Half Truths (A Helheim Wolf Pack Tale) Read online

‘ME is here,’ Grey said, avoiding looking down at the mess.

  ‘Thank fucking Christ,’ he drawled, standing up. Stalking out into the hall, he saw Doctor Lee ducking under the police tape.

  ‘So, Detective, what have we got tonight?’ Lee asked. The doc was in his mid-thirties with a crew cut and adult acne.

  Vaile’s reply was gruff. ‘It’s nothing I’ve seen before.’ And he’d seen a hell of a lot in his lifetime. ‘Take a look for yourself.’ He nodded the doc into the bathroom, following him in. The photographer was taking shots of the scene while Lee set his kit down on the basin of the men’s bathroom. He pulled out a pair of gloves, handing a fresh pair to Vaile.

  ‘Well, this looks new,’ Lee said, looking over at the body. ‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’ Vaile shook his head. ‘It never ceases to amaze me how badly human beings can hurt each other,’ Lee murmured, crouching down and probing the slices in the stiff’s chest. ‘Who found him?’

  ‘A staff member stumbled across him when he came in for the routine clean around twenty minutes ago. Have you got a preliminary cause of death for me?’

  Lee carefully checked over the body, muttering under his breath as he worked. ‘My guess would be massive blood loss due to his carotid being slashed, but when we get him back to the lab, I’ll wash the body down, examine him, and then we’ll have a better idea.’ Vaile nodded. ‘Were there any witnesses?’

  ‘We haven’t had the chance to speak to anyone properly yet. There is a woman out there who seemed to know him though, so we’ll start there. Got an estimated time of death?’

  Lee probed the kid’s jaw. ‘Rigor mortis has just set in, so maybe no longer than half an hour.’

  ‘It’s hard to believe no one else came in here to take a piss and not notice the stiff on the floor,’ Vaile commented.

  Lee shrugged. ‘I just deal with what the body can tell me. It’s your job to figure out the why.’

  ‘Are you ready for me doctor?’ a voice asked from the doorway. The doc’s assistant—guiding a gurney—paused just outside the bathroom. Lee glanced up.

  ‘Yes Briggs,’ he answered absently. ‘Have you collected all the evidence you need?’ Lee asked a CSI hovering around nearby.

  ‘Yep. He’s all yours.’

  Lee turned to Vaile. ‘I’ll take his prints at the lab and get you the results by the time you get into the office,’ he glanced at his cheap-ass Casio, ‘later on today.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Vaile rumbled.

  Lee jerked his head a little at his assistant. Briggs came in, unfolding a body bag, and laid it out on a clean patch of black tile. The doctor and his assistant lifted the body—struggling with the dead weight—and placed him carefully inside the plastic. When the zipper came up over the guy’s face, they hauled him out and onto the stretcher. The crime scene investigators filed out after them, leaving Vaile alone in the bathroom. He closed the door and looked around.

  There wasn’t enough blood on the floor considering the kid had had his throat slashed. He looked at the pattern of the blood, noticing an irregularity in the spatter. Vaile crouched down to investigate the strange looking mark on the tiles where the kid’s head had been. It looked as if something had been placed on the ground just as the bleeding had begun. He looked around the bathroom trying to find something roughly the same size; his eyes finally settling on the soap dispensers above the trough sink. One was missing.

  Vaile stood up to get a better look at them, measuring them visually. They were the right size. So the killer had collected the blood from the Vic. But why? A vampire would have just drunk from the source. A fucking wannabe vamp wouldn’t have though.

  ‘Fuck,’ he cursed harshly under his breath. This was just what they needed—a fucking human pretending to be a vampire. But that still didn’t explain the mutilation. He looked around the rest of the bathroom, allowing his wolf a little more free rein.

  The human scents around him overwhelmed his senses. He’d thought the smell was bad before—it was fucking unbearable now. His wolf growled as the scent of blood overwhelmed it. After refocusing, Vaile walked around the bathroom, checking each stall and around the urinals until he could find something that could be connected with the crime that the investigating team missed. He came up with nothing.

