Wild Embrace (32 page)

“How are your folks?” she asked as she reached him. “I just saw the textured mural your mom did down in that corridor and it reminded me to ask.”

Kenji didn't answer until they were inside Russ's quarters with the door shut behind them. “Dad's in Alexei's den. He's taken over the communications hub there.” Alexei was the youngest SnowDancer lieutenant and had the smallest den to look after, but that den lay along a border and, as such, was in no way unimportant.

“Your dad's one of the best.”

“Yep.” Kenji knew his dad would be
the
best if he wasn't more interested in ballroom dancing and Moroccan rug weaving and herb gardening—just three of Satoshi Tanaka's intense and short-lived interests. “He sent me a yoga book the other week. That's his new thing.” Kenji would bet his left arm that Satoshi was already sleeping with his limber young yoga teacher.

“If your dad's in Alexei's region,” Garnet said with the wry smile of someone who'd grown up with him, “then your mom is surely not.”

Kenji grinned—his parents' fights had scared him as a pup, but he'd come to terms with their relationship long ago. “She's in Tomás's region,” he told her. “According to him, she's driving him crazy while creating art so beautiful it makes other wolves weep.” A standard state of affairs for Miko Tanaka. “She calls me each Friday without fail and goes through every piece of gossip she's heard about me. It's like having my own personal spy network.”

Garnet's laughter was a caress that made his wolf want to throw back its head and howl.

•   •   •

Telling
herself she could trace the edges of Kenji's smile later, Garnet said, “I gave one of her pieces to my parents for their mating anniversary.” It would've been financially beyond her reach if Miko didn't have special secret pricing for packmates. The outside world paid high six figures for one of her unique multimedia works—and that was at the low end. Packmates paid what Miko thought they could bear.

As a lieutenant, Garnet was paid an amount commensurate with her heavy responsibilities. The pack's business assets were myriad and strong and, as such, all SnowDancers who either worked for the pack or held necessary positions in it—like the lieutenants and healers—were compensated fairly. Garnet would've done it for nothing, rarely spent what she was given, so she'd had a good sum saved up to offer Miko.

Only Kenji's mom had insisted on giving the stunning piece to her for what she'd said was the “future daughter-in-law” price. It was so outrageously low that Garnet had felt like a thief, but no amount of arguing by Garnet had changed Miko's mind that Garnet and Kenji were meant to be. Garnet might've refused to take the artwork had Miko not made it clear that she'd be mortally offended at even the suggestion of any such thing.

Clearly, Kenji's mother would be having the last laugh. “My folks love it,” she added, “have it up in their living room.”

“Yeah?” Kenji's cheeks creased. “You should've asked me for one. She sends me a piece every time she decides I need more culture in my life.”

“You're sitting on a fortune there.”

“Except that if I ever sold one, she'd rip off my head.” Kenji laughed. “Your folks still doing the lovebirds thing?”

Garnet groaned. “I walked in on them making out like juveniles last time I was in the main den. No wonder I have eight brothers and sisters.” Turning to the door with Kenji's laugh rippling over her skin, she stared at the dead bolt. “Is there
any
way this could've been relocked from the outside?”

His sweater sitting
easily over wide shoulders, Kenji examined the lock. “I can't see how. It's got no fancy computronics that might've been hacked. Just a solid iron bar snicking into place.”

“I talked to Revel on my way to meet you.” She'd run into him as he was heading off to get Pia a favorite snack. “I asked him about magnets or other tricks and he said the same. It'd be impossible given the depth of the door—and the dead bolt's too stiff for anyone to have gone low-tech with a pulley system.” It took a bit of grunt to push the bolt into the lock; Garnet had tested it during their forensic sweep.

“Revel a locksmith?”

“Engineer.” The majority of SnowDancer soldiers had a secondary specialty. Kenji's was in international law, Garnet's in finance. She worked with their fellow lieutenant, Cooper, to keep SnowDancer's investments strong. However, after the massive attack on the pack earlier that year, she'd also made it a point to learn and study weapons that could be used against SnowDancer and its allies. She was no expert yet, but she was getting there, and Hawke had put her in charge of evaluating possible counterweapons.

Kenji, by contrast, had a brilliant facility for languages on top
of his legal training and natural strategic skills. As a result, he dealt with a number of SnowDancer's major offshore business contacts and was point man for their alliance with the BlackSea changelings. Now his face grew dark, skin tight over the clean angles of his features. “Last night—”

“Rev and I decided to call it quits yesterday.” She bumped her shoulder against Kenji's arm. “I'm free to seduce you.”

Kenji focused those pretty green eyes on the door. “I don't see any scratches or anything else that would indicate this lock's been jimmied.”

Grinning at this dangerous, wicked wolf's attempt to simply ignore her flirting, she returned her attention to the matter at hand. “And we found no forensic evidence on it to indicate Eloise touched it. Only sign of damage is from when she forced the door—”

“—and that damage seems to exonerate her,” Kenji completed. “No way the door frame would've splintered that way
unless
the dead bolt was thrown. The part on the frame literally came away still attached to a chunk of wood.” He paused. “Girl's strong.”

