would still be standing after a fight. David was stronger, but Oz figured he had the bear beat for speed. You’d have to go in tight, right under the chin, and hopefully get a chunk of him before he could get a grip and crush…but it’d have to be quick…like, the fastest-you’ve-ever-moved-in-your-life quick, or he’d claw your eyeballs out of your head and then really go to work.
Worse, David’s ire and Annette’s blood swirling down the drain weren’t his only problems. He had fucked up with Lila, who had every right to assume his only interest in taking her to lunch was to give Annette time to prowl around the Curs(ed) House. There was no coming back from this. There was no nice way to say, Yeah, I needed you distracted while Annette tossed your place, but I also wanted to be with you because I’m obsessed with your scent and mouth and proficiency with firearms, and I think we should get married and make enough cubs to form our own bowling league.
Nope. No matter how he explained it, it was gonna sound unhinged.
He couldn’t stay away from Lila Kai.
He had to stay away from Lila Kai.
The sound of the screen door being wrenched open punctured his train of thought, which was just as well. “Holy shit, we could smell the blood from the driveway!”
“Out!” Annette and David roared in unison.
“Damn,” Oz commented, watching the cubs scramble out of sight. “I didn’t think either of them could move that fast.”
“So the two of you…what? Decided to spy on Stables and be some kind of…I dunno…” David was pacing, and not for the first time, Oz was glad Mama Mac had a big kitchen. “Shifter Neighborhood Watch?”
“Stable,” Annette corrected. “Singular.”
“I’ve only seen her porch and her kitchen and the living room—” Oz admitted.
“And the basement,” Annette added, smirking.
“Kindly go right to hell, Annette. What was the rest of the place like? I wanted to see more of it late last night, but she wouldn’t let me in.”
“You went back again?” Mama asked. “Again?”
“No, not really, but, well, yeah,” he admitted. “Just tying up loose ends. Stuff like that. IPA stuff like that. Y’know, for the job. Nothing weird about it.”
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, boy,” Mama replied, “but I mean to—”
“Can we focus on how I’m bleeding all over the sink and the floor a bit, too?” Annette asked.
Oz exhaled in no small relief. He’d never wish actual harm on Annette, but at least she was distracting Mama from his runaway mouth.
“You were telling us what the rest of Lila’s house was like,” he prompted, because he was either clinically nuts or had latent stalker tendencies he’d never dreamed existed before this week.
“It was like Home Alone if Macauley Culkin had been raised in a militia. It wasn’t just the spring-loaded blades in the drawers. She’s got a ScareCrow sprinkler set up in the back garden.”
“She has a what?” Mama Mac was tidily laying out what she needed from one of her dozen first aid kits.
“A motion-activated sprinkler. Soaked me before I even got to the door.”
“Well, maybe she’s one of those lawn fascists,” Oz suggested. “The kind who ignore drought warnings and just water their lawn whenever and get super pissy when you point out that they’re wasting water.”
“This time of year?”
“Point.”
“Then when I got into the—”
“How’d you get in? I know you can’t pick locks,” David interrupted. And when no one answered, he groaned. “Jesus Christ. Which one of you B&E idiots got your paws on her keys?”
“We didn’t steal them,” Annette said at once. “If you were wondering.”
“Besides, if you’ve got keys, is it really breaking and entering?” Oz asked.
“I might still have had one of Roy’s sets from when the Weismans were living there and asked me to let the plumber in. Or was it the Johnsons? Two families ago…no, three tenants ago…”
“You just handed them over to Annette so she could let herself into a stranger’s house and poke around, breaking any number of laws?” David had stopped pacing, which should have been a relief but wasn’t. “You, Mama Mac?”
“I have cubs to watch out for,” the smaller woman shot back. “I want to know if she’s a danger to us. More than the average Stable, I mean.”
“So then,” Annette jumped in, pulling the focus back to herself to save David from a smack, “no sooner had I crossed the threshold when the air horn went off not five feet from my ears.” She