“Crap... Crap! Crap! Crap!” I whispered.
So many days…
So many days of not thinking about him, but that familiar tension returned in an instant. My muscles tightened, bracing the way they always did around Dennis.
Had to get rid of it. Bury it out of sight.
On instinct, I picked up the piece of paper with shaking hands and put it right back where I’d found it, zipping it into the liner of the gift from Noelle.
The gift he’d managed to take from me yet again.
I hung the orange coat in the closet and grabbed my old leather jacket, knowing I’d be using it from now on for the evening walks. Then I shut the door on the possibly deadly secret I’d just discovered.
But even closed away in the dark closet, it felt like a ticking time bomb.
Hidden, but not forgotten.
“Are you quite alright, Bell?”
That night on the evening walk, I blinked, pulling myself back from thoughts of whether or not the Del Gottis could track me down, given that I’d been offline since May.
I looked up to find Zion frowning down at me with concern in his brown eyes. We were almost back to the cottage, and I knew Zion had been talking the whole way, but I couldn’t remember a single thing he’d said.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically.
My answer only made Zion’s frown deepen. “I’ve just told you the stage manager quit after catching her girlfriend—the actor playing Mother Ursa—kissingJacobi Baerlow, and you’ve nothing to say on that?”
To my left, Ravik was also looking at me with that intense, knowing stare. I remembered the sugar cookies still sitting on my counter—the ones I’d never given him.
“I...” My stomach rolled at just the thought of bothering them with what I was worried about. It was probably nothing anyway. The Del Gottis wouldn’t be able to find me. Other than flashing my passport at the border, I hadn’t left a single footprint between here and Minnesota.
And they didn’t know that Dennis had holed up in my apartment... maybe.
Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about how my perfect, nearly two-week-long streak of not thinking about Dennis had come to an end, casting a shadow over the peace I’d found here in Canada.
“I have a headache,” I blurted, instead of making a weird confession about finding a handwritten slip of paper that may or may not lead to a bank account containing embezzled funds from a Minnesota mafia family. “I’m just going to go home.”
I jogged forward on the gravel path to flip around to face them instead of walking between them. “Sorry, Zion, no movie tonight. I’ll just turn off the lights when I’m ready to sleep, like I do for Boone.”
He and Ravik had gone completely still.
I could practically hear them talking over their maul bond.
“Of course, Bell,” Zion said carefully in the end. “Let me know if you require anything before then.”
It was all I could do not to run back to the cottage.
After my nightly shower, I turned off the lights before it was even nine. Climbed into the loft and lay there, staring at the ceiling.
It’s fine,I told myself.He’s dead. He can’t hurt me. The paper doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a piece of paper.
Sometime later, I heard Zion enter below and move around quietly until the scraping footsteps of his socked feet turned into heavy paw thuds after he shifted. And then one quiet plop as he settled onto the floor in bear form.
I didn’t need an overnight sentry. But my thoughts didn’t stop racing until Zion took up his post.
Only then did exhaustion finally pull me under.
Clack! Clack! Clack!
