Werewolves. Someone had torn up two werewolves.
Once he’d realized that the taller man was Terrence Whittaker, it didn’t take long for Jesse to recognize the shorter, stockier guy as Terrence’s sidekick, Drew Riddell. He’d talked to both of these men just the day before. And now he knew why there was so much blood and gore at the scene. Scarlett had told him that unless you were with a null, werewolves were nearly impossible to kill; they healed too quickly. He knew that Scarlett hadn’t been anywhere near this scene, so whoever had done this had needed to essentially wound these guys faster than they could heal, until they finally bled out.
Could the nova do that? What about Will? After all, Will had openly admitted to there being conflict between him and the other wolves. If Terrence had pushed him far enough, could he have done something like this?
No, Jesse reasoned, if this had been Will, he’d have gotten rid of the bodies himself, or at least called Scarlett, who would have called Jesse to help. Whoever this was didn’t have access to Scarlett’s “services.” But even the nova didn’t leave bodies out in the open, in public. And he still didn’t understand the thing with the jaws.
Jesse got to his feet, getting out of the ME guys’ way, and leaned a bit to put his mouth close to Glory’s ear. “Call Dashiell, tell him it’s Old World,” Jesse told her. “These guys were werewolves.”
“You know them?” Glory said hopefully. “Are you gonna give their names to Bine?”
Shit. Jesse paused, considering. If he told Bine the victim’s ID, she would immediately ask how he knew them. Then again, if he didn’t tell Bine, and in the course of the investigation she found out that he’d talked to both of those guys earlier that day, his career would be over. Worse than that—he might even be a suspect, especially if anyone found out that he’d shot Whittaker in the leg. Jesse cursed under his breath in Spanish, and said, “No. I’m not gonna say anything about the IDs for now. Let’s give Dashiell a little time to work.”
“Jesse, the sun’s coming up,” Glory pointed out.
Jesse glanced up. It was hard to see past the lights of the city, but sure enough, warm pink light was beginning to break over the LA skyline. Dashiell would be dead for the next twelve hours or so. “Oh, come on,” Jesse complained. He stepped away from the body, pulled out his own phone, and called Will, who picked up right away.
“We have a problem,” Jesse said into the phone. He tried to keep his words vague, like Scarlett always did, on the off chance that anyone was listening. Scarlett’s paranoia was really rubbing off on him. “I just got a call from a work friend. Two of your . . . erm . . . family members were killed tonight. The top two on your list.”
Silence. Then Will said, “You’re sure it’s them?”
Jesse considered that for a second, and said, “With the taller one, I’m sure. With the shorter one, I’m ninety-five percent.”
“How did they die?” Will inquired. There was a note of hope in his voice, and for a moment Jesse thought the alpha was asking for details over the phone, which seemed out of character. But then he understood: Will was hoping that Drew and Terrence had been hit by a bus, or drowned accidentally, something like that.
“Well,” Jesse said, glancing back toward the crime scene behind him, “it wasn’t a nice quiet stroke in their sleep.”
“Okay,” Will said, disappointed. “I gotta think about this. Thanks for the call.”
“Wait!” Jesse protested. “You’re not getting it. Two dead, and it’s after sunrise.”
There was another long silence, and Jesse checked his phone’s screen to make sure the call hadn’t dropped. “Will?” he said.
“Dammit,” Will said with feeling. “We’re not set up for this. LA is not supposed to be a place where this kind of thing happens.”
“What do they do in other places?” Jesse asked, trying to keep his voice reasonable. “You guys have stayed hidden for an awfully long time. How does it work?”
“Different things, in different places,” Will said tiredly. “Corruption, more murder, tighter control on everyone. That’s not going to help us right now. But I don’t have Dashiell’s contacts. He’s kept them from me in case—well. You’re just going to have to stall until sundown, and let Dashiell throw his weight and money around.”
Stall. Right. That was just what Jesse wanted to do right now. He’d agreed to this whole deal so he could stop deceiving his fellow cops, but saying so wouldn’t help right now. “Fine,” he said, working to keep the snap out of his voice. After a moment’s thought, he added, “Hey, Will? Have you ever heard of . . . your kind of people . . . being killed, looks kind of like a mauling, but their lower jaws are ripped off?”
There was a sudden crash on Will’s end of the line. Jesse had heard the sound before, and knew Will had dropped the phone. He waited, mystified, for the alpha to return to the line. “Pick up Scarlett,” Will growled. His voice had changed, becoming deeper and more terrifying. “Meet me at Dashiell’s in an hour.”
“I have to tell them something here,” Jesse protested. “Besides, it’s after sunrise—”
Will cut him off. “One hour!” he roared, his voice barely human. And the line went dead.
Chapter 26