Arran’s Obsession (Body Count, #1)

Exiting the boathouse, I wiped the blood from my blade on my shirt. At my car, I stripped, disinfected my knife, and went through the motions of cleaning myself up and disposing of my bloodied clothes in a fire I’d stoked for the purpose.

Tonight, I’d been busy.

Kenney the cop had supplied details of three perverts who needed to be taken off the streets. Two were now dead. The third I’d pick up later in the week.

Yet even with the ability to take out my moods on the men’s bodies, disposing of them in happy little slices, I was still unsettled. Uncomfortable in my skin. Summer had turned to autumn, and changing seasons affected me. A whole lot affected me.

I threw myself into the driving seat and stared into the dark. I should’ve felt calm or maybe even fulfilled, not infected with energy.

A message appeared on my phone.

Arran: Come back to the warehouse. Need to talk to you.

I passed a hand over my face. The last thing I wanted was to go home.

Shade: Going to need to give me more than that.

Arran: Natasha Reid’s post-mortem has an interesting inclusion.

Huh. That report had been a long time coming, either because the coroner had dragged their heels over making it public, or the detective just hadn’t given it to us.

Putting the car in gear, I set out.

As usual, the front side of the warehouse was busy with clubgoers. Also as usual, I slipped in a private entrance, staying in the shadows. Arran wasn’t in his office, so I jogged upstairs, finally locating him in his apartment.

He let me in, his phone at his ear and one foot out to stop Gen’s cat from escaping. I picked up the animal and stroked its head, a loud purring commencing.

I was all about the pussy…of the other variety.

That was probably what I needed tonight. To fuck.

Arran continued his phone call but pointed at the kitchen counter, and I found the report and sat on a stool to read it.

“So they’ll DNA test his charred remains,” Arran said down the line. “Why wouldn’t that work? Right, so he and Moniqua are cousins but not blood relations. Then that’s a dead end.”

He caught my eye. I got the implication. He was talking about Don who the police now believed had died in the car fire. With the vehicle not registered, and the driver having no form of identification, they’d sat on it as an unsolved case. Not uncommon in a busy city with a seedy underside, but it didn’t feel right to me.

We knew from Riordan that his ex-girlfriend was devastated over Don’s demise, though she was probably the only person who gave a shit. She hadn’t heard from him, and had believed the car to be his, as Genevieve had done. So far, so cut and dried. If he had murdered Cherry, then somehow crashed and died, that still left Natasha’s murder unsolved.

Arran wrapped up his call and joined me. He turned the page of the post-mortem results and underlined a section with his finger.

The toxicology readings.

I blinked, the recognition unexpected. In my line of work, I’d tried a number of different drugs, utilising a few favourites, depending on what I needed.

Natasha had been drugged before she was killed, knocked out by a toxin I’d recently started using. My mind raced over the connection.

Arran tapped the page. “That familiar?”

“Aye, it is.”

“Who else knows the drugs you use?”

I shook my head, searching for a connection but coming up blank. “Only the guy who supplies it, the pharmaceutical rep.”

“Who else does he sell to?”

I made a lips zipped motion. “I pay for his silence, and he gives nothing in reverse.”

“The Four Milers peddle more than just party drugs. If he’s dealing to them, that’s a link.”

He continued on, but my mind had taken a sharp turn. Natasha had been knocked out with the specific drug that I used. In analysing both of the murders, we looked for signs of Arran being targeted, or perhaps Genevieve.

What if we’d been wrong?

I’d followed Arran to the Crescent to make sure he was safe when visiting his woman. There, Cherry had died after I’d stood watching her as much as anything else around me. Then we’d had the police raid, with Arran arrested, and me, the second-in-command, left at the helm. Natasha had been dumped on the doorstep with my drug in her veins.

My heart seized up then restarted, and I pushed away from the counter, the kitchen stool falling.

“What?” Arran demanded.

I backed to the door. “What if we entirely mistook who the killer was targeting? Or what if they changed target? Or had more than one?”

He stared. Then his eyes narrowed. “You?”

“If one or both deaths are in any way a message to me, then she’s in danger.”

He didn’t ask who, didn’t need to.

There was only one person outside this warehouse who I gave a damn about. One person I’d sworn to stay well away from but who I never stopped thinking about. Would never stop protecting.

Even if that meant me standing over her fucking bed in the middle of the night while she slept.

As I ran for the lift, I loaded the tracking app which detailed Everly’s movements. I hadn’t lied when I said I tried not to check it, but trying and succeeding were two different things. She kept daytime hours, unlike me, and right now should be in her bed in that fancy-arse house.

But the tracker was blinking.

My stepsister was on the move, and I had the worst feeling that it wasn’t of her own free will.