Unspoken (Shadow Falls: After Dark #3)(22)

“Fine.” She sounded offended by the inquiry.

“Did you get any traces off them?” Burnett asked. “Are they the same ones from earlier?”

“They aren’t the boys I saw walking. I didn’t get a good enough trace to know if they were the same scents from the jewelry store. I think they’re only half were.”

“But they are the ones I smelled earlier with animal blood on them,” Chase said.

Both Della and Burnett looked at him.

“You were here earlier?” Burnett asked.

Della didn’t appear surprised; she knew he’d been in the area. But she hadn’t told Burnett. Was she trying to protect him from the big bad Burnett? Chase liked that thought.

“Yes, before I came to Shadow Falls. Around seven.”

“So about the time of the murder,” Burnett said. “Did you get a visual?”

“No, just a trace.”

Burnett stood there as if trying to grasp it all. “The blood, was it—”

“I didn’t hang around to identify it as feline.” When Burnett looked surprised, Chase added, “I saw Lucas when he came back. He told me about the cat. That’s why I came here, to the murder scene … to see if I could still pick up the were scents.” And to go check out some scumbags. But he didn’t say that.

Burnett didn’t appear pissed. Was he just holding back until he had Chase alone? Burnett stared at the sky as if trying to come up with a plan. “Della,” he said. “Head back home. Straight home.”

Della frowned. “But—”

“Don’t argue. If your parents find you’re gone, it would just cause more trouble.”

Chase saw the spark of anger in her eyes, but she nodded. She respected Burnett that much. That was part of the reason Chase respected him too.

“Will you text and let me know if you get a confession?”

“Yes.”

She took off without offering Chase a goodbye or even a go-to-hell glare. He’d have preferred the glare to nothing. Nothing stung a little.

Burnett turned his dark, accusing gaze on Chase.

“I wasn’t planning to see Della,” he said.

“I know.” He started walking back toward the park.

Chase caught up with him. “How do you know?”

“I had you followed.”

The words raked across Chase’s nerves. “That’s underhanded, isn’t it?”

“No,” Burnett said, unconcerned if Chase was pissed.

“So you have the right to have me tailed?”

“Until I trust you, I do.”

And how the hell long would that be? Then logic hit. “You didn’t have me followed. I’d have picked up their scent.”

“Not if it was Perry,” Burnett clipped out.

Perry was one of the best shape-shifters out there. And the really good shifters could shift their scents so they weren’t distinguishable. But Perry was supposed to be in France … with Steve.

“Are Perry and … Steve back?”

“Got back yesterday.” Burnett cut Chase a quick glance. “And there will be no trouble, got that?”

As long as Steve stayed away from Della, Chase had no problem. “I hear you.”

“You had best do more than hear,” Burnett warned. “At the first hint of trouble you’ll be house hunting. Steve is my student. You are an unwanted boarder.”

Chase gripped his jaw to keep from smarting off.

After a few more steps, Burnett added, “And since you don’t seem interested in sleeping tonight, why don’t you go with me to interview the weres?”

Chase recalled his other appointment. He figured he’d missed that window of opportunity. Tomorrow.

“Sure.”

*

“No!” The scream, her mom’s scream, had Della jackknifing out of bed at seven that morning. Had she dreamed it? Must have, right? She fell back on her bed.

It had been three in the morning when she’d gotten a text from Burnett saying they were still waiting for permission to move the weres to the FRU offices. It had been four when Della let go of her anger and the memory of being so close to Chase and let slumber pull her in. The scream echoed again. She popped back up and yanked open her bedroom door, flying down the stairs in two seconds flat.

It was her mom.

“What’s wrong?” Della yelled, flashing into the kitchen and into the room’s icy temperature. The distinct cold was a dead ringer for the … dead.

Her mom stood in front of the table, her hands knuckled around the back of a wooden chair. Her gaze locked on … Della’s heart stopped. There sitting at the table was Mrs. Chi, her throat gaping open, exposing an Adam’s apple and veins and some other nasty stuff.

Was that how she’d died? Someone had sliced her throat? Della’s own throat hurt.

She swallowed back her gag reflex and looked at her mom. Something was terribly wrong. And it wasn’t just Mrs. Chi’s throat. It was … it was … How the hell could her mom see Mrs. Chi?

“What … is it?” Della pushed out the three-word sentence, telling herself she’d simply misunderstood. Her mom wasn’t seeing the ghost. Could she?

“Mrs. Chi,” her mom muttered, terror and tears in her eyes.