The Rogue Hunter's Mate [Paranormal Protection Unit 10] (Siren Publishing Classic) by Honor James

angry, he never yelled, and his range of emotions was pretty much from annoyed to bored with nothing in between. “Go away and watch the world do as it does, Goddess. I’m done with you and I pray you are finally done messing in my life.” Turning on the water in the shower, he let out an exhausted breath. He seriously had to get the new Hunter trained. He’d had enough of everything.

Chapter Seven
     
    Bethany looked at the painting before her and shook her head. “Crap.” Another dark image with Zaidu there in the background. Tossing her brushes down into the containers, she sighed. Standing, she began to pace, tugging her hair out of the braid that she had it in and running her hands through it in frustration. “Goodness, why in the world am I still painting him?” she asked.
    Walking from her room she painted in and into the kitchen, she was going to pour herself another glass of wine and realized she was out. “Well crap,” she muttered. “Now what.” Now she needed to go shopping. Damn she hated to shop. Stepping into her sneakers she tugged her wallet from her purse and grabbed her keys. Leaving a small lamp on in the foyer she walked into the hall, locked the doors, and headed down to the parking garage.
    Humming as she got off the elevator, she tried to refocus her brain, tried to put him out of her mind so that she could try to find a way to continue to live her life. Getting to her car she paused. “Oh God.” She felt sick. Her knees wobbled and she had to grab one of the support beams to keep upright. What she saw on the hood of her car made her sick. Patting her pants while keeping an eye on the dead body lying across her car she tried to find her phone, but came up without one.
    “Oh God,” she whispered again and turned to flee. Racing for the elevator, she punched the up key, praying as she did so. She prayed that whoever put the body on her car wasn’t still down there, prayed that security was in at their desk, and prayed, God help her she prayed, that the words written in blood on her car weren’t true. The “You are next, sister dear” had her wanting to throw up.
    Tears were falling freely from her eyes when she pushed out of the elevator and stumbled and tripped toward the security desk. Seeing the officer sitting there she blurted out, “There is a dead body on my car.” And with that she sank to her knees, sobbing as she did so.
     
    * * * *
     
    “We have a dead body in a parking garage,” Quincy reported as he continued to pull in other members of the Teams for other missions. “Talon wants you to check it out. He thinks it is a little too close to something that went down a couple years ago.”
    Getting his coffee from the server, he thanked her and turned. “Where?” he said into the phone as he headed for the door. When Quincy gave him the address he frowned. It sounded familiar for some reason. “I’m only about four blocks from there. What are we telling the locals?”
    “Special Agent with the FBI,” Quincy said, knowing that Z would have the ID on him as part of his roving work. “We gave them a heads-up that you were coming in to take a look because it sounded a little too familiar with a serial that we’ve been tracking. Which is true to an extent. Don’t give them too much but get what you can. Talon will be here in twenty and hopefully we can all do a call then and hear what you found out.”
    Going to his bike, Zaidu dug out the appropriate credentials and headed for the address. Since he’d just bought coffee he wasn’t ditching it and as it was only a couple of blocks, he’d walk. Which didn’t take him long but he did have to flash the creds to get through the police line. “All right, Q, I’m switching to comms,” he murmured before replacing the phone at his ear with the earpiece and slipped the phone into a pocket. “I’m heading into the parking structure so I may lose you. If I do, I’ll call you back when I come topside.”
    “Copy