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“How did he find fresh strawberries like that in October?”

“We have our ways.”

“And the flowers are beautiful.” She eyed the bouquet full of roses and foxglove and delphinium and tulips. Spring and summer in a crystal vase. “Thank you.”

“I’m glad you like them. I wish I could have gone out and chosen them myself. I would have enjoyed finding you only the most perfect ones. I wanted them to be bright and smell good.”

“Mission accomplished.”

Male voices sounded in the background. Rhage’s voice dimmed. “Hey, cop, mind if I use your bedroom? I need some privacy.”

The response was muffled and then she heard a door shut.

“Hi,” Rhage said in a husky drawl. “Are you in bed?”

Her body stirred, heating up. “Yes.”

“I miss you.”

She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.

“You still there, Mary?” When she sighed, he said, “That doesn’t sound good. Am I getting too real for you?”

I’ve had eight different females this week alone.

Oh, God. She did not want to fall for him. Just could not let herself.

“Mary?”

“Just don’t…say things like that to me.”

“It’s how I feel.”

She didn’t respond. What could she say? That she felt the same way? That she missed him even though she’d talked to him once every hour throughout the day? It was true, but not something she was happy about. He was too damned beautiful…and hell, he could put Wilt Chamberlain in the shade when it came to a list of lovers. So even if she were perfectly healthy, he was a recipe for disaster. Add to the situation what she was facing healthwise?

Getting emotionally attached to him was downright absurd.

As the silence stretched between them, he cursed. “We have a lot of business to take care of tonight. I don’t know when I’ll be back, but you know where to find me if you need me.”

As the phone connection was cut off, she felt just awful. And she knew the lectures about keeping distant were not really working.

Chapter Twenty-six

Rhage stomped his shitkicker into the ground and looked around the forest. Nothing. No sounds or smells of lessers. No evidence anyone had been through this quiet woodland spot for years. It had been the same for the other plots of land they’d visited.

“What the hell are we doing out here?” he muttered.

He knew the damn answer. Tohr had run across a lesser the night before on an isolated stretch of Route 22. The slayer had taken off into the forest on a dirtbike, but had lost a handy little piece of paper in the process: a list of large land parcels that were for sale on Caldwell’s fringes.

Today, Butch and V had performed a search on all properties sold in the last twelve months in the city and surrounding burgs. About fifty sales of rural stretches of land had popped up. Rhage and V had visited five of them so far, and the twins were doing the same, covering others. Meanwhile, Butch was at the Pit, compiling the field reports, making a map, and looking for a pattern. It was going to take a couple of nights to get through all of the parcels, because patrols still had to be performed. And Mary’s house had to be monitored.

Rhage paced around the woods, hoping some of the shadows would turn out to be lessers. He was beginning to hate tree branches. Goddamned teases as they blew in the wind.

“Where are those bastards?”

“Easy, Hollywood.” V smoothed his goatee and tugged at his Sox hat. “Man, you’re stoked tonight.”

Stoked didn’t cover it. He was nearly jumping out of his skin. He’d hoped staying away from Mary during the day would help, and he’d banked on finding a fight this evening. Had also counted on the exhaustion of sleep deprivation taking him down, too.

Yeah, well, no such luck on all fronts. He wanted Mary with an increasing desperation that no longer seemed tied to proximity. They hadn’t found any lessers. And coming up on forty-eight hours of no shut-eye was only making him more aggressive.

Worse, it was now three A.M. He was running out of time for the battle release he so desperately needed. Damn it—

“Rhage.” V waved his gloved hand in the air. “You with me here at all, my brother?”

“Sorry, what?” He