Hot and Haunted Read online

  She took a few moments to clean up and right herself before continuing on to the hotel. It was a good thing she’d handled her needs because she didn’t even get a chance to go up to her room.

  Miranda arrived the same time Brewster did, and they’d just stepped through the doors of the hotel when an excited tech pounced on them, waving a package in his hand.

  It was addressed to Miranda at the hotel.

  The script was elegant, flowing, and she knew immediately it was from him. In her experience, some of the most brutal fiends had the loveliest penmanship.

  “How did he know you’d be here, Garrick? Don’t open it,” Aden warned. He wasn’t even touching her, and Miranda was still hyperaware of his body heat.

  “The same way you knew I’d be here. This is the only hotel chain in town that the government has a contract with. He wants me to catch him, remember?” Miranda pulled out another pair of latex gloves and carried the package to the conference room Aden had appointed as the command center.

  She opened the fat, cardboard envelope slowly, tugging carefully on the perforated, tearaway strip. Miranda gently dumped the contents on the table.

  The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould. The Werewolf in Lore and Legend by Montague Summers. And a Minnesota wolf-hunting license issued in her name. The Book of Werewolves opened to a page that listed criteria for becoming a werewolf: dying unshriven, selling your soul to the devil, being bitten not once, but three times . . . They’d been highlighted.

  “Christ,” Brewster muttered. “At least we can trace the registration on the license although I doubt it will get us anywhere.”

  Blood rushed through her veins, and excitement welled as inspiration struck. She’d seen something else that connected him to Minnesota. “Where’s the file with all of Webster’s contacts? Specifically, who was putting money on his store accounts in the prison?”

  Aden shuffled some folders on the table and handed one to Miranda. She tore it open like a Christmas present and scanned through the lines and lines of data until she found what she was looking for. “There! October Skies,” she cried, pointing to the line item on the page. “Every month they put $500 on the books for his inmate account. The bank of origin is Alexandria, Minnesota.”

  “You think he’s in Minnesota?”

  “There’s something there he wants me to see. If he’s not there, something is that will lead us to him.” She pulled out her phone to Google October Skies and was determined not to blush, or even think about the fact she’d just pleasured herself with it.

  “How do you know this isn’t some elaborate game to keep you busy while he makes it out of the country, and we never catch him?” Brewster asked her.

  “Oh, it’s an elaborate game, that’s for sure. But he’s fixated on me and has painted me up as Little Red Riding Hood. He’s luring me to his version of grandma’s house.” She smirked. “He thinks that by luring me there, he’ll be the one to lead me from the path and into the darkness, just like the story.”

  “Doesn’t it concern you how he knew you’d be called in on his case?”

  “No. The modern monster is incredibly resourceful. This package he sent to the hotel would have eventually found its way to me, and I would have been called in to consult anyway. It’s not that complicated. I bet he saw me on CNN during the last case I worked with that cannibal in Ohio, and he fixated on me.” She tapped the screen to enter the Web site, then shoved her phone into Aden’s hands. “There, see? I bet he’s there.” She hadn’t meant to do that, to put her phone in his hands. She crossed her legs, remembering her fantasies, even as she fought to keep her head in the game.

  “October Skies, finding the wolf in all of us.” Aden snorted as he read from the screen, but then his brow furrowed. “This is some kind of get-back-to-your-primal-self cult. They call it the Faith of the Moon. They have a commune on Lake Ida in Alexandria.”

  “Then that’s where we’re going.” She grabbed her phone back to find the airport closest to Lake Ida and see what the soonest flight was out of St. Louis—and to get it out of his hands.

  “I’ve got a charter on standby. We can be in the air in two hours.”

  “You are so sure of everything, aren’t you?” He was sure she’d work with him, sure she’d find a lead—so sure, he’d kept a plane on standby, costing the Bureau an ungodly sum.

  “No, I just plan for every contingency. How fast can you be ready?”

  “Just let me get my bag.”

  It didn’t take them long to get on the road, and the two hours it should have taken them to get to the airport in St. Louis was reduced to an hour and twenty minutes, with Brewster driving at top speed with the cherry and the siren on.

  As they boarded the aircraft, the pilot said, “Glad to see you made good time, Agents. There are a nasty slew of winter-storm cells headed for the Midwest. If we don’t get in the air soon, we won’t be able to take off until they pass.”

  Shit. That’s just what they needed, trying to hunt this asshole in a blizzard. Her first thought was what it would be like to be snowed in somewhere with Brewster in front of roaring fire with a bottle of champagne, but her thoughts quickly turned back to the monster. What would it be like to be snowed in with him? A horror beyond anything anyone should ever have to know. She hoped he was at the commune. Not just so she could catch him but because those people had made the choice to support him, to interact with him. They knew what he was, what he’d been convicted of, and had in essence invited him among them anyway. Miranda didn’t feel responsible for those people, and if Webster slaughtered them, that blood wouldn’t be on her hands.

  She sat down and buckled herself in and pulled the books that Webster had sent her out of her bag. What was in these books that he wanted her to know? Or was it just part of the setup and meant to set a tone, a mood for the chase? He had to know she was a logical woman, she wouldn’t believe anything she couldn’t prove.

  While with his schizophrenia, it was possible he believed his lycanthropy could be proven, Miranda was having a hard time buying that diagnosis. He was too methodical, too controlled, too precise. Maybe he’d faked the symptoms of the clinical lycanthropy?

  Images of the crime-scene photos flashed behind her eyes in a seemingly eternal loop. There was nothing fake about those.

  She buried her nose back in the books but then laughed. “What am I supposed to take from this?” Miranda muttered.

  “How to kill him?” Brewster offered, as the plane soared into the air.

  “That’s easy. A bullet to the head. Kills most anything.” She read a few more sentences. “A werewolf can turn another person into a werewolf with a bite? It’s like a supernatural STD.” Miranda just couldn’t take the books seriously.

  “Come on, what about being able to identify a werewolf because the poor bastard was born with a unibrow? Especially in this day and age of laser hair removal.”

  She snorted a laugh. “Or your second toe is longer than your big toe?”

  “Or if you’re left-handed. Then you’ll either turn into a werewolf in life, or after death you rise as a vampire. Again, it’s all about belief.”

  “You seem to know a lot about this crap.” Miranda laughed again.

  “I have a doctorate of crap. Or bullshit. Whichever.” He shrugged with a lazy smile. “Psychology and Folklore. Pick your flavor.”

  “What does one do with a degree in folklore?”

  “Work for the FBI?” He grinned.

  It occurred to Miranda that on Webster’s last mug shot, he’d had a unibrow, and the thought made her shiver for some reason. Her reaction was stupid. Webster was no more a werewolf than he was a unicorn farting glitter sprinkles. Neither was real.

  “Both of these men were well educated for their time. I can’t believe they wrote this drivel and expected it to be taken seriously.”

  “Montague Summers wrote the first English translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, or The Witches’ Hammer in 1928. A witch hunter’