Obsession Untamed (Feral Warriors #2)(3)

He flashed her a bleached smile. “Evening.”

But Delaney had already logged him, and her gaze had moved on to the pack of smoking teens sitting on the front steps ahead.

“Bitch.” The muttered word carried to her from the man she’d just passed.

Her gaze jerked back to him, her hand lifting to hover at her waist, a hairbreadth from her gun. But the man never looked back as he strode away purposefully.

Bitch, he called her. As if she had time to flirt when yet another scumbag was prowling the streets, hunting innocents. Moron.

She ran up the steps, past the teens, and tried the door. Locked, as she’d suspected. Through the glass, she saw a balding African-American with tufts of gray hair over his ears running with an awkward gait toward her. The building’s super, she supposed. She’d called a short while ago and asked him to meet her here.

As he neared the doors, the mix of agitation and fear on his face became apparent. Her instinct for trouble kicked into high gear, her pulse speeding up, the fingers of her right hand flexing. Had she stumbled on a domestic situation in progress or finally hit the jackpot?

The instant the man opened the door, a keening cry high in the building raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

She flashed her badge and pushed through the doorway. “Agent Randall, FBI. What happened?”

“I called the cops, but they aren’t here yet.”

“What happened?” Her gun was in her hand now, senses on high alert.

“A lady dead in the stairwell. Her kid just found her.”

Her kid. God.

“How? Who did it?”

“Don’t know. There’s no blood.”

Without waiting for further explanation, Delaney ran for the stairs in the middle of the building, following the sound of the crying.

But as she neared the third floor, the stairwell became so clogged with people she could hardly get through. She holstered her gun, and barked, “FBI!” The nearest residents parted for her to pass, eyeing her with varying degrees of curiosity, wariness, and relief.

Pushing through the crowd, she finally reached the source of the wailing. A little girl of no more than seven lay across the prone and lifeless body of a woman, the teeth marks that had become the trademark of the serial killer in a perfect oval on her neck.

Delaney’s jaw clenched hard.

“Momma!” Tears streaked the child’s brown cheeks, her dark eyes wells of fear as she rose to pat her mother’s face. “Momma.”

Delaney’s heart clenched as the child’s fear flowed into her, echoing deep in her soul. She remembered that fear all too well. And hated, hated, the bastards who caused it. Thirteen people, now, that they knew of. Thirteen females. Seven of whom had left motherless children behind.

As she called in the murder, she pressed her palm to the top of the little girl’s head. “I’m going to get him.” The promise was too softly spoken for the child to hear, but the words imprinted themselves on Delaney’s heart.

Death was part of life. She accepted that. Right or wrong, it was man’s nature to fight and to kill. She understood deaths caused by war, even the misguided inner-city drug and gang wars. Wasteful as those deaths were, there was some testoster-one-laden male sense to them.

But there was no sense to attacks like this. None.

She’d dedicated her life to stopping them. To stopping the evil that caused them. And this son of a bitch was at the top of her list.

Through the babble of voices and crying, a fresh scream sliced the air, echoing up from the bowels of the building.

Delaney’s blood went cold.

She pushed her way back into the crowd but had only managed to descend a couple of steps when an overweight blonde appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

“He’s got my sister! He’s got my sister!”

“Where?” Delaney shouted.

“Laundry room,” the woman cried. “The basement.”

“I’m FBI. Get up here and stay here.”

“You got to save her. Save her!”

As the woman dissolved into hysterics, Delaney scanned the crowd still standing between her and the blonde, then pointed at the two toughest-looking males. “You and you. Keep everyone back and send the cops down when they get here.”

The pair nodded soberly and parted the crowd for her to pass.

By the time she pushed through the metal door into the basement, she was alone. No sound reached her ears except the dull thud of her boots on the cement floor.

No screams. No crying. No woman begging for her life.

Delaney held her gun aloft, her heart thudding as she eased down the hall to the wide, brightly lit doorway. Pressing her back to the wall, she peered around the corner.

A huge, muscular man with short, sun-bleached hair looked up from where he knelt beside the prone and lifeless body of a woman who could have been the twin of the one who’d sent her down.

She had him.

With both hands she lifted her gun. “Freeze. FBI! Hands in the air!”

The man rose with an ease that belied his size, staring at her, not with the eyes of the guilty but the cold eyes of a hunter spotting prey. Green eyes without humanity. Without mercy.

The eyes of Death himself.

A bead of sweat rolled between her shoulder blades. She was far from short, but this guy towered over her, his shoulders broad, his body lean and strong beneath the navy blue dress shirt and too-short khakis he wore without shoes. No way was she risking hand-to-hand combat.