Page 8 of Patrick’s Seduction (Scanguards Vampires #19)
8
B ack in his office, Patrick replayed his conversation with Fallon in his mind. From everything she’d told him, he realized that if he followed the desire of the vampire inside him, it would lead to nothing but problems.
Fallon wasn’t a woman to readily accept a man she’d only just met, a man she knew nothing about. She was more careful, more contemplative, weighing up the pros and cons of a relationship. Hell, judging by the bad experience she was going through with Cameron, he doubted that she’d be ready to date anyone for a long time. And why wouldn’t she take a break from men after having to deal with Cameron’s jealousness and possessiveness? It was smart.
Unfortunately, this meant he couldn’t act on his desire to kiss her. Hell, he shouldn’t even have that desire. He prided himself in being more restrained than his fellow vampires when it came to women, and in the past two years, he’d only had the occasional one-night stand. He hadn’t really felt the need to be in a relationship. He wasn’t looking for a mate yet, despite having celebrated his 35 th birthday not too long ago. He was happy with the way things were. He had a great relationship with his parents and siblings, and he loved his job and his colleagues. Life was pretty perfect.
Fuck! He wished he’d never laid eyes on Fallon, at least then he wouldn’t know what he was missing: a woman who stirred up all kinds of new feelings in him. None of which she’d be willing and able to reciprocate, not in the vulnerable state she was in. He couldn’t take advantage of her like that, no matter how much he desired her. The best thing was to lock that part of himself away, before he did something that he would regret later. He had to be patient. First, he needed to remove Cameron from the equation, then he had to let Fallon heal. Only then could he show her that he was interested in her.
Determined to work on the first step, he started his research into Cameron Gallagher. Luckily, because of Scanguards’ contacts with the San Francisco Police Chief and the California governor, he had access to all kinds of databases to help him with background checks. He pulled up Cameron’s driver’s license from the California DMV. It had expired a few months earlier. The man staring back at him from the picture was good-looking, he could admit that. Cameron was over six feet tall, with dark brown hair and brown eyes, a stubble beard, and a cleft in his chin.
So, this was Fallon’s type? Well, at least that meant she probably didn’t find him unattractive either, after all, Patrick too was tall, had dark, almost black hair, and had inherited his parents’ good looks, and his mother’s green eyes. Of course, that would also mean that Fallon might be reminded of Cameron every time she looked at him. That would be a turnoff. Maybe she’d choose a blond surfer dude as her next boyfriend, just so she wouldn’t be reminded of her ex.
When he looked into Cameron Gallagher’s social media presence, he found several persons by that name, three of them women, since the name was unisex. The two men who had social media pages weren’t the right age and race. According to his driver’s license, Cameron was thirty-eight years old and white. He checked several other social media sites, but the search was a bust.
This wasn’t entirely unusual, particularly if his assumption was correct that Cameron was a vampire or a vampire hybrid. Nobody in his extended Scanguards family had a social media presence. It wasn’t advisable for a vampire to leave a digital footprint where photos would eventually confirm that none of them aged.
Since Fallon hadn’t written down where Cameron worked, Patrick made a note to have Thomas and Eddie, Scanguards’ resident IT geniuses, hack into the IRS and the Social Security Administration to find out more. However, before he could dig into more about Cameron, his phone rang. He recognized the internal number and picked up.
“Hey, Buffy. What’s up?”
“I’m done with the preliminaries. Can you come down? Benjamin and Nicholas are already here, and I don’t want to have to say everything twice.”
“I’m on my way.”
It took him less than five minutes to reach the autopsy room, where his colleagues were waiting for him. It was cold in the room to preserve the dead body for as long as possible before decomposition set in. The door closed behind him, and he nodded at Benjamin and Nicholas, then gave Buffy an expectant look.
“I’m still waiting for some tests, but I’ve found something that leads me to believe that it wasn’t a vampire who attacked our vic.”
Patrick’s forehead furrowed. “Not a vampire? But the heart—you said yourself that it wasn’t cut out with a knife. It was ripped out.”
“And I stand by that,” Buffy said calmly. “Somebody or something ripped his heart out. No doubt about that. But I found something else.” She motioned him and his colleagues to step closer, and lifted the dead man’s arm. “You see these defensive wounds?”
“Yeah. He fought his attacker,” Patrick said with a shrug.
“He did. I swabbed the wounds as well as his fingernails. Guess what I found?” It was only a rhetorical question, since she continued immediately, “Strands of hair. Short, coarse black hair. I looked at it under the microscope and compared it to other hair samples in our database. The hairs aren’t human or vampire.”
Patrick pinned her with his gaze. “What are you saying?”
“He fought with an animal.”
“No, that can’t be,” Patrick said, shaking his head. “You can’t tell me that an animal attacks a human with such precision that it rips only the heart out and leaves all other organs intact.”
“I’m with Patrick,” Nicholas said. “Could it be that a wild animal came upon the dead body and that’s how the wounds got contaminated with animal hair?”
Buffy rolled her eyes and huffed. Clearly, she didn’t like her findings being questioned.
“If I’d only found hairs in the defensive wounds and the open chest wound, I’d be inclined to agree with you. But hair doesn’t get stuck deep beneath the fingernails, unless the victim gripped his attacker. Ergo, our vic was alive when he came in contact with the animal.”
Patrick stood there, stunned and silent for a moment, just like Benjamin and Nicholas. They exchanged surprised looks. “And you’re sure it’s animal hair?”
“Absolutely.”
“Any chance you can narrow it down to a specific animal?”
“Not yet. I’m still going through samples, but my best guess at the moment is that it’s either a coyote or a mountain lion. Those are really the only kinds of wild animals in San Francisco.”
“A mountain lion? In the city?” Benjamin asked.
“A couple of them were spotted in Golden Gate Park last month,” Buffy claimed. “And there are plenty of coyotes in the city. Buena Vista Park has a den somewhere. That’s why people avoid walking their dogs there after sundown. But as I said, I haven’t found a match to a specific species yet. It could also be a rabid dog.”
Slowly, Patrick nodded. “Good work, Buffy.” Then he turned to his two colleagues. “That complicates our investigation. Assuming that a wild animal doesn’t just go for the heart without chowing down on anything else, there’s the possibility that somebody attacked our victim and then made it look like an animal attack.”
Buffy shrugged. “If that’s what you wanna go with.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to discount your findings, Buffy, you’re doing an exceptional job,” Patrick said putting his hand on her forearm. “But if you’re right, this whole thing is going to be so much harder to solve.”
She nodded in agreement, accepting his apology.
He turned back to Benjamin and Nicholas. “Find out if there have been any other so-called animal attacks in San Francisco, down the Peninsula, on the East Bay, and in Marin County. I want to see whether these attacks have a common denominator. Maybe it’ll shed a light on what’s really going on here.”
Benjamin nodded. “Consider it done. What about the victim himself? Since we know he’s one of the jewelers in town for the convention, do we know if he had any enemies?”
“I’ve already asked Ethan and Damian to make inquiries,” Patrick replied. “They are on security detail at the convention.” He glanced back at Buffy. “Call me when you’ve identified the hair sample.”
“I’m on it.”
Patrick acknowledged her reply with a nod, his mind working overtime. Who had the skill to use a wild animal to make it look like this had been an animal attack and not cold-blooded murder by a person, be it human, vampire, or any other supernatural species? How had the perp done it and why?