Page 173 of White Wolf

“This isn’t happening,” Lanny said, sounding numb. “This is some kinda prank.”

But Trina knew it wasn’t. “Do you believe me now?” she asked, while her heart tried to beat its way through her ribs. “We’ve got to find Sasha and Nikita.”

~*~

It took the rest of the day to make everything about the missing body official – and with Harvey’s phone call and video footage like they had, which hospital security had already watched – they had to go through the motions. A team of lab techs dusted the morgue for prints, snapped photos, swabbed everything, and generally made it impossible for Harvey and her crew to do their jobs.

“You’ve gotta get them outta here,” she told Trina, starting to sound desperate.

“Soon,” Trina promised with a thin smile, though she knew it probably wouldn’t be.

They had a sit-down with their captain, flipped through a half dozen other active cases from surrounding precincts that were similar to Chad’s: young victims, male and female, no blood, nasty bite marks on their necks.

The wordsserial killerfloated in the air above the bullpen. As did the wordhoaxonce the other detectives saw the video.

It was four o’clock by the time Trina pushed back from her desk and took her first deep breath of the afternoon. Her eyes were blurry, and her head hurt, and she felt like she was underwater.

Across the desk from her, Lanny looked even worse. He was staring at his computer, at a still shot of a very not-dead Chad Edwards pushing through the morgue doors.

When he felt his eyes on her, he said, “It’s not real.”

“You know it is,” she said, quietly so no one else in the bullpen could hear.

He shook his head. “When you die, that’s it. No coming back. It’s not real.”

And suddenly she knew why it was bothering him so much. It wasn’t just the impossibility of her still-alive great-grandfather, the absurdity of supernatural beings and walking corpses. It was because it didn’t seem right that something unreal could exist while Lanny himself – strong, tough, boxing-ring Lanny – was dying.

A lump formed in her throat.

And a tiny kernel of an idea took root.

She pulled out her phone and texted Sasha.Can we meet you? My partner and me.

He responded almost instantly.Yes! Lion’s Den in 10?

Yes.

She stood up. “Come on, man,” she said, too-cheerful. “Let’s go get that drink you’re always talking about.”

He surfaced as if from a dream, snapping a startled look her direction. “What?”

“Bourbon, you old drunk. I’m buying.”

That got him moving.

It was twelve blocks, so they drove – Trina drove, insisting she wouldn’t buy him a drop unless he handed the keys over right now. He did, grumbling, throwing himself down in the passenger seat like a child.

She could see the fear lurking in the corners of his eyes, though. He was rattled, and badly. Which made her feel even worse about what was about to happen.

“The hell?” Lanny asked, peering through the window at the façade of the pub once they were parallel parked on the street. “Why are we here?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t come here to pick up women,” she said, sliding out from behind the wheel and smoothing her blazer. She’d been in jeans, tank top, and dark gray jacket all day, and felt wilted and overheated, nervous as a cat suddenly. This wasn’t a date – she didn’t care what either of these men thought of her looks. But she wanted to be someone worth seeing, she realized. She wanted to appear put-together and in-control, and not the frazzled, frightened kid that she felt like right now.

She leaned down to look into the side mirror and apply a quick layer of peach lipstick.

“Trying to get lucky?” Lanny asked with a smirk.

“Something like that.” She elbowed him as she stepped up on the sidewalk. “Come on, come open the door for me like a gentleman.”

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