As I stood in his bedroom, hands on hips and leaving nothing to the imagination, I noted a distinct lack of new spirit energy. Sure, there were a couple of older energies, so old that they were barely recognizable as human. They ignored me completely, which most older energy did. No one had died here recently, I was certain of it. Gunther Kessler wasn’t shitting where he eats, as the saying goes.
That’s what the kill cabin was for.
I noted the motion detectors were reserved for downstairs, so I freely rummaged through drawers and closets upstairs. I checked pockets and inside shoes and behind dressers. I checked under his bed and under his mattress. I lifted paintings and flipped through books. No tell-tale receipts. No photographs. Other than being a closet E.L. James fan, he’d left no clues that I could discern. I next checked the guest room. Nothing.
I left the guest bedroom and headed down the short hall to his office, where I hoped to hit pay dirt. No such luck. Or dirt. The computers were password protected, and I barely remembered my own passwords. His filing cabinet would have been my best bet, except he didn’t have one.
As I stood there in his office, naked as the day I was born, feeling foolish and oddly liberated, I realized I only took Nancy Pearson’s word for it that Gunther was a killer.
The truth was, outside of a ridiculous amount of moon paraphernalia, I wasn’t even entirely sure the man was a werewolf. Even Kingsley hadn’t known him. And Kingsley’s wolfie friends weren’t talking either.
Maybe Gunther had gone on a short trip. Maybe a taxi had picked him up. Or the airport shuttle. Or maybe he was hunting his next victim even now, in the woods, all while I stood naked in his house like an idiot.
I shouldn’t have left the surveillance of his house.
But I had. I had let my hunger get the best of me.
It didn’t have to be that way. I could have satiated it with a packet of animal blood. A cooler in the van, maybe. Fill it with a few emergency packets. I had convinced myself that I wanted—no, needed—human blood. Perhaps Fang was right. Perhaps that was a false belief. Perhaps giving her human blood only made her stronger, and me—the real me—weaker.
Most of all, she fed off my own self-hatred.
“No more,” I thought.
Now, as I stood there in his office, hands on hips and thinking hard, I was certain of one thing: someone had picked him up. Whether it was a taxi or a shuttle or a fellow creature of the night, I didn’t know.
But if I could figure out who picked him up...then I would find Gunther and his kill cabin in the woods.
Chapter Twenty-nine
The call came the next morning.
These days, I tended to sleep lighter. Before, it would take a lot more than a phone call at 10 a.m. to wake me up. Especially after the night I’d had.
The phone number was restricted, which didn’t surprise me. At least not on today, of all days.
The full moon.
It was all I could do to sound coherent, when I clicked on the call. “Moon Investigations,” I said. At least, I think I said it.
“Rough night, Samantha?”
“Who’s this?”
“Ranger Ted with the California State Parks.”
It took a moment for that information to sink in. I was still lying on my side in bed, with my pillow mostly over my head.
“Got a minute?”
I sat up and yawned. “Sure, what’s going on?”
“We have another hiker missing.”
“Shit.”
“You can say that again. You mentioned you met Sheriff Stanley the other day, right?”
“I did,” I said, and nearly added that I’d helped save his marriage, but decided that might come off as unprofessional and a little egocentric...and a little off-topic. “Is he overseeing the case?”
“You could say that,” said Ranger Ted. “It’s his wife, Elise, who’s missing.”
“No,” I said, and might have shouted it and sat a little straighter. “No, no, no.”
I had seen the unborn children. I had felt his love for this woman. I had helped save the marriage, off-topic or not.
“Exactly. This isn’t good, Sam. Not good at all. People know the two of them have been fighting. People even know that she cheated on him. We live in a small town. People talk. Speaking of which, there’s already whispers that there might be foul play.”
“Foul play, how?”
“Sheriff Stanley has a temper. He’s been reprimanded in the past.”
“No way,” I said. “He would never have touched his wife. Not like that.”
“And you know this how?”
“Just trust me on that.”
“I wish I could, Sam. Either way, this doesn’t look good for him, and it’s looking worse and worse for her.”
“When did she go missing?”
“This morning. She went on an early hike. At daybreak. She’s usually home for breakfast at 7:30 at the latest.”
I checked the time again. 10:10 a.m. “She’s been missing for a little over two and a half hours,” I said. “That’s hardly a reason—”
“You don’t understand, Sam. This is a small community. She told her husband she would be back in an hour. The word is out that Elise Stanley is missing. If someone had seen her, they would have reported her. I don’t have a good feeling about this, Sam.”
Neither did I. Try as I might to play devil’s advocate, I knew full well that there might very well be a missing hiker today. Damn well. After all, Gunther was gone and tonight was the full moon.
“We have all available manpower on the case. We’ve even called in some boys from San Diego and Los Angeles counties. It’s a sheriff’s wife, after all. One of our own, in a way. Anyway, I thought you should have a heads up, since you were just here asking about missing hikers.”
“Thank you,” I said, and we clicked off. For the next few minutes, I thought about Sheriff Stanley and his three unborn children.
I got dressed, grabbed my keys, and hit the road.
Chapter Thirty
“Master Kingsley is terribly indisposed—”
“I’m terribly sorry to hear that,” I said, and pushed past the tall butler and into the house.
He caught up behind me. Not hard for him to do with those long legs of his. His mismatched long legs, I might add. “Master Kingsley has given me strict orders—”
“I’m sure he did.”
I was through Kingsley’s big house and in his kitchen, and over to a nondescript side door that led, I knew, to his basement of horrors.