Ripper (Hunter #1)(69)

“Why? What’d I do last night?” I’d seen Syl the night before, but we hadn’t spoken. He’d left a bottle of wine, a pot of tea, and a tray of cookies on the bar before he’d slipped out. It was kind of nice to have someone who always supplied me with food.

“You mated properly with my master,” Syl said with great satisfaction. “I know you humans have formalities, but the master knows you are his true mate, so I consider myself at your service.”

I tried really hard not to flush. “Okay. Good to know.” I thought briefly about refusing and arguing, but I was close to figuring out what was bugging me about the pictures on the wall. I could always pay Gray back later, after I had Dev Quinn’s insanely large check tucked away in my bank account. “Go, then. I’m a size six. I need something professional for this afternoon and something dressy for tonight. I like black.”

The demon bowed deeply and was off in his pursuit of “garments.”

Gray was still running somewhere in the neighborhood. He’d kissed me good-bye thirty minutes before and I’d wondered why he felt the need to run after all the energy we’d burned off in bed. He’d awakened me three times to have sex.

Make love. I had to mentally correct myself. Gray and I made love. It was raucous and dirty and Gray was seriously kinky, but it was love. It was also tiring and I could use a nap. Not so the inexhaustible Grayson Sloane. He’d put on a pair of sweats and a T-shirt and taken off at a brisk pace. He’d had energy to burn, like his body couldn’t shut down.

My brain was doing the same thing. There was something off about the pictures. It had been bugging me ever since I first saw the horrible “works of art” the Ripper had sent to Gray. One of the photos poked at me—the one of Joanne. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I kept coming back to it again and again.

I studied it carefully that morning. There were three photos of her, just like all the others, but one in particular kept my interest. At first I thought it was because I felt as though I’d known the girl. I’d become emotionally invested and it was messing with my head. But as I continued to look at it, I had a feeling deep in my gut that it was important. I knew there was something there.

I stared for a long moment, the heat from the coffee blowing up through the air. What was it about this one picture that bugged me? On the surface it was no different than the others. Joanne lay on her back, unseeing eyes staring at the camera. Her body was wrapped in silver chains, her hands over her head. I shivered at the thought that I’d probably looked that way last night when Gray had tied me up.

I wasn’t going to even think about that. It was completely different. I concentrated on the photo. Her torso was sliced open with a neat, surgical precision, but it seemed to me like Joanne had less blood in her pictures than the rest of them. Joanne was the only shifter in the group. The unknown girl was a wolf. There was something about her that screamed wolf to me. I bet she came from a different pack than the Dallas wolves or they would be looking for her.

Did shifters bleed less than wolves? I seriously doubted it.

Time ticked by. I finished my coffee and I stared.

Gray returned. He yelled hello to me and that he was taking a shower if I thought I needed one, too. I heard that, but only vaguely in the back of my mind. I waved him off and he seemed to sense I needed space.

Why Joanne? If this person was going after wolves, it seemed to me he loved the thrill of the hunt and wresting life from a strong, proud creature. Joanne was a doe. While she might be a little stronger than a human, she had nothing on a wolf.

Which one of these is not like the others? Which one of these doesn’t belong?

I groaned in frustration because it didn’t make sense. I turned to the computer on Gray’s desk and decided to change tactics. I googled Jack the Ripper. Thirty minutes later I knew more about the * than I ever wanted to. As I would be interviewing him tonight, I should have done it first thing. He’d killed at least five prostitutes in the White Chapel section of London. He’d mysteriously stopped and some people posited that he’d been caught and either killed or placed in a mental ward. I knew for a fact he was happily walking the Earth plane.

White Chapel.

Something stuck in my head about the name. It was a low-rent district in London during Victorian times, so why did the name ring a bell? I quickly typed in the words White Chapel and Dallas into the browser and got absolutely nothing. I sat back and then decided to try again. He’d killed wolves from both Dallas and Fort Worth packs. I tried Fort Worth. Nothing. If the computer had a neck, my hands would have been around it. Frustration welled. I knew something was there, but I couldn’t find it…

White Chapel + DFW

“Whites Chapel Cemetery.” The website came right up. I breathed with an expectant air of triumph. It was in Southlake, not far from my own little house in Hurst. The entire Metroplex was dotted with small suburban cities, each with their own histories. Whites Chapel Cemetery was old enough to have a historical marker.

I jumped up and dashed for the bedroom.

Twenty minutes later, Gray slid me a frustrated look from the driver’s side of his truck. “I don’t see why it had to be this second. I didn’t even get to dry my hair.”

I was watching the GPS. It said we had another five minutes until we got there. Gray had been cranky ever since I forced him into the truck. “I thought you wanted to solve this case.”