Page 7 of Fire on the Moon

“Why would you help me? What’s this to you?” her question only reinforced the emotions clanging through him.

By an effort of will, he kept his gaze steady. He couldn’t deal with the life-changing idea that had slapped him in the face, but he knew he had to cope with the immediate situation.

“It’s my job. My name is Zane Marshall. I’m a private detective. I work for an agency called Decorah Security.”

“I never heard of it.”

“We’re in Maryland, but I came down here on an assignment, and when I was finished, I decided to stay in Naples for a couple of days. I was running on the beach, and I saw something happening up at your house.”

“Not my house—my uncle’s,” she said, giving him a piece of information he hadn’t previously possessed.

“You live with him?”

“No. I just came down from . . . outside Boston.”

He could see it had taken an effort to get that much out. When she wavered on unsteady legs, he pulled her toward him, holding her in his arms, not tightly but enough to keep her upright.

“Were you trapped in there? He asked.

“No, I was hiding.”

“From those men?”

“Yes.”

She said no more. She must have been holding herself together by force of will. Now she started to shake.

He gathered her closer, and he could feel her fighting tears.

“You’re okay,” he murmured. “Everything’s going to be okay.” Hoping it wasn’t a lie, he added. “But you’re too exposed out here on the beach. We should get inside.”’

She nodded against his shoulder but didn’t move. “Those men?”

“A big dog went after them.”

“Why?”

A glib answer came to his lips. “Maybe he’s a guard dog—trained to respond to an attack.”

Perhaps that satisfied her for the moment. When he turned slightly, he felt her stiffen her legs.

“Come on. I’ve got an Airbnb just a few hundred yards down the beach.” When she made no move to go with him, he repeated, “You’re too exposed. You need to get out of the open. Before they come searching for you,” he added, although he was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon.

She shuddered, then turned and looked back the way they’d come, seeing the black smoke rising into the sky where a house had been. There was no sign of the men—or the dog.

She made a small sound of distress, and he knew the smoke had reinforced the urgency of his words.

It seemed that he had to say everything to her twice. “Come on.”

“Where?”

“My place.”

She hesitated, then took a step in the direction she’d been running. Once she had gotten moving, she kept putting one foot in front of the other, looking like a dazed passenger astonished to be walking away from a plane crash. He moved in beside her, then slowly pulled her against his side so that he was partially supporting her. Luckily his short-term rental wasn’t far. It was on the same stretch of beach but definitely not as grand as the one that had just burned down. He took her to the side of the house on a stepping-stone path to the front door where he retrieved the key from a hiding place in the shrubbery, unlocked the door, and ushered her into a small foyer and beyond to a great room. Like most of the houses along the Gulf, the wall facing the beach had large windows. But here there was no fence obstructing the view. She looked for a place to sit and dropped into a high-backed contoured chair.

He closed a set of drapes, then stepped into the downstairs master suite where he quickly pulled on a pair of sweatpants. After a stop in the kitchen he handed her a glass of water. “Sorry I don’t have anything stronger.” He didn’t add that a werewolf’s system couldn’t abide anything stronger than herbal tea.

He sat on a matching chair opposite her, trying not to look like he was studying her—that he wasn’t taking in every detail from her blond hair to her blue eyes to her slender figure, covered by only a sundress.

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