Free Sins of the Angels by Linda Poitevin

comparison to the vic’s photo. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” He nodded toward the surrounding buildings and the hundreds of windows looking down on the parking lot, too many to canvass with resources already stretched thin. “We’ll ask the media to put out a public appeal and see if anyone out there saw anything.”
    They both looked over as the head of Forensics passed by, clipboard in hand. Frustration was etched into every line of the man’s face and he shook his head in response to the unspoken question hanging in the air.
    â€œOf course not,” Roberts muttered. “How could I have possibly imagined they’d find something?”
    â€œHe has to slip up at some point,” Alex said. “Maybe they’ll get something on the autopsy.”
    After five scenes without a scrap of evidence, however, her words sounded as hollow to her as she knew they did to her supervisor. Without responding, Roberts turned and headed for his own vehicle, parked near the top of the ramp. When he was gone, Alex settled her hands on her hips and stared at the covered body on the pavement beyond the barriers. Fingertips poked out on either side, and she didn’t need to see the familiar pose to know it was there: arms outstretched, ankles crossed. Neither did she need to see the gashes; deep, livid, exposing parts of the victim never meant to be seen.
    A familiar knot formed in her belly.
    Of all the weapons in the world, the killer had to use a blade. Couldn’t have just strangled his victims instead, or blown their faces off with a shotgun—just as messy, but so much less personal and, for her, so much less complicated.
    Alex looked down the parking lot at the other complication in her life. She ran her gaze up Trent’s lean, powerful body, letting it come to rest on his profile. Her partner. A partner who inspired imagined wings and wild energy, and a certainty that he despised her on a level she’d never encountered.
    Along with a visceral response she’d never had to any man in her life.
    The knot in her belly snarled a little tighter. Fuck, she didn’t need this right now. Any of it. Not the case, not the memories, not the hormones, not the imagination gone berserk. She didn’t need that last one ever , but especially not now.
    Another year and she would have made it. Been in the clear. She would have passed that magic milestone in her mind, the age her mother had been when the madness had won. She could have begun to relax, to believe that maybe she wouldn’t be the same as her mother after all, that she wouldn’t inherit the voices, the delusions.
    The insanity.
    Â 
    FROM THE CORNER of his eye, Aramael saw Alex’s determined, hands-on-hips approach. He suspected that even if he hadn’t seen her, he would have still felt the space between them closing; he had become that tuned in to her presence, that aware of her every move.
    He clutched the pen until it dug into his knuckles.
    He should be focused on the hunt. Should be directing all his energy toward tracking Caim, following the taint of evil that lingered, drawing ever closer to the confrontation with his brother. The capture.
    Instead, he was writing down license plate numbers. On the orders of a mortal. A Naphil whose very existence was a slap in Heaven’s face. Aramael jabbed pen against paper hard enough to dig through to the underlying sheet. A Naphil he’d been sent to defend and who had instead put him on the defensive and awakened a response that shouldn’t exist. Couldn’t exist.
    Alex’s steps neared. Aramael’s neck knotted.
    It had been bad enough the first time they had touched and she had seen him. Even then he’d felt a response to the recognition flaring in her eyes, a tug of something that had acted as a brake on his instinct to lash out.
    But the second time had been worse. So much worse. No urge for self-preservation had come to his defense. Not