Chapter Eight #2
I think about how I’m going to convince him to keep seeing me as I devour my chicken. I barely taste anything, already knowing Serena would be so disappointed if I didn’t give her the exact taste palette description of everything I tried today.
The problem is that the date is not going well. The conversation has been so painfully awkward that it makes porn dialogue seem well-written. Not that I’m hoping this will turn into that.
That would be absurd. And wrong. What would it even look like? I wipe off that pout on Elliot’s face with my mouth. Elliot begging for me to touch him, his long fingers tracing patterns on my neck, my chest—
I clear my throat again. It’s a small mercy I’m nowhere close to being done with my food, because there’s no way I can stand up and walk out of this restaurant without being banned for life.
Conversation. Interesting, fun conversation. That’s what I need. Or there won’t be another date.
“Did you catch a movie or a show recently?” Great job, Nick. Now he’d think I read Dating for Dummies before I came here.
Elliot looks up at me. The pout is still absent.
I make it my mission to keep it off his face for the entire date, mostly to avoid the images it’ll inevitably bring to my head.
“I don’t watch a lot of television. Or at all, really,” he says with a tone that almost makes me apologize for ever paying for a streaming service.
I don’t apologize. I’m strong, damnit.
Elliot keeps his fork down and straightens up. “Do you watch a lot of shows?”
I copy his stance. “I usually put something on in the background when I’m doing brainless tasks like cooking, finishing a report,” I admit, it comes out a bit apologetic. Damnit.
Elliot tilts his head. “Let me guess, sitcoms …or no, reality shows?”
I laugh. “I can’t be that easy to read.”
He smiles a tiny smile. I mentally pat myself on the back. “Oh, you’re not easy to read at all,” he murmurs. I’m not sure if it was meant for my ears, so I don’t poke it.
“I mostly rewatch my favorite sitcoms, easier to pay attention to work that way. Plus, there’s just something comforting about the predictability. I get enough excitement in my day job as it is.” I immediately regret adding the last part.
But Elliot just hums and looks at me.
“It’s just easier to breathe when I have something familiar to lean back on after work,” I confess. Why do those intense eyes always pull out my most vulnerable thoughts? They don’t even have to be targeted at me to work.
“I meditate before bed. That helps me,” he says, his face soft, understanding.
Ahh, that explains the strong nervous system. At least my detective skills aren’t failing me in every aspect. “I could never concentrate long enough to do that,” I admit.
“Not a surprise, Mr. I Need Drama in the Background To Finish Basic Tasks,” he parrots.
I snort out a surprise laugh. “Sitcoms, not dramas. And reality shows are very, very rare.” He raises an eyebrow. “Okay, not that rare. But they’re stupid and fun,” I insist.
He huffs, then picks up his fork.
“I’m so gonna make you watch the stupidest one,” I warn.
He snorts but doesn’t reject the offer outright.
When the bill arrives, Elliot grabs it right out of the waitress’s hands.
“I asked you out, so I’ll pay,” I insist, trying to snatch it from him.
“No, that’s not how it works,” he says, pulling it back.
“Uh… yes, that’s exactly how it works. You wouldn’t know because you aren’t caught up with the trends. There are established rules we must follow, Elliot.”
He narrows his eyes. “There are no rules. You’re making up the rules.”
“C’mon. We can’t be having our first fight about a bill on our first date. What does that say about the future, huh?” I try for a teasing tone, but I doubt it came out that way.
“Everything, if you don’t drop this right now,” he says with finality.
“Ugh. But I’m paying the next time,” I relent.
“Yeah, yeah,” he says. Did he just agree to another date? Yes, he did, and now, he can’t take it back.
When we walk out, I feel satisfied and relaxed. I got little out of him, but at least I know I was right. And with my experience in police work, I know investigations take a lot of time and patience. If only Elliot would cooperate long enough.
We drive back in relative silence. When I instinctively park right behind Elliot’s car, he says nothing about how I knew it was his. I breathe out a sigh of relief.
I walk him to the driver’s seat. I need to get our next meeting confirmed while he’s still poutless and at the lower end of meanness. Vague plans can be poison to new relationships. Look at me, quoting Dating for Dummies word-for-word. Probably. Seems like something it would say.
