His parents weren’t the lovey-dovey type, but they had built a solid life for each other and their kids. Sure, Mom and Amelie fought like cats and dogs, and Dad would rather stare into space than see what was right in front of him, but that’s just how things shook out for them.
It could have been a lot worse.
“I’m an honest man these days,” he joked to let her down easy. “Don’t tempt me.”
“You really mean that.” Honey spun an earring through her fingers. “Huh.”
“It’s new,” he said gruffly. “I’m still figuring out what to do and how to act.”
“Seems like you’ve got what not to do down pat,” she teased back. “That’s the big one.”
The old Boaz might have viewed juggling three women as a challenge, but that was before he set eyes on Grier, all grown up and everything he ever wanted. And even then, he still took Adelaide’s hand and made her a promise he couldn’t break. Slowly but surely, it was sinking in that he was too damn old for the bullshit he got up to in his youth.
Plus, the one thing he could say for himself was he didn’t cheat. He hurt women, he knew that, but he made it clear up front what they could expect from him. Fun. That was it. No strings. But some still got attached.
“Okay.” Honey picked her way behind the corpse. “Do you think whoever did this realized they were leaving us a witness?”
The smooth transition from personal to business was one of the reasons he liked her so well.
“Maybe whoever called this in scared them off before they finished the job.”
“Maybe.” She pursed her lips. “It was an anonymous tip, so it’s hard to say.”
How anyone found Angelo out here left Boaz twitchy with the certainty the killer called it in themselves. That meant they wanted to get caught, or they wanted other vampires in the area to know they were being hunted.
“The other kills were similar to Ron’s death,” he reminded her. “Newly resuscitated vampires.”
“You can’t think we’ve got a vampire hunter.” She laughed hard once then sobered. “Seriously, those went out of style ages ago.”
“They crop up now and then.” Humans watched movies, read books, got ideas. “People notice neighbors, coworkers, even their friends acting strange. They hold that behavior up against what they think they know about vampires and decide it’s their civic duty to go on a killing spree.”
The one human killed so far had been the primary food source for his vampire lover, so the hunter hadn’t been too far off the mark. It was the only mistake he had made so far, if it was one. They might have viewed the human as guilty by association.
The problem with those statistics being, they were ninety percent sure this killer was also a vampire.
To his knowledge, no vampire had ever gone on a killing spree of this magnitude against its own kind.
“That would explain why they’re sticking to freshies.” She frowned. “They’re easier to identify and simpler to kill.”
“Ron was the link to Angelo.” Boaz exhaled. “That’s how the killer found Angelo, why they risked it.”
A cautious hunter was rarer still, and even more dangerous. Most humans made mistakes identifying the monsters among them and got caught early on. This one had been operating for months, all across the country.
“Jaden was the first vampire killed in the area.” She thought it through. “He was one of Ron’s lovers, so that’s our link.”
The killer must have asked Jaden for names, and Jaden gave up Ron, who then fingered Angelo.
“We need to find out where Jaden was from originally,” Boaz said. “There’s got to be a link between him and the previous victim from Savannah.”
Jaden might have been the first in the area, but they tended to happen in clusters. There must be a reason the killer left Savannah to come here. They still had no concrete evidence pointing toward why he had hit Savannah after a stent in Maine, but Boaz would find it. No matter how long it took him.
“I’ll get Abernathy on it.” He paused. “I caught him flirting with a woman at the roadblock earlier. I couldn’t tell if he had the hots for the driver or for the car. Any idea who was behind the wheel?”
“The woman who reported Ron’s murder, I think. I didn’t get close enough to ID her, but I heard talk a clan master bought his top earner a new ride, so it fits.” She glanced toward the flashing lights. “She’s a bounty hunter, a vampire. She was tracking him for a payday when she stumbled across his corpse. Odds are good she was out searching for Angelo tonight when Abernathy put a kink in her plans. His clan was desperate to locate him before he did something foolish.”
“Tracking this killer could make her a target.”
“With a job like hers?” Honey scoffed. “She can protect herself.”
The brutal tableau before him burned in his mind’s eye. “I bet Angelo thought the same thing.”
Waving the cleaners in, Boaz tipped his chin to Honey then set out for his bike to head back to the Whitaker place for the day. They would have reports ready for him to read at dusk, along with fingerprints to compare to the previous crime scenes.
Eight
Cass woke me up with one of her favorite stalking games. She let herself into my room, climbed onto my twin bed, and straddled my hips. She leaned down, hands cuffing my wrists, and raked her fangs across my juicy carotid while purring deep in her throat.
And then she hissed when I flipped her off me, onto the floor. She landed nimbly, like a cat.
The self-defense classes were her idea. Really, she only
