she asked, “Is this the female?”

“It looks like her,” Nick said from beside her.

He’d come around, touching her arm lightly as she moved closer to the table sitting in the middle of the floor with the dead body on top.

“This is the body Xavier brought to me. I have had a chance to examine it extensively.”

“Is this safe?” Nick asked, his voice lowering only slightly.

Papplin nodded. “There are more examining rooms down another hallway. This is the main room, but all staff are out for the morning at meetings. Besides, this was not a shifter.”

He retrieved a clipboard and turned a few sheets before reading. “African American female, twenty-five to thirty years of age. There’s evidence of plastic surgery, extensive plastic surgery including implants in the breasts and buttocks. No signs of trauma or blunt force. Otherwise healthy.”

“She didn’t look healthy when I saw her,” Nick grumbled.

Ary was already lifting her hands to the corpse. Her fingers were steady as she touched the lips, around the mouth, and the chin. “There’s some sort of residue here. It’s chalky.”

Nick spoke first. “She foamed at the mouth as she collapsed.”

“That’s what I was going to get to next,” Papplin began. “Toxicology results show a couple of different substances. Cocaine for sure—that was the easy one. There’s another substance that showed remnants of some type of herb. The third is not known. It could be a poison because it’s very potent. I can’t readily identify it exactly, but I suspect the combination caused the unknown reaction.”

“So she literally went so crazy she killed herself because of whatever she’d taken?” Nick asked.

Ary touched the arms, which were swollen and splotchy. She moved down the body, hearing Nick and Papplin talk but drawing her own conclusions.

“I believe she ingested all of these substances. I cannot tell if they were a mixture or taken separately,” Papplin was saying.

“They were mixed,” Ary told them as she lifted one leg that looked as if it had been injected with fluids. To the touch it was cold as ice, but the splotches here were ruby red, as if fresh blood still pulsed through the veins.

“He’s mixing the damiana with the acids and solvents used to base the cocaine,” she said.

“What acids and solvents? How do you know?” Nick asked.

Papplin stood on the opposite side of the table, looking down at the leg Ary held. He was a knowledgeable man, and clearly open to her comments as he watched her with interest.

“Cocaine starts with the coca leaf, but there are several chemicals needed to complete the final product. In the jungle, tons of solvents, acids, and bases are moved daily to the labs where the cocaine is manufactured. Acetone and potassium permanganate are just a couple of the chemicals they use that also have everyday uses in the jungle, like keeping bananas from ripening too fast, or serving as an agent in house paint. It’s not hard to get these chemicals,” she told them.

“But there’s something going on when these chemicals are combined with the herb and the other mystery agent?” Papplin asked.

Ary nodded. “Something unpredictable.”

“Okay, let me get this straight,” Nick said as he walked around the table.

Today he wore jeans of a washed-out blue; a loose-fitting polo shirt did nothing to mask his bulging muscles and alluring build. The dark burgundy color of the shirt made his light complexion seem brighter, his dark hair and eyes, darker, his entire appearance more dominating.

“He’s mixing all these chemicals together with the damiana to make some sort of synthetic drug to sell on the streets. Only there’s no way to know how each person will react to this drug.”

Ary nodded. “That’s right. The drug in its unpurified state is going to filtrate into the system of each person who ingests it. But each reaction will be different because it’s not just a physical process at work. Remember I told you about what Yuri taught me? The energy surrounding the herb must be purified. Without this process, it’s a living source of negativity.”

“Ingestion by a person with already negative energy would exacerbate their dark traits. One who is normally vulnerable would become utterly dependent and most likely hyperactive, overzealous,” Papplin finished for her.

“So a woman who was already promiscuous would become a walking sex machine, ready to perform any and every sexual act anywhere at any time,” Nick added quietly.

He was thinking of the dead woman as she’d approached him. Ary remembered him telling Rome how the woman had come on to him, pulling down his zipper and … she didn’t like to finish that thought, but she knew the dead woman’s actions were imperative to what they were unveiling.

