Detective Crowley hadn't come alone, he'd brought two other officers with him, and though she was a little nervous, she tried holding it together.
"What can I do for you, Detective?" She asked in what she hoped came across as a pleasant voice.
Damien motioned for his officers to hold back, approaching Madison with long swift strides that ate up the ground. She hadn't noticed until that point how tall he really was. His height alone made him an intimidating man, but she remained partially reluctant to believe that beneath that roguishly handsome exterior hid a ruthless killer.
She decided to tread lightly either way.
"I have an arrest warrant for Keith Walker, or whatever the hell his name is," Damien replied gruffly, trying to hold onto his composure.
"For what this time?" Madison demanded, heading him off at the pass as he started in the direction of Keith's cottage.
Damien attempted to ignore her, but Madison stood her ground, refusing to let him by.
With a hand on his hip near his holster, Damien thrust the warrant in her direction. "Murder." He answered maliciously.
Madison's mouth fell open, the air rushing from her lungs as Damien shoved the warrant into her grasp and evaded her at the same time. "Murder?" She choked out, now following in his wake as he reached the back door of the cottage and began pounding on it.
"Keith Walker?" He shouted, ignoring a stunned Madison once she finally caught up.
The other two officers made their way over, prepared to subdue Madison if necessary. She gave them both a menacing glare and stepped between Damien and the door to the cottage.
"He isn't home." She spat, finding her voice once the initial shock wore off.
"Where is he? His truck's right there." Damien groused, pointing to the large Silverado that sat in the driveway.
Madison had to be quick on her feet. "He's riding the fence line."
Damien grumbled under his breath, nodding to his officers in the direction of the main house. "We'll wait inside with you then until he gets back if that's okay?"
"Fine."
With the warrant still in hand, Madison turned on her heel and marched toward the house, tempted to slam the door shut in their faces. Murder! Ha! Once inside, with a smile that looked like more of a snarl on her face, Madison motioned them to the table and walked into the kitchen busying herself by making coffee as she tried to come up with another plan.
What was she supposed to tell them in a couple of hours when Keith still hadn't surfaced? And what if they checked the barn and realized none of the horses were missing? She'd really jumped the gun this time!
"Do you want some coffee while you wait?" She asked more graciously, stalling for time as her thoughts ran a mile a minute, scrambling to come up with some way to get rid of them.
The two deputies accepted her offer readily, but Damien declined, looking around the kitchen and what little else he could see of the house while he waited.
Madison fixed herself a mug and sat down at the table with them, hoping to seem a little more cheerful as she tried to wheedle information out of Damien.
"Can I ask why you assume Keith did this reprehensible thing you're accusing him of?"
Damien stayed silent for a moment, the two officers with him lost in their cell phones. Madison figured he wouldn't answer her, but then he looked at her, and the smug little smirk on his face gave him away. The arrogant bastard was dying to get something off his chest.
"Oh, I've been hunting Mr. Walker for some time now." He eventually answered.
Madison gulped. Keith's theory becoming a little more believable by the minute.
"I'm not actually supposed to talk about this, but, what the hell, it's only fair, Ms. Adams, that you understand what kind of man your father hired." He boasted, making himself more comfortable by leaning back in his chair. "I didn't arrest Mr. Walker yesterday for simple fraud, I picked him up on the suspicion of murder, the fraud charges were only the sticking point until I proved he murdered that girl."
"And now you have proof?" She asked wearily, wanting so badly to trust in Keith's innocence, and hoping to God he hadn't murdered that girl in New York the other night.
"No," Damien admitted begrudgingly. "Not for the first girl anyway, Walker had an alibi, but I'm positive he's involved in it somehow, and when I connect the two, you can bet I'll make sure he goes down for it... but the murder from last night, well, that's a different story, I have ample evidence to..."
"Wait..." Madison butted in, holding up a hand. "What do you mean last night?"
Damien gave her a curious glance, and the two officers stopped dallying with their social media apps long enough to pay her mind as well. "I have evidence that puts Walker at the scene of a murder last night." He said cautiously.
"That's impossible, he's been here all night."
In one quick fluid motion, Damien pushed back from the table, the chair clattering to the floor as he leaned into Madison's face. "You want to run that by me again?"
"I'd rather show you." She replied, her voice laced with steel. She didn't particularly like the fact that the detective's face got within a scant few inches from her own. She smelled his cologne, and though he didn't exactly broadcast his emotions the way Keith did, she noticed he was angry. Almost like a small glimpse of what Keith had described to her.
