Cam shook his head. “You’re the blood expert.” Which is what had brought me to Cavazos’s attention …
I unzipped the first baggie—the plaid cloth—and reached inside with my bare hand. The blood was room temperature and still sticky. Fresh enough to be viable, and readable from a decent distance.
As the metallic scent of blood filled the room, I pulled the cloth from the bag and closed my eyes, fingering the material, focusing on the feel of the blood between my fingers, and the feel of it in my head. That mental scent. The energy signature of whoever’d spilled it.
It came from a man. Gender was easy to discern, but race and age took more experience—exposure to and study of a variety of samples. Fortunately, I’d had plenty of experience.
The blood came from a man of Asian descent. I couldn’t pin down his age without a fresher sample, but I knew two things for sure. The blood held no power, which meant its owner was not Skilled. And the blood held no pull—no psychic thread connecting it to the man who’d spilled it, through which I could Track him. Which meant the owner was dead.
“It’s Shen’s,” I said, resealing the cloth in its bag.
Cam sat straighter. “How sure are you?”
“As sure as I can be, without having met him. It’s either his, or another dead Asian man with no Skill.” Which could easily have been one of about a billion other people—if we didn’t already know Shen’s killer was a Traveler.
I stood without touching anything and crossed into the bathroom to wash my hands with the bar of lye soap on the left side of the sink. It was hell on my skin, but lye destroys blood, which would keep me from confusing one sample with another.
In my chair again, I opened the second bag—the denim—and knew almost immediately that the blood in this one was also Shen’s.
Another hand scrub, then I opened the third bag. The carpet. And that one was interesting. Shen’s blood was there, but it wasn’t alone. Two people had bled on the carpet, and the second person’s blood held both power and pull. He was both Skilled and alive. But with the samples so thoroughly mixed, I couldn’t tell what kind of Skill it was, nor could I get any specific direction from the pull. I didn’t even know for sure that the owner was male.
I sealed up the carpet and washed my hands again, then sat down with the last sample—the sock. “The carpet, I understand. But how the hell did Anne get bloody clothes from a crime scene? Why didn’t the police take them for evidence?”
Cam sighed and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “The house was locked up tight when Shen was found, and his keys weren’t missing. The cops know the killer was a Traveler, and they know they’ll never find him with only county resources.” He shrugged. “It’s no surprise they’re not dedicating much time or effort to a case they know they can’t solve.”
And there were more of those every day, it seemed. Sure, some cops were Skilled, but the police department couldn’t legally use resources that weren’t officially recognized by the government, which meant they were crippled in the investigation of any crime obviously committed by a Skilled perp.
Victims and loved ones who could pay would come to people like me for answers the cops couldn’t give them. Some independent Trackers—like Spencer and his associates—also offered vigilante justice, of the variety Anne had requested, for a huge fee.
Those who wanted justice but couldn’t afford it in monetary terms would turn to either Tower or Cavazos, who were happy to take payment in the form of an IOU—a dangerously vague contract sealed by one of their own Binders. And just like that, one by one, private citizens fell into debt to one syndicate or the other, signing away their souls—or at least their free will—for one short moment of visceral satisfaction.
What they didn’t know was that half the time, the very syndicate they turned to for help was responsible for the crime they wanted avenged. I’d seen it happen. If Cavazos wanted a Traveler or a Reader who refused to sign on, he’d have the target’s spouse or parent killed—never a child, thank goodness—then sit back and wait for a desperate knock on the door.
And people kept falling for it, devastated and naive in the face of engineered tragedy.
I held up the bloody sock, mentally crossing my fingers that what had happened to Anne was nothing of that sort. That this was something we could put an end to without making powerful enemies. Then I closed my eyes and inhaled.
Score.
One bleeder, with both power and pull. This blood almost certainly matched the second bleeder from the carpet, and with only one scent to concentrate on, I was able to pin down some details.
“Male, and he’s a Traveler.” Just as Anne had guessed. I’d found the killer. Or, at least, I’d found his blood, and since it hadn’t completely dried, the pull from it was strong.
Cam sat straight again and glanced from the sock to my face. “Anything else?”
“A general direction.”
He was already on his feet, keys in hand. “I’ll drive.” I glanced at him, my gaze narrowed in suspicion, and Cam scowled. “What, you don’t trust me? Don’t you think it should be the other way around? How do I know that you’re not just going to ditch me again and move to another city, without even a goodbye?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I snatched my worn satchel from the couch and filled it with supplies from the cabinet behind my desk so I wouldn’t have to look at him.
“Well, then, why don’t you tell me?” he demanded, and when I didn’t answer, he grabbed my arm and tried to turn me around. “Why are you so angry? You’re pushing people away. People who care about you. What happened to you, Liv?”
I jerked my arm from his grasp and met his gaze reluctantly. “Nothing I can’t handle.” Yet. But he didn’t understand that, and I couldn’t explain it. “Fine. You can drive. It’ll be easier for me to concentrate on the blood that way anyway.” Which was probably the reason he’d offered in the first place.
The last thing that went into my satchel was a spray bottle of ammonia, then I zipped the bag and set it on the desk. I shrugged into my good holster and pulled my jacket on over it, then checked the clip and the safety on my favorite 9mm and dropped it into the holster. I sealed the sock back into its bag and shoved it into my right jacket pocket. With my phone in the opposite pocket and my satchel over one shoulder, I shooed Cam out the door and locked it behind us.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, following me down the narrow staircase at the end of the hall. “Even if you’re not talking to me.”
“I am talking to you.” I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the bright parking lot, squinting against the glare of the sun. I’d rather work at night, when there were fewer of Cavazos’s eyes around to see me with Cam, but Anne’s blood sample wasn’t getting any fresher.
“You’re talking, but you’re not really saying anything,” Cam insisted, digging his keys from his pocket.
“You’re doing enough of that for both of us.”
His car—the one he’d tracked me down in the night before—was parked near the end of the front row, and as we approached, he unlocked it by remote.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked, dropping into the passenger’s seat.
“It’s been six years, Liv. I don’t even know you anymore.” When I didn’t know how to respond, he sighed and started the car. “Is this what you do now? Freelance Tracking?”
I nodded, and the knot of tension inside me eased just a little. Work questions, I could handle. “I was on Adam Rawlinson’s team for three years. They taught me to shoot and fight—Rawlinson himself trained me on the nine mil—and I quit last year and went into business