“You’re not going.”
“Seriously, Jace, who would be better at training me than you?”
“Flattery? You’ve struck a new low.” But the daredevil look in her eyes told me that was only the beginning.
Abby laid one hand over her heart in mock horror. “This is because I kissed you!”
I swerved onto the shoulder of the road and stomped on the brake. When I turned to scowl at her, those big brown eyes were staring at me expectantly, but it was the anxious beating of her heart that convinced me. She wasn’t just being a pain in the ass—this really meant something to her.
I exhaled slowly. “If I let you come, will you please stop kicking that poor elephant?”
Her triumphant smile could have lit up the Dark Ages. “What elephant?”
“Are you sure this is the place?” Abby held her phone up to compare the image on her screen with the one visible through the windshield: the last house on a street that dead-ended in front of a small wooded patch of land. “This house is the wrong color. Either you or the sicko crime scene junkies have made a mistake.” She turned to me with a wicked smile. “My money’s on you.”
“O ye of no faith at all. That is the wrong house. The one we’re here for is on the other side of those woods.” I chuckled at her sheepish expression. “We can’t park in front of the scene of a vicious, mysterious mauling and not expect neighbors—or sicko crime scene junkies—to be curious, can we?” I lifted one brow at her, ridiculously pleased to have struck her speechless, even momentarily. “Guess you’re not quite ready to replace me as Alpha yet, huh?”
She pulled her hair into a poofy ponytail, avoiding my gaze. “I wasn’t trying to… I’m just trying to help.”
“I know. Grab that box behind your seat.” I got out of the Pathfinder and circled it to open the back hatch, then dug through the junk for a few specific items. When I returned to the front of the car, Abby was staring at the small box in her lap.
“This is an ammo box.” She held it up, and sunlight glared across the print.
“Yes.”
“It’s empty.”
“It’s just for show. Set it on the dashboard.”
Abby frowned, but complied, and when she got out of the car, I draped a used paper shooting target over the arm of her chair. I dropped a receipt for the ammo and a trip to a gun range on the center console, then wedged a rolled-up hunting magazine into the space where my windshield met the dashboard.
“We’re hunters?” Her brows rose.
“That’s the idea. We’re here to hunt for the beast who killed that poor man on the other side of the woods.” Which was close to the truth.
“Clever.”
“I have my moments.” I eyed her white down jacket, the only one she’d brought from the dorms. “Are you warm enough?”
“Yup.” Abby grinned. “I run hot.”
Was that a double entendre? Or was she just pointing out the obvious—that a shifter’s metabolism kept us both slim and warm?
She closed her door and I locked the car with my key fob, then caught up with her as she stepped into the woods. “So, what’s the plan?”
“First, we scout to make sure no one’s home. Unless there’s an app for that too.”
“Give it a couple of years, and there’ll be one that scans for human heat signatures.”
“Until then, we’ll have to use what nature gave us.” Our eyes and ears, of course. And our noses. Cats can’t track by scent, but we have very well-developed senses of smell, and we can identify nearly every odor we come into contact with. “When we’re sure the house is empty, I’ll find us a way in.”
“We’re breaking and entering?”
I shrugged. “With any luck, just entering.”
That’s when I realized Abby was wearing hiking boots rather than the party heels she’d worn the day before. She’d known from the moment she got out of bed that she would talk me into taking her to the crime scene one way or another.
I’d never even stood a chance.
We made our way through the woods quietly, on alert for any sign that another shifter had been there recently. But I saw no claw marks on bark, which would have indicated that a cat had climbed the tree. Both the undergrowth and bed of fallen leaves and pine needles were too thick to show any paw prints. And the only other cat I smelled was Abby.
She smelled like warm flesh, airport coffee, and good health. And strawberry lip balm. And a little like whoever she’d borrowed her jacket from. The residual scent was familiar.
“Is that Robyn’s?”
Abby glanced down at the jacket. “Yeah. I couldn’t find mine.”
I’d never formally met Robyn, and I’d only had the chance to smell her once. She’d been unconscious and bleeding by the time I’d arrived at the cabin where those sick hunter bastards had tried to lure Abby to her death, then hang her taxidermied head on their wall. But once was enough for any cat worth his claws, and I should have recognized Robyn’s scent earlier.