11
Mercy
Anthea carefully proddedthe cat’s mangled body with a stick. A renewed waft of the rotten flesh stink drifted up, and my stomach twisted all over again.
“It’s not a fresh kill,” she said. “How long ago was it that you found the tail on your window?”
I rubbed my hand over my face, trying to clear my head. The security lamps cast a faint yellow glow over this part of the lawn that only made the situation more eerie. “I found it when I woke up the same day I figured out things about Gia.”
“Then I’d guess the cat was already dead or killed shortly after the perpetrator cut off the tail. They were saving the rest until now.” Anthea’s nose wrinkled.
Kaige was pacing back and forth on the lawn, his muscles flexing with tension I knew he must be dying to let out. “Who the hell could have done this? Why are they doing it?”
“It obviously wasn’t Gia,” I said. Unless her ghost had come back from the dead to haunt me.
Anthea didn’t suggest that possibility. She sighed and looked around the lawn again, but after Kaige had called her out to make use of her forensics expertise, she’d already gone over the whole area thoroughly. “I haven’t found any evidence pointing to the perp. They were careful about it. All I know is that from the looks of the entrails, they left the cat whole until just before they placed it here.”
Kaige let out a growl. “It’s obviously a threat toward Mercy. Katz—a dead cat. Even I can figure that one out.”
“There was a creepy drawing someone shoved through my window too,” I said, remembering with a jolt. “A couple of days before the tail. It was a girl with cat ears and her neck sliced open.”
“I’d say it’s very likely it was all the same person,” Anthea said. “There are a lot of sickos out there, but they tend to indulge their inclinations alone.” She tossed the gory stick aside and swiped her hands together, her voice getting that deadly tone that made me glad she no longer had it out for me. “It doesn’t matter. We protect our own. Whoever thought it was a good idea to harass Mercy like this is going to die.”
At the rustle of footsteps, I glanced up. Rowan was hurrying toward us from the house with a concerned expression. “I saw you from the window. What’s going on out here?” Then he spotted the cat and stopped in his tracks. “What the hell?”
“Mercy’s stalker is upping his game,” Kaige said grimly, and paused. “Or her game. It couldn’t have been Gia, but what about the other groupies? If one of them could have killed Titus, who knows what the others might get up to?”
“I won’t discount the possibility,” Anthea said. “You can be sure I’ll interrogate them thoroughly.” Her eyes gleamed as if she was looking forward to it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was. “Our known enemies seem like the most likely option, though.”
Of course. “Colt,” I said, a surge of anger racing through me. No matter where I went, he couldn’t stop hounding me.
“That bastard,” Kaige snapped. “I’ll tear him open like he did that cat.”
“Let’s not do anything crazy when we don’t have definite answers,” Rowan said. “Shouldn’t the security cameras have picked up whoever did it?” He glanced toward the house.
I frowned. We’d been too distracted the day of the cat tail to end up checking. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” I glanced at the cat and restrained a shudder. I needed to get away from it, away from the reminder of what some insane person apparently wanted to do to me. Raising my chin, I stepped back and took on a brisk tone. “I’ll go talk to Gideon. I wanted to check how things are going with his investigations into the Steel Knights anyway.”
Rowan shot me a worried glance. “Are you going to be okay?”
He sounded genuinely concerned, but I wasn’t about to open up to the guy who’d already crushed my heart once, no matter how much he’d eased off on me recently.
“Yeah,” I said. “Nothing happened to me. It’s the cat that got torn up.”
Anthea gave the furry corpse a sympathetic grimace. “Poor thing.”
Kaige moved as if he was going to offer to come with me, but even though I’d been feeling pretty comfortable with him on the fire escape just a half hour ago, our discovery had left my skin twitching. I needed space, and he wasn’t the best at giving it.
“Why don’t you make a larger sweep of the property and see if you turn anything up?” I suggested, not really thinking it’d accomplish much but aiming to keep him busy.
He perked up a little with the thought of taking action. “Good idea. I’ll grab a flashlight and get right on it.”
I set off for the house before anyone else could try to join me. It wasn’t that late yet, and I suspected that Gideon regularly stayed up to the wee hours tapping away at his keyboard and tablet. He didn’t like to leave work unfinished—that much I’d gathered.
We weren’t exactly friendly, but at least he wasn’t the type to play games. I could count on getting straight answers from him and a minimum of bullshit.
I knocked on his office door and got a distracted-sounding “Come in.” When I pushed it open, I found him exactly where I’d expected, poised in front of his multiple monitors with his fingers racing over the keyboard and his eyes flicking from screen to screen. A fresh cup of the coffee he made so precisely was steaming away in easy reach.
His gaze darted to me just long enough to see who’d come in, then veered back to his work. “Did you need something?” he asked in his usual disinterested tone.