Looking at the pictures, I saw Slade with his arm over Odra. He hadn’t bled, he’d just died. “What killed Slade, if it wasn’t the same thing that killed Odra?”
“We need to find out how someone could have put something in their food,” she said. “We’re reasonably certain the dinner food was fine, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “There was enough of it left to check it out. No poisons in it of any kind. But since the chocolates were gone, we can’t run any kind of analysis on them. And Slade’s family didn’t want an autopsy done on him since it was ruled a murder-suicide. And Odra’s body wouldn’t yield anything being that it was mummified.”
“Are we certain Odra ate the chocolate?” she asked.
“She could have eaten it. She’s young enough to where it wouldn’t have given her too bad a case of indigestion. For her lover—I’d think she would have eaten them with him.”
It got me to thinking. If we could locate the owner of the gift shop, maybe we could get some answers as to who had purchased the chocolate. Possibly the person who’d handled the chocolate box at the gift shop had left the unknown smudge above the sticker. Or maybe the perp had.
“We need to go to the chocolate shop,” Augusta suggested again…completely aligned with what I was thinking.
“That’s a very good idea. We could go, look around, check it out, see what we find,” I said.
She looked at me playfully. “Cade, the two of us are going to go to a chocolate shop together.” She glanced at me mysteriously, and I leaned back feeling relaxed.
I reached out and then caressed her neck. It was quick, it was fleeting, and as soon as I did it, I pulled back. But I had her velvet softness in my memory. And that one small touch was not enough to appease me.
Don't make her uncomfortable and get a hold of yourself, Cade.
“Then it's settled,” I said. “Tomorrow, when the snow thaws, we're going to head over to the next town and look around in a gift shop.”
It was getting quite warm in the room, which contrasted with the coldness of the weather. I needed to do something with myself, or else I was going to descend upon sweet Augusta in insatiable lust.
I stood, made as if to dust an imaginary speck of dust off of my flannel and headed out of the room.
“Are we done?” she asked.
Whatever we were, I didn't think we were at a point where she was ready to complete what I wanted to start. I shook my head. That wasn't the question that she was asking. “We’ll talk some more about it later.”
And I left the room.
I kept myself busy for a while. I moved wood from the attached shed and to the living room. I changed light fixtures in the house that probably were in no danger of going out.
Then I went back to my work area and began sanding wood for the sleigh. I must have worked well into the late afternoon, and it was at that time, that I realized Augusta had been quiet.
I'd heard her moving some things around in her room earlier, but after that, she’d gone mysteriously silent. Concerned that maybe something had happened and she didn't have the ability to call out, I went to investigate. I knew it was a senseless concern. But still it was there, and I walked down the hallway to where she was rooming and saw that the door was open.
Knocking on the side of it, I hoped to see her cleaning or working on the clues we had put together like she normally did. What I didn't expect to see was that she'd moved the bed to the other side of the room, and the dresser next to the door.
Where she stood, was a hole in the floor. Inside, I’d kept my most precious possessions. The floorboard that covered it had been lifted. Now, the hole was empty.
Slowly, I flowed into the room, not able to see anything or say anything. She'd gone into my things? Augusta had found the one item that I had never wanted anyone to see. The one thing that kept me here like a tether to a pole. It was the reason that I’d left the Arcane Affairs Agency.
I stared at her like a wounded animal, hurt, ready to lash out, not able to speak. I wanted her to leave. No, I wanted her to put my things back. I didn't know what I wanted. I just knew that I had to get out of that room.
“Cade?” she said.
I didn't dare say anything to her and I shook my head.
“Cade!”
The only words I could force through my tight throat and my numb lips were, “Put it back.”
“But I saw them. I saw her,” she said.
“I can't do this,” I said. Why was I trembling like a leaf? I couldn't stop shaking. I had my back to her as I walked to the door. Not capable of turning around, I said, “Return them to where you found them, please.”
And then I flew out the room and poured out of the cabin. I didn't know where I was going to go or what I was going to do. But I knew I couldn't stay inside that cabin.
****
The snow was deep and it was cold outside. I could freeze out here. But I wouldn't die. As long as I kept the blood moving inside of my cold body, I had nothing to fear.
I saw movement on the edge of the forest. It was too slow to be a vampire, and it was too fast to be a creature of the wild. I doubted it was a shifter, it wouldn't have been able to last for too long out here in this weather.
With my emotions already raging, I hauled ass to meet whatever it was skulking about my land. I circled around to the far side. Then I planted myself in front of the man—coming at him just out of his peripheral vision.
This was a maneuver that I’d taught my men centuries ago. I had perfected it. And yet as I got close enough, the unknown person on my land turned just in time to face me.
“Hey, Cade, fancy meeting you out here,” he said.
The person’s head was covered in a black hood. I smelled a strong odor of bleach, and I realized this must have been the same person that had been on Augusta’s land. He had to be the one who had chased her from her cabin.
“Who are you? Why are you on my land? And what business do you have with Augusta?” With some people, it was best to take a direct approach.
