Page 55 of Tested
Chapter Seventeen
All that food has a sedative effect. I fall asleep before Trajan gets home and wake up right before he rises.
A text from Connor blinks at me from my phone. I need a moment, so I dive into the shower before reading it. Wrapped in the silky robe Trajan gave me on my birthday, I start a pot of coffee, then perch on one of the stools by the kitchen counter. With the pot burbling, I concede defeat and open the text.
Smith gave him the names of a dozen women who graduated the same year our victims did and he wants to decide to divide and conquer.Should have waited till after I had some coffee.
Making a mental list of all the ways this could go wrong, I respond with a vagueSure.
He responds quickly, as if he’s afraid I’ll change my mind, and before I’ve poured my coffee I’m reading through a list of names and contact information.
Then I get lucky.
Trajan strolls in, expression calm, hair slicked back, Micky Mouse tee shirt stretched tight over his biceps.
“Where’d you go?” I ask. He doesn’t respond, but he doesn’t stop moving until I’m wrapped in his embrace. He rests his cheek on the top of my head and some of the tension leaves the big body in my arms.
“Where’d you go?” He echoes my question.
I try to read the room. He’s relaxed, no sign of impending doom. Good. “Grabbed a bite to eat with Lydia and a couple of her wolves.”
He straightens, giving me a puzzled look. “Lydia Sanchez? The alpha?”
“Yeah. There was another murder.” I tell him about my afternoon adventure with Connor, leaving out the side-trip with the Elites. “At any rate, when Kitten’s ex said the murder victims were best friends in high school, I figured something must have happened back in the day that someone wants to kill for.”
“That would be convenient.”
“Yeah, it’s a little murder-of-the-week, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Did Lydia have any ideas?”
The coffee pot burbles and I hop up and give him a kiss. “Nope.”
While pouring my coffee, I want to poke at him again, to try to figure out what really happened last night, but he distracts me with a question about Connor.
“Did he come home at all?”
The weight in his voice makes the identity ofheobvious, but I don’t have a good answer. “I didn’t see him, but then I didn’t check his toothbrush to see if it was damp.” I shrug. “He just texted me, though. He asked me to interview a few women who might have been friends with the victims when they were in high school.”
Trajan’s look of interest takes me by surprise. “Let me see the list in case I know any of them.”
I hold out my phone, half convinced that the thing we’re best at is keeping secrets from each other.
“Laura Duran’s a were from the Culver City pack. She’s not Duran anymore, though, unless she’s divorced and got rid of her husband’s name.” He scrolls down a bit more. “And Jennifer Maslow’s a siren. She used to get singing gigs around town, but last I heard, she was living in San Francisco.”
“Do you know every supernatural creature in town?”
He passes me the phone. “They say Hollywood’s high school with money, and supes are just a different kind of celebrity.”
“So if you’re not busy, do you want to come with me to talk to any of these people?” Not that I couldn’t do it alone but having Trajan along would make things more fun.
And I can keep an eye on him in case he turns back into a monster.
He agrees and I make a couple phone calls. There’s no reason to expect any of them would be available for an interview after dark, but I do get three of them to agree. We plot their addresses on the map and I change out of my flirty little robe and into something a tick more professional. That means jeans with fewer holes and a University of Washington hoodie.
Our first interview is in West Hollywood, not far from the ex’s house. The place Connor and I visited right before I caught him cavorting with the Elites.Damn. I keep my lip zipped while Trajan parks the car. We’re looking for an apartment on thesecond floor of a three-story walk-up made of cinderblock and bougainvillea.
Trajan lets me take the lead, so I’m the one who knocks on the door. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous about finding another dead body. Fortunately, someone living answers the door. He’s tall – tall enough that I wonder if there’s a touch of troll in his background – and his heavy brows give him a permanently suspicious expression.
