“And that would be helpful, if we knew where this cottage is.” I stood and came closer to scan the email.
“I think we do.” Warner clicked on the trackpad again, opening an email attachment before I’d finished the first paragraph of text. “Darren sent this picture with the message. Look past all the carnage,” he said, when I scowled at the image of a stray I’d never met, stuffed and posed in cat form, like a grizzly bear at some redneck’s hunting lodge. “Through the window behind that poor bastard, you can see the ‘lake,’ but it’s really not much more than a big pond in the woods. Jace, I know that pond.” He glanced up at me, then turned back to the image. “It’s in Knox County. I used to run there. There are only three cabins within sight of the water, and only two of them face the western shore.” He looked up at me again, excitement gleaming in his brown eyes. “We can be there in two hours.”
“Be where in two hours?” Abby asked, and I looked up to see her standing in the threshold of her brothers’ bedroom, draped in a throw blanket my mother had crocheted. Her bare knees peeked from beneath the blanket, and I could tell from the flesh showing through small holes in the afghan that she wasn’t wearing much beneath it. If anything.
I hadn’t even heard her get off the couch.
“Warner thinks he’s found Darren’s lake house, and that Hargrove might be hiding out there.”
Abby’s eyes widened. “I’ll be ready in ten minutes.” She ran for the living room, the blanket flying out behind her. I groaned, then snatched her duffle from the end of Lucas’s bed and followed.
“Abby.”
“What?” she called from the floor beneath the sofa bed, where her legs stuck out.
I dropped her bag on the mattress, then squatted and ran one hand lightly down her thigh, wishing I had the time to linger. Then I pulled her out from under the couch by her ankles; her afghan cape slid easily against the wood floor.
Abby laughed and turned over to look up at me, clutching the shirts we’d discarded several hours before. “Here.” She shoved mine at me, then leapt to her feet. “I just have to brush my teeth.”
“Abby, wait. I need you to stay here.”
“No way! I’m an enforcer now, and this case affects me. It’s about me, at least in part.”
“Both of which are good reasons for you to stay here. Enforcers follow orders.”
Her copper brows dipped low over angry brown eyes. “Then give me a good one, and I’ll follow it.”
I growled, realizing for the first time that our relationship would be more complicated than I’d anticipated. Brian was no longer in the way, but I was still her boss, and that was one hell of a conflict of interest.
“What?” Abby cocked her head and gave me a smile. “You didn’t think this was going to be all kissing and cuddling, did you?”
I groaned, and Warner burst into laughter from the bedroom.
“Okay, we’re going to have to draw a couple of boundary lines,” I said. “When I’m the Alpha and you’re the enforcer, there will be no kissing, and you will follow orders.” Which would not in any way be affected by the fact that I could still taste her on my lips. Really. “When we’re off duty, there will be plenty of kissing, and whatever else you want to do, and you won’t have to follow any orders.”
“But an Alpha is never off duty,” she pointed out. “We’ve been over this.”
“Fine, then, when you’re off duty, there will be all the kissing and none of the orders. Okay?”
Abby propped both hands on her hips, and when her afghan fell to the floor, it took every bit of self-control I had to keep my focus on her face. “Let me draw a boundary line for you. If I don’t go, you don’t go, because you swore to spend every single second at my side. So, which is it going to be? We stay here and do off-duty things, or we go catch this son of a bitch—together?”
Warner laughed again, then pretended not to hear my growl of warning.
“Damn it, Abby,” I grumbled, but she only shrugged.
“I don’t make the rules. Yet. So what’s it gonna be, Alpha?”
I exhaled slowly, clinging to patience. “Get dressed. We’re going to the lake.”
“If I could make a suggestion…” Warner’s nearly silent footsteps came toward us from the hall. “Take a shower. No, take separate showers. Unless you’re both ready to confirm the rumors buzzing in the main house.”
Abby raced across the back yard in faux-fur-trimmed white winter boots, with little leather tassels hanging from the shoestrings. We were going to have to talk about her work wardrobe. Enforcers do not wear tassels. But then, none of my other enforcers had ever sat on my lap, nearly naked, and asked me to slide my fingers…