Leopard 05 - Savage Nature

hostile.”
    Drake snorted. Remy had the photographs and he had to see them. Gritting his teeth, he righted himself. The lacerations along his ribs and across his belly burned like hell, but he’d sustained far worse injuries. No broken bones this time, only minor gashes and rips that would heal fast. His leopard blood would see to that.
    “Yours aren’t?” Jerico demanded, turning to face the detective. “I’ve never seen a lair like this one, not in all my travels. Drake could have killed all three of those men and maybe he should have. In the rain forest, men act without honor, there are consequences.”
    Joshua stiffened. “This lair has been without honor for a long time.”
    The Boudreaux brothers bristled, coming to their feet.
    Drake swung his feet to the floor, holding up his hand for silence as he waited for the room to quit spinning. “A lair needs strong leadership to control the leopards, all of us know that. And something else is going on here. I don’t know what, but I intend to get to the bottom of it. We all felt it out there in Fenton’s Marsh. We’re not turning on each other. The only people we can count on right now are the ones in this room.”
    “Sadly I have to agree with that,” Remy told his brothers. “Although I’d put my life on Gaston and Jules. Right now, however, I can’t risk it.” He handed the photographs to Drake.
    Saria had carefully catalogued each body, the wounds and the surrounding scene. The stab wound was the same each time, a straight puncture to the abdomen the victim had never seen coming. The knife hadn’t killed him. He’d been awake to see his attacker shift and probably look right into his eyes as he delivered the suffocating bite. The victim had to have been terrified.
    Drake looked up at Remy and saw the same understanding in his eyes. Whoever was killing these men had done so cruelly and deliberately, needing to see the life leave their bodies. A serial killer then. A shifter who enjoyed killing for the pleasure of it.
    “The crime scene almost looks as if two people went there together, had a couple of drinks and one killed the other.” Remy frowned as he studied one of the photographs. “You say you couldn’t find a hint of another male? A leopard or human?”
    “I picked up Saria’s scent, but nothing else,” Drake confirmed. “There was a strong scent of blood in the ground in several other places. I don’t think Saria found all the bodies. If I had to guess, maybe six.”
    Remy shook his head, his teeth snapping together as if he wanted to bite down hard on something. “This makes no sense. The wounds are almost exactly alike every time. The stab wound is very precise. It enables the killer to take the fight out of his victim fast and yet keep them alive to spend as much time as he wants terrorizing him—or her.”
    “This is the work of a leopard—a shifter,” Drake said heavily.
    Remy scrubbed his hand down his face as if removing something oily and thick. “I was so certain it was someone who couldn’t shift tryin’ to put blame on us.”
    “You didn’t want it to be a friend or neighbor.”
    Remy shook his head. “No, I didn’t, although I checked up on everyone. My brothers first.” He shot Saria a small smile. “You can stop feelin’ guilty for thinkin’ it might be one of us. I will admit, I doubted it, but I checked all the same.”
    “Great, bro,” Lojos said. “You didn’ tell me that.”
    “I didn’t think it was necessary. I’m a detective, Lojos, and I take my job seriously. The first thing I do is clear my family and then move on to a pool of suspects. Because I thought the women were killed by someone with shifter blood that couldn’t actually shift, the suspect pool was large. This narrows it down.”
    “Off the top of your head, Remy,” Drake said, “who would be your first suspect?”
    Remy’s gaze shifted just for a moment to Joshua and then he shook his head. “You know it doesn’ work that way.”
    “Sure it does,” Joshua said. “My grandfather was a monster. Why your leader didn’t take him down years ago, I have no idea, but he beat my grandmother continually and then started on his sons. You know why my mother left, right?” He dared Remy to state the reasons out loud.
    Remy frowned and shook his head. “I was gone for years. Most of us were. We only started hearing rumors about a daughter recently, and Saria met her in the swamp a time or two. Her name is Evangeline. We