“Cook at the gym I trained at. She fed the fighters.”
He tossed the wok in a single fluid motion, dropped the marinated chicken and scallions in, and stirred it all through the hot oil. He then added the garlic-chili paste, and the drained noodles. He poured in soy and fish sauce and tossed the whole thing twice. He finished with a handful of basil and plated it into two bowls he pulled from a low cabinet.
He was a man who cooked. He’d fit right in with her family.
She picked up both bowls. He carried two forks and a glass of water for each of them. She followed him to the couch. They sat with about a foot of space between them and ate without talking for a few minutes.
The food was excellent. The heat hit first, then the sweet, and the basil bloomed at the back of her throat. The noodles were wide and slick and had the breath of the wok on them. She ate half the bowl in five minutes and only realized when she stopped that she was the hungriest she’d been in months.
She set the bowl on the coffee table. “I can’t believe they took Nell,” she said in a low voice. A memory surged up inside her. “On her first shift, she dropped a tray of waters all over a table of four. She almost cried.”
Blaze set his bowl on the coffee table next to hers. He didn’t interrupt.
“I sat with her in the back office for ten minutes. She thought I was going to fire her, but I promoted her ten months later.” She paused. “I told her mom I’d find her.” Her voice cracked.
Nell was twenty years old. She’d moved across state lines on her own to go to a school no one in her family had attended. She’d walked into the diner two years ago barely able to speak to a customer and now ran the floor by herself. She was going to graduate in eighteen months and do something Stella had never been brave enough to do herself. Stella saw it every time she looked at her. Nell was the woman Stella might’ve been if she’d ever once chosen herself. And now Nell was gone.
Her chest filled with grief and rage and terror. Her throat was hot and her eyes burned as a tear ran down her cheek. Her breath caught. When she lifted her hand to her face, it was shaking. She put her hand over her mouth, and the sobs broke through her control. Blaze reached for her and pulled her against his chest. Stella let herself cry in his arms.
When she finally stopped, she felt his heart beating under her ear. He smelled good. She looked up at him. His blue eyes were very steady, his arm around her back. He reached up and brushed her hair away from her wet face. The pad of his thumb was rough against her cheek.
She pressed her mouth to his, and he went still. Then he kissed her back.
His mouth was warm, and he tasted like chili and basil and salt. His arm tightened around her back, and he pulled her closer. The bond opened so wide and so hot she made a desperate sound she’d never heard herself make before.
His tongue slid into her mouth and stroked against hers. Slow. Wet. Deliberate. Heat dropped through her stomach and pooled low between her legs. He tightened his hand on the back of her neck and his tongue drove deeper. Her breasts dragged across his chest, and she could feel his erection press against her hip.
He pulled back. “Stella. If we go any further, I’m not going to let you leave.”
“Right.” She stood and picked up her purse from the kitchen counter. “Thank you for dinner.”
“Anytime.”
She walked out to her car and sat in the dark. Her mouth still tasted like him. Her pussy was wet and throbbing. She’d cried in Blaze Mercer’s arms. She’d kissed him until she couldn’t think straight. She’d walked out of his apartment with her body still wanting him. She thought about her father. Eventually, she’d have to tell him her mate was his sworn enemy. But first, she needed to find Nell.
Chapter
Twelve
Blaze walkedinto the conference room. Dom was already at the head of the table. Hunter was at the far end. Siren was two seats down from Dom with a folder in front of her and her laptop. Axel was connecting his laptop to the room monitor.
Siren stood and attached seven photos to the whiteboard at the back of the room with magnets. “I spent half the night on this. But I’ve found a pattern of missing persons. All female non-predator shifters between the ages of nineteen and twenty-six.”
She pointed at each photo as she continued. “A finch shifter in Eugene. Twenty-three months ago. A wren shifter in Spokane two years ago. Oldest case in the stack. Rabbit shifter in Olympia, eighteen months. Fawn shifter in Bend, eleven. Squirrel shifter in Salem, nine. Hummingbird shifter in Tacoma, seven. Dove shifter outside Seattle, three months ago.”
Blaze looked at the row. Seven young women, all the kind of shifter who couldn’t fight a grown man off in animal form. His wolf was growling inside him.
“Nell Meadows is number eight,” Dom said. “This is organized. And they are good enough at it that seven police departments haven’t connected the cases.” Dom looked at Axel. “Your turn.”
“I got into the SIM and the storage on the phone.” He pulled up one of Nell’s social media accounts on the room monitor. Her profile photos came up. Her posting history. Her followers and following.
Then he pulled up a video. “She posted this three weeks ago.”
The video played on the large room monitor. It was about sixty seconds of a tiny brown bird with a striped face perched on a branch singing. Behind the bird, the angle showed a paved trail and the trunk of a Douglas fir. The geotag pin was in the lower right of the screen. It read: Pine Ridge Trail, Fate Mountain, Oregon.
“That’s how they found her,” Siren said.
Axel then pulled up Nell’s search history from the week before she disappeared. He scrolled slowly so the room could read each query.
