Shadow of Doubt - Hailey Edwards Page 0,49

means I can lactate and reproduce.”

Once again, my sense of humor had robbed him of speech.

“You’re right,” he admitted after he recovered. “I have trouble…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, and it made me doubt that was all he’d meant to say in the first place.

“You have a thing for abuse survivors.” I did not look at the scarring up his arms, but he must have sensed my thoughts sway in that direction, because he rubbed a hand over them. “I can respect that. Careful it doesn’t blind you to the bigger picture. The abused can be abusers too.”

The statistics for abuse survivors repeating what was done to them was stark.

I would never have kids. Never. Not in a million years, and not for a million dollars.

I was too afraid.

Midas was right. I had fire, I had passion. I had a temper.

That didn’t make me a monster, but my mother had been one. Was one. I worried how much of my mother’s daughter I was after all those years of tiny pinches, hard slaps, and kicks delivered when I was already down.

I had proven I was capable of committing evil. I didn’t want to prove I was capable of birthing it too.

“Hadley.”

“I should get back.” I turned and started walking away, from him and those grim thoughts. “Ford is my ride home.”

“I’ll stop by your apartment at dusk,” he called to my retreating back.

I raised a hand to show I heard and would be ready, but I was halfway to running to put distance between myself and thoughts of her.

Maybe the POA was nuts for letting me step into his shoes, or at least try them on.

Then again, who better to hunt monsters than one of their own?

Ahead of me, my shadow walked backward across the pavement, craning his neck to stare at Midas.

“Shut up.” I stomped past him. “No one asked you.”

Ten

Midas kept walking after Hadley fled, eventually breaking into a punishing jog. The predator in him was affronted she had discovered his weakness after knowing him for such a short time. The primal urge to dominate heated his blood, but she wasn’t pack, she wasn’t gwyllgi. She owed him no allegiance and no submission.

Part of him worried that might be the reason he kept dropping in where he wasn’t needed when he had already tasked Ford with acting in the pack’s best interest.

“Midas.”

Eyes closing, he had no choice but to stop and listen. “Yes?”

Ford was out of breath from running flat out to catch him, his chest heaving and his hair damp with sweat. “You didn’t have to come tonight. I could have handled it.”

“I know that.”

“Tell me it’s not Lee.”

Lee.

The familiar ring of it itched the far corners of his brain, but he couldn’t quite scratch it.

Yet.

The question shot out of his mouth without permission. “Are you pursuing her?”

“I… Hell. I like her.” He rolled his shoulders. “That’s hardly breaking news.”

Ford had developed a dangerous crush on her, and Midas had hoped working together would cure him. So far, exposure therapy was only deepening his infatuation.

“Damn it.” Ford cursed under his breath. “I can still do the job.”

“You can’t keep her in check if you’re dating her, Ford. You’re good, but you’re not that good.”

“Lee is a smart woman. This investigation is an excuse for me to get a read on her, and she knows it.” Amusement bounced in his shoulders. “She’s called me out more than once.”

Midas grunted, expecting nothing less. Linus wouldn’t have trained her if she wasn’t diamond sharp. The past year had done nothing but polish what was there.

“I don’t think she’s into me,” Ford admitted. “That doesn’t mean I won’t try, with your blessing.”

“You two seemed chummy enough when you arrived.” He wished he could blame the growl roughening his voice on the scarring, but Ford knew him too well. “You have a date set, right? A movie night?”

“Yeah, but it’s not a real date. She knows I want to snoop around her place.” He laughed a little to diffuse the tension. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she turned up at my place with a DVD—or, god forbid, a VHS—with some black-and-white cheesefest to avoid having me in her space.”

“I thought you liked science fiction.”

“I enjoy the futuristic aspect of it, the looking forward. Her tastes run toward looking back.”

There was comfort in the soft lines of black-and-white movies, where the good guys always won, and death never happened on screen. How she swallowed the shrinking violets so often cast as heroines, he