Page 22 of Touch of Evil

“You sure, miss?” The cougar makes a face. “Your boyfriend ain’t looking too good.”

“He wasn’t her boyfriend,” I tell him, before Emme can.

The snarl to my voice catches me off guard. I avoid looking at Emme and edge closer to the tub. A shit-ton of baggies and Ted bits are stacked to the rim. I cross my arms. “Where exactly did you find him?”

“The beach. Close to the dock where dem rich people keep their boats,” the cougar tells me.

“He didn’tchange,” I say.

Emme clears her throat. “Ted was, um, not dressed when I threw him out of the window.”

I roll my eyes. “Don’t remind me. What I mean is, he didn’tchangeinto his beast form.”

Emme shuffles behind me. “That’s odd. He should have if something was trying to kill him. It would have made him stronger.”

“Unless he was still unconscious from you throwing his ass out,” the cougar points out.

All the color drains from Emme’s face. “Oh, my God. Bren, I killed Ted.”

I peg the cougar with a narrowed gaze. He backs up and bumps into the toilet. “No, you didn’t, Emme,” I say.

“But if he was unconscious, he couldn’t protect himself,” she insists.

Emme is the worst liar ever. Like, even worse than Celia, and Celia is embarrassingly bad at it. And I’m not even talking about the “I’m guilty” sign with an arrow pointing down she’s currently waving over her head. Have these girls learned nothing from hanging out with me?

“Emme, you didn’t kill Ted,” I bite out.

She places her hand on my arm, her eyes pleading. “How do you know?”

I don’t. I just don’t want to implicate you for murder. “Because it takes more than a fall three stories down to knock out awere.” I cough into my shoulder. “Did he make a noise when he hit the ground?”

“Yeah,” the cougar pushes. “When you cracked his skull against the concrete sidewalk all dem stories down, did he make any sound? Even a gurgle?”

I think the cougar is trying to help. He isn’t.

Emme beams. “He cursed,” she said quickly. “I remember him swearing quite a bit.”

Thank Christ. I shrug. “See? It’s fine.”

“I was sure she knocked his punk ass out,” a female calls out from the living room. “Don’t worry, honey,” she says. “He would’ve deserved that shit anyway.”

“Oh, jeeze,” Emme squeaks, covering her face.

I change the subject, needing to get this over with, and Emme out of here. “What’d you find at the scene?”

The cougar whips out his phone and shows us several shots. I take it back. He showsmeseveral shots. Emme stops looking when she takes a gander at the first sets of chunks.

“There wasn’t a lot of clean up,” the cougar says. “Just the meat. The sand absorbed all the blood and body fluids”

Emme gags. I hold up a hand. “I can see that, man.” I point to the sections of bone. “See that. All the bones are the same size. The same as human size. He didn’tchangeat all.”

“You saying he didn’t put up a fight?” the cougar asks.

I flip through the photos. “I’m saying a lot things,” I admit. “He either couldn’t fight or didn’t want to, which is bullshit. We’reweres, fighting is what we do.”

“Damn, right,” the motley crew in the living room calls out. Several fist bumps and high-fives follow.

I focus on the pictures and keep going. “My guess is he couldn’t fight. Magic or something else overpowered him.”