AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Anyone nice,” she corrected. “I’m not sure I’d have been that nice. Show me the rest.”
He led her through an open archway into the kitchen and basked in her gasp. He’d spent the most time and money on this room, and he was proud of it.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “Marble and natural brick. And all this light.”
He admired his handiwork fondly. “Took me years to save up to do this room right, but I’m a chef. I couldn’t cook in a shitty kitchen.”
She chuckled. “You did just fine in the office’s shitty kitchen.” She trailed her fingers over the marble island. “Gabe, it’s incredible. And it’s so much bigger than I expected. Are you sure it’s not a TARDIS?”
He laughed. “The high ceilings give the feeling of space. But the house really is big for its style. It had four bedrooms, but I turned one into an office and one into a man cave. Left me with the master and a spare. Come on. I’ll show you to your room and you can drop your bag there.”
She followed him down a hall that was barely wide enough for one person, Shoe tagging along behind them. Gabe pulled the bifold door open to the spare bedroom and gestured her inside.
She gasped again, stroking his ego. “Gabe, it’s amazing.” Lowering her duffel, she walked to the French doors, which led to the garden. But she checked the alarm contacts first, which made him smile.
“I love this,” she said. “How tropical it looks. But I don’t love that there are doors in the bedroom. So many points of entry.”
He sighed. “It was my favorite thing. Before now.”
She turned, her expression contrite. “I’m sorry. After this is over, you can go back to loving it.”
“I intend to.” He showed her the office and the theater room, a.k.a. his man cave. “All the bedrooms have windows and doors to the outside, except for the man cave. I wanted a place where I could watch TV without the light. There’s a veranda that runs the perimeter of the house and a deck on the back.”
She checked the security of those doors as well. “The locks aren’t bad, but they could be better.”
“They were a compromise. I would have used a normal lock, but Dad wanted the Fort Knox model. We agreed on these. He would’ve had me living in a concrete bunker to keep me safe. I did get the hurricane glass he insisted on. It’ll keep prowlers from breaking the glass, and also got me a discount on my homeowners insurance, so that was a win-win.”
“Hurricane glass is a good security measure. Where is the doggy door?”
“In my bedroom.” He led the way, very relieved that he’d picked up his dirty clothes that morning. He pointed to the flap in the wall next to the French doors. Tail wagging, Shoe disappeared through what was, now that Gabe was looking at it through Molly’s eyes, a big hole in his wall. “It’s magnetic,” he felt compelled to point out, “so it stays put against the weather.”
“But not against someone who’s trying to break in.”
He frowned. “It does lock.” He wasn’t a total fuckup. “And there’s a security bar that came with it. It’s in the closet somewhere.”
She arched a brow.
He sighed. “Where it does no good.”
“We can secure it from the inside, which means you’ll have to let Shoe out periodically during the day rather than letting him have his freedom and—” She stopped abruptly when Shoe barked, the sound high-pitched and oddly aggressive. “Is that normal?”
The hairs rose on the back of Gabe’s neck. “No.”
He ran to the French doors, Molly directly behind him. “Me first,” she insisted, pushing him aside. Opening the doors into the backyard, she ran out of the house and leapt the rail around the deck like it was a track hurdle. “Stop!” she shouted to... who?
Fucking hell.Gabe raced down the back stairs to his backyard in time to see her yanking at the gate in the eight-foot security fence. His heart pounding, he started to follow, but she pointed behind her. “Get your dog,” she said urgently. “Somebody threw something over the fence.”
Luckily his backyard wasn’t too huge, and within seconds, he was yanking Shoe by the collar, dragging him away from something brown. “No, Shoe! No! Leave it!”
Meat.The something someone had thrown over his fence was meat. Steak, actually. Cooked steak. He inched closer, keeping Shoe behind him, out of reach of the meat. Luckily leave it was one of the commands that his father had taught to Shoe.
Then Gabe stared. There was white powder sprinkled over the steak. A lot of white powder.
He swallowed back the bile that rose to burn his throat.
Poison.Someone had tried to poison his dog. Dropping to his knees, he pried Shoe’s mouth open, searching for any evidence that he’d consumed it.
“Did he eat any of it?” Molly asked from behind him. He glanced over his shoulder to see that she was on the phone. She tapped the screen, putting the call on speaker. “It’s Burke. Burke, it’s a cooked steak with some kind of white powder on it. Gabe, did Shoe eat any of the meat?”
