Her Lone Wolf Read Free

of the roof seconds later and peered down at the street below, expecting to see the man in black on the ground. But there was no sign of him. She looked around wildly for another way off the roof. There were some heavy-duty electrical conduits running along the side of the building almost all the way to the ground, as well as a set of guide wires that attached a big antenna to the corner of the warehouse. The man could have used one of those as an escape route, but it would have taken him a few minutes to get down to street level. Which meant he hadn’t gone down that way.
    So where did he go?
    The door leading to the stairwell on the building across the alley banged against the wall, then slowly swung closed. That really bad feeling she had in her stomach suddenly got a whole lot worse.
    Dammit .
    She eyed the gap between the roof she was on and the other warehouse. It had to be twenty-five feet at least, maybe thirty. The roof over there was about ten feet lower than the one where she was standing, but there weren’t any normal humans she knew who could make that leap. She knew some not-so-normal humans who could, though. If she was right, this wasn’t the kind of guy she and her partner should go after by themselves. Hell, she wouldn’t want to go after him with four or five agents for backup.
    Danica holstered her gun and turned to head back downstairs when Tony rushed onto the roof. She waved him off.
    “All clear. It was a homeless guy. He slid down some electrical conduits and disappeared. I’m pretty sure he’s not our guy.”
    Tony’s dark eyes scanned the rooftop as he shoved his gun in his holster. “Maybe he saw who dumped the body.”
    “Maybe,” she said. “I’ll give a description to the locals and see what they turn up.”
    She hated lying to Tony. They’d been partners for the past two years and friends even longer—since all the way back at Quantico. But what the hell was she going to say? That there was a not-quite-human guy out there who could jump thirty feet in a single bound? Tony was a good FBI agent—a great one even—but he was practical to a fault. He’d think she’d lost her marbles. She had to keep her partner in the dark for his own good.
    Luckily, the two Sacramento police officers had been so busy covering either side of the long warehouse they hadn’t seen what had happened on her end. Good. She hadn’t been looking forward to trying to convince them they hadn’t seen something they really had. Since that wasn’t an issue, she sent them off on a wild goose chase after an imaginary homeless guy. Yet one more thing to feel bad about, but she’d gotten used to living in a morally gray world long ago.
    While Tony called in the situation to the task force command center, she crouched down and checked the body once more. As she surveyed the mutilated remains, she desperately wanted to convince herself this wasn’t what she thought it was. But that would be a crock of crap. She’d seen this more than once—back when she worked for the Department of Covert Operations.
    She stood up and walked around the warehouse looking for anything that might give them a clue as to who’d dumped the body. And it had definitely been a body dump. She didn’t need a crime scene tech to tell her that. Unfortunately, the killer hadn’t left so much as a piece of lint behind. That sucked. It would be so much better for everyone if forensic evidence and old-fashioned detective work led them to this killer. But it wasn’t going down that way. And delaying the inevitable wasn’t going to make that call to the super-secret organization she used to work for any easier.
    Danica walked outside to find Tony briefing the lead crime scene investigator. She gave her partner a wave as she held up her cell phone and moved off to the side. She dialed as she walked, her finger flying over the keypad from memory. Two years and she still remembered the number. God, that was sad.
    She held her breath as she