Page 98 of Wicche Hunt

He reared up on his back paws, his front paws on the door above my shoulders, and rested his head in the crook of my neck.

“I know what it must have cost you not to come out and kill him when you realized I wasn’t talking to the delivery guy. Thank you. This is much cleaner and ultimately safer for me. There’s no body to hide, no crime scene to clean up, no lies that have to be remembered. He’s human and the human authorities are dealing with him. Okay?”

He rubbed his head against my jaw and then went back to the floor.

“And don’t eat all the pizza,” I added, slipping back out to the porch.

Dorian was cuffed and being walked to the police car by Officer Cross, the one who’d helped get me home when I was consulting on the child abduction case.

“Do you know who my father is?” Dorian blustered. “This is outrageous. I’ll have your badges, all of you. I’ll be bailed out in an hour and then you’ll be dealing with a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for wrongful arrest.” He kept yelling, but once Cross slammed the door, we didn’t have to hear it.

“Did you get the syringe?” I glanced around the porch, not seeing it.

Osso, who’d joined Hernández, nodded. “It’s been bagged and is heading to the lab. Do you know what’s in it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think he intended to kill me here. I think it was something to put me out so he could kill me at his leisure elsewhere. He wanted to draw it out so it was more pleasurable for him.”

“Okay,” he said, pulling up the voice recorder on his phone. “Tell us what happened.”

I did, leaving out my freezing him and the raccoons. “I have cameras up. I can give you the tape.”

He turned off the voice recorder. “Is there audio?” Eyebrows raised, he knew they’d probably hear something that would be hard to explain.

“No.”

“Good. We’ll take that with us.” He put his phone away. “We’ll need you to stop by the station tomorr—”

“I’ll bring it to her to sign,” Hernández said. At Osso’s look, she added, “She doesn’t drive.”

“Right. Of course. We’ll bring the statement to you to sign.” He took one last look at the porch and then nodded to himself. “We’ll get out of your hair. Lock up,” he said, going down the stairs. “There’s still one more out there.”

“Thanks for that,” I grumbled. “Like I don’t have enough trouble sleeping.” When I went back in, Declan was once again himself and sitting on the floor.

“Hey, did you eat?”

“Yeah.” He stood and picked up the boxes.

“Did you leave me a couple of slices?”

“I only ate one pizza.” He took my hand. “Are you really all right?”

I glanced over. “Are you kidding? I got to scare the crap out of the asshole who killed my cousin. I’m great. And kinda hungry.”

Waving a hand, I closed most of the windows, leaving the rows at the top open to continue airing out the paint fumes. I’d spelled the windows a while ago to only let air in and out. I didn’t want to worry about randos crawling in at night, but I still felt more comfortable with the windows closed and locked.

We settled back in the studio with pizza and drinks, Declan lowering the screen so we could watch another British mystery.

“I fell asleep last time. Who done it?” I asked.

“The brother-in-law,” he said, taking another big bite, the open box on his lap.

“What? I thought for sure it was the governess.” I donned thin rubber gloves and then slid two pieces onto my plate.

“You missed some important details while you slept, namely that the brother-in-law was having an affair with the murder victim, who turned out to be pregnant.”

“No.”

He nodded.

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