  ‘Did you find anything more?’ Grey asked behind him suddenly. Goose bumps broke out on his skin and he had to swallow the warning growl that was trickling out from his wolf’s throat. Nobody snuck up on him, but she had managed it somehow. Fuck, he was getting rusty. He blinked a few times to make sure his wolf’s ice-blue eyes were gone before turning around.

  ‘Nothing,’ he grunted. ‘Did you get a sketch of the scene?’ She nodded. ‘Well then there’s nothing more we can do. Let’s get out of here.’ He turned to leave.

  ‘Did you maybe want to go grab a cup of coffee?’ she asked quickly—suddenly—clearly grimacing after like she hadn’t meant to ask him. Vaile stopped mid-step.

  ‘Why?’ he demanded.

  She looked stunned, sweeping her eyes across the floor in thought before answering him. ‘I just thought you’d want a cup of coffee. I’m not going to be able to get to sleep again after seeing that,’ she said, gesturing to the black tiles. ‘I thought you’d like to come … unless you have to get back to your wife, or something,’ she tacked on.

  ‘I’m not married,’ he grunted.

  ‘A girlfriend then?’

  He pinned her with a hard look before answering. ‘No girlfriend.’ Something flashed in her green eyes that he couldn’t interpret before she looked away.

  ‘Well, okay then. I’ll meet you at the twenty-four hour diner down by the river in ten.’ Grey sauntered out of the room without waiting for his reply, wholly convinced that he would just show up because she’d said so. He stood there for a full minute before he realised what had happened, and with a curse he left “The Imp and Impaler”, driving his unmarked down to the diner by the river.

  *

  Larissa’s heart was pounding violently against her ribs. She’d barely managed to get her car keys out of her bag without dropping them into the icy mush that pooled in the car park behind the club. Starting the engine, she turned up the heating and held her hands in front of the vents. She could hardly believe she’d just asked Vaile out to coffee like that. But she had and he hadn’t said no. He actually hadn’t said anything, but she took his silence as a yes.

  Larissa watched the ME’s van roll out of the car park while some last minute gawkers watched on—pointing and taking photos with their camera phones.

  Shifting the car into gear, she backed out of her space and drove towards the river. It would only take five minutes to get there, but she wanted to make sure she looked her best.

  She pulled into a space and locked her car, the small fob on her keychain blinking in time to her headlights. The diner was an old railway car that had been refitted to accommodate half a dozen booths along one side and a long counter in the middle. The kitchen was small, but the cook made amazing pancakes.

  Pushing through the glass door, she glanced around to make sure there was a booth that would provide them with enough privacy. The place was empty at this time of the morning, so there was no problem there.

  Walking into the small, single-stalled bathroom at the back of the diner, she locked the door behind her and placed her bag onto the small countertop. She glanced at her reflection, horrified by how washed-out she looked. Her hair was just as disastrous. The two A.M. phone call hadn’t been pleasant and she’d barely had enough time to throw on yesterday’s uniform before getting down to the club. Vaile had already been there, and she hated having to walk in late.

  Pulling a compact from her bag, she started applying powder to her face, trying to conceal the dark circles that had developed there from the lack of sleep. She really should have stopped there, but something inside her drove her to get her mascara and lipstick out too. She applied a little mascara, pulling the clumps off when they formed with a square of toilet paper. Glancing at her watch, she put on some lipstick quickly before pulling her blonde—usually immaculately styled—hair into a high ponytail with a hair elastic she found at the bottom of her bag.

  Stepping back from the mirror, she looked over her five-minute-fix and sighed. She still looked like she’d been dragged out of bed at two in the morning and been forced to throw on a crumpled uniform from the floor.

  When she walked back into the diner, Vaile was in a corner booth; his head stuck behind a plastic-coated menu. He looked up before she actually got to the table—his eyes impassive—before he went back to the menu in his hands. Larissa slid into the bench seat opposite him and picked up a menu as well. She knew exactly what she wanted, but looked anyway.

  The waitress came over to them a few minutes later wearing a smile that shouldn’t have been possible that early in the morning.

  ‘What can I get y’all?’ she asked in a friendly, open voice.

  ‘Coffee. Black,’ Vaile said; folding his menu and placing it back with the others at the end of the table. Larissa glanced at the waitress to see if she took his gruffness personally, but her expression was still friendly.

