A muscle ticked in his jaw, and she could see veins throbbing at his temple. “I don’t want you to die. I just ... holy shit, I can’t believe this is happening again.”
“I’m not her, Jack. I’m not.” She wanted to reach for him, but she had no right. It was all she could do to keep her teeth from chattering, she was so damn cold. “I’m not planning to kill myself. This is more ... terminal disease than suicide. The end is coming. It’s not by my hand, but it is inevitable. Try to accept that. I have.”
“No.” He shoved his face into hers, his blue eyes blazing pure fire. “No. I won’t accept it. I’ll never accept it. So don’t ask it of me.”
She drew in a shuddery breath. “Okay, I won’t. That doesn’t change anything.”
“Fine,” he snapped, throwing himself back in his seat. He scrubbed a hand down his face. “Go home, Selina. Peyton and I can handle this scene without you. I’m not taking you off the case, but I don’t want to see you right now. Get the hell out of my sight.”
Hauling himself out of the car, he slammed the door behind him. He didn’t look back as he walked away. She made herself put the vehicle in gear and press her foot on the gas pedal. Something inside shattered, and she felt as frozen as she had when Bess died. There really was nothing left for her now. Just the case. Just catching this murderer. It was better this way.
Maybe if she said it enough, she’d believe it.
14
Another woman who wanted to die. How could he have found two of them? The irony of it made Jack snort, and hot moisture stung his eyes. He strode up the walkway to his parents’ front door, away from Selina and the pain that ate him up inside.
He slammed his way into the house. The door closed behind him so hard, it set the doorbell gongs off, and he couldn’t help but hear it as the death knell on their relationship.
How morbidly fitting.
Peyton turned when he entered, his gaze going from Jack to the door and back again. “Everything okay?”
“Not one thing, actually.” His stepfather, Selina, a killer still at large. It was too much to handle at once. Jack felt like his head was going to explode. He clamped down on the emotions battering at him. Every time he thought about Selina, he wanted to put his fist through something. His hands actually shook with the need, and he clenched his fingers to stop from giving in to the urge. How could she so casually walk into her own death? He’d put his life on the line before, so he understood that came with the profession, but what Selina was doing? It was a suicide mission for her, whether she chose to acknowledge it or not. It was one thing to know the killer was gunning for her—Jack had pointed out as much to her—it was something else to calmly acquiesce to it.
It all circled back to this killer. This Normal who pretended to be a vampire. He wanted to rip the bastard’s head off. If he did that, maybe Selina wouldn’t be his last victim. Jack’s heart stilled. He forced himself to think logically. She’d said this was a vision Merek had had, but Jack had seen Merek’s visions change depending on the decisions people made. It was possible to alter them. How much, Jack didn’t know, but he knew he had to try. Selina might readily accept her death, but he refused to. If there was a way to stop this, he wanted to find it.
He had to track down their killer before the killer tracked down Selina. She might be involved in the hunt—there was no way he could stop her, and he wasn’t stupid enough to try—but that didn’t mean he was going to stand aside and watch her die.
“Laramie.” Peyton’s hand closed over his shoulder, jolting him back to reality. “If you need to go home or be with your family now, I can handle this.”
Right, like sitting alone with nothing but his own thoughts to drive him crazy was going to help anything. Jack shook his head. “No, I’m here. Let’s do this.”
His parents’ home was in shambles. Everything that could be smashed or broken had been. He’d bet his annual salary that nothing had been stolen. It had just been destroyed. Systematically. There were holes in the walls, windows shattered, smashed furniture, broken dishes, slashed mattresses. Everything that had made this house a home was gone.
A shudder of revulsion went through him as he walked from room to room. Splashed across the debris was his stepfather’s blood, and the heavy stench of it made his insides twist.
“This one was different.” He coughed and looked up at the ceiling so he didn’t have to view the wreckage for a second. “He never touched anything but the victims at the other crime scenes.”
“Of course, this is different.” Tess stepped out of his parents’ bedroom, sealing something into a plastic bag. “This is personal.”
Peyton slipped his hands in his pockets, but his gaze kept going back to Jack. If Jack didn’t know better, he’d think the wolf was worried about him. “He’s sending you—us—a message. He can get to us, and none of us are safe. If we keep pursuing him, it’s our loved ones who will die.” He sighed. “Or it’s us who will die.”
Jack’s teeth ground together as he fought lashing out at the other man. It was the last thing he wanted to hear. Peyton was right, he knew that. Logically. But this was madness. He wanted to hunt this fucker down and rip him apart limb by limb. “You’re damn right, it’s personal.”
“I know.”
Jack’s fists balled and unballed at his sides. “You’re not going to argue with me, tell me not to let him get to me, because that’s what he wants?”
“No. You already know all that. In the end, it doesn’t mean shit.” Peyton’s eyes sparked with feral light. “It’s personal, and we’re still going to nail this asshole.”
“Thanks, man.” He clapped a hand on the wolf’s shoulder.
“We protect our own,” Peyton said simply. “And, in a way, his extra effort to send us a message is what saved your stepfather. One of your neighbors saw the broken windows and called the cops. The killer had to flee before he could finish the job.”
“Thank God for nosy neighbors.” Tess managed a small smile. She and Peyton still looked a little pale from the full moon the night before, but they’d survived and they were here. Jack was grateful for that. Tess tilted her head. “There is something that you should see, though.”
Jack snorted. “There’s something better than this?”
“Better is such a relative term,” she retorted drily. “Cavalli called Peyton to let him know about the Normal thing, and that’s when the shield spell issue came to us.”
“How would a Normal get through a security spell?” Of course. They’d assumed the man was a Magickal. They’d had their doubts that a vampire would be able to cast a spell powerful enough to punch through one, but they had assumed the darkness of the man had made up for any lack of casting abilities that vampires might have. That assumption just got blown out of the water. “I don’t buy that every single Magickal he’s attacked has happened to leave their shields down that night. With Mathison, it was unlikely, and I’ve never once known Darren to forget. How would this Normal even be able to tell if they were up or not? I know I can’t sense it. Not really, and I know what I’m looking for.”