She found a madness in his eyes. He buried it deep, but a glimmer of it rose to the surface when she'd challenged him. Damien didn't like being wrong about his instincts, and Madison saw now how dangerous he would be if he understood the truth.
Hoping that Keith had stayed put, Madison asked the officers to wait in the kitchen, and led Damien down the stairs into the basement, opening the door to the powder room.
"What the hell is this?" He barked, backing up a step as she walked inside.
Madison didn't answer, she threw a fleeting smile over her shoulder and began moving the panels aside. She heard Damien's quick intake of breath before the heel of his boots clicked on the bathroom tile behind her.
"Why wasn't this listed on the blueprints?"
Madison shrugged, walking into the safe room and heading for the monitor on the left, "We're allowed to have a panic room, aren't we?"
"How convenient." He rasped, watching the monitor as Madison began to rewind the tapes. "And I suppose you didn't tell us about this room during the search for a reason? Perhaps you were hiding something in here, or you simply didn't want us to view the tapes?" He prattled on, turning his attention to the monitor on the right that showed footage of the barns and cottage.
"I guess you'll never know, now will you?" She retorted, tired of his relentless accusations. She realized Keith had done some less than pure things, but a murderer he was not. At least, she seemed pretty sure he wasn't.
Damien scoffed. "Are there any other secret rooms in this house?"
Having rewound the footage to earlier in the day when Keith had first gotten home from the police station, Madison stopped, facing him. "I'm sorry, do you have a warrant to search the property?" She asked snarkily.
"I can get one."
Rolling her eyes, she turned her attention back to the monitor behind her, "Good luck with that."
Damien watched in utter dismay as Madison slowly fast-forwarded the tape.
The time stamp showed clear as day at the top left of the screen. He saw Keith walking in through the utility room and down the stairs to the basement. A few hours later they both emerged from downstairs and headed into the kitchen. Hours went by, Keith and Madison sat down at the table, ate, one or both got up and paced. They talked animatedly to each other. But Keith stayed there, all night, and well into the morning.
Madison stopped the tape when Keith took her wrist in his hand. "Satisfied?" she practically gloated.
Damien remained quiet for a moment contemplating. "Can you make me a copy of this?"
"Sure."
Madison carefully copied only what she'd already shown him, uploading it into an email and forwarding it to the address he gave her. His voice sounded clipped, his answer short. Damien didn't seem pleased, and it showed.
Not bothering to put the panels back in place, Madison quickly followed him out of the safe room and back into the kitchen where he addressed his officers and ushered them outside without so much as an explanation as to why they were leaving without their perp in custody. The officers looked baffled, exchanging confused glances before giving Madison a thorough once over.
The way their eyes roamed her body almost made her feel dirty, she hoped to God they didn't assume she'd done something untoward with the Detective in their absence. Intent on following them out the rest of the way, Madison saw the warrant lying on the counter and grabbed it before rushing out the door.
She caught up with Damien right before he got into his truck.
"Detective Crowley!" She called out. "You forgot this."
Damien reached for the papers, and noticing the marks on her wrist, turned her hand to get a better look. "What's that?" He inquired.
Madison sneered at him, ripping her hand from his grasp and pressing her arm tightly against her side. "It's nothing. One of the dogs bit me."
Damien glowered, but said nothing at first, getting into his truck and closing the door. "You should be more careful." He told her through the window. His voice eerily flat.
The way he said it made the little hairs on the back of Madison's neck stand on end. She watched him back out of the driveway, a little unnerved by her encounter, and once he was out of sight, she hot-footed it back inside and into the basement to spring Keith from his hiding place.
Cybil slammed the door shut behind her, rattling the cheap paintings on the wall. Sean chuckled, he didn't need to see the scowl on her face to realize that things still weren't going her way. She had a stupid plan, to begin with, the only reason he'd gone along with it at all was that she'd finally allowed him to kill someone, and to feed again. He wasn't a dog though and grew tired of the leftover scraps.
They'd raided a couple of blood banks after arriving in the area and setting up camp, but it didn't take long for them to run out. While he usually only needed to feed once or twice a month, Cybil's appetite had been increasing regularly, frankly, it worried him. She had to choke down a pint of butcher's blood four or five times a week lately simply to quell the urge.
Of course, it'd become a point of contention for Cybil, something they couldn't even talk about for more than two minutes without her trying to verbally rip his head off. She'd always end the conversation with "That's why Keith is so bloody important!"
Right, because their history together had nothing to do with it.
