Hotter After Midnight (Midnight 1)

“Uh, Doc? You there?”

“Ah, sorry, yes.” Emily coughed. “What can I do for you, Detective?” She really, really hoped he hadn’t just heard that little quiver of excitement in her voice. In talking with the guy for less than two minutes, she’d gone from professional psychologist to needy woman.

Maybe she could use some therapy of her own.

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, then Gyth’s deep voice announced, “You can tell me that you meant it when you said you’d help out on this case.”

Now that got her attention. Her back snapped straight. “Yes, yes, of course, I meant it.” He was calling about business. Time for the professional psychologist to get her ass in gear.

“Good, cause the big boys just gave me the go-ahead to bring you in as a profiler.”

A profiler. Her fingers tightened around the phone. Working a murder investigation.

“The press is already crawling all over this case. Once you’re officially in, they’ll get your name.” He sighed, then said, “So prepare to start seeing a lot of yourself on the six o’clock news.”

For a moment, she hesitated. She hadn’t given a thought to the press. Hadn’t even considered that they’d learn of her. “Can’t we keep my involvement quiet for now?”

“The DA wants to make sure the public feels like we’re doing everything possible to catch this guy. He wants to release data about our profiler to make everyone feel better.”

“O-okay.” Surely there was no way that anyone would discover her past. It had been so many years since—

“Relax, Doc, dealing with the press will be the easy part. Catching the killer, that’s the challenge.” There was a rumble of voices in the background, then he asked, “Hey, when are you gonna be free this afternoon?”

“I’m free now.” Maloan had been her last patient of the day. No night clients were scheduled.

“Good. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“Twenty minutes? But—”

“You need to start on the profile, right? Well, I’ll take you back to the crime scene, then you can come meet Smith.”

“Smith?”

“The medical examiner.”

Oh. Her stomach tightened. She didn’t have a good track record with MEs.

He laughed softly. “Don’t worry, Doc. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

Not exactly reassuring.

A thin line of yellow police tape blocked the door at 208 Byron Street. Colin pulled out a knife, slashed through it, and opened the door.

The smell hit her when she stepped inside. The stale, cold odor of death. The coppery scent of blood.

Emily swallowed. The house was dark. Shadows loomed across the floor. “Can you do something about the lights?”

He tapped a button on the wall. Light flooded the foyer and the den.

She inched forward, keeping her attention on the ground. Colin had told her that the killer had entered through the front door. So he’d come this way, walking slowly, carefully into the house.

The thick carpet swallowed her footsteps as she entered the den. The killer had crept into this room, found Preston Myers. And attacked him.

The stark outline of Preston’s body still marked the floor. The stain of his blood covered the brown carpet.

Her gaze rose to the nearby wall. Dried blood marred the surface. So much blood.

“This guy was in a fury,” she murmured, bending to inspect the carpet. Her hand lifted over the outline, hesitated.

“Is this your first murder, Doc?”

She hadn’t heard his approach but wasn’t really surprised to hear his voice sounded from right behind her. Shifters often made no sound when they moved.

Her fingers were trembling. She balled her hand into a fist and glanced back at him. “Yes.” But not her first blood soaked scene.

For an instant, her mind flashed back to that last bloody room. She saw the man’s body, slumped on the floor. His brains and tissue were on the wall, blood surrounding him.

Her father’s death hadn’t been pretty, and sometimes, late at night, she still woke up screaming.

Emily drew in a deep breath. She had to focus on Preston, not the past.

Standing, her stare swept the room, lingered on the pictures decorating the mantel, on the chess set in the corner, on the books lining the built-in shelves near the doorway.

From all appearances, Preston Myers had been a normal guy. Completely human.

So why had he been attacked? Why had the killer chosen him?

“It doesn’t make sense,” she muttered. “SBs stick to their own kind.”

“Uh…SBs?”

“Supernatural beings.” In her experience, SBs always stayed with their own for mating, for fun, and for killing.

To cross over like this and to murder a human, to so blatantly attack—

Her gaze narrowed as she glimpsed a familiar face in one of the photos.

Hell.

She marched closer to the mantel. Snatched up the picture.

“Hey, Doc, what’s—”

Her fingers tightened around the small frame. “Have you run a background check on Preston yet?”

“My partner’s working on it.” His eyes narrowed. “Why, Doc? What do you know?”

She held up the picture. “I know that one of the guys in this picture is a demon.”

One black brow shot up. “A patient?”

“No.” She would never have agreed to treat Niol. The guy gave off black waves of energy that made her far, far too nervous. Her nail tapped just over Niol’s unsmiling face. “But I’ve met him a few times. He owns a bar near here, a place called Paradise Found.”

“Then I guess I’ll be paying him a visit.” He smiled at her. “Good thing I brought you over. You might not have gotten any more details about the killer, but you sure did just speed up the—”

“Oh, I know more about the killer,” she interrupted, frowning at him, feeling slightly insulted. What did he think she’d been doing?

Daydreaming over a dead body?

He pulled out his notebook. “Then tell me.”

Emily licked her lips. “This wasn’t an impulse kill. Nothing’s disturbed. Nothing’s taken. The guy came to the house with the attack already planned out. He knew where the security cameras were, and he knew how to hide from them. That probably means he’s been here before, that he knew the victim.”

She pointed to the blood on the wall. “When there is this much violence, this much rage, it’s usually very, very personal.”