Ripper (Hunter #1)(81)

“Jo was buried separately. He took care with her. She was the only one who was buried with her jewelry. All the other girls were completely stripped down with nothing left to help identify them.” Now for my grand finale. “And I believe she was dead before he cut her open.”

“Why do you believe this, Kelsey?” Marcus didn’t argue with me. He merely wanted to know how I had drawn my conclusions.

“Because of the lack of blood,” I explained. “If you look at her pictures, compared to the rest of them, she doesn’t bleed. There’s bruising around her neck and that tells me she was probably strangled to death before she was taken to the warehouse. The bruises are already visible. It also explains why the silver didn’t burn her the way it did the rest.”

“Because dead girls don’t fight back,” Marcus concluded grimly.

Gray shook his head in the back seat. “All this time I was paying more attention to the other pictures for the simple fact that they were more violent. Kelsey comes in and proves that the least violent of all the kills is probably the one that will tell us who the killer is.”

I took enormous pleasure at the pride in his voice. “He knew her. He liked her. He didn’t want to kill her, but he had to.”

If I was right, my list of suspects was somewhat short. I wanted to start with Professor Peter Hamilton.

“Did you have relations with that girl, Councilman?” Gray asked his question in that Western, all-lawman twang he got when he wanted the truth.

It was overkill. It was so weird that I was the soft touch between the two of us. That so rarely happened to me. “Gray, let up on him.”

The vampire waved his hand to silence me. “It’s all right, Kelsey. It’s a legitimate question. The answer is no. I did not have sexual relations with Miss Taylor. I did, however, feed from her. I did so several nights in row, and now I understand why she sought me out.”

“She looked for you?” I wanted to know everything about what she’d done while she was investigating.

“Yes,” Marcus replied. “I thought she seemed out of place. By nature, the girls who choose to work the clubs are harder, tougher than Joanne Taylor was. Perversely, her very softness was alluring to every vampire who walked through the door.”

“See, I don’t get that,” I said as the bright lights of the city flowed by. “That other vampire, Michael, thought I was soft and you agreed with him. You guys must have an entirely different version of soft than me.”

Marcus had the temerity to chuckle. “You might be prickly on the outside, Kelsey, but on the inside you long. We can feel it. Especially myself, given my talents. You long for someone to take care of you the way your father never did. You long for someone to love you just the way you are, and you’re not even sure of who that is, yet, but you want a man who will be willing to stand by you while you discover it.”

I wasn’t sure I liked being such an open book to anyone, much less a bunch of vampires. “How can you see that much when you barely know me?”

“Two thousand years of interactions with other human beings can refine your ability to see past defenses,” Marcus said. “It’s also one of my talents. Academics aren’t the strongest so we adapted. We can sense what humans need. It makes it easier to feed. You are very resilient, cara mia, but there is such softness on the inside.”

Gray frowned from the backseat. “Hey, I don’t know what you called her but don’t. It sounds awfully intimate. She is soft, though, and sweet when she wants to be. She can flay you alive when she thinks you’ve done her wrong.”

I flushed because I really could. It was time to get back to the subject at hand. “So Joanne sought you out?”

The vampire nodded his agreement. “She seemed out of place with the others. She wore the clothes that were provided for her, but she took no pleasure in them. She was always trying to cover more of herself. I thought it odd that she covered a designer dress with a sweater. I asked her why she was there and she told me she needed the money. For three nights she allowed me to feed from her. I felt her distaste so I fed from her wrist. It’s less intimate. On the fourth night, I simply offered to pay for her school. I wouldn’t miss the money and she needed it. It was painful to watch her, but she turned me down and sought out another vampire. I decided it was her game. I was wrong.”

What a dangerous game she’d played. “Did she ever ask you about Britney Miles?”

We were approaching the club and Marcus slowed down the Bentley. “She asked if I’d met her. I said I had. She’s one of the girls I did bed. She was a hard girl, very aggressive. I told Joanne that she had moved on after me. She seemed to be working her way through the vampires. Before me she’d had Michael and several of the visiting vampires. After me she allowed Alexander to make an appointment with her.”

“And he’s seriously Jack the Ripper?” Gray snorted a little, a show of his suspicion. “Don’t all you vampires claim some historical relevance?”

Marcus pulled to the side of the road, putting the car in park. He met Gray’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Do not doubt it for a moment, Lieutenant. He is everything that history claims him to be and so much more. He’s incredibly clever. He’s been careful for the last ten years. He knows that if he steps out of line even once the king will have him executed. If he’s working again then he’ll do anything to keep it quiet. I believe this is where you leave us, Lieutenant.”