“I’ll talk to Emi about Margot. You can take Volkov’s stalker.” His chin jerks toward the invitation. “It wouldn’t hurt to scope that out, too.”
“Don’t you want to help?”
“You don’t need my help.”
“We work better together, don’t we?”
“We’re not a team, Poppy. We’re not even friends.” He shrugs me off and swiftly buttons his jacket. “Don’t mistake this alliance for anything more than it is.”
I blink, whiplash cracking me across the face. “I’m sorry, was I hallucinating when we almost kissed?”
“No.”
“Then what changed? Not half an hour ago, you were all over me.”
“Pheromones. Tricky little bastards.”
I scoff, crossing my arms. “Why are you pissed? Was it Nik?”
“No.”
“Was it me? Did I say something?”
Brontë pinches the bridge of his nose with a nettled sigh. “It’s late, and I have back-to-back graveyard shifts at the morgue this weekend. Are we done here?”
“No, we’re not done until I say—”
My purse buzzes.
I hiss a curse, whipping out my phone. It’s Bax, reporting a fire cooking his lab and everything in it. By the time I’m done calming him down and doling out orders, I turn back to Brontë, ready to peel his layers until I get to the core of his wrath before it festers any more than it already has.
But he’s gone.
And I’ve never felt more alone.
MUTILATION
Brontë
Decay, pungent in its sweet rot, slithers up my nostrils in droves with the metallic fetor of rusting iron. Scene lamps filter weak patches of dim light onto the sea of evidence markers circling a nude woman who stood no chance against the monster that did this to her.
“Fucking Christ,” gripes Scull against the medical mask he pulls over his nose as if it will block out death’s stench. “I know we’ve had our fair share of unpleasant shit, but this is downrightodious.”
I couldn’t agree more.
The woman is staged in a steel chair within an abandoned chemical factory, her wrists bound behind her by pink feather cuffs. Her head is thrown back as if she died screaming. Her throat is missing, and an object is lodged within her gaping mouth. Her femoral arteries are severed. Blood, dark as an aged bottle of merlot and dried to a mahogany crust, cakes her from the roots of her curls to the tips of her toes. A pentagram is carved into her abdomen, deep enough for her entrails to seep out in fetid ropes. Another is drawn around the chair from the pool of gore.
I don’t miss the parallels. Half the wounds are a perfect replica of Poppy’s victims. But this wasn’t her doing.
This was Leviathan.
I pull a pair of nitrile gloves from my pack and click on my penlight. “Introduce us,mon ami.”
The detective shakes his head. “You know as much about Jane Doe as me, Bourbon.”
“Jane Doe?”
“Mhm. The anonymous tip came in from an untraceable number. No witnesses, no camera footage. Still waiting on ID confirmation from the lab.”