Page 35 of Shadow Blind

When Cos reached for the dish of applesauce that had accompanied the chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes, Aiden’s hand shot out to grab it first. Not because he wanted it, but hell—it was his lunch, not Cosky’s.

With a shrug, Cosky sat back. “Have you reached out to Hurley? Shadow Mountain is shielded. Hurley’s boys won’t trace the call back here.”

“Not yet.” The sweetness of the applesauce turned to ash in his mouth. He dropped the spoon back in the dish and stared down. “Can’t quite stomach their damn questions.”

He didn’t know, not for sure, if WARCOM was responsible for what had happened. But he didn’t know that they weren’t either.

It was fucking hell not trusting your superiors.

“If SEAL Command was behind what happened,” Kait said, echoing his thoughts. “If they were testing something,” she continued quietly, “then you can’t go back to your team—”

“My team’s gone.” Aiden’s throat tightened. Still, he knew what she meant. She meant the SEAL community. Lead filled his chest, pressed against his heart. He waited for the loss to hit. But there was too much rage and bitterness, along with grief, over Squirrel and Lurch and the rest of his squad brothers. The thought of walking away from the teams just felt numbing, not painful.

He took a deep breath and focused on Kait, shaking off the hollowness. There was still one person out there who pierced that emptiness. “I need to get to Demi.”

If Wolf didn’t pony up a plane, he’d check himself out of the base and find one for himself. He was done waiting. The protective detail didn’t mean she was safe. Shadow Mountain was the only place they couldn’t get to her.

“I still don’t get why you wouldn’t let me talk to her about flying up.” Kait sounded hurt.

Kait and Demi had been talking every day, but not about flying up and not about Aiden.

“If her line’s tapped,” which it probably was, “it’s safer not to give the bastards a heads up. I’ll fly down and just show up, grab her, and run.” Of course, they could still try to interfere, but he was prepared for that.

His pulse jumped when his cell vibrated against the plastic tray. He picked it up and accepted the call, frowning at the lack of caller ID.

“Aiden?”

He recognized the flat voice, and it wasn’t Wolf.

“Tag?” Aiden jerked up, his heart suddenly pounding. Tag wouldn’t be calling unless something had happened. Something bad.

“Yeah.” Tag’s voice was hard. “We’ve got a problem.”

Chapter fifteen

Day 7

Coronado, California

Demi hissed as ten claws pierced the skin of her forearm. The furry asshole she’d agreed to adopt curled its lips back, exposing long, sharp fangs.

“Oh, come on you one eyed, three legged, no tailed, human-hating son of a serial killer.” She crooned in a soothing—certainly not critical—tone of voice. Her new master did not tolerate criticism. “This medicine is good for you. Trust me.” A low, seething growl greeted her proclamation. She winced as the claws dug in deeper. “I’m trying to help you. This stuff prevents infection. If you don’t swallow it, you’ll get sick and back to the vet you go. Remember how much you hated it there?”

Juggling the cat and the medicine, she dipped the eyedropper into its bottle and sucked up a dose of milky liquid. The cat writhed madly in the towel wrapped around its leg and torso. Originally, only its head had been free. Until it wiggled its front legs loose and unleashed those lethal claws.

Beads of blood oozed down the fresh scratches on her arms. The cat had neatly spaced these new scratches between the scabs from their previous battles. Administering the medicine was more of a two-person job. One to hold the cat and one to force open its stubbornly clamped jaws and squirt the medicine down its hissing gullet. Not that she had a second person available to help her. Its attack on Megan and Elise three days ago had circulated through the building. Her neighbors avoided her now.

Clamping the creature to her chest, she carefully placed the medicine bottle on the kitchen counter and lifted the stopper to the orange whiskered face with its sutured eye socket. The demon’s remaining eye—which was metallic green and glittering with malice—locked with hostile intent on the eyedropper. He retracted his claws from her arm and swatted the eyedropper out of her hand.

With a soft plink, the eyedropper hit the tile. Demi groaned, watching it spin across the kitchen floor. Since bending to pick it up would plant her face too close to those murderous claws, which she had no doubt the ungrateful creature would put to good use, she walked over to the kitchen alcove with its gorgeous view of Princeton Park. Usually, the rolling grass, studded by majestic evergreens and banks of colorful flowers, soothed her.

Not today.

Not for the past four days, if she was honest.

“You’re the most ungrateful little snot in the history of ungrateful snots.” She crooned in that annoyingly sweet voice she hated. But the cat responded violently to harsh voices. “You know you’re alive because of me, right? Who rushed your furry, bleeding ass to the vet when you were dying? Who paid your vet bills? Who bought your specialty food—both wet and dry—along with your bed and carrier and toys, which you won’t even play with? Me. That’s who. The person you keep trying to bleed dry. You could at least take your medicine without shredding me.”

She eased the growling animal onto the kitchen table, towel and all, and let go, then backed away with the caution of someone expecting a bomb to go off.

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