My heart thumped twice as hard at the sight of him.
However, he paused near the dismembered hand and peered down at it, ruining the moment. We had work to do. My thoughts could wait.
Maddox
Everyonein the station stared at Addie until I glared at them. Then they gave us a wide berth. She squirmed uncomfortably beside me. I put a hand on her lower back and guided her along as she tugged the hat over her head and hid her face.
Some stared at her because they knew she’d been involved in my last case. Others stared because they’d caught her name on my request to work with a local medium. For the most part, though, I knew they stared because they hadn’t seen me with a woman in months.
The captain came up and elbowed me suggestively. The growl that escaped me was a warning. I didn’t like how close everyone was getting to her. Anytime someone veered our way, I snarled.
The wolf was nearly in full control, and I wasn’t exactly upset about it. I didn’t want anyone to touch Addie. If their attention made her uncomfortable, then I didn’t even want them to perceive her.
There was only one place that would allow us privacy: the interrogation room.
“I’m so sorry,” I said under my breath.
Addie looked up with a question on her lips until I gestured to the door ahead. She laughed, a sudden sound that drove my beast into a hungry frenzy. When the table inside came into view, I was blasted with images of Addie on top of it, her legs spread and me between them.
My breath hitched. I tried to shove the horny beast back down, but it was in no mood for our power struggles today. The beast should have been concerned with the body part we’d found earlier. Instead, it craved Addie in several positions.
I groaned and ran both hands over my face.
Addie touched my upper arm. “It’s going to be okay. We’re getting closer.”
My beast wondered how she would sound screamingcloserwhen I pushed her over the edge into an orgasm.
I snapped upright. “I’ll be right back.”
Throwing myself out of that room, I fumbled back to me desk so I could gather the recordings and other files. My beast thrashed. It remembered Bastien, the threat that had been right under our nose this whole time. Addie was alone and defenseless here in the middle of the station. The beast shoved me back towards the interrogation room.
When I returned, Addie was patiently waiting. She flashed a relieved smile in my direction. The look made my heart melt. I tried to ignore the feeling, but it sank all the way down to my toes and made them tingle like I was a schoolboy with a playground crush.
This damned beast needed to get laid. The hormones coursing through my system were too damn much. I wasn’t going to form another attachment to a woman. That wasn’t a pain that I wanted to experience ever again. I wasn’t going to drag Addie through it, either.
I’d already learned the hard way that I wasn’t a good partner. I could save everyone a lot of trouble simply by never dating again. That would be easier said than done, though. The beast was making sure of that.
When every other thought was of hunting or fucking, that left little room for anything else. I shook myself and took the chair opposite Addie.
“Are you prepared?” I asked her.
She raised a brow. “For?”
“These emergency calls can be unsettling if you’re not prepared.” I tapped the little media player.
I couldn’t have the recordings on my phone. They’d been downloaded to an old MP3 player that didn’t have any connection to the internet. That way, the files were kept secure. I hated this old piece of junk with every fiber of my being, but that was the way the captain wanted things done.
It wasn’t even regulation. The old man was just being overly cautious.
Addie laughed in my face. She levied tired eyes at me, to which I nodded. She was right. This wasn’t going to be anything new for her. Addie had lived her entire life knee-deep in death. These recordings would be light in comparison.
So, I nodded and pressed play on the first one.
Addie immediately recognized it as the woman that had been haunting her. This recording dated back two weeks. That meant the hand I’d found couldn’t belong to the married woman. I sighed and rubbed my eyes.
It would have been nice to give that ring back to her husband, but it wasn’t even the right ring. That man deserved some peace of mind, but my life was too tumultuous to even focus on this case. My entire morning had been spent parading in front of shifters.
I didn’t want to lose a part of myself to this supernatural side. It was bad enough that I was in constant struggle with the new wolf inside myself. I didn’t want to struggle with the people I should have been working alongside, too.