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To his surprise, Beaufort scowled, his skin pulled tight over his bones. “I have no idea what the fuck is going on, Adam, but this smells to me. The chief going down right after the attack on Jacques? Nothing ever happens in Raintree. Now this? I’m not buying coincidence.”

“Yeah, I don’t like it, either. You have the authority to ask the hospital to run full tox panels?” Adam asked.

“Poison?” A dark look. “I’ll make some calls—I should be able to get it done. Chief’s got a lot of friends all over the region.”

Leaving the other man to it, Adam began to jog back to the clothing cache—but halfway there, he could no longer fight the compulsion that was acid inside him.

He’d thought he’d cut it out of him, burned it to ash, but it lived, a primal need that would not take no for an answer—and his heart was aching today, was hurt.

It wanted to see her , wanted to find comfort in her when the woman who’d come to Raintree clearly had no awareness of what that even meant.

Dawn was a pink light on the horizon by the time he reached the inn, but it was still early—though he wasn’t surprised to spot Dae Park’s black work truck leaving the inn as Adam began to walk down the driveway.

The burly twenty-six-year-old saw him but didn’t stop.

That was par for the course with Mi-ja’s only son; he seemed to have maintained his surly teenage phase right into his twenties.

Sally over at the diner had been known to joke that the reason Dae lived with his mother was because no other woman would put up with his moodiness.

Adam frowned, his mind on a serial killer who seemed to be driven by the sick desire to punish pretty young women.

Shifting on his heel, he watched Dae’s truck turn onto the road.

A robust vehicle suitable for the harsh desert environment outside of Raintree’s microclimate, it also had a covered flatbed that the other man used to carry tools for his handyman work—but that was also big enough to transport a body.

“So are a whole bunch of other cars in town,” Adam muttered to himself as the truck disappeared down the road.

“And Dae’s no telepath who can pulverize brains from the inside out.

” Still, he made a mental note to dig into the other man, see if there was even a remote possibility that he could be doing dark things of which no one was aware.

Eleri might be convinced it was one killer, but serial killers had been known to take partners.

A human/telepath partnership made sense, especially if the telepath was physically weak, while the human was strong.

Dae definitely had the muscle to lift bodies and the skill to build the kind of structures under which the Sandman left his victims.

Disturbed by the idea, he made it across the all-but-empty parking lot—only Mi-ja’s and Eleri’s vehicles in sight—without attracting Mi-ja’s attention.

She was probably still pottering about her kitchen cleaning up after Dae’s breakfast. Everyone knew she got up to make him breakfast—because Mi-ja proudly shared that piece of information with anyone who’d listen.

“Well, I mean, he doesn’t have a wife, does he?” she’d say. “And I can’t let my boy survive on toast!”

Adam had no idea what Dae thought of her hovering because they’d never had any kind of conversation about it—or any kind of real conversation at all.

Dae had been two years below him in school, a stark divide at that age, and Dae never seemed to hang out at the bar or diner or anywhere else where Adam might’ve had a chance to talk to him as an adult.

However, unlike a number of the humans in town, he didn’t find it strange that mother and adult son cohabited. Changeling clans and packs were all about cohabitation. To the vast majority of changelings, regardless of species, being on their own was a painful loneliness.

That falcons flew long distances alone was an entirely different situation—they always knew that when they chose to turn back, ride the winds home, they’d be welcomed into the warm embrace of clan.

The only reason Adam had noted the arrangement as anything odd was Dae’s surliness and—to outside eyes—complete isolation from all relationships aside from the one with his mother. Adam’s clan cohabitated, yes, but fostering emotional independence in their fledglings was a core tenet.

“We’re here,” they’d say. “We’ll help you. But you must learn to fly. Come with me, little bird. Let me show you the sky.”

That included teaching their young how to build social bonds outside of the clan.

Most human families did the same, but Dae…

Mi-ja’s son was known to turn up on time to fix plumbing and electricity problems, and his repairs stood the test of time.

He was never short of business as a result, but per his customers, he ignored any overtures of friendship, even something so small as an offer of a cold drink on a hot day.

Might be the man just hated small-town life but was stuck here because he didn’t want to leave his mother alone. He’d gone to college a few hours away and could have an entire social group no one knew about. Adam had spotted his truck heading out of town for a few days on more than one occasion.

Well, shit.

Ice in his gut as he reached Eleri’s room. No light glowed beyond the windows, but he could hear movement through the door.

His heart kicked, his skin hot.

He hated this. He hated her .

The door opened even as he fought the driving urges of his body and told himself to turn back, get away from her. Whatever they could’ve once been, that chance lay dead and buried with the murderer she’d helped set free.

“Adam.” Her gaze was alert, her body clad in slim black suit pants and a crisp white shirt that she’d tucked into the pants. “I saw you.”

He followed her glance to see a tiny camera eye above the door. That definitely wasn’t standard issue at the inn. “You were awake.”

“I don’t sleep much.” The deep purple bruises under her eyes bore harsh witness to her words…but he hadn’t spotted them yesterday.

“And use makeup to hide the effects.”

“People focus on the wrong things otherwise.” She looked straight at him, the eye contact unaggressive because her gaze was so flat.

It enraged him, the distance of her, the lack in her. He wanted to shake her, tell her to stop being a ghost. He couldn’t fight with a ghost, couldn’t let his anger burn through a ghost. He needed a living, breathing woman who’d feel his pain, his grief, his fury at her.

“Your clanmate?” When Adam just shook his head, she added, “We only discovered two major pieces of information at the site.”

“The tire marks and the vehicle, yeah. I heard.” Leaning up against the outside wall, he tried not to draw in her scent and did so all the same.

It was as faded and flat as her expression.

“The chief of Raintree Enforcement just suffered a severe heart attack,” he said, even as the raptor inside him flared its wings in agitation. “He’s the most experienced officer in the area, probably knows everyone in town and any relevant history.”

Eleri’s hand tightened on the doorjamb. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Adam found himself hyper-focused on that betraying hand devoid of the thin black barrier she’d worn yesterday. The urge to touch her, see if she was real or a two-dimensional illusion, was so strong that his entire body pounded with it.