Kiss of Midnight_ A Midnight Breed Novel - Lara Adrian [887]
She nodded. “He came home looking like something the cat dragged in. When I said something about it, he grabbed me by the throat. I tell you, I thought he was going to kill me right then and there. But he just mumbled that he had work to do, then went inside his room and closed the door. That’s the last he was home, far as I know. Part of me hopes he never comes back, the way he treats me. Part of me wishes he would just … go away. To prison, if that’s where he belongs.”
Zach stared at her, realizing that her fear and dislike of her own son could work to his advantage here. “When he was here at the house last, did he say what kind of work he was doing?”
“He didn’t say, but that boy’s never done an honest day’s work in his life. You wanna have a look inside his apartment? It’s a damn pigsty, but if it’s proof you need—”
“Can’t do that,” Zach said, even though right now he wanted nothing more. “From a law enforcement standpoint, I can’t search his residence. That would require a lot of paperwork and procedures.”
The rounded bulk of her shoulders slumped a bit. “I see—”
“However,” Zach added helpfully, “seeing how I’ve known you folks for the past decade or so since I’ve lived in Harmony, I suppose if you asked me as a personal favor to come in and have a look around—unofficially, as it were—then I would not be opposed.”
She peered at him for a long moment, then stepped back from the door and motioned him inside. “It’s this way, down the hall. He’ll have locked the door, but I keep a spare key tucked behind the baseboard.”
Ida Arnold ambled down to her son’s door, retrieved the tarnished brass key from its hiding place, then unlocked and opened the door for Zach.
“I’ll be just a few minutes,” he said, dismissing her with both his tone and his unblinking academy-trained stare. “Thank you, Ida.”
Once she had shuffled back up the hallway, Zach walked into Skeeter’s dump of an apartment and began a swift, thorough search of the place. Empty food wrappers, bottles, and other trash littered the floor and nearly every flat surface. And there—surprise—on the counter next to an old police radio, a roll of twenty-dollar bills, secured with a rubber band.
It didn’t seem like Skeeter to leave his money lying around. Didn’t seem like him to leave his cell phone behind, either, but there it was, jammed into the seat of a tattered light blue recliner. Guess that explained the ignored calls and texts, although it hardly excused Skeeter for being an asshole out at Pete’s the this morning.
Zach grabbed the cash and counted it out: fifteen bills. Not the five hundred bucks Skeeter owed him, but he’d gladly take what he could get.
Hell, he’d take the cell phone, too.
If it didn’t give him any insight into Skeeter’s recent activities or his apparent newfound business associates, then Zach would pawn the damned thing next time he went to Fairbanks to pick up new product from his connections in the city. Skeeter Arnold owed him, and one way or another, Zach intended to collect what he was due.
CHAPTER
Twenty
Alex sat on the sofa in her living room, sharing a piece of buttered toast with Luna, both of them watching Kade walk a repeated track from the kitchen and down the hallway as he spoke on satellite phone to Boston.
In the time since they’d been back to her house, he’d brought her up to speed on a few more things about himself and the work he’d been sent to do in Alaska. Her mind was still reeling over the fact that he wasn’t precisely human. Now she understood that he was also part of a group of Breed males pledged to maintain peace between their race and humankind. From the way he described it, the Order sounded almost military, which made some kind of sense to her when she looked at Kade and observed his dark combination of lethal strength and laser-sharp confidence.
And despite the danger that rolled off him in waves, especially what she’d witnessed today, Kade was gentle with her, protective. As shaken as she was by all she had seen and heard in the past few hours—the past few days—she felt secure with