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CHAPTER 11
You can’t do epic shit with basic people.
-Kobe to Folsom
KOBE
“These cute kitties are Coco and Melon.”
Her ‘cute kitties’ were actual, real-life tigers. One white and one orange.
They were regally beautiful, though.
They both looked at me, the white one with eyes of cerulean blue and the orange one with eyes of copper.
“I’m not supposed to do this, but…” She walked over to the freezer in the corner and walked back, a chunk of meat in her hands. “They say that they have to be on a regular feeding schedule. That if I feed them off that schedule, they think that any time is feeding time. But…”
I watched her walk up to the cage, and before I could stop her, she offered each cat a piece of meat out of her hand.
I nearly swallowed my fucking tongue.
“They’re about as tame as you can get when it comes to a wild animal,” Folsom came up to my side. “But she’s not supposed to be feeding them. Not from her hand, and not at all.”
She said that last part louder than the first part. JP turned around with a guilty look on her face.
“I was just showin’ him…” she shrugged.
“Just showing him and just following the rules are good things. But one should supersede the other, Julie Payne,” Folsom grumbled.
JP sighed. “I don’t understand why we have to followthisrule.”
“Because,” a sweetly drawled Southern voice said from out of the darkness. “Coco and Melon are wild animals. They might want to obey us, but if it ever came down to it, and they didn’t want to, they could really hurt us. You have to respect the animal and the rules. Then I wouldn’t have a cat act anymore.”
The woman that emerged from the shadows was quite lovely.
She was plump in all the right places, had darkly tanned skin, and had long black hair that fell almost past her butt. She was captivating, and I could see why she’d do well with the big cat show. She looked exotic and ethereal.
“This is Caristonia,” Folsom said. “Caristonia, this is Kobe.”
Caristonia’s eyes were a startling shade of pale blue.
But even beneath all that beauty, she wasn’t the blonde beside me.
The woman that, for the last year, I’d allowed myself the thought of making mine.
And once that thought took hold…well, it was impossible to let go of.
Not even the shock of her telling me she was my unsolved case could dim that need.
“Nice to meet you, Kobe,” Caristonia said in her sweet, Southern drawl. Then she turned to Folsom. “I take it this is the one?”
My brows rose as I looked over at Folsom.
Her answer made my heart beat a little faster. “This is the one. The one that I told you about that would come for her one day if I happened to disappear.”
That made my heart downright stop.
“He’s…” she hesitated as she came to look at me. Absentmindedly, she reached out her hand and allowed the tigers to lick her fingers. Both of them relished in the attention of their person. “Captivating.”