Elliot turns when he’s right beside the door and tilts his head up. He chews on his lower lip. My eyes drop down without my permission. Should I kiss him? Can I kiss him without getting my head torn off? Wait, that’s no—
“Do you want to come over to my place?” he says casually. But he’s still chewing his lip.
When I told Oliver I was going out with Elliot, he mentioned Elliot doesn’t do relationships, which is perfect.
The best case scenario, really. But it would still be cruel of me to make this anything more than casual.
If he ever knows the truth, he’ll feel used.
I know I would if the tables were turned.
And then there’s a chance he’d want this to be a just one-night stand, which Oliver had also warned me about. That would be a disaster.
“Raincheck?” I say, apologetically. So, so apologetically.
My werewolf is demanding I throw Elliot over my shoulder and dump him on the nearest flat surface to explore those lips and his entire body slowly.
Then fuck him senseless. I swallow. My werewolf needs to be far, far away from my investigation. “Got an early shift tomorrow.”
Elliot’s face crumples for a fraction of a second. Was it a disappointment? Probably confusion because, yeah, I can’t imagine anyone sane saying no to that offer. But then he schools his expression just as quickly. “See you around, Nicholas,” he says and slips into his car.
He takes off while I stand there rethinking this and every other decision I’ve ever made in my entire life.
***
“Do you really need two separate boards for one case?” Bree cocks her head and gives my boards a disapproving look.
Do I need them? No. Will I move everything to one board, destroying the tidy symmetry? Also a big fucking no. “If you don’t want me to add another one, sit your ass down and make sure we catch this guy before there are more victims.”
She sits down beside Marcus on my couch.
I’m growing as a person, so I’ve decided to bring in the entire team into the case.
Meena’s seventeenth email, threatening me with a month of desk duty if I didn’t start delegating properly, might have played a part, too. But it’s mostly the growing-up thing.
Plus, Matt got Chinese.
“You would think the threat against the city's werewolf population would be reason enough, but the two boards are really grating my nerves.” Bree grumbles. “Let’s solve this bitch.”
“Hell, yeah,” Sloan hollers.
Every in-field Bureau Agent has specific tasks assigned, and we typically like to stay in our lanes. Bree is an emergency dispatcher, so she diverts calls involving werewolves and keeps the Bureau updated on any werewolf-related incidents in the city.
Sloan monitors the crime scenes and fabricates evidence as and when needed.
As a medical examiner, Marcus keeps track of werewolf deaths and deaths that werewolves may have caused.
Matt is a firefighter, so he deals with all the werewolf-related emergencies while keeping his colleagues and the general human population in the dark.
Camilla deals with werewolf incidents that reach the hospital and provides medical consultations.
It’s my work to solve crimes. I can take help from the fellow agents, like everyone else can.
In fact, we solved the case of the psycho werewolf killers last year that caught Oliver in the crosshairs together.
So, our paths intersect from time to time, and we sometimes volunteer for work that isn’t our responsibility, like Matt did last year, to make sure Oliver doesn’t find out about werewolves. And got a fiancé out of it.
But it’s still my work. So, the point is, I’m not going to entertain anyone’s complaints about my murder boards and their numbers, the food bribe can’t do a thing about it.
“What theories are we working with?” Matt asks from the office chair he’s perched on in the corner, bringing us back to the topic. Of course he does. He’s my brother, he always has my back. We’re one— “Because I don’t want to look at these confusing and disorganized boards longer than I have to.”
My jaw hangs open. “What’s confusing about it, Brutus?” I narrow my eyes at all of them sitting and munching on food littered on my coffee table. Sloan slowly smuggles rice to Mickey under her chair.
“It’s so simple. This row at the top has all the victims, then on the left are the people who saw them last. The pictures on the right are of the people who had grudges against them.
Below them are people connected to two or more victims. See the red yarn, it matches people with each other.
” I turn to look at their blank, clueless faces.
See, that’s why I work alone. I don’t need murder board moralists in my apartment.
