Page 36 of Furever Loyal
“Bigfoot?”
“Want to know the real story? It’s not that exciting.”
“Wait. You know therealstory of Bigfoot?”
He chuckled. “Distant family relative.”
“You’re related to Bigfoot?” Haley was leaning forward, her hands on the dash, mouth wide open.
“No!” he sighed. “Well, yes. Except Bigfoot isn’t real. It was just one of us, caught midway in the change, running across a field into the forest. Piss drunk, I might add.”
Haley was laughing now. “That makes so much more sense!”
Kincaid smiled. He enjoyed the sound of her laughter. It was refreshing, uplifting to his spirits, and precisely what he needed to keep going, to push through and clear his name before word got out.
“So why are we going back to your house?” Haley asked, bringing the subject back around. “What are you hoping to find there?”
“My Queen. I want to inform her of what we’ve found, and our suspicions. Keep her informed, but also to see if she has any other thoughts. Anything we’ve missed. She’s a wise woman.”
“Whathavewe found?” Haley asked slowly. “And you meanyoursuspicions. I don’t have any. I’m neutral in this, remember?”
Kincaid glanced over at her, letting his doubt show. She could pretend not to care all she wanted, but he wasn’t going to act like he bought it. Her acting wasn’tthatgood.
“I am!” she protested half-heartedly. “Now spill.”
“You know this already. We’ve found that Granted Holdings is more important to Canis than we thought. Encountering a full-blooded Canim there is unusual, and it means either they expected us to go there, or they permanently have a guard there. Either way, that needs to be noted by more than just you and me.”
“Okay. I’ll buy that. What else?”
“We think there’s a connection between Krawll and whoever is trying to get rid of me. We don’t know if it’s the Canim or not, all we know is the restaurant has something to do with it.”
Haley shook her head. “No, you don’tknowany of that. You can’t prove it. Maybe he did a favor for the owner of the restaurant?”
Kincaid was speaking almost before she finished. “A generic ‘family restaurant’ like that does not make three million dollars a year gross, let alone in profit that they can spare. Tell me that nothing about that smells a little fishy to you?”
“I admit, it seems unusual,” she said after a moment. “But not enough that I’m willing to say it has anything to do with you.”
“Fine. It does, but you do you and keep thinking that. Either way, this should be enough to at least shedsomedoubt on my situation.”
Haley was quiet for several long seconds. “Or it makes it worse. It could make it look like you’re fully in league with them. It confirms that Granted Holdings is an important Canis operation, and they funded you. That’s pretty damning for people who aren’t inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt.”
Bristling at the challenge to his loyalty, Kincaid tried to keep his calm. Haley was just playing devil’s advocate. She wasn’t saying he was a traitor, just pointing out how it looked to some people.
“You’re right,” he said gruffly. “Though I’m trying not to think of that.”
Haley reached out and patted his arm gently, her fingers lingering longer than he would have expected. Then, to his surprise, they dragged up and down as she gently stroked his arm for two or three seconds. “It’ll be okay, Kincaid,” she said softly.
But his mind was still on his forearm as it continued to tingle from her touch, long after she’d taken her hand away.
Now, what the hell does that mean?
18
“I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this,” she said, staring out the window in awe.
She didn’t have her face pressed to the glass, but it was pretty darn close. The mansion was huge. So huge, thatmansionreally didn’t do it justice.Palatialwas the only way to describe the building that revealed itself after a miles-long drive through forested lands to get there.
“There is a certain charm to it, isn’t there?”
