“No,” she said crossly. “Attending a crime scene that’s been utterly fouled by blood and magic.”
And me. She didn’t say that, but that was the unspoken implication.
Of course, in this particular case, she wasn’t actually wrong. I just had to hope it wasn’t a case of bad luck coming in threes, and that we’d find Monica and Lanie before they too got their hearts ripped out.
“Does that mean you found blood at the kidnapping scene?” I hadn’t noticed any, but then, a werewolf’s nose and sight were far keener when it came to those sorts of details.
“Only a few drops not far from where you’d found her purse,” her partner, Janice, said somewhat dryly. “It wasn’t Monica’s.”
“Have you run it through the system yet to see if there’s a match?”
“It’s not like we’ve had the time,” Sienna growled. “If you’d stop finding bodies, then we might.”
My amusement grew. I wasn’t the only one out of sorts by the long hours, it seemed.
“There were spell stones present in both bedrooms here—three of them, each strategically placed under her clothes. They disintegrated just after I got here, but I did manage to snare one piece and keep it whole with magic. You may or may not find dust remnants.”
“We’ll vacuum and see what we get.” She paused. “If your magic contains the shard in its current state, you’ll need to take it to the lab yourself. There’s no guarantee we’ll get it there in time.”
I nodded. Aside from the fact the spell wasn’t perpetual, I’d made it on the fly, meaning there was no guarantee how long it would last without me boosting it. Janice, as a witch, could have placed a similar containment around it, of course, but it remained a risky business out here in the field.
“I take it,” Sienna continued, “that you have touched said clothes?”
“Yes, carefully, while wearing gloves. I also recorded my movements.”
“That’s something. You’re leaving now?”
There was an undisguised hopeful note in her voice, and I couldn’t help grinning. “Sadly for you, no. I need to search Monica’s bedroom to see if she left any clue as to what might be going on.”
Her responding sniff somehow managed to sound disgruntled. While most of the werewolves I’d come across over the course of the last few years tended to be very guarded when it came to any outward display of emotion—at least until you really got to know them—Sienna appeared to have no such qualms. “Just record what you do and keep those gloves on.”
“I am not new at this, you know.”
“She gives everyone the same warning,” Janice said, in that same dry tone. “‘Trust no one to do the right thing’ is her current motto.”
“I take it someonedidn’tdo the right thing recently?”
“Yeah, and it almost lost us the case.”
“Ah, well, I shall be on my best behavior.”
Sienna snorted and moved past me, heading toward Francesca’s bedroom. Janice followed, her amusement chasing away some of the gloom. It wouldn’t last. Not when they got inside that room.
I spun on my heel and walked into the master bedroom. It was opulent and spacious, with glorious views over the river and a bed the size of a boat. To the right, there was a walk-in wardrobe, but it was empty, which was decidedly odd given the four women had checked in for a week. Monica didn’t seem the sort to live out of a suitcase. Next to the wardrobe was a large bathroom decked out in marble, with gold fittings and a huge tub. Her toothbrush and a small tube of paste sat in the glass to one side of the sink, and there was a smattering of makeup on the other. There wasn’t, in my opinion, enough of the latter for someone who was notoriously finicky about her appearance.
I left the bathroom and walked across the vast room to the suitcase sitting on the stand near the window. The case was closed but not locked, so I opened it up and once again found the bare minimum. Monica had packed for a couple of days, at most, rather than a full week, and that suggested she certainly hadn’t planned to stay here for long—unless, of course, she simply intended to buy what she needed up here. She certainly had the money.
If shehadplanned to run off with someone, would she also have arranged to have two of her best friends killed in such a brutal manner?
Monica might be a princess, but she wasn’t a murderer.
I continued to search the room but couldn’t find anything that clued me in as to whether she’d simply intended to slip away for a final fling before she got married, or if her disappearance was, in fact, connected to whatever threat had led to us being asked to watch her in the first place.
I hit the earwig again. “Jack, we got an update on Lanie’s current whereabouts?”
“We’ve got the address of the guy she left with, and a team has been sent over there. We’ve also got a second team investigating the area we’d gotten the last ping from her phone from, which was in the opposite direction.”
“Meaning Lowell has pulled everyone from other investigations?”
