“A sudden, blinding flash of insight,” I muttered. Since I wasn’t really expecting that to happen, I pulled a pen from inside my black vest. He’d referred to it earlier as combat gear. It wasn’t. It was just…useful. Very useful. I bent down and marked an X on the map. “First sighting.”
Finding the next was harder.
I marked it and put a tiny little two next to it.
The third and fourth had been practically on top of each other.
I starred the fourth—something about the van was still bugging me.
“Why the star?”
“The van.” I fisted a hand in my hair and stared at the map, although I wasn’t seeing it. In the back of my mind, I saw a dusty blue van. Where, though…where did I remember seeing it? In person? On the news? Hell, for all I know, it could have been one of the hundreds of MP reports I had to churn through. Shoving my hair back from my face, I stared at the starred X. “Something about the van is bugging me.”
His hand stroked up my back.
I was so busy concentrating for a minute, it didn’t occur to me to notice it.
But as he rubbed his thumb over my nape, I tensed. Swallowing, I closed my eyes. “Damon…why in the hell are you touching me?”
“I think we’ve already established this,” he said, his voice low as he leaned in over the map, studying it with the same intent gaze I was. “I think you know, if you’d just let yourself think about it.”
I set my jaw. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Uh-huh.” He tapped a point on the map. “We should go visit the park. Since we’re here. Take a hike or something.”
“A hike?” Shrugging away the hand at the nape of my neck, I started folding up the map. “I’m sort of in the middle of working a case that I need to solve unless I want the Alpha Cat to try and rip my throat out.”
He reached up. Laid a hand on said throat. “I’ll take care of your throat, Kit.”
“Uh-huh. So reassuring from the man who all but crushed it a week ago.”
That look darkened his eyes, the one I couldn’t quite comprehend. “I’ll take care of it,” he said again. “And we need to go on a hike. I caught weird smells on the wolf kid. Maybe I can track them.”
I trudged along behind him, swatting at mosquitoes, cursing the heat, still feeling too damned tired and wondering how long we’d be out here. We’d spent most of yesterday in the woods and had collapsed at a little roadside hotel only to get up at dawn and return.
He’d wanted to check out the northern part of the park, but my gut told me to go south. So here we were. And I was miserable.
Thirst nagged at me and I tugged the bottle from the pack I carried. I emptied it in three long drinks and added it to the small collection in my bag. Rummaging through the pack, I unearthed a granola bar, but before I could tear into it, I found myself trapped between Damon’s body and a bent, gnarled tree that felt rough against me, even through my T-shirt and the material of my vest.
Swearing, I jerked a look up at him. “L—”
A hand covered my mouth and he looked down at me, shaking his head.
Storm clouds swirled in his eyes and the pupils swirled. Flared. And as I watched, the bones in his face started to shift.
Swallowing, I nodded.
He backed away, lifting a finger to his mouth.
Yes, yes. I get the point.
He held out the pack he’d slung on his back. His hand was human when he started the motion, but furred, clawed by the time I caught the pack. The damn pack was more than twice the weight of my own. I shifted my balance and swung it onto my back. He pointed to the tree and mouthed, Stay.
At least that was what I thought he said.
Hard to say…because the bones around his mouth, the shape of it…everything was changing.
Slowly.
I decided it was easier to watch a shift in full speed rather than this. Muscles appeared in places where they didn’t belong and bones broke, realigned, formed, as fur spread and flowed along his body.
He stripped out of his clothes as he changed, the slow shift giving him the time to get of them without them falling to shreds around him. And it was all so completely