Dragonfury 01 - Fury of Fire

kitchen, Mac hit his haunches at the opposite end of the island. A muscle jumped in his jaw as he met her gaze over the top of Caroline’s body. “I think they belong to Myst Munroe, our missing nurse.”
    “Um-hmm.” Picking up a discarded cell phone, she flipped it open. Yup, it belonged to the nurse. “Wrong place, wrong time?”
    “Maybe.” He tipped his chin toward their vic. “That’s precision cutting…surgical, clean, no hesitation marks. Need a lot of training to do that.”
    “So, what are you thinking? Black-market baby?” Angela hoped not. The monster killing young women was enough for any duo to handle. That someone might have sliced up a woman to take her baby? Yeah, she wasn’t going there until the evidence forced her to. Her eyes narrowed, she scrolled through the nurse’s phone, looking at the history. “Got a nine-one-one call.”
    “A hang up?”
    Angela shook her head. “Two minutes and twenty-seven seconds.”
    Mac’s eyes narrowed as he stood to take the iPhone out of his front pocket. “I’ll get the recording. And a BOLO out on Munroe’s car.”
    “Get a warrant, too…for her place, financials. Everything.” Angela snapped the cell phone closed and reached for the tag on the medical bag lying open beside the victim. With a flick, she flipped the name out and…what do you know? Myst Munroe was printed on the face in neat block letters, address included.
    Yes, indeedie. Something smelled rotten in Bumpkinville.
    And Angela’s gut told her that Ms. Munroe was up to her eyeballs in it.

Chapter Fourteen
     
    Myst woke up in a strange bed. Naked.
    Alarm bells—the kind that killed brain cells—went off inside her head, shutting down her ability to breathe properly. As her choppy breaths grew louder, adrenaline joined the fun, ramping her heartbeat into catastrophic territory. She swallowed, forcing herself to focus. Yeah, a functioning brain would be good right about now. Maybe then she could figure out whose bed she’d face-planted in.
    And where her clothes had gone.
    Rubbing her eyes, she ransacked her memory, trying to remember the hows and whys. Nothing but fog came…and the shriek of panic.
    Double-fisting the down duvet, she forced herself to breathe in and out—in then out—and turned her head on the pillow. Her vision stayed blurry a second then…
    Thank God. She was alone.
    Good news all the way around, but even better? The neighboring pillowcase was smooth, the pillow without a dent from oh, say, a head. Which meant, she’d crawled in by herself and stayed that way since landing, well, here. In the middle of a strange bed…that no doubt belonged to a strange guy.
    She rubbed her forehead, struggling to remember. The missing piece was…right there. On the tip of her brain, but no matter how hard she stretched, she couldn’t reach it.
    “Okay…relax and think,” she said to herself.
    Which, in hindsight, was a bad idea, because upon that instruction an awful thought popped into her head. While it banged around in there, Myst swallowed hard. Had she been…been…God, she didn’t want to say the r-word, but she couldn’t shake the horrible suspicion. Her big mind blank could be drug induced. Rohypnol was a powerhouse narcotic, one that wiped memory clean with wide, ugly brush strokes.
    Myst should know. She’d had a patient or two come into the ER looking lost and empty-eyed the morning after being slipped Roofies at a bar.
    All right. Breathe.
    That was an awfully big assumption. Huge, really, without proof. So, first things first…eliminate every other possibility.
    Myst pushed up onto her elbows. A narrow wedge of light streamed across the carpet, coming from an open door to the left of the bed. A bathroom, maybe? Seemed like a good guess, particularly since a second door was closed tight on the other side of the room. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, shadowed shapes formed: a dresser against the far wall, a bench at the end of the bed, a wide window behind tightly drawn shades.
    But better than the semi-lit, somewhat sketchy decor? She really was alone…100 percent by herself. No one was sitting in the wide-backed armchairs in front of the window or lurking in dark corners or leaning against the wall across from the bed.
    Relief hit her so hard she jackknifed into a sitting position. Blankets clutched to her chest, she took her investigation one step further. As she curled her legs underneath her she paid close attention. She and sex