  ‘And for you, honey?’ she asked Larissa.

  ‘I … umm …’ She glanced behind the counter to see who was working the grill. ‘I’ll have a cup of coffee with sugar and cream and a slice of cherry pie, thank you.’

  When the waitress turned away, Larissa folded her menu and placed it at the end of the table. When she looked up, Vaile was staring at her.

  ‘Cherry pie?’ he asked, raising a platinum-blond eyebrow.

  Her cheeks flushed. ‘I’m hungry.’ She always ate when she was nervous, and when she was around Vaile, that seemed to be always.

  He grunted and looked away. ‘You were late to the scene,’ he eventually said, still not looking at her. His voice was hard—judgemental.

  She blushed. ‘I’m not a morning person,’ she mumbled, her cheeks bruising with colour again. She didn’t know why, but she wanted to make a good impression with Vaile. She’d seen him around the station for a long time, always wondering why he was alone. He worked alone, ate alone and left alone every night—long after other cops had clocked out.

  Now she could kind of see why.

  A long period of absolute silence stretched between them. His eyes were glued to the window, looking out into the darkness like he could actually make out more than just the shadows of cars and the woods across the wide stretch of highway in front of the diner. Sometimes when a car passed, light reflected in his eyes and they looked blue—not grey—for just that split second until he blinked the colour away.

  The smell of cherries brought Larissa back to the diner. Her pie was sitting in front of her now, two forks wrapped in white napkins beside the plate. The waitress was placing their coffees down onto the table when Larissa glanced between Vaile’s drink and hers thinking about how poignant that was: hers white and sweet, his dark and bitter.

  ‘Anything else I can get y’all?’ the waitress asked. Not waiting for Vaile’s reply, Larissa told her no and she left. Sucking in a nervous breath, she unwrapped one of the forks and took her first bite of warm pie. When she looked up, Vaile was staring at her again.

  ‘What’s on your eyes?’

  ‘On my … oh, that.’ She suddenly wanted the earth to open up and swallow her whole. ‘It’s mascara.’

  ‘You weren’t wearing it before,’ he replied, taking a shallow sip from his cup, all the while keeping her pinned with his grey and blue-flecked gaze.

  ‘I-I know. I just put it on in the bathroom.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, not dropping his gaze. She swallowed thickly, her eyes on her fork. She pushed a bite of pie around the plate wondering whether she should just tell him the truth or lie to him. Why had she put it on? Part of it was because she felt naked without her make-up on, and the other part was she wanted to look her best for him which made no sense at all. He was angry and rough and rude. He wasn’t anything like the kind of man she would normally be attracted to.

  She decided on a half-truth. ‘I’ve been wearing make-up since I was thirteen. I can’t seem to go anywhere without it,’ she replied, meeting his eyes. His irises churned slowly; the colour twisting from grey to blue then back again. Pressing her thumbs into eyes, she rubbed until she could see red before opening them. All the lack of sleep was catching up with her.

  ‘Tired?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she sighed.

  ‘Drink your coffee,’ he suggested, waving a hand languorously towards her untouched cup. Propping her fork against the side of her plate, she took the mug in her hands and took a deep sip. Caffeine and sugar zinged through her bloodstream, instantly waking her up. She picked up her fork again and took another bite of pie. Vaile watched her in a way that could only be described as predatory.

  Her heart thumped loudly and impatiently in response. ‘Do you want some pie?’ she asked, wiping her mouth with her paper napkin and nudging the second fork over to his side of the table.

  ‘Are you married?’

  Larissa was suddenly stock-still. ‘Married?’ she asked eventually, not able to keep the surprise from her voice. Vaile glanced pointedly down at her left hand. Larissa’s fingers went to the plain gold band on her ring finger and twisted it nervously.

  ‘I’m not married,’ she replied when she found her voice again.

  One of Vaile’s brows arched. ‘Boyfriend?’

  ‘No boyfriend.’ She watched for his reaction, focusing on his eyes which seemed to give away most of his emotions, but saw nothing. ‘So,’ she said, hating having to tread the waters of silence for any longer than she already had, ‘what do you think about this murder?’

