“I don’t know where the hell she is. Damn it all to hell, what the hell is wrong with her? Does she want to piss me off?” She thought that even if she didn’t want to, she’d done a bang-up job of it. “No, I don’t want to. Just let her come home on her own. She’s going to have to learn that she can’t just take off when she’s pissed off.”
Kari stood up. Her panther snarled loudly and had Steele turning toward her. When he started toward her, she growled low and hunkered down on the ground to attack if he tried anything. She was surprised when he stopped.
“I’ve been looking for you. Mitch said you left him over three hours ago.” News to her. That meant she’d been out here a lot longer than she’d thought. It was after five, she supposed. “Are you going to shift so we can have an intelligent conversation?”
Kari had bitten him, tasted his blood, so she could have spoken to him anyway. But she only sat down and licked her paw, waiting for his next move. When he started cursing, she decided that she was the predator here, not him, and when she snarled at him again, he backed up.
“I have to leave. I wanted to let you know that I’ll be gone on a mission for a while.” Nodding, she didn’t move. “You can understand me, I take it.”
She nodded again and sat down. When he started pacing, she watched him. For a man his size, he moved very well. She waited for him to tell her to get her ass back to the house, but all he did was pace and mumble to himself. A sudden stop by him had her fur along her back stand up.
“I’m going to get you a cell phone. I expect you to carry it with you at all times. Mitch said you declined his and thought I should provide you with one.” She didn’t care what he provided her with. She wasn’t going to take it. “I have also set up some interviews for you. You said you wanted a job, and there are a couple of people who owe me favors.”
She’d not go to those either. Kari was quite capable of getting her own job. A shitty one, but a job. His phone went off again, but he ignored it in favor of pacing again. When he stopped this time, he looked at her.
“I’m sorry for what I did to you in the bedroom. It won’t happen again. Not the sex part—that’s…I could take you again right now if I had the time—but the pissing you off part.” She felt her body heat up with the thought of him taking her out here. “You tend to make me say things I don’t mean.”
So much for letting him take her out here. Every time the man opened his mouth it was as if he wanted to make her mad at him. Kari couldn’t wait to get out of the place and put as much distance between the two of them as she could.
“Will you be here when I get back?” She nodded at him. Where the hell would she go? It wasn’t as if she had any sort of transportation or even enough money to get herself a place to stay. She’d looked at apartments too when she’d been searching for a job. Nodding back to her, he moved back in the direction he’d come from. But he stopped again before he spoke. “When we get back, I’d like to sit down and work out a plan with you. I can’t…having you here is making me want you all the time. I think if you…if you moved to a place of your own, I wouldn’t be so crazy with need all the time.”
He moved on then, and she lay down. Kari wondered if in a few weeks anyone would care that she’d been a living, breathing person if she were to die right here. Standing up, she moved to where she’d left her clothes and shifted. She pulled them on and moved toward the house again, and hoped that he’d be gone by now. Luck was with her. Not only was he gone, but so were the rest of the men.
Kari didn’t bother asking what he was doing or where he was. Izzy put a plate of food in front of her, and she made an attempt to eat it. But when she finally stood up from the table, she noticed that she’d eaten very little of anything, and even that weighed heavily on her belly. Going to her room, she noticed the envelope on the dresser and the money. Laying down and ignoring them both, Kari cried herself to sleep.
Chapter 4
Ray watched his men. He knew that Mitch was having a difficult time right now. Not what about, but that he was hurting from something. He’d found the young man more often than not out by the old cemetery, and wondered which one of the people there he was pouring his heart out to.
Drew moved like a man on a mission through the building they were in. A report of a ghost, several of them actually, had brought them out in full force. And Drew was determined to find every last one of them before the building was set for demolition in a few days. The man was hard working and extremely lonely.
Ray moved to the next room to check on Nick and found him staring at the floor where the first sighting had been recorded. It had turned out to be a fake sighting, yet there was enough going on that his friend had called him in. The blood on the floor had startled more than a few of the cops that had been here before.