“I’m a friend. I come with the intent of judging for myself how things are going.”
I wasn't satisfied with the answer. “Again, who sent you?”
He sighed and stared up at the trees. “Have you ever sat long enough to watch a glacier move?”
It was an odd question. It should have been one where I quickly told him I had not. Who had time to watch that? But the truth of it was, I'd been around a while, and there was a period in my life, that I had watched a large glacier thaw.
I shrugged.
“So have I, Cade. They do, you know. It just takes time.”
The being standing before me was ancient and possibly filled with an impossible amount of power.
“She's one of a kind, is she not?” the man asked.
He had an arrow-like face with a pointy nose, age-old black eyes, and saggy ears. For all his peculiarity in appearance, his voice was rather mundane to the point of being ordinary.
“You know my name, at least tell me yours.”
He inclined his head. “Forgive my rudeness.” He cleared his throat. “I’m a whispering breeze over the sea, a frolicking wind in the glade, and a blustering gale on a storming night. I'm Kip. At one time I counted myself among the living. Now I just find when one of them has gone missing.”
It hit me then like a ton of steel on my head. Her family must have sent him to find her. “They could have called the agency instead of getting someone who is, you know, questionable,” I said.
Rather than appear offended, he smiled benignly. There was something sinister that worked inside of him, I was certain. But I honestly didn't sense that he was doing anything more than taking note of things like he said. It was the oddest sensation. As if he took jobs, but in the end, he decided what the final verdict was.
“She left them for a reason, you know,” I said.
He nodded at me, and as he did, he began to fad
e. “It’s blistering cold, Cade, and even you mustn't stay long in it. I'm merely a watcher of sorts, but you need to watch out for Augusta. Keep her safe, and be easy on her, because I'm afraid that I am unable. It’s outside the scope of my assignment,” he said and then disappeared.
I stood there stunned.
Augusta. More than anything I knew that I was going to have to find a way to back her off of this case. As I raced back to the cabin, I thought about it. I seemed to remember tales of Kip.
He was a person that was called to bring people back home who’d run away. And he was known to be slow in making his decision, but once he made one, it was final. If he brought someone back that didn't want to go back, but who had run because of their own duplicity, they would never be able to leave the place they ran from again.
On the other hand, if he found someone who’d run, who was justified in leaving, and was happy where they were, then no one would ever be able to bring them back to where they’d run from.
From what I could recall, he had a one hundred percent success rate either way he decided. I didn’t know where Augusta and I were headed with our attraction. But if Augusta was to stay with me at all permanently, then we’d better be right for each other. Otherwise, she was going back to the place she ran away from forever—Kip would see to it.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
*Augusta*
I COULDN’T GRASP THE TORMENT the unearthly and beautiful vampire must have experienced to live through what I’d just found out.
Cade had been gone for a while. He’d told me to put his items away. I'd wanted to do just that and had even knelt onto the ground over the removed floor board to do so. I stayed that way until I got a crick in my neck.
Finally, I gathered up the items again and returned with them to the bed, sat down, crossed my legs, and studied the pictures…and the obituary.
She was beautiful. Her smile was contagious, and even in the black and white picture that had captured her immortality, I could see the cool intelligence in her eyes. To Cade, who was usually very reserved, this woman must have been the opposite. She seemed to have an open quality, an inquisitive nature, and maybe even had been the voice of compassion. That was the impression I got from her picture.
I understood in a way why he was so angry with me for finding these. If he had buried them away, then my retrieving them must have stirred memories that were too disturbing to revisit.
What I got from Cade, was that he was extremely protective by nature—and it extended to this mystery woman. The obituary said her name was Evelyn Theresa Harrison, and she and Cade had been partners for five years with the Arcane Affairs Agency. She was an agent level two at the time and he was an agent level three. I sighed. The article said Cade had been her superior.
I found out the next bit of information with dread. It seemed that Evelyn passed away in the line of duty. The article said she was courageous and she’d received many honors.
The details were vague, and I was fairly certain that I would have to get the full story from Cade if he was willing to tell me. But I'd never seen him so angry, so unwilling to talk, so upset over something like he had been with my discovery. I didn't know how to help him get past the death of a partner. I suspected that it was what was holding him back, possibly even what kept him isolated here in this cabin.
But if I couldn't help him, who could? He didn't let anyone in. If I was going to be honest with myself, I didn't want him to push me out. I wanted to be right here. I wanted Cade to talk to me.
A sound disturbed the interior of the house, and I slowly looked up from the articles on the bed. When I did, Cade was standing in the entrance of the room. He wore a dark green flannel that accentuated his emerald eyes.
I was in one of his deep blue flannels that brought out mine. His face was sculpted, carved in stone with his reserved expression. I didn't think now was the time for me to be the first one to speak. After all, I was the one who'd gone snooping.
In dismay, I looked around. How was I to know how my bid to rearrange the room would end? I hadn’t meant to find out something so much a part of his professional life as well as anything so personal.