“This must be what he gave me in the forest. It made me angrier because at the time I was already upset about the kidnapping and what was going on with the lack of supplies. It didn’t make me more sexual, because—” She stopped. Papplin didn’t need to know she’d been celibate for the sixteen years Nick had been away from the forest.

Nick, however, already knew the end of that statement. “Putting this drug on the streets in this unpurified state could create an urban holocaust.”

Her gaze met his and held, neither one of them knowing exactly what to say to that assessment. It was true, that was clear from the silence in the room. Even Papplin looked as if he agreed. The question now was: How would they stop it from happening?

*   *   *

“Another female body was found in a Dumpster near Georgetown,” Kalina said, walking across the hardwood floors in the building where Rome had texted Nick to meet them.

They’d driven for more than forty-five minutes from the hospital where they’d just seen the woman who had confronted Nick, to this location in Virginia, just beyond Great Falls National Park. It almost looked like a forgotten locale, as the tall white oak trees gave way to what appeared to be a one-level dwelling that spanned a couple of acres in a type of U shape.

“Was she mutilated?” Nick asked immediately.

Senator Baines and his daughter and two prostitutes had been reported mutilated in the last eight weeks in DC. His gut told them this one would be the same.

Kalina nodded. Nick swallowed. He’d always trusted his gut no matter what.

“Part of her face was gone, mauled. The base of her skull had been cracked; ten-inch-deep puncture wounds penetrated her skull, causing instant death. Homicide fears they’re looking at a serial killer. The mayor and the chief of police are organizing a task force. The FBI are on standby to take immediate action if need be. The war has barely started and the casualties are adding up,” she finished.

Rome stood right beside her, his features hard like a mask of the deadliest jaguar ever.

“This building has enough space to be our headquarters. It’s secluded enough for us to shift if need be to protect everyone here. I want this to become our base for the East Coast. I’ve already talked to the other FLs about finding a location similar to this for their Zones,” Rome said sternly.

Nick nodded his agreement, looking around the large open room as he did. They’d come through a set of double wood doors and met Rome and Kalina in this spot, but he could see about thirty feet beyond where the room branched off to a hallway and most likely the rest of the space. This was the case to the right and the back. After seeing the dwelling from the outside, Nick was sure it had more than enough space. “Medical facilities can be down that way,” he suggested, looking over to Ary.

He lifted his brow to show her he was asking and not telling, to prove that he’d heard every word she’d spoken last night. Watching her in the morgue with Dr. Papplin had given him a new sense of this woman who was his mate. She was knowledgeable and serious and focused on her craft. When she should have appeared to be an outsider in a human morgue, around human medical supplies and concepts, she wasn’t. She’d known more about the death of the female than even Papplin had, proving to Nick that she was the one to run the medical facility without any doubt. But even with his positive conclusion, the decision would have to be Ary’s.

“We can look at the entire place to see if anything is more suitable, but I’m inclined to trust your judgment,” she said, holding his gaze.

“What about this new body? Should we try to get a look at it? I have contacts at the city morgue,” Kalina interrupted. “I just think we need to take a closer look at the casualties this time. We didn’t look at Baines’s or his daughter’s body, or those other two females. There could have been clues to let us know positively if it was the Rogues.”

She was right. It was time they started looking at every angle Sabar would play. That sonofabitch thought he had the upper hand, and it was up to them to prove his ass wrong.

“If you can get Ary in to see the body, that would be good. We just came from George Washington University, where she looked at the body X took to Papplin. Tell them what you figured out.” He deferred to Ary once more.

She looked a little surprised at his words, tilting her head only slightly, her eyes twinkling just a bit. She wore dark gray pants that were only a fraction thicker than pantyhose, hugging her legs and her ass like a second skin. Her sheer white buttondown shirt came to her kneecaps like an air of enticement. Through it he could openly see the white camisole that hugged her breasts and covered her torso. But it wasn’t enough; he knew what she looked like naked, knew what those clothes did nothing to hide.