She rolled her eyes. Had he touched her last night, however innocently, she might have been all over him. Might have jumped his bones before getting the door to her room shut.
Why did she have to have the worst luck with timing on absolutely everything?
His scent was all over the jacket. She didn’t want to wear it. She couldn’t deal with the emotions that were being dredged up from feeling surrounded by him.
She may have snapped a little. “Why? Why is it so damned important that I wear your stupid jacket?”
Aiden snapped back at her. “For God’s sake. We can see your nipples.”
Her brain didn’t immediately turn the sounds coming out of his mouth into words. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to believe them.
Didn’t take her long before she had to come to terms with what he said and connect it to the fact that in throwing on a T-shirt—a thin, white one—she’d failed to put on a bra underneath.
She was mortified. The rising heat that flew up her neck and into her cheeks let everyone know. Agent Reyes pressed his lips together as though he were completely miserable with the entire bit.
There was a possessiveness that came with wearing a man’s jacket. Gave off the impression she belonged to him. That he had a stake in keeping her honor together.
Accepting the jacket felt as though she was admitting to something.
But she was willing to take that it meant keeping her boobs from being seen by everyone in the FPU.
Teddy would be laughing his ass off at her if he could.
“Right. Now, can we get to work?” Pretending things didn’t happen or didn’t bother her was her preferred method of putting a few tricky situations behind her.
Jack cleared his throat while Agent Reyes continued to glare at any male team member who happened to look at her a little too long.
“You can see here that our suspect decided to pay you a visit last night.”
“So I see. Where did the tracks come from, and where do they go?”
She wasn’t the lightest sleeper in the world, but the fact that they had time to get set up and were searching around had meant they’d been here for some time.
And she wanted to know what they’d found.
Delilah wasn’t going to start yelling at Jack for not giving her the full rundown on their suspect just yet.
“Tracks came from over there.” Jack pointed. “Go back that way, too. Agents are still scoping things out, but if I’m right, it came from out of the ocean, way the hell down there, and went back the same way.”
Delilah nodded. “That’s smart. Travel in and out of the ocean like that, and it becomes impossible to track.”
“I won’t let it near you,” Agent Reyes said.
“You already did.”
That might have been a little harsh, but she didn’t care. Not too much, anyway.
This was her life, and she was putting it on the line while some dickhead killer picked off other shifters.
“Whatever else there is for me to look at, I want to see it. I also want the honey badgers here.” She issued the demand that she would have given Jack the day before, had he answered her calls.
“You want us to fly down a whole other team?” Jack asked, not revealing what he thought about the idea.
“With the size of this thing?” she said, still looking down at the imprint in the grass. “Absolutely.”
“I can keep you safe,” Agent Reyes insisted. “But if you want the extra security, I won’t fight you.”
She didn’t expect him to say that. Her stomach clenched at those words.
Delilah thought she would have hurt his pride and challenge him to prove himself. That he’d want to fight her on her decision and keep the badgers away so he could puff up his chest.
“You don’t care if I bring in other shifters to look into this?”
Jack was the one who answered that. “If you want them for the added security, you can absolutely do that, but until I have the credentials of every single person you invite into Scotland, no one will be touching this case.”
“They’re more than qualified.”
“And I will be the one to confirm that.”
Now Delilah was the one who had to back down. Much as she wanted to defend her team, he was right.
This wasn’t her turf.
Though she did want to insist that the honey badgers would be nothing but helpful in the matters of this case. If this creature could crawl around on land, it meant the ocean wasn’t the only place this creature could hunt, so the ATTF was no longer at a specialized advantage.
He was staring back down at the tracks, grass, and dirt as though he could find the cure for cancer in there if he just looked hard enough.
She was only here for the second autopsies, to give her opinion on what was going on, and that was it. This monster shouldn’t have known she was there. The only way they’d be informed was if they had an inside connection.
Or were themselves on the inside.
Someone was using their knowledge and training as an Aquaterrestrial Task Force member to get away with their killings.
As the new girl in town, literally, she was of interest to the perpetrator.
“Jack, is there anything else Delilah needs to be here for?” Aiden’s words snapped her out of her thoughts.
“I thought you just agreed to not fight me on bringing in the honey badgers?”
“If that’s our only option, I’ll agree to it, but maybe you don’t need to be here anymore. You confirmed the autopsies and cleared the initial coroner. Nothing in your review of the photos of the other victims flagged foul play in reporting. If you’ve done all the physical work, you shouldn’t just wait around for the next body. We should put you on a plane and send you home as soon as possible.”
Right, okay, so all thoughts of him being a logical thinker went right out of Delilah’s mind.
And her illogical anger took over as well. “Excuse me?”
Jack seemed to mull it over, but then he looked at Delilah.
“It’s up to you.”
“I want to stay.”
Agent Reyes seemed confused. Pained, even. “Why not? This is the best way to keep you out of harm's way.”
“I thought you were such a great protector.”
He winced.
Delilah felt like a bitch.
“If there’s another murder victim found, then I want to stick around and be the first to autopsy the body. I don’t want any more fuck-ups that can be avoided.”
There. That was a reasonable enough response. The fact that she pulled it right out of her ass, and it was true, was a bonus.
Meanwhile, she was doing everything in her power to not look at Agent Reyes and to breathe through her mouth so she didn’t have to take in too much of his scent off the jacket.
Yeah, she was so screwed right now.
An active case where the killer had been less than a dozen yards away from her was not the time to be getting emotionally tied up in someone.
No matter how good they happened to smell.
Jack shrugged. “All right, but until there’s another body, I want you on lockdown. Aiden, good work setting up those cameras. We’ll review the footage and see if we got a better look at our suspect.”
“Cameras?”
She frowned.
Aiden stuffed his hands into his pockets, but even doing that, he somehow managed to make himself look like the most calm, cool, and collected person on the planet.