Staring at her face in the mirror wasn’t going to provide her with the answers. Not when Maria didn’t know what the questions were. It was the same face it had always been. Thinner and marked by the brutality of the Cage Killer, but her own wide, gold-colored eyes and delicate features gazed back at her. The once-luscious mass of white-blond hair was missing, of course. There was only a faint trace of silvery stubble on her head where it had been. In contrast, her eyelashes were dark, her brows twin black arches with a slight upward slant. It was a face that had always gotten her attention, often for her unusual coloring.
Do I look like a werewolf?
She tilted her head to one side. Her nose and chin were too sharp to be called pretty and her mouth was wide and generous. Put them together and people called her face beautiful or striking. Her body was lean and lithe. She had been blessed with a metabolism that meant she could eat anything and not gain weight.
She laughed. Blessed? It doesn’t matter what I look like. I am a werewolf.
What the hell was she supposed to do with that information? She was aware that Madden had been watching her as she absorbed the details of the test results. She knew he had been waiting to offer her support, but she had held back from accepting it. I’m not ready to accept any of this. Not yet.
If she had turned to Madden in that instant, taken the comfort he was waiting to offer, she’d have collapsed into his arms. When they’d kissed, it had been the sweetest thing Maria had ever known. If it happened again, she didn’t want it to be because Madden thought he had found a new girl wolf to play with.
She winced at the trend of her thoughts. She had no idea how these things worked. In imagining that Madden wanted to mate with her she might be getting ahead of herself. He might already have a mate in his wolf life. He might have several. The details of Madden’s sex life probably shouldn’t be the thing that was uppermost in her mind in all of this.
There were other things she should be asking. Like how the hell did I get to the age of twenty-seven without noticing this about myself? What do I do next? Can I just ignore this? Do I want to?
As well as her new werewolf identity, there were other changes to consider. Changes that ran as deep, and were just as radical. Outwardly, she was shrugging off the signs of her ordeal. Inwardly? She was no longer the same person she had been when had responded to her name being called that day on the gallery steps. No matter how much she told herself she wasn’t going to let the Cage Killer ruin it, he had altered her life. It was up to her to decide how she would let it change her. She could become reclusive and embittered. Or she could emerge from the experience stronger. Maria knew what her preference would be.
She guessed the horror of her ordeal would fade in time, but she felt angry that there would never be a day when she didn’t think of him. He would always claim a part of her life. Whatever the future held for her, he would overshadow it. Love, marriage, children. If those things came her way—and she passionately hoped they would—there would always be a tiny corner of her mind that was shut off from those she loved. A tiny bit of her that he owned. And she would always have to fight to make sure that part didn’t grow and become out of control.
A knock on the bedroom door interrupted the increasingly frantic spiral of her thoughts and she went to answer it. Madden was there with Lowell. “Can we come in?”
Maria stepped aside to let them step across the threshold. The room immediately grew smaller as the two muscular Arctic werewolves dominated the space. There was a sofa positioned beneath the window and Madden indicated for Maria to sit there with him. Lowell sat on the edge of the bed.
“Lowell is an expert on werewolf history and folklore,” Madden explained. “When the issue of your test results came up, I asked him to research whether it was possible for a werewolf to be unaware of his or her status. I also asked him to find out if it had ever happened before.”
“Before Madden asked me about this, I’d have said it was impossible,” Lowell said. “I’d have believed the urge to shift into wolf form was too strong to be ignored, particularly once puberty was reached.”
“Would have believed?” Maria repeated. “That sounds like you no longer believe it.”
“That’s right. During my research, I came across the case of a medieval werewolf known only as Tumbolt. When he was born, his peasant parents were given a sum of money in exchange for their son. Tumbolt was taken from them to live in the palace and be reared by the kindly duchess who reigned over the neighboring counties. To prevent Tumbolt from shifting, the duchess gave orders that he must never see the full moon. The windows of his room were covered with blackened cloth and, to make doubly sure, he was not allowed to ride out during the hours of darkness. Tumbolt grew to manhood in blissful ignorance of his lycanthropic state.”
“What happened to him?” Maria asked.
