seven
The shift from wanting to tear her clothes off to wanting to kill whoever had done this happened so fast it made Bear’s head ring.
Two minutes ago, Greta had been wrapped around him in the dark, wild and wrecked and kissing him like she wanted to crawl inside his skin. Now she stood frozen with the beam of her flashlight shaking across overturned furniture and smashed glass and those fucking words on the wall.
STOP LOOKING.
He stepped in front of her. “Wait outside with the dogs.”
She didn’t budge. “What? No. This is my?—”
“Let me check the rest of the building.” He planted a hand against her sternum, easing her back a pace. “Once it’s clear, you can come in.”
She knocked his hand away. “I’m not waiting outside while you play hero. This is my shop.”
“You don’t know if someone’s still in here.” He kept his voice even, reasonable. “Let me check first.”
“I know every inch of this place, and nobody else is here.” She tried to step around him, but he shifted to block her path. “Move, Bear. Now.”
A week ago—hell, two hours ago—he would’ve hauled her outside over his shoulder and dealt with the fight later.
Now?
She’d already spent the day getting gutted open. He wasn’t taking more control away from her unless he absolutely had to.
“Stay behind me,” he conceded. “And if I tell you to get down, you get down. No questions.”
She scowled, but after a stubborn second, nodded.
He turned and moved deeper into the shop, scanning the space with every skill he’d learned in Special Forces. Greta followed three steps behind him, close enough that he could feel the heat of her at his back, but not so close she’d get in his way if things went sideways.
The back room opened into a narrow hallway that ran the length of the building. To the right was the main showroom, a spacious area filled with outdoor gear—everything from climbing equipment to backpacks to the kayaks that were Greta’s specialty. To the left was the bathroom and, beyond that, a storeroom packed with inventory.
He took the main showroom first, clearing each section methodically—behind the counter, the changing room in the corner, the small office visible through the glass partition. No sign of forced entry, no obvious points of access. The front door was still locked, the alarm panel beside it silent.
“The front’s secure,” he told Greta, who was watching him from the doorway. “Alarm’s not tripped.”
She frowned. “That’s impossible. The system’s supposed to call my phone if anything happens.”
He moved past her toward the bathroom, pushing the door open with his boot before stepping inside. Empty. The small window above the toilet was closed, the lock engaged.
The storeroom came next—a cramped space filled with shelves of inventory, boxes stacked three high against the backwall. He checked behind each shelf, under the small desk in the corner, even in the supply closet.
“Clear,” he said, backing out of the room.
“I told you nobody was here.”
He grumbled. Of course Tink wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to tell him “told you so.”
They returned to the front room, and Greta moved past him, dropping to her knees beside the overturned desk.
“My laptop,” she said, her voice hollow. “All my client files, my business records...”
Bear crouched beside her. “We’ll get it back.”
She didn’t answer, just turned back to the mess, hands hovering over the scattered papers as if afraid to touch them.
Bear moved deeper into the room, scanning for threats, for clues, for anything that might explain what had happened. The desk phone lay on the floor, the receiver cracked. A lamp had been knocked over, the bulb shattered. The chair—a simple wooden thing with a padded seat—had been tipped onto its side.
