Passion's Prey

a hunch.”

X let out the breath he’d unwittingly been holding. “I know what the government doesn’t do with important hunches and tips. But this, they’ll run with this until the end of time.”

“You’re right,” Bas said. “Just like they’re still secretly looking for UFOs.”

“Great, now we’re in the category with UFOs. Fucking perfect. Rome’s not going to like this. Do we know who received the emails, who the sender was, all that?”

“I’ve got a written report in my office.”

“On a secure USB, I hope,” X said.

Bas nodded. “All our computers are secure. You should know—you installed most of them.”

“Right. But we’ve got to start being real careful about what we say and to whom. Last month at the raid on Rome’s place there was a Rogue found on the property. Baxter thinks he came in with the landscape group earlier that week. And then there was the Rogue that was working at the firm with Rome and Nick. They’re everywhere now.”

“Yeah, I know. But they’re masking their scent. We’ve got to figure out how they’re doing it.”

X agreed. “As for the chick at the firm, we think she may have been sleeping with a human. If that’s the case he would have carried her scent and she would have been virtually scent-free.”

“Damn genetics,” Bas swore. “There’s still a lot we don’t know about our kind. Like I was thinking the other day, what if one of us was to get a human pregnant. What would that be like?”

For a moment X was quiet. Actually, he was stunned because pregnant and human were not generally words that went together in Bas’s vocabulary. For all that he was a womanizer he usually stuck to shifters because he figured they were safer for whatever reasons he may have had. This was different, and the look he was giving X was even stranger.

“You got somebody knocked up?” X asked, trying to keep this conversation as light as possible.

Bas shook his head. “No, nothing like that. I was just thinking. You know with thousands of us here in the United States and spreading out across the country, it’s entirely possible that one of us would hook up with a human and a pregnancy could occur.”

X shrugged. “I don’t know. Nick’s mate is pregnant now and that’s strange enough. We’re all kind of just waiting to see what’s going to happen. I mean, shifter births are fairly common now or else we wouldn’t be here. But none of us has ever witnessed any.”

“Yeah, I don’t know what’s going on in my head,” Bas said rubbing a hand over his face. “So anyway, you and Caprise—where’s that going?”

“Nowhere” was X’s instant reply. “What I mean is there’s no mating or joining on the horizon.”

“You sure about that?” Bas asked skeptically.

“Come on, man, you know me.”

Bas nodded. “I do.”

“You and I are kind of alike. Commitment’s not on our agenda,” he replied, watching Bas carefully.

“Right. It’s not on my agenda. But you’re pretty damn protective of her.”

“She’s a female, Bas. And she’s Nick’s sister.”

“And she’s what to you?”

X stood. “She’s Nick’s sister and she’s a shifter. Damn right I’m going to protect her. As a matter of fact I’m going to go see what she’s doing and let her know we’ll be flying out in the morning.”

But as X opened the door Jewel was on the other side. The smile she gave X wavered as he figured he was probably scowling at her instead.

“Sorry, I was just leaving,” he told her.

“What is it, Jewel?” Bas asked.

When she spoke her voice was decidedly feminine and very serious. “There’s an urgent call for you from a Roman Reynolds.”

Chapter 17

Washington, DC

Kalina Reynolds was no longer a detective for the Metropolitan Police Department. She was no longer a candidate for employment with the Drug Enforcement Agency. What she was—and most would be absolutely amazed at her transformation—was the First Female of the Stateside Shifter Assembly. She was part woman and part jaguar, and she was absolutely gorgeous in her four-and-a-half-inch-heeled cobalt-blue Jimmy Choo pumps and white sleeveless V-neck Victoria Beckham mini dress.

Never in her life had Kalina imagined she’d be wearing such clothes, walking in these shoes and heading into the DEA satellite office in DC. It almost felt like deja vu, since about three months ago she’d done this very thing—different clothes, of course. Still, she looked damn good, felt spectacular, and let her cat purr just slightly as she knocked on the door of Agent Dorian Wilson’s office.

It took only seconds for him to beckon her in, and she moved with the slow, sleekness of a cat. Her lips spread into a friendly smile, while her hazel eyes found his glare and locked into place. Gentleman that he was, Dorian stood, extending a hand across the desk toward her immediately. Kalina accepted his hand graciously while surreptitiously glancing around his office.

The space consisted of a cluttered desk, a high-backed faux-leather chair for him, two hard need-to-be- reupholstered chairs for guests, a file cabinet that looked to be on its last leg of life, and no windows. Four walls surrounded the closet-like space, effectively boxing its occupants in for the duration they stayed. Kalina felt claustrophobic already.

“Nice to see you again, Kalina,” Dorian said as she let her hand slide from his grasp.

He had a nice, firm handshake and was dressed in dark brown slacks and a beige dress shirt. He’d forgone the tie but from the haphazard way the top button of his shirt was undone she knew it was most likely somewhere in this office. Probably beneath the suit jacket that hung on the back of the door Jax had just closed. Her guard with his six-plus-foot, 285-pound body looked like he was being stuffed in this Cracker Jack box of an office. But he wasn’t leaving Kalina’s side, not for one instant.

“Hello, Dorian. It’s been a while” was her cordial response as she took a seat.

Dorian’s gaze went to Jax, who’d fitted himself in a corner, crossing his beefy arms over his massive chest.

“Jax is my guard,” she said nonchalantly. “He goes where I go.”

Dorian nodded, giving Jax no more than another quick stare before returning to Kalina.

“So you need a guard now?” he asked, taking his seat again and coming forward to rest his elbows on his desk. “Somebody after you?”

Kalina shrugged. “You never know. My husband would rather be safe than sorry.”

“That’s right.” Dorian nodded as he spoke. “You married Roman Reynolds. The subject of your previous investigation. How’s that going?”

“It’s going very well, thank you” was her quick reply. She was sure to keep a smile on her face and her gaze on Dorian. He looked at her as if he could see things that weren’t there. A few months ago this might have made Kalina nervous, as she was just getting used to the feline side of her gene pool. Now, as comfortable in human form as she was on four legs, she simply watched him in return.

There was something about the agent that he didn’t want people to know, a part of him that wasn’t quite the norm. She recognized that as a trait she’d carried for most of her life and wondered briefly where Dorian’s secret door would lead. But that wasn’t why she’d come.

“I understand you’re investigating murders now? Has the illegal drug trade dried up?”

Her words were only a mild surprise, which Dorian masked with a tentative smile. “You know how it is, Kalina. You find a clue that seems to connect the dots and you follow the trail. That’s what I’m doing, following the trail.”

“And it’s led you to Xavier Santos-Markland?”

“It’s led me to a suspect.”