Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [831]
“Oh, my God.” Appalled, Alex brought her hand up to her mouth. “And you saw it?”
The tendon that jerked in his cheek was confirmation enough. “If you know something more about the slayings that took place here, I need you to tell me now, Alex. It’s very important that I have all the information I can get.”
If Alex had been tempted to blurt everything out last night in the town meeting, now, as she stood alone before this man—this stranger who rattled her inexplicably on every level of her being—the words clogged up tight in her throat. She didn’t know him. She wasn’t at all sure she could trust him, even if she did somehow ratchet up the nerve to drag her darkest suspicions into the light.
“Why are you really here?” she asked him softly. “What are you looking for?”
“I’m looking for answers, Alex. I’m looking for the same thing I believe you are—the truth. Maybe there’s a way for us to help each other.”
The sharp trill of Alex’s cell phone broke the lengthening quiet. It rang again, giving her the excuse she needed to put a few paces between herself and the man whose presence seemed to be sucking all the air out of the room. Alex turned away from him and connected to the call.
It was Jenna, phoning to remind her that they were supposed to meet up for dinner at Pete’s tonight. Alex murmured a hasty confirmation but stayed on the phone after Jenna said her good-byes and disconnected. “Yeah, no problem,” Alex said into the dead air of the receiver. “I’m on my way right now. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, tops. All right. Yep, bye.”
She stuffed the phone into the pocket of her parka and pivoted back to face Luna’s new favorite person, who was now seated on the sofa with Alex’s dog lying at his feet. “I have to get going. Deliveries to make before sundown, and then I’m meeting a friend for dinner in town.”
She was anxious to get away now, but why did she feel compelled to make excuses to this man? What should he care why she was leaving as though she couldn’t run out of there fast enough?
Alex subtly snapped her fingers and called Luna’s name. To the wolf dog’s credit, she ambled over without looking too heartbroken to be summoned away from him.
“I’ll let Officer Tucker know that you were here today,” she added, figuring it couldn’t hurt to remind him that she was friendly with the police.
“You do that, Alex.” He didn’t get up from his negligent slouch on Pop Toms’s sofa. “Be careful out there. I’ll see you around.”
Alex caught his slow-spreading grin as she rounded up Luna and headed out the door of the cabin. Although she didn’t dare look behind her, she could feel those quicksilver eyes at the back of her neck, watching her as she hopped on her snowmachine with Luna and gave the motor some juice. She’d driven out a few hundred yards before another thought hit her.
She hadn’t seen another sled parked anywhere.
So just how the hell had he made the forty-plus-mile trip from Harmony all the way north through the open wilderness?
CHAPTER
Seven
Kade waited out the short few hours of daylight in the cabin at the Toms settlement. As soon as it was safe for him and his solar-sensitive Breed skin to venture outside, he took off on foot once more, this time heading for the ten-thousand-acre plot of land his family owned north of Fairbanks.
He wondered how he would be greeted in his father’s Darkhaven compound—he, the prodigal, the unapologetic black sheep, who’d left a year ago without excuse or explanation, and never looked back. He felt some guilt for that, but didn’t figure anyone would believe him if he said it.
He wondered if Seth would be at the compound when he arrived, and, if so, what his brother would say about the killings that had brought Kade home from Boston to investigate on behalf of the Order.
But more than any of that, Kade wondered what it was that Alexandra Maguire was hiding.
Kade had enough personal experience with keeping secrets to guess that the attractive female bush pilot wasn’t being entirely honest about what she knew of the recent deaths