Lowell smiled. “As with all good stories, these things never go to plan. One day, the duchess fell ill and Tumbolt, fearful that his kind benefactor might die, decided to ride out and seek help from the village wise woman. It was night and, you’ve guessed it, the moon was full. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.”
“It sounds like a fairy story,” Madden said.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Lowell nodded his agreement. “But Tumbolt existed. He was a duke who ruled a small kingdom in what is now Germany, and there are many well-documented stories that suggest he really was a werewolf.”
“How does Tumbolt’s story relate to mine?” Maria asked.
“It’s the sensory deprivation part that is important.” Lowell turned his attention fully back to her. “The duchess controlled Tumbolt’s inclination to shift by depriving him of the stimulus. She hid the full moon from him. I don’t know the result of your test results, Maria—”
“I am a werewolf.” There was no point in hiding it.
Lowell nodded. “Then, given your coloring, you are an Arctic werewolf. You are, like Madden and myself, one of the rare breed of werewolves whose stimulus for shifting is not the full moon. It is the midnight sun.” He leaned forward, a passionate glow in his eyes. “Have you ever allowed the midnight sun to warm your body?”
Maria swallowed. “I live in Anchorage. I join in with the solstice traditions every year.”
“Were you born in Anchorage?” Madden’s eyes were on her profile.
“I don’t know where I was born,” she confessed, turning to face him. “My real parents abandoned me in a train station restroom. I was adopted by the couple I grew up with. As I was growing up, we never traveled far from Anchorage. My parents were an older couple and my father wasn’t in the best of health, so our vacations were always camping trips close to home in case he needed to see a doctor. Since they died, I’ve been too busy with the gallery to travel.”
“Living in Anchorage probably created the perfect conditions for you to grow up not knowing you were an Arctic werewolf,” Lowell said. “It’s close enough to the Arctic Circle and the midnight sun to nourish you, but not close enough to trigger your werewolf instincts. If you had traveled farther north, you might have felt the urge to shift. Had you gone farther south at any time in your life, you’d have struggled with the climate and the loss of the Arctic influence and become ill.”
“So my parents inadvertently did to me what the duchess did to Tumbolt?”
“It looks that way,” Lowell said.
Maria turned her eyes to the window. She was in Fairbanks. Three hundred and fifty miles north of her home. She was closer to the Arctic Circle. It was summer, so it was light here almost twenty-four hours a day. There were other lands that could more accurately claim the title of the land of the midnight sun, but she understood why Madden and his friends chose to call this place home. She felt a tingle of excitement building within her, a desire to know more about the point at which sunrise and sunset met.
“Our former leader, Gunnar, used to tell us that you don’t choose the midnight sun.” Madden’s voice held a depth of emotion that surprised her. “It chooses you.”
Her lips quirked into a smile. “It seems to have chosen me without my knowledge.” She smiled at Lowell. “Thank you for telling me. It helps to make sense of it all.”
He rose. “Happy to be of help.” With a wave of his hand, went out, leaving her alone with Madden.
“Will you take a walk with me at midnight?” Madden’s smile was irresistible. “I promise not to bite.”
The words sent a tremor of something decadent thrumming through Maria’s body. Unable to speak, she nodded. How could she have gone from the decision to keep him at arm’s length to a quivering mass of longing in such a short space of time? She didn’t know . . . and, more importantly, she no longer cared.
* * *
Being in charge of a statewide team was a logistical nightmare. Theoretically, Madden had the necessary resources to run an investigation of this type. When the Cage Killer struck, the plan was for the Alaskan Frontier Force to travel to the area and call on the local force to provide any additional manpower they needed. For a variety of reasons, things didn’t always work out that way. Madden didn’t have time for the petty jealousies and point scoring that sometimes went on within policing. Often, it wasn’t that simple. Lack of resources, geography, communication issues in rural locations . . . all of these impacted on his ability to swoop in and make a swift impact on the case.
In terms of managing his team, he relied on video calls for updates. As he prepared for the latest call, he made notes about Maria’s most recent revelation. The mystery presence she had felt during her captivity could have been a figment of her imagination. Then again, he, or she, might have been real. Madden didn’t believe there was another victim in that weird cave-basement setup. They had found no forensic evidence to indicate that anyone other than Maria had ever been held there.
