"Done," he said as he walked up beside me.
"More of a challenge for you this time, I hope?"
His brows shot up. "Challenge? Heavens, no. Why would I want that? I'm a responsible Alpha, and as such, I hope all such dangerous endeavors are as straightforward and risk-free as possible."
I smiled, put my hands against his chest and lifted onto my tiptoes. He lowered his head, getting close enough for me to reach.
"Speaking of challenges," I muttered.
"Speaking of risks," he murmured back.
I met his gaze. "I'm willing to take them. Whether you are is, I suspect, another matter."
He hesitated, and I knew I'd guessed right.
"It's not-" he began.
"Okay, it looks like-" Hope's voice, across the lot. "Uh, sorry. I thought I heard voices."
"You did," I said, stepping away from Jeremy. "We should get inside while it's clear."
GETTING INSIDE wasn't the only thing made more difficult by daylight. Although the windows were smoked glass, anyone peering in could see us. But the alternative was to wait five hours.
Hope had contacted Karl earlier and hinted that his skills might be needed, but she'd pretended the occult case was her work assignment, not mentioning Jeremy or me. Jeremy seemed reluctant to get Karl involved. I could chalk this up to Jeremy enjoying the "challenges" of doing it himself, but knowing his feelings about Karl, I suspected there was more to it.
"I'll start in the office," Jeremy whispered as he adjusted his gloves.
"Can-?" Hope began, then pulled a face and reached for her cell phone. "Sorry. I'm supposed to be investigating crop circles. Thankfully, I can write a crop circle story in my sleep." A glance at the phone. "Oh, it's Rona Grant. Should I-?" She glanced at us.
"Go ahead," Jeremy said. "Perhaps she has something.
She didn't. Hope kept the phone a half-inch from her ear, volume jacked, so even without werewolf hearing, I could listen in.
Seemed May had asked Rona to follow up on whether any of those contact names had panned out. Hope strung her a story with the ease of a professional huckster, insinuating that we were indeed making use of those contacts, when we'd dismissed the lot of them yesterday. She probed around the subject of Botnick-nothing overt, just leading questions that might have gotten Rona talking about the cult leader, but obviously the woman had no interest in steering us down that seedy path. So Hope promised to keep her in the loop and hung up.
"As I was going to say, can you spare Jaime to show me those dissected bits?" Hope asked. "Not that I have a prurient interest in seeing dried-up body parts, but you were wondering whether they were taken from someone who was already dead… or someone they helped get that way."
"And you'll be able to tell. Jaime? Would you rather take the office?"
"Dried bits don't bother me."
WE CREPT to the storage room. Just inside the door, Hope stumbled. I went to catch her, but she brushed me off, regaining her balance herself. She turned, hands out, fumbling, as if dazed. Her face was white, her eyes wide and unseeing.
Having a vision. I knew better than to interfere-it's like shaking a sleepwalker awake. Instead, I stayed there, ready to grab her if she fell.
Her hands found the curtain and she grabbed it, as if for support. For a moment, she clung to it, head dropped forward, eyes closed, breaths coming deep and fast. Then her head whipped back and she gasped, eyes flying open.
"What's in here?" she asked hoarsely.
Before I could answer, she threw open the curtain. A sharp intake of breath as she stared at the bondage gear. Then a shaky laugh. "Well, that explains it."
A pause, then she glanced at me. "I have to- I can't do this here. Too strong. Can you get the… stuff and bring it out to me?"
I nodded.
A COUPLE of minutes later, I slipped into the cleaning closet and found Hope there, rubbing the back of her neck.
"Sorry about that," she said. "It was just-"
"Too much."
A wry smile. "Yeah. Asking me to get a sense of those-" she waved at the bags in my hand, "-while I was in that room, would be like asking a bloodhound to pick out a month-old trail in an airport terminal. Way too much else going on."
"Are you okay?"
Nodding, she took a bag from my hand. She stared at it, but I could tell she was still watching the movie playing in her mind. A sharp shake of her head.
"Maybe you should get some air," I said. "I know whatever you saw couldn't have been very pleasant."
"I'm okay. It's not… They don't disturb me." She lifted the bag. "Nothing here. Let's try another."
She went through three of the half-dozen bags, then stopped on the fourth, eyes closing, eyelids flickering, like someone in the throes of a vivid dream. Her breathing accelerated. Sweat beaded on her forehead. Then her eyes flew open and she handed the bag back to me.
"Car accident."
The next two gave her nothing.
"One accidental death, five chaos-free deaths. My sensors aren't perfect, but if all those folks were murdered for their body parts, I should have picked up something from at least one. All I got was a car accident-single-vehicle collision. Not pretty, but normal enough."
"So they're likely morgue or cemetery pickings. Like necromancers use."
"You guys use…?"
I nodded. "Only we don't get the nice protective wrapping. Physical contact is a must."
"Ah."
"We get used to it. Like you and your visions-a nasty part of life."
She glanced at the bags. "So could this guy have been selling to necromancers?"
"Only without knowing it. More likely, he was just selling to humans wanting the stuff for medicine or magic. We use our own black markets, but even those are iffy. If I want quality goods, I have to go to the source."
"You mean…"
"Grave digging. Fortunately, it's not something I have to do very often."
Hope found one more violent death in the next batch-electrocution-but again it seemed accidental.
"So this cult draws the line at murder?" she said. "That surprises me. You'd think if you're going to kidnap and torture your victims, you'd kill them, if only to cover your tracks."
"Kidnap and torture?" I shook my head. "It may seem hard to be-lieve, but they don't need unwilling victims. That bondage stuff is for the cult members. Consenting adults."
"Maybe that's what you saw. What I saw was definitely noncon-sensual. And it was recent. I've been working on distinguishing past and current images and I have no doubt about that one."
"What did you see?"
"Not much. I was watching it from the victim's point of view, and his or her head was covered. Not just a blindfold or leather mask either. This thing was heavy."
"Like a metal helmet?"
She nodded. "But it was solid-or almost solid. The person inside could barely breathe."
I hurried back to the storage room and checked the shelf. The helmet was missing.
SUPERNATURAL CSI
HOPE PACED from one end of the storage room to the other. "No, it's not helping. I just keep seeing the same scene. That's usually how it is. If there's some way to see more, I haven't figured it out yet. I just get a snippet, playing over and over."
"Go through it again," Jeremy said. "In case I'm missing something."
From the frustration in Hope's face, I knew she thought he meant in case she'd missed something, but she took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
"Scene starts. Blackness. Can't breathe. Struggling. Restrained. First by hands, then those are gone but he still can't get away. There's a voice, but it echoes inside the helmet. Can't make out the words. Can't even tell whether it's a man or woman. Trying to scream, but can't, as if gagged, but…"
Hope opened her eyes. "It's like the person is gagged, but I don't feel one. Same with the restraints."