“Or there will be a bunch of shifters turned into humans or worse,” I said counter to his point.”
He took the phone off mute. “Thanks again, Willy,” he told her. “Please, tell Dad I’m okay. I don’t want him to worry.”
“Tell him yourself. He’s got his own phone, and you have the number.” On that note, she ended the call.
Jo Jo frowned at me. “The guy in the living room has a father named War?”
I grimaced. “Yep.”
“I killed War’s son?”
“Uh-huh,” I said.
His eyes widened. “We should go.”
“Immediately,” I agreed. “I’ll pack fast.”
CHAPTERSIX
Etta – I’m not much of a conversationalist, but I’m willing to put in the practice.
Ijumped in the shower and took less than a minute so soap up and rinse off, then quickly changed clothes and packed in record time while Jo Jo moved Pete into the kitchen and covered him with a blanket. I found him a pair of loungy, oversized sweats that I’d bought at the university store that he could fit into.
“I’m sorry I don’t have shoes in your size.” His socks and tennis shoes hadn’t survived the shift either. “We can stop and get a pair on the way to Grand Lake Grove.”
“I have work boots in the back of the truck,” Jo Jo said. “And extra socks.”
“Cool, cool.” He had Pete’s blood on his hands from moving the body. “You should go wash up. I’ll bring the clothes in for you. There’s a clean towel on the shelf behind the toilet.”
Jo Jo nodded his thanks and headed to my small apartment bathroom.
“You have a nice array of lingerie hanging up on the back of the door,” he commented.
Eeep. I’d been so focused on moving from one task to the next, that I forgot about the panty parade going on in there. The laundry room was in the basement of the apartment, and I only used it when I had to, and never for my underwear. I skirted past him into the bathroom. The walls were painted yellow, and it consisted of a one-sink vanity, a toilet, and a bathtub shower combo. I had put up a bamboo shelf over the toilet tank for extra storage. Quickly, I yanked two bras and four pairs of underwear down from the hooks where I’d hung them to dry. “There. All clear.”
“I didn’t mind.” Jo Jo chuckled, and the sound made my lower bits stand at attention. “I was only making an observation.”
He tugged his shredded shirt over his head, and my word, the room temperature went up ten degrees. He had tattoos covering his torso and arms. My eyes widened when I saw the silver barbells in his nipples. I resisted the urge to fan myself, but holy crap, the man was sex on a silver barbell stick.
Calm down, Etta.I reminded myself that there was a dead body in the kitchen. Somehow, that wasn’t the lady boner killer that I’d expected it to be.
Jo Jo’s tattoos danced under his rippling muscles as he washed his hands, and my pulse went chugga-chugga-choo-choo.
I caught Jo Jo staring at me through the mirror. The corner of his lips tugged into a knowing smile. “Like what you see?”
I fluffed my hair as I checked out my own reflection. “Sure. I’m having a good hair day, all things considered.”
He snorted a laugh and then shook his head. “Sure.”
He had sleeve tattoos covering both arms. I’d spent some time staring at them when I stayed in Peculiar. Recently, I’d gotten a tattoo of my own, but it was small, and on my right shoulder, and nothing to brag about, just a simple, single-line tattoo of double spirals. I’d seen it somewhere, and it had felt right at the time. I’d gotten it for two reasons: one, William would’ve hated me getting anything permanently inked on my body, and two, silly as it was, it had made me feel closer to Jo Jo, as if I had shared an experience with him.
Jo Jo’s, however, were works of art. He had a cougar face on his right deltoid with clusters of roses covering the rest of his skin down to his wrist. There were numbers above the cougar’s brow that read725RC17000.
I dragged my fingertip across the strange code. “What’s that mean?” I asked him. I knew his mother, like his stepmom Willy, had been a cougar shifter. The tattoo had to have been for her. Her name was Rose Ann, so the roses made sense as well, but I didn’t get the numbers. It didn’t look like a date.
He gave me a curious look. “You don’t know?”
“Know what?”