  ‘We won’t know anything more until I can talk to the coroner later on this morning.’

  ‘He’s going to pull an all-nighter for us?’

  ‘For me, he’s going to pull an all-nighter,’ Vaile replied arrogantly.

  She didn’t bother correcting him or fighting him on anything he said. It seemed to her that Vaile was just one of those men who had to take all the accolades. That was fine with her—up to a point. If his posturing got in the way of her career, she’d firmly put him in his place, but until then he could take the credit for whatever little things he wanted to.

  ‘I wonder how Beth is doing,’ she muttered to herself almost incoherently. Thinking about her career and getting on with life made her think about that poor girl who had been raped so violently only a couple of days ago.

  ‘Beth?’ he asked.

  ‘The rape victim,’ Larissa clarified. When he didn’t say anything more, she looked at him, raising an incredulous eyebrow.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ he snapped at her. She could have sworn she saw his eyes churn again; the colours bleeding to grey and blue before clearing again. She sat further back into the booth and crossed her arms under her breasts.

  ‘That poor girl had her whole life ahead of her and it was taken away.’

  ‘She’s not dead, Grey,’ he replied in a flat, irritated tone.

  ‘Her virginity has been stolen by a monster. She certainly feels like her life is over,’ she snapped back, feeling her anger bubbling in her blood. Men could be so clueless when it came to women. Of course Beth was still alive, but the thing that made her different and unique had been stolen from her, and she would never get it back.

  Vaile studied her carefully from over the top of his coffee cup. ‘Sorry,’ he said softly, placing his cup back down onto the tabletop. Stunned, Larissa picked up her cup and took a sip, finding the coffee too cool to drink. Looking down at her pie, she found her appetite gone too. She pushed the plate away from her and looked out the window, only seeing her own reflection staring back at her at first. Her eyes flickered in his direction almost automatically to find that Vaile was staring at her intently, but when she turned, he looked away.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he grumbled, scooting out from behind the table and stalking off towards the back of the diner. She watched him go, enjoying the view. He was huge; nearly a whole foot taller than she was and built like a Mack truck. But somehow, he still managed to move with a smoothness not meant for a man his size.

  He was gone for nearly five minutes when she pulled her purse from her bag to pay for their drinks and her pie. She left the money on the table and stood up. Looking around to find him before she left, Larissa saw him come from around the counter with two more cups in his hand. As he approached, he looked at the money on the table then at her.

  ‘Were you leaving?’ he asked in a rumble.

  ‘It’s late,’ she snapped, pulling her handbag onto her shoulder and clutching at the straps.

  ‘I thought we could have one more cup of coffee.’

  Her eyes darted down to the cups he was holding. ‘Why?’ she asked stiffly.

  He sighed. ‘Because I can be an asshole sometimes and I’m sorry. Please. Sit down. Have another cup with me.’ Without waiting for her answer, he put a fresh cup down on her side and slid into the booth. She felt stupid just standing there looking ready to leave, but not actually going anywhere. With a groan, she put her bag down and slid back into the booth.

  Her coffee was perfect with just the right amount of sugar and cream. ‘Thank you,’ she said after her first, very satisfying sip.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ he grumbled. A small smile tilted his mouth up in one corner, revealing a small dimple. See? There were some redeeming features about him.

  ‘Why don’t you like working with a partner?’ Larissa blurted without thinking. When she’d first approached Captain D’Angelo about shadowing Vaile, he’d told her that Vaile preferred working alone, that he could be very difficult to work with. And although everyone told her she was crazy for doing it, she still wanted the assignment.

  He cocked a brow at her, looking at her for a long time before answering. ‘I just prefer working alone.’ He looked down into his coffee cup. Larissa had almost given up on getting anymore information from him when he added, ‘Sometimes … sometimes I don’t know how to act around people,’ he admitted, still staring down into his coffee cup. His huge shoulders were curled forward, almost like he was ashamed for admitting that he was a little socially inept. Larissa didn’t see the problem though. Sometimes she didn’t want to talk to people because they’d eventually find out who she was, and she didn’t need their pity-filled looks or the silent I’m sorrys in their eyes.