“Hmm.” Garnet went over how Eloise had seemed the day before, added that to what she knew about young female pride. “Damn it.” It was a growl. “Even if she didn't break anything, girl has to have bruises to hell and back.”

Kenji pulled out his phone, made a call to Lorenzo asking him to check up on Eloise. “I seem to recall a certain pint-sized Sheridan refusing to go to the infirmary after fracturing her ribs falling from the climbing frame.”

“Shuddup.” Shooting him a glare that did nothing to dim the wattage of that troublemaker smile she adored, Garnet went back to staring at the lock. “What the fuck are we missing?”

Kenji walked backward until he was standing not far from the
spot where they'd found Shane. “Let's run this through. You be Shane. I'll be Russ.”

“Okay, I come in.” Garnet considered the personalities involved. “We're polite at first, but then the wrong words get spoken and we fight.”

The two of them pretend-grappled all the way to the bedroom and back.

“I pull out my knife from—” She paused. “He wasn't wearing a jacket and it wouldn't have fit in his jeans pocket, so it would've had to have been in his boot.” At Kenji's nod of agreement, she continued their reenactment of the murder. “I pull out my knife from my boot and stab you.” Garnet made a stabbing motion. “Right to the heart.”

Kenji clutched at his chest, then frowned and stood up straight instead of falling down. “Wait. When did Shane take the hit to the back of his head?”

That
was what had been bothering her. “Let's figure out the how, then maybe we can figure out the timing.”

Kenji nodded. “Any ideas?”

“It has to be something heavy and portable,” she murmured. “Lorenzo's pretty sure it wasn't the edge of the coffee table and we didn't find any blood or hair on it.”

The two of them began to search. It was Kenji who finally found it—a heavy metal flashlight that had rolled under the display cabinet and ended up hidden in a deep pool of shadow. They stopped long enough for Garnet to get an evidence kit, then pulled it out. The blood and hair on the end erased all doubt about whether or not it had been the weapon used to incapacitate Shane.

“Okay, Russ hits Shane with the flashlight,” Garnet said as she bagged the flashlight so they could confirm DNA and check for
fingerprints. “That begs the question of why Russ would be holding a flashlight in the first place. We didn't have any power outages that morning.”

“It could've been lying on top of the display cabinet,” Kenji suggested. “He picks it up to defend himself when he sees the knife. Shane stabs him, turns away for some reason, and Russ still has enough strength to whack him over the head?”

“I guess.” Garnet frowned. “He was just so fastidious. Nothing out of place.”

Kenji glanced around. “You're right. But you saw how dark it was under that cabinet—he could've lost something down there, been looking for it when Shane arrived.”

It made sense but the sick, wrong feeling in Garnet's gut wouldn't subside. “I want to take another look at Russ's body.”

•   •   •

Once
in the small, isolated morgue at the far end of the infirmary suite, she, Kenji, and Lorenzo examined Russ's body with care, found nothing other than the marks of the autopsy and the killing wound, along with the light bruises and scraped knuckles Lorenzo had already noted.

Shoulder muscles bunched after Lorenzo returned the body to the temporary storage unit, Garnet paced the room. “Can we see his clothes as well as Shane's?” They were the only things left that might offer some kind of an answer. Garnet
was not
going to condemn Shane when an ever-expanding sense of wrongness continued to chill her blood.

“Here.” The healer pulled out the evidence bags in which he'd stored the clothing, one bag for each item.

Taking one set after pulling on surgical gloves, Kenji went to
the steel autopsy table and—after Lorenzo disinfected it to prevent contamination—laid out the clothes as Russ would've been wearing them, while she did the same with Shane's clothing on a neighboring table. Then they stood side by side between the two, their bodies touching in a line of warmth as they stared at each set in turn.

“This blood drop,” Kenji said, pointing to a perfect teardrop low on Russ's shirt, “it doesn't fit the gravitational direction of the rest of the blood.”

Garnet leaned in to see what he had, nodded. That one droplet went vertically downward, while the rest of the blood had gone sideways across one side of Russ's chest.

“Could've been from the knife after he was first stabbed,” Lorenzo said.

Plausible, Garnet thought. “I know Shane doesn't have any visible blood on the front of his shirt, but what about microdroplets?”

“No microdroplets.” Lorenzo's striking eyes went to Shane's shirt. “I double-checked.”

Garnet turned over the shirt to point at the droplet she'd noticed on the back of Shane's forearm. It looked like it had splashed downward onto Shane's shirt, its shape pristine and undisturbed—as if Shane hadn't moved so much as a flicker after the droplet fell onto his body.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. “This blood, is it from Russ?”

“Yes. DNA confirmed.”

“Damn,” Kenji murmured at the same instant the pieces clicked together in her head, the ensuing pattern so incomprehensible that she and Kenji just stared at one another.

Turning as one, they headed back to the scene.

Lorenzo accompanied them. “What've you two figured out?”

“Let's see if we're right first,” Kenji murmured once they were inside Russ's living area. “Be Shane, Lorenzo.”

“You want me to lie down?”