Cybil hadn't come to America alone, she'd brought with her, three men and two other women. Her 'pack,' as she called them. And Sean had sort of bonded with Martin, her right-hand man for all intents and purposes. Before settling down in this shit hole, Sean and Martin hunted the clubs together, bringing back food for the rest of the group.
During one of those hunts Martin, who could only be described as the infamous tall, dark, and handsome type, filled him in on the reasons why Cybil spent so much time looking for this particular scientist, to begin with. Martin had been aware of Cybil's first mate, being as it was his brother, and he knew about her children, her life, her lineage as well. Martin also understood the relationship she'd had with the man she came back to America to track down.
She might tout the lie that she only wanted him in matters related to her growing thirst, but Martin, who never particularly liked the guy, didn't appear shy when it came to talking about how much Cybil had doted on Keith, how much he'd meant to her, and that she'd created him to be her mate before having to flee from the hunter on her trail. He only hoped now that it would be too late to rebuild that bridge.
Cybil might find some way to convince him to help her with her bloodlust, but considering she'd killed his mother, for whatever reasons, noble or not, and had abandoned him once she'd gotten what she'd wanted, Sean suspected that it wouldn't be as easy to force Keith back into bed with her.
Especially not now.
Lee seemed to think that Keith and this woman, Madison, might be rather chummy, and Lee hadn't been wrong about any of her intel yet. Imagining it made him all warm inside. Maybe he didn't love Cybil, hell, he wasn't even sure he knew what love was, but she had a banging body, she was amazing in bed, and her quick temper made for some really interesting entertainment value. He definitely didn't want to share her with anyone else.
The other four members of her pack, excluding Martin, whom she'd never been intimate with, were couples, and whether people wanted to believe it or not, most vampires weren't into swinging with each other, they usually mated for life, unless, of course, like in Cybil's case, one died.
Cybil might have liked a good threesome now and then with a random stranger they'd brought home for dinner, but that was more or less her simply playing with her food. Sean suspected Cybil didn't engage in sexual activities with more than one partner at a time. She didn't seem like that kind of girl.
Which meant that if she ever got her claws back into Keith, Sean would probably become nothing more than her cast off, she might even kick him out of the pack. Hell, she'd have to. Sean considered himself an alpha, he'd never let another man take his mate without a challenge, and Keith, well, he sure didn't seem like much of a fighter.
Cybil threw her trench coat onto the back of the couch and strode, gloriously naked, into the bedroom, letting out a frustrated sigh as she passed. Sean couldn't help but gloat, if it weren't for that viper's tongue of hers, he'd probably even rub it in her face.
He told her from the start that her plan was full of gaping holes. Her idea to find someone on the inside remained about the only part of it that made sense, and it didn't hurt of course, that Lee was pleasant to look at. Working for the police station, Lee made it possible to keep tabs on Damien and the progression of his case, she also served well to get information to Damien without suspicion.
Like that little snippet about Keith's identity being fake.
Lee proved equally helpful when it came to keeping an eye on the whereabouts of Keith. Cybil hadn't had much trouble sneaking through the woods, but she hadn't been able to get close enough to the ranch to really sleuth without all those damn dogs sounding the alarm, so, having an undercover that just so happened to be best friends with one of the ranch hands, became a definite plus.
Women loved to gossip after all.
And what had it cost them? Nothing so far.
Lee knew what they were, she was enthralled by them, she wanted to be them. If only she realized how dangerous her infatuation really was. They didn't plan on killing her or anything, leaving a trail of bodies for no reason, especially innocent ones, wasn't usually part of Cybil's repertoire, but turning Lee, and releasing her back into the care of a hunter, probably wouldn't be the smartest thing either.
Especially considering how quickly Cybil's plan seemed to be escalating these past few days, even if it hadn't exactly been going the way she wanted it to. Detective Crowley looked to be on the verge of breaking through, Cybil had said as much, he simply needed a little more coaxing.
Sean had no idea what that actually meant, he'd been with Cybil and her pack for the last seven years, and in that time, while they may have killed a few sleepers, they'd never come across an active hunter. Sean didn't understand exactly how dangerous they were, he had only what Cybil and Martin had told him to go off of.
But my how he'd enjoyed watching Cybil drain and truss up those ignorant hunters they'd met along the way. She acted like a she-wolf protecting her cubs, ripping them limb from limb. She never did share though, she called it her personal mission to rid the world of hunters. She didn't bother giving them a chance either, a teacher, a dentist, hell, one of them had even been a garbage man! Didn't matter to Cybil, they had potential, and they needed to be snuffed out.
