Page 24 of Brandon’s Mate

To top things off, all four ghosts had materialized, and they were sniffing around Kitty and her car like friendly house cats when a stranger walks in.

He could not deal with this.

He picked up one of the unconscious crows and tossed him into the bed of the shiny black pickup. Damn, that sucker weighed a lot for a fucking bird shifter. He went back for the next one.

Kitty was still leaning on the car, watching him. “Now I could use a hand,” he said pointedly.

Kitty just gazed at him with those fathomless blue eyes. “You had your chance,” she said. “Now you expect me to get blood on my shirt for you? You’re on your own.”

Somehow he had the feeling she wasn’t talking about the last few minutes.

He heaved the second body into the pickup, and looked back at her. She was still standing there. Still watching him. One of the ghosts was perched on the hood of the Catalina, and another one was curled up in the back seat.

Shit.

Kitty was totally, completely screwed.

Because she’d found Brandon, and he was just as breathtaking and compelling and sexy as ever, even covered in blood, his midnight-blue eyes eclipsed with the green of his panther, standing over a pile of bodies. He’d tossed his bloody shirt aside, and his eight-pack abs showed above his low-slung jeans.

And despite how hard she’d tried to tell herself her feelings for him had just been an adolescent crush, the minute she saw him they’d all come rushing back.

Only one thing about him was different.

Brandon had always been passionate, volatile, expressive—she’d spent so many hours just watching him, over the years, she thought she knew every expression he had.

She’d never seen him look like this.

His face was hard, almost stony. Like all that vivid life and passion and humanity had gone out of him.

What had happened to him?

And what was she supposed to say now? She couldn’t let him know how she felt. He’d try to get rid of her just like before, and she couldn’t let that happen—at least not until she was sure he was out of danger.

She just had to be cool. Calm. Her normal smartass self.

Except as soon as she’d laid eyes on him, her words went away. And now neither one of them was talking.

“Brandon?”

He shook his head, opened his mouth like he was going to say something, and then closed it and shook his head again. Finally he muttered something that sounded like, “I can’t fucking even.”

He heaved the last body off the ground and tossed it in the back of the truck like a sack of garbage. Then he fished a set of keys from one of the guys’ pockets.

Opening the door of the truck, he pointed the keys at her.

“Stay there. Don’t move.”

He got into the truck and pulled it around. Then he leaned out the window and added, “Don’t go inside. And don’t fucking touch anything!”

He floored the accelerator and drove off in a cloud of dust.

Kitty stared after him. “Well,” she murmured to herself. “That went well.”

Chapter 9

Brandon drove a half-mile or so down the road and pulled the panthers’ truck off into a dirt track, just far enough so that some random person wouldn’t see it from the road.

They were all still out cold.