“What’s the yellow yarn?” Sloan asks hesitantly.
“Yellow matches the victim to werewolf suspects and orange one to human suspects,” I explain.
“But why didn’t you use a brighter shade of orange or practically any other color? They look so similar,” Marcus complains.
Because I was out of yarn, but I’m not admitting that to them. “You’re a werewolf. You have supernatural sight. Use that,” I snap. “Does anyone else have any questions?”
“The date was that bad, huh?” Matt asks flatly.
Four sets of curious eyes snap to Matt’s face.
“Ooooh, what date?” Bree asks.
“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Cami says, but her tone is more ‘you should feel bad you haven’t told us already’.
Ugh, might as well get it over with. They’re gonna know soon enough since I expressly gave Matt permission to tell them because I don’t want to hide it. Not from these people.
I know this is Matt big brothering me to let me come out with little drama, the only way I would want to. But I still send an obligatory glare his way. Don’t want him to get complacent.
“I went on a date with Elliot,” I announce.
“Oliver’s Elliot?” Bree asks.
“Can kill you with his glare Elliot?” Cami adds.
“Impress me because I’m better than all of you Elliot?” Bree asks.
“Took the last piece of garlic bread Elliot?” Marcus scowls. Guess he’s not over that one yet. Bree pats his arm.
I roll my eyes. “He’s not that bad.”
“No, he’s perfectly nice,” Cami says sincerely, with a smile and everything.
“And also a guy,” Bree adds.
“And I totally called it,” Sloan claims.
Bullshit. “You didn't call shit,” I dismiss her.
“How could you have possibly known he was into men?” Matt asks, sounding offended. A pang of guilt hits me right in the chest. I really should have talked to him about it more clearly.
“I mean, isn't everyone a little bit bi?” Sloan says matter-of-factly.
And all the curious minds in the room find a new target. “That's such a bi thing to say,” Bree points out. Because yeah…
“Sloan, are you a little bit bi?” I ask carefully.
She waves me off. “Don’t worry about it. Did Meena update you about the body we found in the forest?” she asks, transparently changing the topic. Huh, do I need to explore that? Or should I give her time to figure it out?
“Oh yeah, it was brought in the next day,” Marcus chimes in before I can decide whether I need to poke Sloan more. Guess her distraction game is solid. “Apparently, a forest ranger found the body before the Bureau agents could get to it.”
“That checks out. It would have been surprising if the Bureau had reached there in time,” Bree sighs.
“Sucks, though,” Sloan says.
It really does, but what can we do? “I’m sure it’s being investigated,” I say. Or at least it’s in the never-ending pipeline. “We have our own case to solve.”
Everyone scrambles to get back to work. We have a serial killer to find before my friends’ brains melt trying to understand my beautiful, sophisticated boards.
“So we’re currently trying to figure out where our killer is getting the drugs from. We’re compiling a list of suppliers, clinics, stores, and hospitals that keep Valmeron and Myocardiner to see if we can find some pattern,” I explain.
“We didn’t find a single person who might have known all the vics?” Sloan asks, squinting at the boards.
“No,” I point to the board. “There are only a couple of connections between them, and most of them are kind of a stretch. They don’t go to the same gym, hang out in the same places, share a workplace, or even run in similar circles.
It almost seems like a random murder spree, other than the fact that they’re all suspects of murders in the Bureau records,” I explain.
“Not in human records,” Matt raises an eyebrow that reminds me weirdly of Elliot.
I shake my head. “Their alleged victims' deaths were ruled as animal attack in all the cases.”
“Huh. So, it can be someone who has access to Bureau records? Maybe it’s their way of lightening our workload?” Sloan suggests.
“I did think of that. So, I checked every officer who was in the city around the time of the murders. Not a single one was here for all of them.”
“So maybe human police?” Marcus suggests.
“Thought about that, too. You know, when anyone checks a case file, it goes on the records, right? I checked who accessed the files of the alleged victims of our victims, no pattern. Some of them weren’t even opened around the time of the murders,” I explain.
Camilla nods. “I guess we’re looking at the list then.”
I nod. “We’re looking at the list.”