Bree comes back, looking down at her phone, almost tumbling over a chair before Cami gets up to help her back into her chair. She smiles up at Cami, dropping a kiss on her cheek before going back to her phone again.
“So?” I ask Bree, who proceeds to ignore me.
Sloan nudges her. “What did she say?”
“I was looking at this reel. You have to—” Bree looks up to find everyone staring at her. “Oh, sorry, what were we talking about? Right, Meena said we investigated four criminals last month. Two were already in custody before the murders.”
I cock my head. “Can you call her again and ask her to give us the list of current active investigations? We should definitely keep an eye on them.”
Bree nods and goes right back out. Hopefully she’ll remember why she picked up her phone this time.
“We have hundreds of open cases we’re slowly going through. These victims didn’t even commit their crimes recently. One killed two women three years ago, and the other killed his student more than a year ago. So why choose these particular people other than to directly challenge us?” Matt asks.
“But how could they know we’re investigating them?” Sloan asks.
“The killer is someone from the Bureau?” Marcus suggests.
“Or we have a leak,” I mutter.
***
I park in Elliot’s driveway after a long, tiring day of chasing down a Bureau tech guy and figuring out whether anyone accessed the investigation files on the victims, including the ones killed by Elliot.
The Bureau’s information is strictly available on a need-to-know basis. The rule even applies to the higher-ups in the hierarchy. So, unless our leak was part of the previous team hunting Elliot, they shouldn’t know enough details about the case to replicate the murder scenes.
After we were able to get him access to the investigative reports, he found that the Bureau stopped tracking logins because the documents aren’t publicly available. Now that’s some information I could have usedbeforewe started the goose chase.
So, here I am, back at Elliot’s with nothing but disappointment. As I walk towards his house, his scent does nothing to calm me down. Instead, it’s a stark reminder I’m failing to protect him each day the copycat killer walks free. Right now, the best-case scenario is that the killer is someone hiding behind Elliot’s reputation to mock the Bureau, and they don’t actually know Elliot’s identity.
But even if that’s a possibility, as long as my team is looking into the case, Elliot is at risk of being caught. After everything that happened last month, the guy deserves some rest. And here I am, making his life more and more difficult every day.
It makes me wonder if he’d be happier and safer without me dragging danger to his door every day. After all, he’d been pretty successful in keeping his identity hidden for years until I crashed into his life.
As I hit the doorbell, I curse myself for being the most selfish bastard in the world because there’s no way I’m giving up Elliot.
The door opens to a gleeful Sam. “Ah. Just the man I wanted,” he says, then turns and heads back inside, leaving the door open for me. I close it behind me and follow him. “A corporate-slave werewolf and a guy with years of Pilates, weight training, and jiu-jitsu under his belt. Who would win in a fight?”
I spot Elliot on the couch and beeline for him. I drop a kiss on his cheek as he scrunches his face. “Is the other guy you?” I ask Sam, flopping down beside Elliot.
“That’s irrelevant.”
Elliot snorts. “No, it’s not. Because you didn’t attend a single jiu-jitsu class, you just paid the fee.”
“That month wasn’t great for me. I found Dick.” Sam sighs happily.
I frown. “Wow, you must be a late bloomer.”
Elliot laughs.
“My ex-boyfriend Dick, you dick,” Sam says.
I raise my hands in defense. “Where is this Dick, by the way? Sounds like you want to get back together. You should go do that now.”
“Stop behaving like you just foundyourdick, Nick. We need to focus.” Sam claps his hands.
“Dick ghosted him after that month,” Elliot stage whispers. “We're observing a respectful mourning period.”
Sam stares daggers at both of us. “He didn’t ghost me. He left on an epic quest to bungee jump his way around the world.” Sam stomps to the kitchen, Mickey on his heels.
