“The doors are locked. Windows, too. No one else in the house. I checked upstairs.” She held Purdy’s pistol pointed at the ceiling.
Kye rose to his feet, muscles and joints protesting the punishment they’d taken. He swallowed more blood before he found his voice. “You have a basement?”
She shook her head. “Cupboard under the stairs has a lock.”
“Let’s stow him there until the sheriff gets here.”
She moved in to help him carry the man. The look on her face gave him pause. And then he realized that she was looking at his face. His nose felt like a bloody pulp that he could barely breathe through. “I’m okay.”
Her dark eyes remained a moment longer, taking in the damage, until her lips thinned in a way that was painful for him to watch. But she nodded. “You’re good.”
At their feet, Purdy had begun to struggle a bit until Oleg sidled up alongside him. One look into the K-9’s yellow eyes and he went slack.
Kye bent and gripped him under the arms while Yardley moved to his feet.
“Wait.” Pulling Purdy’s body up against his chest, Kye said, “If you kick that woman I will lock you and the wolfdog up in the closet together. That’s not a threat. It’s an absolute certainly.”
Kye went first, taking most of the man’s weight as they did an awkward backward dance into the living room and then to the stairs. Once Yardley opened the under-stairs door, Kye dragged Purdy into the narrow space half filled with boots and jackets and other gear.
He looked down at the bound man. “The next person to open this door will be the sheriff. Until then, you’d better be the quietest mouse in this house.”
Purdy jerked his head but his eye were brimming with hatred as Kye closed the door.
Yardley waited until he had turned the key in the lock and stepped away from the door before she spoke softly. “Who is that man?”
Kye weighed his options, wanting to tell her how fucked up the situation had become now that Gunnar had arrived. How they needed law enforcement like yesterday. How lover boy had screwed up royally. How her paragon of virtue had been thinking too hard about himself to really consider the position he was leaving her in when he disappeared into protective custody. Or when he busted out, only to land on her doorstep.
He could have said that, and a lot more, and felt pretty good about destroying her illusions about Gunnar. But he didn’t. Because it wouldn’t do them any good. And it wouldn’t make her feel better or safer. And right now, Yard was all that mattered to him.
“I can smell the rubber burning from here.” Yardley crossed her arms and cocked a hip to one side. She looked determined and resolute, but her left leg was doing that nervous jig it did when she was pissed. “When are you going to stop thinking and start talking to me, McGarren?”
“Not until I get some answers myself.”
Kye moved quickly past her and opened the bedroom door, his eyes fastening on the man propped up on the bed.
“What the fuck is going on?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
“Huh.” Kye wiped the blood from his nose with a wet cloth then slapped the bag of frozen corn Yardley handed him against the back of his neck and angled his head back to try to stop the bleeding.
Lily entered the bedroom where he sat listening to Gunnar explain the circumstances that had brought him to Harmonie Kennels. She climbed up in his lap, doing her kitten impersonation as she curled into his stomach. She seemed to understand he was in pain. Added bonus, the warmth of his body. The thermometer hadn’t crawled past freezing today and night was coming on.
Yardley, who refused to sit, stood with her back to the wall, her arms folded, the dangerously sexy curve of one hip jutted toward him in an artless invitation he knew she wasn’t making. That didn’t stop him from remembering the feel of her naked hips in his hands as he’d buried himself in her. Was that only this morning? It seemed like a week ago. Looking at her face, he revised. A lifetime ago. Her gaze was sharp and focused on the man on her bed. He wished he could read her mind. Her expression was giving away nothing but serious attitude. Enough to make the room hum.
Oleg was at her side, sitting alert in his handler’s pheromone cloud as his slanted eyes continually surveyed the terrain of her room. Not even an ant crawling on the floorboard was getting past him unnoticed.
Angling his gaze, Kye refocused on the problem at hand. Gunner’s narrative of his good deeds and selfless attitude was giving him a headache. The man had some, if not all, of the responsibility in the danger he’d brought to Harmonie Kennels. The gnawing in his gut told Kye it probably wasn’t over.
Finally Kye broke in, pain and inaction making him impatient. “So far you haven’t mentioned the guy we’ve got stuffed in the closet.”