Page 47 of Bitter Discord

We split up. I sniffed around the spot. It was open, so a shooter would have a good line of sight from several angles. Further away from Mason’s body, I smelled the two BSA agents, and part of me wanted to interrogate them, just to make sure neither was the mysterious Bruce, our known mole from April. I caught more than a few other human scents in the area as well, but aside from the obvious children, I didn’t know if they were park visitors from the daytime or more recently that evening. There were dozens. While the BSA had good intentions to keep other humans from coming over to the area, they couldn’t wipe away the other useless scents.

I was grateful for the lack of a werewolf’s scent.

“There’s no magic I can discern,” Zuri said, shaking her head when we met at the body again. “No werewolves or other werecats. There are too many other human scents in the area to know which one of them it could have been.”

“Same. Whoever did this clearly wanted to take advantage of it being a higher traffic area than some spot in the woods. Do you think the shots could have been fired from a farther distance than where the tape line is?”

“I don’t know. I would think the farther away the gun was, the more likely someone would have heard the gunfire, and we’d have the normal human police in the way.” Zuri looked at Mason with me. “There are ways to cover up one’s physical scent. Magic is a new thing they’ve developed, but any one of these humans could have been a witch not using magic or had done it before coming close. I’ve encountered magical objects that will mask scent or hide supernaturals from werecats. They’re rare and oftentimes require a lot of power. Any of our guests could have something that gives them that edge when they want it.”

“I think our BSA mole did this,” I said suddenly. “I’m certain of it.”

“If it was someone at random, I would agree, but there are two problems. They don’t know all of our visitors, and worse, how did he know to target Mason?” she countered. “We didn’t even know about Mason’s relation to Mikkel’s treason. That leaves me wondering if it was another werecat we had over for dinner.”

“Good point.” I went to one knee again to search Mason’s body for anything useful. If he was carrying a phone or wallet, I would have been happy. I turned out every pocket and cursed. “Okay, so someone took everything off him, or he wasn’t carrying anything. Do you think we can have Davor look into him and find out where he was planning to stay while he was in the city? Maybe we could get his stuff from his hotel room.” I hated that I couldn’t smell anyone else around the body. If they had stolen his things, it would have been nice to catch a scent.

“We can try, but with false identities, paying online, and everything else we do to protect our movements…” Zuri didn’t seem confident.

“Great.”

“This is bad. We need to call everyone in and hope no one else was killed. It should be clear to everyone that this is a setup. I bet you the tip to the BSA came from the murderer, but I can only imagine that those tip lines are public record, easy for anyone to look up.”

“Do you want me to drive to Heath and talk to the entire pack or call him to the mansion with Landon?” I asked as she walked away. I went to follow her, looking at Mason one more time before deciding it was time to leave. “He won’t bring the entire pack into a situation where they could be killed.”

“I don’t know yet.” Zuri and I left the taped-off section. “And I don’t know what we do with the body. Probably burn it and take the ashes to Father. He’ll find Mason’s family.”

“We’ll tell Rhodes. The BSA handles supernatural disposal when they need to. They did it for us in April.”

“Do they take pieces for themselves? No one will like it if the BSA is able to research us using the dead.”

“As far as I know, that’s highly illegal. There must be safeguards in place, but I wouldn’t doubt if pieces like hair slip through.”

Zuri sighed. When we reached the tent, the humans were silent, watching us carefully.

“The body is supernatural and needs to be burned, but you can move it for now to a morgue that can be trusted,” I told Rhodes. “I’ll need the details of the morgue and unlimited access to it.”

“Why not immediately?” he asked. “We can do that if you want. I can have verification of disposal before lunch.”

“I believe Jacky wishes to ask some of the local werewolves to sniff it. Let the two agents who have already contaminated it bag it. No one else. We can’t leave it here, and it will take Heath Everson at least two hours to get here to help with the investigation.” Zuri reached out and touched his arm. “If you can continue to be helpful, we would appreciate it, but we don’t believe any humans are at risk, so leave the rest of the investigation to us, please.”

“If you don’t mind me asking… What is our victim?” Rhodes asked, glancing at her hand on his arm. His attraction was thick in the air.

“A problem,” I answered, starting the walk back to my car. “Tell us where you secure the body. We’ll know if anyone else toyed with it.”

“I don’t need to be told that, Miss Leon,” Rhodes called after me, louder than I really needed him to be.

“Director Rhodes, I like you and want to trust you, so let’s make something clear before it becomes a problem.” Zuri was talking sweetly. “We’re asking you to be careful about this situation, not because we will do anything against you.”

“We don’t want the others to get more pissed off than they already will be,” I finished for her. “You don’t know who they are or what they’re capable of. They have to rely on Zuri and me to maintain the strict line of what can and can’t be revealed… and if they feel we can’t, they’ll take matters into their own hands. No one wants that.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Zuri promised, finally following me.

18

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“Ido everything right and still…” I was mad when I got in the car. I hadn’t liked Mason, and Zuri had made it known she hated him.

That didn’t mean he had to die.

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