“No, run this from the start.” Garnet nodded at Kenji to pick it up.

“Okay, you enter. I shake your hand.” Kenji snapped his fingers. “Forgot something I had for you in the other room. Please come with me.”

“Something of Athena's that she accidentally left behind?” Garnet offered.

Nodding, Kenji said, “That works.”

Lorenzo took a moment to think about it. “Okay, I agree to go,” he said. “Just keeping the peace so this meeting is over as fast as possible and I can grab much-needed shut-eye.”

“Fits with Shane's personality,” Garnet said, and the three of them walked to the bedroom. “And it explains Shane's scent in the bedroom.”

“Yes, and then, damn, I realize I left this unknown thing in the front room after all.” Kenji led Lorenzo out. “It's just over there.” He pointed.

When Lorenzo turned instinctively in that direction, Kenji reached toward the display cabinet next to him, picked up an imaginary flashlight, then brought it down lightly against the back of Lorenzo's head. “Slam with the flashlight and you're down.”

A scowling Lorenzo nonetheless went to the floor.

“You dead-bolt the front door then go to the bedroom,” Garnet said, disbelief a living being inside her, “mess it up, punch a hole in the wall . . . get the knife.”

“But before the final act . . .”

Kenji rolled Lorenzo over and pretended to punch the healer's face before punching himself a couple of times. As Lorenzo's eyes
widened in shocked understanding, Kenji rolled Lorenzo back over and aimed several pretend kicks at his ribs. Only then did he rise to his feet and use his phone in place of the knife to mimic stabbing himself before leaning down to place the “weapon” by Lorenzo's outflung hand.

“This is when the blood drops onto Shane's sleeve. Vertical droplet on Russ probably happened when he pulled out the blade,” Garnet said softly as Kenji placed a hand over his heart and went to the ground in the position in which Russ had been found. “Explains everything.”

Lorenzo and Kenji both sat up.

The healer's blood had leached from his skin, leaving it unnaturally stark. “Russ wasn't wearing a glove.” He wrapped his arms loosely around his raised knees. “Why didn't we find his fingerprints on the blade?”

And the final piece slotted into place for Garnet.

“The handkerchief,” she whispered. “He deliberately got blood on it to hide any metallic scent from the knife hilt.”

Kenji ran a hand through his hair. “Could be it was also a parting shot aimed at Athena. Screw with her emotions, foster guilt.”

“Yes.” Garnet slid down to sit with her back to the door, unable to believe that one of her packmates had been filled with enough rage to orchestrate his own “murder.”

•   •   •

Kenji's
heart rebelled at seeing that shocked, pained look on Garnet's face. Rising, he went to sit by her side. It was primal instinct to wrap an arm around her. “Adults, remember?” he murmured to her, bending to nuzzle at the soft, warm skin of her cheek. “We aren't their keepers. We can't control our packmates.”

One hand closing over his raised knee as she allowed him to
tuck her against his side, Garnet nodded. “You're right.” No shakiness, her breath steady. “It's just the idea that Russ hated Shane so much he was willing to die to hurt him . . . And Athena, too. The woman he was meant to love.”

“We're seriously saying Russ did this to himself?” Lorenzo gripped at one of his wrists. “How did he get the knife?” The healer answered his own question an instant later. “No one locks their doors and he's no child—could've circumvented the lock on the studio door and on Shane's knife case.”

“Athena's teaching schedule is available to anyone.” Garnet stayed tucked up against Kenji as she spoke, the pressure of her body a physical reassurance to his wolf that she was all right. “Shane's work schedule wouldn't have been hard to figure out, either.”

Easy, Kenji thought, for Russ to walk into the apartment when no one was home; and if he'd left the door open on his way out, his scent would've dissipated long before Athena and Shane returned. “It fits, but to exonerate Shane, we need hard evidence.”

“Russ had a mathematical mind.” Lorenzo's words were quiet. “A liking for everything in its place.”

“The kind of man who might've come up with the perfect murder.”

Garnet nodded at Kenji's statement, fine strands of her hair catching on the gray of his sweater. “Could be he kept a diary.” Pulling out her phone, she got in touch with Athena. “No diary,” she said after hanging up. “Athena did confirm he was meticulous in his research and planning, even if it involved a short trip out of town, or the purchase of a new appliance.”

Lorenzo rubbed at his jaw, his stubble rasping against his skin. “If he did this, he did a damn good job.” The healer's difficulty in believing the ugly truth was a good indicator of the probable reaction
of the pack should Garnet and Kenji not find any physical evidence. “Doesn't make sense he'd leave behind proof that could undo all his planning.”

Kenji's eyes went to the display cabinet and to all those academic accolades so prominently displayed. He felt Garnet's head move in the same direction. Pulling on gloves from the forensic kit, they moved as one to it, began to remove items with care. They'd almost emptied the cabinet when they discovered a photo of Russ and Athena in a simple black frame. It was the only piece that didn't relate to one of Russ's achievements . . . unless he'd seen Athena that way, been proud of having her as his lover.

Beside him, Garnet examined the frame with care. “Russ's scent is strong on this.”