Page 37 of Knotted their Beauty

I frown as his voice gets louder, the tone more agitated with each step I take.

“One foot in the grave… it has to be here.”

“What does?”

Ves doesn’t jump, doesn’t spin around and aim a gun in my face. Instead, he just slows his digging and glances at me over his shoulder. “The other foot.”

“Left or right?”

“Left,” he grunts, going back to the task at hand before he pauses again and takes a deep breath. He visibly shudders, humming low in his throat before I see him shake his head and go back to work. “I have a feeling it’s buried.”

I didn’t even think about the fact that he’s downwind, but whatever.

Whether he recognizes me as a match now or later doesn’t matter, he will at some point and we’ll deal with it then. I’m a little more concerned with why he doesn’t seem to care that we’re both contaminating the crime scene, and I’m the farthest thing from a cop who just walked in on him searching for evidence in the most unorthodox—and illegal—way ever.

Fuck it. “Want a hand?”

Ves snorts. “I need a foot, but if you’re offering to help, walk where I did and start looking over there.”

I follow his nod and do as he says, careful to put my size thirteens on top of what must be his size elevens, then squat across from my omega. I push up my sleeves and reach toward the outline but stop when a pair of latex gloves land on my knee.

“Vinyl.”

I look up into his hazel eyes and blink. “What?”

Ves shakes his head then goes back to digging. “They aren’t latex. I’m allergic.”

“Me, too.” I almost miss the way his full lips curl into a small smile as I pull them on, and it has one of my own trying to crack my face. “Wasn’t sure it would matter much since⁠—”

“I’m ruining a crime scene that belongs to a serial killer I’m trying to catch?”

I nod and push my fingers into the dark red sand. “Yeah, that.”

“At this point, I don’t give a shit. I’m going to catch this bastard one way or another, I’m going to fucking catch him, and I don’t really care how I do it.”

“Even if it gets you fired?”

Ves doesn’t skip a beat. “Exactly. If I don’t, I’m going to lose my mind trying to figure him out, and I can’t let that happen.”

Seems to me he’s already well on his way, but I don’t say that.

Now isn’t the time, and frankly, his scent is strong as fuck right now and that might be messing with my judgement. Hence digging in a crime scene with my omega like we’re looking over a menu trying to decide what to eat or something.

God, this is not what I was expecting at all when I decided to follow Ves instead of Arlo.

Then again, I wasn’t expecting two scent matches, a cute little girl who brings out a protective side I didn’t think I had with anyone other than my brother, and whatever the hell Lennox is, either.

It’s kind of funny when I think about it.

Murder sent me packing and led me to one omega, while a serial killer put me face to face with another.

I’m not sure what that says about my life and the direction it’s heading, but I can’t say that I’m too mad about it.

I guess I’m more fucked up than I thought.

Chapter

Twelve