AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A clatter from the kitchen had him jerking to attention.
“Damn it, Layna. Don’t touch my shit. I’ll put the phone up. Go to bed.”
There was no answer.
“Layna?”
Eagan stood from the bench and crept toward the back entrance to the kitchen. He eased the door open, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Stepping in, he scanned the prep area, quickly finding the source of the noise. His heavy chef’s knife lay on the tile floor.
Eagan let out an exhausted sigh. He must’ve set it too close to the edge, causing it to fall.
He strolled over to his work station and began packaging the chopped veggies for the walk-in. As he worked, his nose burned with the smell that filled the room.
“Damn onions,” he muttered to himself.
Walking to the freezer with his stack of containers, he nearly tripped over his knife. He bent to pick it up and tossed it in the wash sink before reaching for the handle of the walk-in. But what he saw there locked his muscles in place.
There was a smudge of dirt on the chrome of the handle. Not dust. Dirt. Dark, like the mud from the creek bottom. He was sure it hadn’t been there earlier.
The back of his neck prickled with the sense of danger. Their thief was here, and Eagan’s cat wanted out to fight. To defend. Catch his prey.
Not here. Not inside. No turning in the lodge.
But before he could come up with a plan, the door to the storage closet burst open and a small, dark figure shoved past him, sending the containers of onions to the floor.
“Shit!”
Eagan spun, reaching for the figure, and managed to grasp one mud-covered arm. A jolt of recognition hit him, and his throat tightened, his jaguar reeling at the contact.
He jerked angrily, and the intruder gasped, turning to gawk at him from under the bill of a ratted baseball cap.
His breath froze in his chest.
Golden eyes fringed in long dark lashes stared back at him. Muddied round cheeks sat above the most luscious set of rosebud lips he’d ever seen. Lips that were parted in shock. And probably pain. Pain?
Fuck.
Their thief was a female.
He loosened his grip, but that was a huge mistake. Because the moment he did, she jerked away from him hard enough that he stumbled backward. And before he’d even regained his footing, she ran.
“Wait!”
Eagan scrambled to catch her, but she was through the swinging door before he could. He pushed through, looking left and then right. Both ways again, and there was no sign of her. But she must’ve made a run for the outdoors. She wouldn’t stay inside where she could be captured.
He rushed through the lobby and out the front, stopping on the front deck to scan the area. No sign of his thief.
“Shit.”
He breathed deep, trying to find her scent. But he only smelled the normal scents of the lodge. The werecats, the human, the forest. The deer.
He ran into the clearing where cars were parked, ducking and searching under each one. But there was no thief.
He walked the perimeter of the main building, sniffing for any change that could indicate the female, and came up with nothing.
Eagan stared out into the forest. He could track her if only he had a scent. Without it, in the dark… he had nothing to go on. She was a ghost.
“Shit.”