“It was an old vampire who got her, you know.” His words were soft, rustic, filled with a reservoir of grief.
“I shouldn't have gone through your things,” I said. And I meant it.
His throat worked, and he pressed his lips together. Finally, he opened them, and he glanced from the stack beside me, to my face, and I swear it was as if he was cycling his mind through so many possibilities.
It was as if he was aware of something that I knew little of. And I wondered if anything had happened between his going outside and coming back to the cabin. Because I expected him to kick me out, honestly, when he came back. But now he was looking at me as if contemplating locking every door inside of his home and never letting me leave there.
I saw it in the way that he was standing in the doorway. It was as if he was on guard for something.
“It was just, I was trying to clean under the bed, and moved it. When I saw the raised board, I went ahead and pulled it up,” I said.
“Your family is looking for you,” Cade said.
I squinted at him in alarm. “What? How do you know this? How do they know where I am? How did they contact you?”
Finally, he left the doorway. Cade came over to me, gently pulled the stack away from beside me, arranged it neatly, placed the articles in the box they had been in, and put them back in the hole. Then he covered it.
Was he not going to talk to me about this? I wanted to know how my family found me but I also wanted to know what was going on with him—and what had happened to his partner.
There were so many questions going through my mind that I couldn't pick one to settle on. I didn't think I was going to get anywhere by asking him about Evelyn.
“Are you going to send me back to them?” I asked.
I knew my family. Knew how persuasive they could be, and could only guess who they’d sent to come looking for me.
“Do you want to go back?” he asked.
Did he want me to?
“No, I don't. I think it would be best if you stayed with me here in my cabin,” Cade said.
He’d heard my silent thought—but he’d answered me out loud. Had I completely lost his trust? I sighed unhappily. What could I do to regain it?
“Cade, about those things,” I said.
He shook his head. “When I came in here, I wanted to be angry. But then I saw you sitting on the bed with the pictures beside you, looking at them and you seemed so full of empathy. What I see in your face is not the same as the sympathy that I get from everyone who knows what happened.”
I held my tongue and let him finish. He was speaking to me, and I didn't want anything that I said to make him stop.
“It's as if you were living there right alongside me, Augusta. Do you know what that’s doing to me? Despite what it seems like, if something is trying to hurt you, if someone is trying to harm you, I will protect you,” he said.
“Did... did something happen out there with the person my family sent?” I asked.
Cade’s power washed through and around me. It called out to the Alpha in me. He was a man that pulled out the desire inside of me. That attraction was sitting just within reach waiting for one of us to acknowledge it. I was attracted to Cade and I couldn’t deny it—wouldn’t anymore.
His urge to protect me called to something even stronger inside of me. I sat there staring at him with this friction between us sparking into something so intense, and I couldn't take my eyes off of him.
We stared at each other for a long moment. All of the uncertainty I’d felt over exposing the contents under the floorboard, the closeness of us trying to put this murder puzzle together over the last few days, and the extraordinary nature of Cade came crashing into me.
As my pulse rate picked up, and my hands grew clammy, I realize
d one thing. I wanted Cade. And I was fairly certain that if anyone had ever known what it felt like to be in the presence of their true mate, it had to have felt like this.
Cade slowly walked towards me. I was on a string being pulled towards him. I unfolded from my cross-legged position on the bed, hopped down, and met him halfway.
His dominance made the Alpha in me awaken. I could think of nothing else but his gorgeous gaze pulsing with power. He stood over me. We waited one second, another heartbeat, a slow breath, and then we were in each other's arms.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
*Cade*
THE URGE TO PROTECT HER was overwhelming me, intensifying my desire to be with her. I shook my head as I silently pulled her even closer to me. It wasn't only my desire to protect her that had me so hard right now.
It was something about her being here in a moment when I needed to feel another body against mine. No, that still wasn't right. Not just anybody. It wasn't like how I felt when I wanted my one-night stands. I wanted Augusta, and I wanted her now.
As I kissed her lips, her eyelids, and back again to her mouth, I spoke in between. “Is being with me this way what you want?” I asked. I had to make certain that she wasn't doing this out of some mistaken need to comfort me.
No matter what happened the next morning, I needed to know, that she was doing this because she wanted to. That she understood the box she was opening.
When our clothes came off, there would be no turning back. Normally, I wouldn't be concerned about making certain that we were both ready for this. Somehow, with her, though I realized she wasn't like the other women that I'd been with. They knew that I had no intentions of getting involved with them for longer than it took for us to get what we needed from each other.
Augusta glanced at me mysteriously. “You have my permission to proceed if that's what you're asking.”
The breath that I took was shaky and relieved. But it was short-lived, because as soon as she gave me her permission, she began unbuttoning the flannel shirt that she’d borrowed from me. By my count, she had at least four of my shirts. I placed my hand over hers to stop the movement.
The Vampire's Alpha Mate: A BBW Tiger-Shifter Romance (Arcane Affairs Agency) Page 13
