Under Wraps by Hannah Jayne

against the soft cotton of his undershirt. He pushed my palm flat, his hand over mine.
    I resisted the urge to ogle. His chest was firm and taut and wonderful, and his heart thumped underneath my palm—warm—and very much alive.
    “So you’re not dead,” I said, trying to squelch down my giddy goose bumps and control the tone of my voice.
    Hayes’s voice was thin, his eyes big, terrified. “Then what am I?”
    “A big girl.”
    Hayes’s eyes flashed and I sighed. “You can get down as a normal person—Nina calls ‘em breathers—if someone who can go down sends you down. They’re able to temporarily loosen the veil on the breathers.” I went back to stabbing at my salad, and glanced through my lowered lashes to see a look of utter relief flood across Hayes’s face—and then he panicked again.
    “The chief is a demon?” he asked. “Is that how he knows Sampson?”
    “I don’t know if the chief is a demon,” I said, mouth full of salad. “He and Sampson met in college, just before Sampson was bitten. They were college roommates.”
    Hayes’s eyebrows rose expectantly.
    “Sampson was bitten and changed into a werewolf in college. Now, can we just have lunch and then get to work? The sooner we crack this case, the sooner you can be done with the Underworld and go back to believing that the things that go bump in the night are just harmless human rapists, sadists, and murderers.”
    “That’s all I ask,” Hayes said, sipping his coffee again.

Chapter Five
     
    After lunch at the diner, we headed back to the police station. Hayes handed me a Styrofoam cup filled with horrible coffee, drank his down in one gulp, and told me to hold steady.
    “I’m going to go grab our files from downstairs. Can I get you another cup?” He gestured toward my still-full cup, and I wagged my head, forced a small gulp just to be polite. When he left I dropped the greasy mess into the trash can and shuddered.
    I was making myself comfortable in a cracked pleather chair in the police department conference room when Hayes came in, carrying a groaning cardboard box packed with file folders.
    “This is all we’ve got on the case so far,” he said, dropping the box with a thud.
    “Looks like a lot.”
    “Looks like a haystack.” Hayes nudged the box. “It’s our job to go through here and figure out what’s pertinent and what’s not, what’s part of the case, what’s helpful, etcetera, etcetera. But”—he reached into the box and extracted a grease-soaked white pastry bag—“I did bring dessert.” He shook the bag with a grin.
    I smiled. A man with a heartbeat, a chiseled chest, and a penchant for sweets? Sophie Lawson hits the jackpot.
    “Well, aren’t you the gentleman?” I said in my best attempt at sultry.
    “I am. But the jelly-filled one is mine.”
    Hayes reached into the bag, extracted a sticky, glazed concoction, and stuffed the entire donut into his mouth, chomping down. I quickly shoved the file box aside, just in time to avoid a splat of blueberry jam as it dribbled from his chin and dropped onto the table.
    “Be still my heart,” I said, feeling instantly sticky.
    Hayes sat down next to me. “Try your best not to fall in love with me.” He pushed the bag toward me as he chewed. “Donut?”
    I picked out a pink-sprinkled one and tried my best to nibble daintily.
    “Pink sprinkles. I totally had you pegged,” Hayes said, smiling down at the table.
    I rolled my eyes, shoved the rest of the donut into my mouth, and dug into the file box.
    “Interesting,” was the only thing I could think of to say as I sifted through the first overstuffed folder. I pulled out a few yellowed newspaper clippings, some crime-scene photos, a Starbucks receipt, and a GO WITH GAVIN bumper sticker. “Don’t you guys have any organizational system?”
    “Yeah,” Hayes said, gesturing toward the ragged box. “Put. In. Box.” He dipped his pincher fingers into the pastry bag. “Do you mind if I have