Ripper (Hunter #1)(2)

Her speech moved me. It really did. I’m not heartless, though sometimes I wish I were. I looked down at the picture she had given me not because I wanted to but because, somehow, I was required to. I had two brothers and I knew where they were. It seemed wrong when my siblings were safe to not acknowledge this woman’s pain.

Joanne Taylor was a bright and smiling face in the picture. She was surrounded by her beaming mother and her little sister, who stared up to her like she was the sun in the sky. In this picture, Joanne was roughly seventeen or eighteen years old. She was wearing the black robe of a graduate and had her cap in one hand like she’d just gotten through tossing it up in the air. She was blonde like her mother and had big brown eyes. She looked like a girl with a lifetime ahead of her.

“When was this taken?” I heard myself asking before I could stop the question.

Helen Taylor sat up, obviously eager to answer my questions. “Two years ago. She’s a sophomore at SMU today. Oh, she’s so bright. She got a full scholarship. She’s studying to be a teacher. I work at the school she went to. She wants to give back, you see.”

That was great, but it didn’t solve my problem. I sighed. I was going to have to be blunt. “She sounds like a wonderful girl.” I slid the picture back across the desk and into Mrs. Taylor’s unwilling hands. She took it back but flipped it over and over, like she didn’t know what to do with it. “But I don’t take cases like this. Besides, I work here in the suburbs. I don’t work with Dallas police. I don’t have any contacts.”

It was a lie. My brother worked for the Dallas police as a contractor. I wasn’t about to mention that fact.

“But your brother James has plenty of contacts,” the woman said, looking confused.

I took a deep breath in and wondered who the hell had sent her. She knew so much about me. I didn’t exactly advertise, and certainly not in the supernatural world. “James works specialized cases for the police. He tends to work alone.”

That wasn’t a lie. Jamie preferred to work alone. The one partner he’d taken with him on a job had spent a little time in a mental hospital after the case. He only occasionally worked with his best friend, who happened to be a Texas Ranger. My younger brother, Nathan, had the good sense to get out altogether. He worked retail at a software store while he put himself through night school. He made less money than the rest of us, but he didn’t have to deal with this shit.

Mrs. Taylor stood. She looked confused, like someone had told her to expect one outcome and she’d been given something entirely different. She turned toward the door that would lead her into the parking lot and I thought I’d made it. I would close up shop as soon as she was gone and eat my turkey sandwich and go home. I looked forward to a nice, quiet evening sitting in front of the TV while I made lists of things I needed for this weekend’s renovation project. I was changing out the faucets in my little house. I found working on updating the three-bedroom ranch my grandmother had left me soothing.

All those plans were blown to hell when Mrs. Taylor turned around. Her brown eyes flared as she stared at me. “No, I won’t be brushed aside. You’re the only one who can help me and you will.”

I would have bet a lot that she didn’t rebel like this often. I was the lucky one who got to take the brunt of her frustration with a system that had probably ground her down for years. I threw up my hands and stood to face her. “Why? Why am I the only one who can help you?”

“Because you’re a hunter.”

I slumped back into my chair. She’d managed to say the one word that was sure to send me to the bottom of a bottle. I had promised myself I would break off my relationship with Jose Cuervo, but it looked like I would be having a one-night stand with my ex tonight.

“I am not a hunter. Not anymore.”

“You people think we don’t know you,” Helen said with a certain righteousness that put me on edge. “But we keep track of you. We have to. We have to know who is coming for us. My husband was killed by a hunter. He was so gentle. He changed into a buck. We played around the forest together. He was gunned down in the street because your kind can’t stand that we exist. He was thirty-five years old.”

God, I hoped it wasn’t my father who had done it. My stomach felt sick, but I tried to keep it together. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

Mrs. Taylor took a second. When she spoke again, she was quieter, more sympathetic. “Of course, you didn’t, Kelsey. I don’t blame you. I’m sorry if I made it sound like I did. I know how your father raised you. It’s a testament to who you are that you aren’t like him.”

I wasn’t so sure of that. I was a lot more like my dad than I wanted to admit. “How do you know so much about me?”

She sat back down and looked quite motherly. “I work with someone who knows you. When I told her my problem and how the police won’t help, she said you would. She said you were the best.”

I only knew one person who she could possibly be talking about. “You work at Olivia’s school.”

She smiled at the sound of Liv’s name. That wasn’t surprising. Most people who knew Olivia Carey brightened at the thought of her. I, on the other hand, was going to kick her ass. “Yes, she’s such a nice young woman. She hadn’t joined the school when Joanne was there, but I look forward to Nancy getting her for English next year. She works late sometimes and I talk to her while I clean her room.”