Page 44 of Nightshades

“You have a message here, Detective. And I think it’s from our killer.”

Keeping my gun in my hand, I climb up the staircase, dragging my gloved hand over the grooves in the wall. I pause when I see something long and curved sticking out of one of the marks. Glancing up, Waylon’s attention is glued to one of the victims.

Plucking the foreign object out of the wall, I place it in my palm to get a better look. It’s black, curved, and thick. It reminds me of a nail or a claw. That would be impossible. A nail like this could only come from an animal of some sort.

And what animal has the ability to kill like this?

“You coming?”

I curl my fingers around my find. It’s evidence. I should place it in an evidence bag. That would be the right thing to do. This probably has plenty of DNA on it to run matches.

As if any matches would appear for an animal.

“Yeah, I’m coming. We need to dust every inch of this place for fingerprints. The killer doesn’t seem that organized. I bet prints are all over.” I slip the giant claw into my jacket pocket and hope it isn’t too noticeable.

“Oh, this place will get turned inside out. There’s evidence here. We just have to find it.”

My jacket pocket begins to burn from his words alone. The cop inside me is screaming to do the right thing. Another part of me is louder, convincing me to protect this claw with my life.

I’ve never ignored my instincts, and I’m not going to now. This claw is important to me. I have to figure out why.

The scenery before me has me gagging again. The taxidermist doesn’t even compare to the violence this crime scene holds. To the right, we have a young male, probably in his twenties, and he is staked through his entire body, the spear piercing his skull.

Then, my attention lands on the woman who looks as if she has been flattened.

“That’s her,” I sigh. “That’s Fireopal. She was one of the case files I brought home. I wanted to look into her more. I know there have been a few sites that have been hacked lately, and I wanted to know if it was possible that it was her.”

“I think you might know the killer, Detective.”

“There’s no way I know a monster like this, Waylon. I know I’m new, but that’s one hell of an accusation.”

Waylon steps to the side and points to the wall. “It isn’t an accusation.”

“What are you”—I’m silenced by the message written on the wall—“talking about.” The words fall flat.

“Lula-lala-la-la-laa,

Sweet dreams.”

It’s written in Fireopal’s blood, specks of her brain sticking against the wall.

The familiar chill that someone knows me well enough to break into my home, kill anyone in my case files, and leave me a message written in blood, has me pressing my thighs together.

I know it’s wrong that my panties are wet with need and there’s a throb in my clit, pulsating with every wild thump of my heart. I can’t help what the unknown mystery does to me. It’s out of my control.

“Are you okay?” Waylon questions, pulling me from my inappropriate thoughts.

The image of the monster I saw hovering over me in bed, wondering if my imagination would be able to conjure him again. Unless he is real, and he is the one causing all of this commotion.

“I’m fine. Rattled. No one has ever left me a message at a crime scene before. I don’t know anyone here, Waylon. Except for who I work with, I haven’t had time to make friends, especially friends with a murderer.”

“Maybe it’s someone from New York? You worked there for a while, right? Maybe you pissed off too many people that you arrested and sent to prison.”

I didn’t think of that. I should have. There have been a handful of threats over the years. One guy promised that when he got out, he would cut my throat for ruining a sculpture he was making out of human bodies. Another threatened to kill me by sinking me to the bottom of the ocean by tying cement blocks to my feet. It was a mafia tactic, one of the biggest syndicates used to get rid of bodies. My partner and I, at the time, arrested the secondhand man of the O’Byrne family. It was a giant bust for me—in a good way. That was the arrest that set me up to be a detective.

“You’re thinking about that a little too long,” Waylon says with a quirked eyebrow.

“Well, I have years of arrests to remember. There are a few, but they are still in prison, Waylon. They won’t be getting out for a very long time.”