If he accepted that someone—or, as Maria had suggested, something—had been present while she was imprisoned, he had to try and unpick why. What was the reason for that other being’s attendance at her incarceration? The human capacity for evil never ceased to amaze him. A number of reasons presented themselves. Amusement? Sexual gratification? A shared interest in torture and murder? As shocking as those things might seem, Madden had seen many things during his time as a police officer and he was ruling nothing out.
Since they hadn’t found evidence of another presence in the caves, Madden couldn’t think of any way of discovering whether that shadowy individual had been a feature of the other murders. He ran a hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration. Maria’s disclosure had added another layer to the case rather than helping to solve it.
He faced a dilemma. Should he mention this latest development to his team? He got a sense that Maria was already viewed as an unreliable witness by several of his officers. It wasn’t surprising. No one who had undergone the sort of trauma Maria had could be expected to have total recall of events. Madden had to repeatedly ask himself if she actually did. When he was with her, he had no question about her clarity. When he was away from her? That was when the doubts crept in.
None of his officers had the benefit of the same extensive immersion in Maria’s company that he had. He didn’t want to waste valuable time explaining why they should trust his word on this. Damn it, he would be asking them to trust his feelings on this.
No, he decided he wouldn’t mention this new information. Not yet. It wasn’t fully formed enough to be of use. Instead he would talk about how he wanted to take the case back to basics. Start looking at each murder again in detail. They must be missing a common denominator, something simple. He didn’t know what it was, but they had to keep plowing on until they found it. Or until he strikes again. The voice at the back of his mind refused to be silenced.
The briefing took the same format as always. Each partnership fed back their findings from the last few days. Closed-circuit television images from the hospital showed a man prowling the grounds just prior to the intruder getting into Maria’s room. They were working on getting the images enhanced. A forensic artist would be coming out to work with Maria on producing a sketch of the suspect. He was hopeful that, together with the images from the hospital, they might finally have a face with which they could go public.
“I want to take a fresh look at each case. Let’s go right back to the start.” Madden flipped through his notes as he opened the meeting. “With Maria, we have thirteen victims. The first was David Barnes. He went missing from his home in Ketchikan eighteen months ago. We found his body ten days later when I got a call from the Cage Killer giving me the details of the location. The cage was in a disused mine shaft. Barnes was the southernmost victim. Age thirty-five and single, he ran a coffee shop in the art district.”
“There are similarities with Maria. She is single and she runs her own business.” Rick Tyler, one of the detectives based in Anchorage, pointed out.
“That’s the sort of connection I want you to look out for. Anything that can link these victims together, or connect them to the killer. They didn’t live close to each other, but did they use the same website designer, accountant, any other services that might have brought them into contact with the same person?”
“But the next victim, Kristie Eden, was only eight-years-old. She didn’t have an accountant.” Callie Monroe’s pedantic voice acted like a bucket of ice water thrown over any optimism that may have begun to rise within them.
“We are looking for any link. Something we could have overlooked the first time. A mobile salesperson who sold them all the same type of cleaning product. I don’t know . . .” Madden ran a frustrated hand through his hair. “Maybe they all had a craving for the same chocolate-coated peanuts from one specific place. I’ve got a feeling it will be simpler than that. Let’s do whatever it takes to nail this guy.”
He signed off to the background chatter of his team arguing over the best places to get chocolate-coated peanuts. Madden glanced at the clock. The forensic artist was due any minute to work with Maria on the sketch of the suspect.
We are missing something simple. He was sure of it. Until they found it, the killer was going to stay one step ahead of them.
* * *
“He looks ordinary.” Madden viewed the forensic artist’s sketch with frustration. The guy it depicted could have been anyone. Boy next door. Favorite uncle. The guy who advertised the leading brand of soap. He had a pleasant, forgettable face.
“He was ordinary,” Maria said, her own voice dispirited. “The most unremarkable, uninteresting person you could imagine.”
