Page 46 of Fire Dancer

I woke up cranky, with a whirlwind of thoughts competing for my attention. A double helix, actually, with one strand madeup of Pippa and all the emotions that brought, and the other occupied by the case of the young woman found at Gunnery Point.

By nine a.m., I was in my office in town and calling the police for an update.

“We got confirmation on the initial ID,” Jimenez reported. I heard her flip through a few sheets of paper. “Janet Sullivan, aged twenty-six. According to the coroner, there were no drugs in her system and no signs of foul play. None at the scene either.”

None except the bear scent all over the area.

“So, all indications point to an accidental death,” she concluded. When I snorted, she sighed. “My thought exactly. But we’ll be pursuing it until we have a clearer picture.”

I hung up on that call, then steeled myself for the one I’d been putting off.

“Captain Edwards, please,” I told the agency operator.

Soothing music played while I was put on hold. Then came a click, and the phone practically exploded in my ear.

“What the hell are you doing putting a trace on Jananovich’s car?” my boss hollered.

I winced, holding the phone away from my ear. “Putting a trace on what?”

“Don’t you play games with me,” he blustered.

My mind spun but remained blank. Nada. Nothing. Zilch.

Then it hit me. “The Utah plate I called in is registered to Jananovich?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Kemper,” Edwards barked. “And if I find out you took the Sedona position because you somehow anticipated Jananovich moving there…”

“He’s here?” I sputtered.

Wow. It was one thing to have a gut feeling, but another to have it confirmed.

Edwards snorted again, then took a different tack. “His whereabouts are no business of yours. Restraining order, remember?” He sighed, then muttered more to himself than me. “I should never have assigned you the Sedona office.” The line went silent as he thought it over. “All right. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time. But stay away from Jananovich and any of his holdings.”

My mind stuttered. Did that mean TTC Limited, the company name on the invoice I’d seen?

“I had enough of him and his lawyers last time,” Edwards grumbled.

I grimaced.Last time,three young women had been found dead, plus a fourth who might have survived if only I had acted faster. But my hands had been tied, as Edward liked to put it.

“My hands are tied, kid.”

I rolled my eyes. Yep. I’d heard that before.

“Focus on what you’ve been assigned to do,” he continued in a more measured tone.

Like detecting and monitoring supernatural activity?I nearly shot back.Like the suspicious bear shifter driving that car? Like the bear shifter scent at the scene of the crime? Like possible links to Jananovich?

“We opened an office in Sedona to investigate reports of witchcraft, and that’s where your focus should lie,” Edwards continued.

I’d covered those bases in my first week in town, but the only witchcraft in town was so amateurish, it was laughable.

Totally laughable…except Pippa and her sisters. But technically, they lived outside city limits, right?

Yeah, I might have a minor conflict of interest. One I didn’t plan to mention to Edwards.

“You know as well as I do that our resources are limited,” Edwards lectured. “So don’t go wasting your time on what will only cause you grief in the end.”

I bit back a comment about the grief caused by senseless, preventable deaths.