Page 29 of Colton’s Mate

Chapter 12

Using Remy’s special app, Colt and Callie scanned the entire house room by room, pulling surveillance equipment from corners and crevices until they had a collection of tiny videocams on the dining-room table.

Including a shower cam.

Callie eyed it with distaste. “That is just gross. There’s no way they think I hid a sacred crow relic in my shower. Fucking pervs.”

Normally Colt would have made a smartass remark about how good Callie probably looked in the shower, but all he could muster was a growl at the idea of pervy crows potentially watching her naked.

Or, really, anybody watching her naked.

But only because it was an invasion of her privacy. Not because he was jealous, or anything like that.

His leopard said, If she was naked we could lick her. She tastes good.

Shit. Boner happening again.

Colt tried to concentrate on the cameras, disabling each one and cutting off the transmission. Just before he got to the last one, Callie picked it up and held her middle finger in front of it, then moved it right in front of her mouth and enunciated “Fuuuck yooouuu” very clearly and distinctly.

Colt grinned.

He took the camera from her and disabled it, then turned in his chair to face her. “Okay,” he said. “We’re secure. Want me to take a look at Caleb’s and Tex’s papers now?”

“Please,” she said. “Because if I do have any clue where this damn McGuffin is, I want to find it so Cruella and her minions will leave me the hell alone.”

She led him into the spare bathroom. Under a false bottom in the linen closet was a safe set into the floor. Callie spun the combination, opened the safe and began handing files out to Colt.

When it was empty, they carried everything back to the dining-room table, shoved aside the pile of cameras, and began searching through everything.

She was right, there wasn’t much there. Deeds, business papers, bank records that really didn’t need to be kept in a safe, except… He looked at the total balance in her business bank accounts and whistled.

“Where the hell did all that cash come from? Tex?”

She looked over his shoulder. “Oh. No. Caleb put that in there at some point, when he was running the Crows’ Nest. He never let me see the accounts. Now I know why.” She tilted her head and looked at him. “Did you know that when Tex died, all those accounts reverted to me by rights of survivorship? So everything in there is legally mine.”

And she deserved every dime. He hoped Caleb was rolling in his grave—it would serve him right, knowing his dirty money would set Callie up for life.

Colt asked her, “Do you think that’s what the Corsairs are really after? Caleb’s money?”

Callie thought about it, then shook her head. “If it was money they were after, why wouldn’t they just say so? I’m pretty sure Rohene was telling the truth when she said it was some kind of artifact.”

“Maybe,” Colt said. “But you might want to get that cash out of there, all the same. I could ask Remy to set up an offshore account for you.”

Callie stared at him. “Do real people have those? And how does Remy know how to set one up?”

“Remy is a financial genius. And a hacker. He knows how to do all kinds of stuff that would probably scare us both.”

“I’ll think about it.” He could tell she was taken aback by this new information. First Colt and his engineering degree, and now Remy and his computer skills.

It made her look at him differently. He was surprised to discover he liked that.

The McCall twins were perfectly fine with people underestimating them, most of the time. But for some reason, he wanted Callie to know what they could really do.

They went back to the papers. She didn’t have much stuff of Caleb’s. The business files weren’t really his—he’d taken them from Callie after Tex died, so he could funnel that cash through the bar accounts. Other than that, there was nothing of significance that Colt could see.

They moved on to Tex’s stuff. There was more there, because it went back more years, but it was basically just the paperwork of life.

Nothing mysterious or magical.