Prey by Andrea Speed Read Free Book Online Page B

answer it or not. Son of a bitch: Sikorski.
    Maybe it was good news; maybe forensics had turned up something that pointed definitively away from a tiger. And maybe Eli really was a divine messenger.
    Christ, maybe he was too cynical for his own good.

    Infected: Prey

    33

    5
    Officer Unfriendly

    HE KNEW he had to answer the phone, but part of him didn’t want to. He wanted to bury the goddamn phone in the compost heap, go hide Paris in Vancouver, and then come back and answer the phone, but it wasn’t going to work that way. Roan glanced back to make sure Paris was upstairs before answering his cell. “Yeah, Sikorski, what is it?”
    He chuckled faintly. “You’re such a blast of sunshine up the ass, Roan. That’s why I miss you.”
    “You coming on to me?”
    “Ha. I was wondering what you knew about the virus child mutations theory.”
    Roan found himself wondering where the hell that came from.
    “What? You mean that Weekly World News bullshit?”
    “So you don’t believe it’s possible.”
    “That new strains of cat can arise from virus children? Fuck no.
    They’ve never proved it, and I don’t see how it could be done anyways.
    Our DNA incorporates the virus, but no one’s altered into some weird half-cat, half-human thing. How would that even be possible? Most virus children are lucky not to be deformed or developmentally disabled in some way.” Their odds of being productive, functional citizens was even slimmer than surviving a tiger strain infection. Sikorski had to know this.
    “Why are you even asking?”
    Sikorski sighed, and paused long enough that Roan knew he was considering whether or not to tell him. Ultimately, he did. “The coroner was able to recover a partial bite mark from the body, and it doesn’t match any known cat teeth formation. Combined with the partial paw print—
    which also doesn’t match with anything known—the conclusion seems obvious.”
    34
    Andrea
    Speed

    “Chupacabra.” Relief washed through him, with such intensity it was like he’d been holding his breath for hours. Paris was cleared; Paris hadn’t done this. But he was careful not to let it come out in his voice, because then Sikorski would have known he’d been hiding something. At least it wasn’t hard for him to compartmentalize his emotions—growing up as a ward of the state had given him very early training on how to do that.
    “I can’t believe it. I think you’ve become more of a smart-ass since you left the force. I didn’t think that was possible.”
    “No one has ever proven that alternate cat strains exist. All that anyone’s proven is there’s some cats out there with malformed teeth. Or worse yet, wannabes who pay dentists to grind their teeth into fangs.”
    Sadly there were many of those, more than he ever would have guessed.
    Sikorski sighed impatiently. “But we know that no wannabe with budget fangs ripped out DeSilvo’s throat and ate the dog.”
    “Granted. So why do you jump to mutant hell beast when the answer is more likely to be a cat with poor dental work?”
    Roan could hear Sikorski’s chair creak as he shifted his weight, and as the silence dragged on, he could hear fingers clicking on a keyboard, people talking in the background (including a perp angrily and profanely denying some charges), and the normal hum of a busy police station. He didn’t miss it; honestly, he wasn’t even sure why he’d become a cop, except it pissed an awful lot of people off. Yes, he was apparently so angry he liked to piss other people off. He was sure a therapist would have a field day with him and all his issues, but he just didn’t have the time or the money to bitch to a professional. What else was a boyfriend for, anyways?
    Finally, Sikorski said, “This is all just so fucked up, Roan. And this was a cop. No matter his reputation, no one is happy about it.”
    “His reputation?”
    “Apparently there were some… issues before he retired. He and his partner were accused by a