Page 14 of Wicked Ways

“I didn’t know how you felt about me, Cain.” He’d given no indication of his attraction before. She hadn’t even realized he’d wanted her until his lips had been on hers.

“Now you do.”

Yes. “Cain, I⁠—”

He exhaled and stepped away from her, mumbling, “You smell too sweet.”

That was good, right? Or was it bad?

She wanted to catch his hand again. To touch him. But time was running out, and though she wanted to make amends to him, well, now she needed his help.

Before Sam returned.

So Miranda jumped right in with, “The man last night….”

“The vampire,” he corrected, voice sardonic.

“Fine. Whatever. That guy, he’s a killer.”

His head moved in the faintest of agreements.

“Sam isn’t going to believe me if I tell him the truth about what happened.”

“Humans rarely understand just what the word ‘truth’ means.”

Not the most helpful of answers. She sighed. Miranda knew she couldn’t just walk away from this case now. And she knew that Cain was the one with the creature-feature knowledge. “What do we do?”

Three women. Three months. She would have been victim number four. And she didn’t believe for a moment that Paul Roberts was just going to walk off into the sunset and never kill again. Last night, the devil had been in his eyes, and evil that strong didn’t just stop its blood quest.

She couldn’t stand by and wait while another woman was killed. “We can’t let him get away,” she said, when Cain didn’t speak. “There has to be a way to stop him.”

He laughed, the sound too hard. “Ah, baby, let me clue you in to a few facts.”

She bit back the sharp retort that sprang to her lips.

Cain jerked his head toward the closed door. “I’d say, in less than five minutes, a team of suits will be arriving at the station. Your Sam won’t have to contact the FBI, they’ll have monitored the call systems for this station—they do that for all the offices—and they’ll know what happened.”

Her palms were sweating. “They’ll go after Paul?”

“They go after killers like him every day.” A shrug. “Sometimes they catch them—well, they catch the human psychos—and sometimes, when the killer is…different, like your friend Paul, well, then they are pretty much just shit out of luck.”

“So you’re telling me this jerk is going to get away?” And that he’d get to keep killing?

Cain shook his head. “I’m telling you that the Feds are going to lock you up for the next few weeks⁠—”

“What?” She was the victim, not the attacker!

“Sam isn’t as clueless as he appears. I think he was right about the killings, and the FBI will, too. Hell, there have probably been more murders, scattered around the country. No way our vamp has been playing nice the last few years. The agents, they’ll want to keep you safe until they’re sure Paul isn’t coming after you again.”

Now that gave her pause. “Will he?”

Cain didn’t answer, but Miranda supposed his silence actually was an answer. Oh, no.

“Go with them,” Cain urged her. “They’ll keep you safe, and Paul⁠—”

“Will what? Move on to another victim?” She’d be all safe and protected by the Bureau while some other poor woman had her throat ripped open by razor-sharp fangs. No, that didn’t sound fair. Not at all. Her chin lifted. “Why can’t they catch him?”

“Because vampires are damn strong, far stronger than humans. And bullets can wound vamps—not kill them—and those bullets usually they only serve to piss off his kind.”