Until now.
The plan was to activate Damien, to bring out his true nature and focus all of his attention on Keith so Cybil could swoop in to save the day. Of course, it also involved isolating Keith from those around him, people like Robert who would have protected him. Even if it meant labeling him a killer, she didn't care, she'd planned to whisk him back to Italy with her once she'd disposed of the hunter, so what did it matter if she soiled his name here in the states in the process?
They hadn't counted on Madison though.
Sean tracked Keith's movements, found out who his recent donors were, and Cybil convinced them all to report their attacks to the police once she'd learned they had a hunter in their ranks. They really should have counted their lucky stars there, had it not been for Damien, the plan would have been a full-on kidnapping effort, and with Martin and the rest of her pack back in Italy, it wouldn't have been easy for only the two of them.
But things got complicated when the investigation went south. Robert kept getting in the way, Keith always seemed to have an alibi. That's when Sean started getting cozy with Lee, his hot little double agent. He'd been tempted a time or two to turn her himself, run away with her and never look back. A real sweet young thing, highly corruptible, and she had legs for miles. The idea of living without Cybil though proved to be too much in the end.
Seeing as things had yet to go as planned where Keith and Damien were concerned, he still had hope for the two of them. Damien was stonewalled at every turn. Keith somehow always managed to come up with an alibi, little miss Madison taking up exactly where her father had left off, and Lee said the FBI was in on the case now too, trying to force Damien to back off.
Judging by Cybil's pissy mood, Keith, and his pal Madison had probably found a way to explain away the latest evidence too. He'd told Cybil it wasn't strong enough, but did she listen to him? Nope. She always had to learn things the hard way. If she'd only listened to him the first time around and allowed him to dispose of Kieri's body on Keith's property, they probably wouldn't be in this predicament now.
"Have you talked to Lee today?" Cybil demanded as she came into the room wearing a robe, her hair dripping from the shower.
She smelled like soap and wet dog, a combination he found surprisingly seductive. Sean always loved her scent after a transition, it probably had something to do with the lingering lycan DNA in his own genetic makeup, but Cybil couldn't stand it, she insisted on washing herself two or three times afterward until the odor dissipated.
Sean shook his head, his nostrils flaring as she got closer. Like some exotic perfume that only he picked up on.
"So what are you waiting for?" She asked, hands on her hips standing before him. "Call her and find out what the hell happened!"
"Weren't you there?"
"No, of course not. I simply go traipsing around town in my trench coat for no reason! Don't be so bloody stupid, Sean. I watched the detective pull up, and that woman..."
"Madison?" He supplied with a snicker.
Cybil glowered, her eyes shooting daggers at him. "Whatever. She told them he'd gone out riding the fence which was a lie, I saw him from the window only moments before, and they went inside together and came out half an hour later when the detective left. I didn't hear what she said to him, but he seemed angry. I want to know what happened, I want to know why they didn't arrest Keith!"
"Probably because your plan sucks, did you ever consider that?"
Cybil huffed like a petulant child and turned on her heel, "Just call her." She snapped over her shoulder.
Sean rolled his eyes, grumbling under his breath as he strolled into the kitchen to grab his phone off the counter where he'd left it.
Cybil reemerged seconds later, her mood shifting faster than the changing tides. "Better yet," She called from the doorway to the bedroom, her robe askew, hanging half off her body and exposing a bare breast. "Why don't you invite her over for dinner? It's high time we had a little fun around here, don't you agree?"
Sean's smile became deliciously evil, he sent Lee a text, closing the distance between them. Cybil waited until he was barely out of reach, taking a step back for each one he took forward, his fingers skimming the opening of her robe.
She came up against the side of the bed, shrugging out of her robe while he continued to bear down on her. His phone buzzed as he managed to fill his palm with the weight of one breast, using his fingers to tweak her nipple.
"She said she gets off in half an hour and she'll come right over." He purred, tossing the phone into a nearby chair.
Sean leaned Cybil back over his arm so that her breasts thrust upward, greedily pulling one into his mouth and lavishing her with his tongue.
Cybil moaned, "Wonderful. Tonight, my love, tonight we feast." She said huskily as he came down on top of her, pressing her into the mattress.
Sean took a minute to bask in the glory that was Cybil's nakedness, shivering with excitement as he undressed and imagined what the rest of the night might bring. Whatever he put up with, from her crappy attitude to her unrealistic demands, it all seemed worth it in the end when she took off her clothes and embraced him with her sexuality.
She had been right about one thing though, tonight, he would definitely feast.