But Stef was walking towards them now, and Krista was looking away again, avoiding the subject. Blake introduced Krista—not that Stef hadn’t seen plenty of surveillance photos and read every briefing they’d put together on her. She probably knew what size Krista took in panties.
And I havegotto stop thinking about her panties.
“It’s very nice to meet you. I appreciate you coming here,” Stef said to her.
“Sure, sure. What’s a little blackmail between friends?” Krista returned Stef’s sunny smile with a sour look.
“No pretenses. I like her,” Stef said to Blake, flashing a big, white-toothed smile.
“Damn, she’s good,” Krista observed grudgingly to Blake. “You know, you were right. I’d find her very likeable if I didn’t know she was an underhanded sneak who had you threaten my livelihood and my family.”
“You could just speak to each other directly, you know,” Blake said to her.
“Nah, I plan to make this as awkward as possible.” Krista marched into the cabin, head held high.
Mal and Dexter were already there, rumbling around in the dining room, setting up a bulletin board. The cabin had high ceilings, framed paintings of wildlife, and deer-antler chandeliers. The furniture was polished hewn wood, decorated with red plaid cushions.
Unlike most of the cabins in the area, it had small windows rather than picture windows, which was probably why it had been useful to whichever clan had been using it for illegal activities—they’d want privacy.
Krista and Blake grabbed roast beef sandwiches from a cooler that Dexter had brought with him. They sat in the living room and scarfed them down while debriefing the team with what little information they’d managed to dig up.
“All we’re getting is vague threats, and it’s impossible to tell if it has anything to do with Ethan,” Krista said wearily. “It might… well, there are a number of reasons why they might not want outsiders poking around here.”
“You mean the Reeds’ moonshine business?” Stef asked. They knew it was big business. The moonshine was rumored to be more addictive than cigarettes, and it sold all over the region known as the Zoo, not just in the little holler known as Flowering Dogwood.
Krista hesitated just long enough to make Blake’s wolf twitch. “Yeah, that, and whatever else people are up to around here.” Then she cleared her throat and straightened up.
“I don’t think that Dawnie had anything to do with it, even though her daughter was acting weird. Actually, not that weird, for Eva-Jo. She’s always defensive and on edge.” She said that to Stef, looking her straight in the eye. Blake felt like Krista was trying to steer the conversation away from… something.
“We don’t think so either, because Michael is working with Dawnie on a plan to re-open the mines,” Stef said. “He’s already paid her some money, and there will be a lot more where that came from if she gives her blessing to the mines opening again.” Krista’s eyes widened in surprise.
Before he could question her further, the sound of an approaching vehicle perked their ears up. Blake hurried to the window to look out, then relaxed a little. “It’s Mr. Coffman,” he called out to them.
His gaze flicked up at the wall clock. Michael Coffman and his men were ten minutes early to the meeting. That told Blake a lot. Men like Coffman, the richer-than-God CEO of a multinational corporation, usually made a point of rolling up ostentatiously late, as a message that their time was so much more important than anyone’s else’s. It was a measure of how worried he was about his boy that wasn’t posturing or blustering.
Most of his pride members were apparently out searching for Ethan, roaming through the woods, trying to pick up his scent, knocking on doors. From what Krista had said, that would get them exactly nowhere, and might even get them killed, but Blake understood that Michael was a desperate father who would do anything to find his cub.
Ethan’s mother had died giving birth to him, and Michael had never chosen another mate. Ethan was an only cub. This had to be absolute torture for him.
Blake glanced at Krista and the look on her face made his heart hurt. Guilt, sympathy, pain. Her shoulders slumped. She wanted to help, she was born to help, and she believed that she might actually cause harm instead by her mere presence in the holler.
And she could be right. But the mere chance that somebody might be brave enough to at least whisper a hint about Ethan was worth the risk.
Coffman and half a dozen men bustled into the cabin with an air of urgency. Coffman was a handsome man with a square face and a tawny mane of hair. Blake suspected he deliberately cultivated a leonine look even in human form, and he had to admit it was impressive. His pinstriped suit was pressed knife-edge sharp, and Blake would probably have to sell his liver to be able to afford even the vest.
Coffman barely bothered greeting them before settling into a chair in the living room. His bodyguards remained standing. They were massive and expressionless, wearing stark black suits. Four of them stood to the right of the chair, and the other two stood about six feet away. The two who were standing further from the chair wore big mirrored shades and tension radiated from their bodies, no matter how hard they tried to hide it.
Richard and Alfonse. Their faces bore fading bruises. Shifters healed fast, which meant that they’d gotten the bruises within the day.
It was clear that those were the two who had screwed up. He could smell their fear, bitter and tangy, and see the strain in the taut muscles of their jaws.
“We need a debriefing on what exactly happened when Ethan went missing,” Stef said, getting right down to business. She inclined her head at the two tense body-guards. “Names? And I assume these are the men who were assigned to watch Ethan?”
“Alfonse,” one of them muttered. “And yes.”
“I’m Richard,” the taller one said. “Mr. Coffman was on his computer after breakfast. Ethan got bored and wanted to go for a walk. And we’d had no threats, no indication of any danger…” he trailed off, withering under Michael’s glare.
“For a man in my position, there’s always the threat of kidnapping.”
