Mandy shivers next to me. “Not exactly the type of speech you ought to give a girl after you’ve just threatened to hold her prisoner.”
I cup her face. “I’ll never hurt you, Mandy, I swear. I’m trying to protect you. Let me keep you safe.”
Pepper, the bacon kicking in, trots next to us, barking at the waves.
Motion catches my eye. “Whoa, whoa.” I snatch up the dog.
“You’re seriously not going to pick her up after all that.”
I jerk my chin to the south. “Look. Orcas. They’ll beach themselves to get a meal.”
Mandy huddles closer to me.
“This is one of the reasons I paid out the nose for this island. It has some of the best orca watching.”
“They’re huge. I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to one before,” she whispers, leaning back against me.
“They don’t eat people,” I remind her as we watch the massive predators a few yards out in the deep water, swimming, lurking.
“They’re beautiful and dangerous and mesmerizing,” Mandy says softly.
“They’re also kind of ditzy. That one”—I point to an orca with a notch on its dorsal fin—“is a juvenile. He was born on the other side of the island. His mom likes the seal hunting here, but he couldn’t quite get the hang of it when she was trying to teach him to hunt. She would smack fish out of the water, but they’d just kind of fall on his head and he’d look really confused about the fish falling out of the sky.” I smile. “I could spend hours watching them.”
I glance down at her.
Mandy’s staring up at me with this soft expression on her face. “You’re such a marshmallow.” She grabs my arm. “I’m going to find you an orca charity to donate to.”
“I already give money to several,” I admit.
“And you gave me so much shit about Forever Furry.”
“First off, it sounds like some sort of bestiality-porn site. Also, five hundred thousand dollars? That’s obscene.” I smirk. “Orcas are cool. The parade of abandoned hamsters they have over at Forever Furry is not. You still haven’t unsubscribed me from that mailing list, by the way.”
My car is waitingfor us when we disembark the yacht. It’s been detailed since yesterday evening—no evidence remaining of the grime and dirt from Mandy’s run through the alley.
I’m furious all over again.
“Stop being stubborn,” I tell her as we drive out of the dense downtown traffic. “You need to tell me who he is.”
“It’s not that bad. You’re blowing things out of proportion.” She crosses her arms. She’s back in that black dress.
Mandy reaches for the radio as I drive us out of the city to the suburbs dotting the hills. She turns it on as if to cut off the rest of my argument about why she needs to stop protecting the monster who’s after her.
Pepper has been relegated to the back seat so she can’t get fur all over everything. She’s hanging over the back of my seat, panting against the back of my neck.
I sigh heavily.
“I was perfectly fine with you dropping me off at my car,” she says in response.
“I’m not.”
We pull up in front of a low-slung ranch house, the type built all over Seattle in the eighties. Outside is a beige lawn, the color perfectly even.
“Damn.” I whistle. “That is a perfect kill. Mandy, do you see this? They even edged it.”
I slam on the brakes as Mandy lets out a cry of anguish.
“What is it? Is it him?”
