Brandon sighed. “She had a lot of escape routes. But I don’t want to get your hopes up. There’s a chance she might not have made it.”
Her throat closed. Ah, she felt awful. She’d only known Tesseract for a couple of days. And she obviously hadn’t been a better forever home for the cat than the cat café. As signs went, it seemed relatively obvious she wasn’t fit to provide for any other life but her own.
Or, more truthfully, she couldn’t even take care of her own life, much less be responsible for another.
“I’m sorry.” Brandon touched her shoulder briefly, then the warmth of his fingertips disappeared. “We’ll go look for her, but even if she did get out we might not find her.”
The woods were a dangerous place for a domesticated cat. Sure, Tesseract had her full set of claws intact, but she could come up against a raccoon or possum. Worse, Tesseract could run into a larger predator.
Sophie nodded. “We’ll look, but I won’t have false hope, okay? I just need to go and at least look.”
“Okay,” Brandon acquiesced readily.
“Okay.” She stared at the door. Step one had gone well, she thought. Tough question, a decision, and somebody to support her in the decision. “Thank you.”
“It’s not a thing.” He said the words lightly.
She pressed her lips together. “It is. It’s a lot of things, actually. Too much to list. But mostly, thank you for letting me decide what we’re going to do next instead of telling me what to do.”
There. Even if he tended to look like he could read minds whenever he stared at her with those startling hazel-green eyes, he couldn’t. She wasn’t going to go through her entire thought process from the past several minutes, but he wasn’t going to make her, either.
And this, she thought, was something she could settle for. Or she’d have to, because friendship, or whatever their relationship had been turning into, wasn’t something they could go back to.
A sharp knock at the door brought Brandon to his feet and they both stared as Raul poked his head in the door. “Hey. The doctor is coming down the hallway.”
Brandon dragged his hand through his hair. “Copy.”
Raul hesitated, his brow wrinkled with a quirky expression.
“Something else?” Sophie decided to prompt him because maybe the whole ex-military habit of less is more when it came to words wasn’t the best approach at the moment.
Raul met her gaze, somewhat relieved. “Something snuck into my vehicle. Taz doesn’t know what to do with it but it’s definitely not afraid of him and doesn’t look like a random stray from the woods around that cabin.”
The man stepped all the way into the room, gesturing to a cream-colored puff of fur attached to his shoulders. Her claws were hooked firmly into his weapons harness and her bright blue eyes scanned the room.
Sophie straightened. “Tesseract!”
Her cat uttered an imperious meow and leaped from Sa’s shoulder to the chairs, then daintily picked her way over to Sophie. By the time her cat had climbed up to her chest, Tesseract’s fur had smoothed down and she curled up with a happy purr.
Sophie buried her face in Tesseract’s side, reveling in the silky softness of her cat. She smelled of smoke and maybe gunpowder? But she was here and safe.
Raul was talking to Brandon. “It was just sitting in the back of the car where Taz rides. Didn’t know what to make of it. Figured I’d bring it in and drop it off here for adoption if you two didn’t know where it came from. Does it always freak out like that?”
Brandon chuckled. “Yeah. Yeah, she does.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
This apartment is a comfort-food-only zone. It’s a carb overload. Everything tastes good, and the word ‘diet’ is banned until every room is cleaned and either set back to rights or redone.” Sophie stood in the doorway leading to her apartment, holding off Lyn and Elisa until each of them grinned and nodded in acknowledgment.
There hadn’t been any doubt, really. But this way, they couldn’t say she hadn’t warned them.
“You’ve been back for a morning. How did you have time to cook?” Lyn picked her way into the living room area and set down bags of cleaning supplies. “And why is Brandon holed up in his office like a bear going into hibernation?”
“Brandon said there were a few more things he needed to take care of,” Sophie said slowly. The men who’d attacked them in Virginia were all in custody. But those men worked for an organization, and Brandon had said he had enough to be sure which it was.
“I’m not surprised.” Lyn dropped her hands to her sides. “It’d be weird for you to be back here if Ky or any of the guys thought there was a continued threat.”
Sophie sighed. “Mrs. Seong saw us come in before dawn. She was here before noon with enough food to feed an army. Said I shouldn’t worry about groceries the first day I’m back from the dead.”