“What we’re aiming for is a good composite sketch, based on all the information Maria has given me.” The artist, who had been sitting behind an easel, rose and held out his hand to Madden. “Redmond Wilkes. This is an exclusionary tool. Something that will tell us who we are not looking for. But we are also trying to tap in to the recognition of others, to make someone sit up and take notice. We want to catch the eye of that one person who will say ‘That looks a lot like . . .’”
“This looks like almost anyone,” Madden said.
“It doesn’t look like a tattooed Hell’s Angel, does it? So, if someone comes forward with a suspect who is a member of a biker gang, you need to consider whether pursuing that lead is a useful deployment of your resources.”
Madden decided he didn’t like Redmond Wilkes. He wasn’t entirely sure what it was about the other man. Maybe it was the pompous, slightly lecturing tone he adopted when he told Madden how to do his job. Possibly, it was the way he leaned a little too close to Maria as he said goodbye. Either way, he was glad to close the door on the other man’s departing back.
When he returned to Maria, she was regarding the picture with an expression of dismay. “The features and the coloring are right, but it just doesn’t capture anything about him.” She raised her eyes to Madden’s face. “If only I could draw him myself, I’m sure I could do a better job of catching the nuances of his expressions.”
“In a day or two those dressings are coming off. It’s possible you’ll be able to use your right hand then.”
She didn’t look hopeful. “Maybe.”
“In the meantime, do you feel up to getting some fresh air?”
Maria cast a thoughtful glance in his direction. “I thought we were going to do that at midnight?”
“You look like you could use a change of scene. I know I could.” It was always the same. Too much time spent trying to get inside the head of the Cage Killer always made him a little stir crazy.
They followed a trail away from the elegant landscaping of Lowell’s gardens. Although Madden was careful to watch Maria for signs of fatigue, she matched his pace as they followed unusual geologic formations created when molten rock had been forced upward from the deeper layers of the earth. After cooling and hardening close to the surface, these granite pillars were stark and unmistakable.
Pine trees topped the hillside above the imposing rocks and blueberry bushes grew in abundance along the sides of the rough path they followed.
“I love blueberries,” Maria said. “Can we come back with a basket another time and gather some?”
“Only if we also come back with a gun or with me in wolf form.” She raised questioning brows. “Bears love blueberries, too. I wouldn’t want to linger on their territory and take their favorite treat without some kind of protection.”
When they reached the top of the incline, Maria’s cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright, but Madden judged the walk had done her good. They sat on a rocky ridge and he pointed to the distant peaks. “On a clear day like today, you can see the Alaska Range, Chena Dome, Far Mountain, and Bear Paw Butte.”
He didn’t add that across there, near Two Rivers, was the area where a pivotal part of his life had been spent. It was where Ivan Joseph had found Madden when he was a half-starved, lonely wolf cub. Madden owed his life to the taciturn man who had brought him back from the brink of death. Ivan didn’t have much time for people, but he loved animals, rescuing and rehabilitating many sick and injured wild creatures.
“It’s incredible.” Maria sighed as she drank in the view.
She turned her head to look at him, and it was the most natural thing in the world to lean closer and kiss her. His hands closed around Maria’s upper arms, pulling her closer. She wrapped her arms tight around his neck. The gods pressed a pause button on time. Her lips parted beneath his and his tongue tangled with hers. She tasted as heady as the pure, clear air around them. Madden wondered how the hell he was ever going to find the strength to stop kissing her.
The feeling hit them both at the same time, rousing them from the sweet stupor of the kiss. As he broke reluctantly away from Maria, Madden couldn’t say exactly what it was that alerted him, only that he somehow knew they were not alone.
Hikers occasionally used this trail, but he knew at once that the presence he felt was not human. He also knew it wasn’t a bear or another wolf. It was dark and malignant. Whatever it was, it was watching them. Somehow feeding on, while at the same time loathing, the passion they shared.
“Can you feel it?” Maria shivered, staying as close as she could to the shelter of his frame.
“Yes.” Madden’s keen eyes scanned the area around them. Although he could feel it, he couldn’t see anything.
“That’s what I felt when I was in captivity. It’s the same presence.” She lifted frightened eyes to his face. “It followed me here. The Cage Killer knows where I am.”