Page 46 of Destined for Shadows
Chapter 13
Cori
Cori fought through the dredges of deep slumber. Something niggled at her senses, telling her she needed to wake up. She had tossed and turned for the most of the night and didn’t fall asleep until sometime after three in the morning. It didn’t feel like it had been more than a few hours since then. What was bothering her now?
She cracked open an eye, wincing at the bright light coming through her bedroom window. Didn’t she close those curtains the night before? Slowly, she scanned her gaze across the room, starting at the far corner and moving toward the doorway where a man hovered there. He leaned his shoulder against the frame with his arms crossed and amusement glinting in his amber eyes. Several strands of his light brown hair covered his face, obscuring the burn scars on one side. Cori jerked upright in bed.
“Bartol!” she yelled. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you to wake up,” he said in a dry tone.
Cori glared at him. For the past few days, he’d avoided coming anywhere near her until the moment she needed “transportation.” How he knew exactly when she was ready, she had no idea, but she had her suspicions. Bartol could turn invisible if he wanted. All he had to do was wait until the right moment and then grab her before she knew what was happening. One moment she’d be in her cabin and the next at the shop. No chance to negotiate kissing or even get more than a few words of conversation before he disappeared again. To say she was getting frustrated would have been an understatement. Had her kiss been that bad? He’d been treating her like she had a contagious disease ever since.
“Knocking on my front door would have worked, too,” she said, scowling. He might have finally decided to show his face for more than a few seconds, but she was still angry with him.
Bartol straightened and took one step into the room before catching himself. He’d almost forgotten to keep his distance. Good. She was glad to see she was cracking the walls he’d put up around himself, but she still had a lot of work to do.
“I did knock—several times.” Bartol’s lips thinned. “When you didn’t answer, I got worried.”
“For me?” Perhaps he cared after all.
“No, for the cat.”
She pretended confusion since she didn’t have any pets. “What cat?”
“Exactly. Who else would I mean?”
Cori smiled, no longer disturbed to find him in her bedroom. “Admit it. You really are getting attached to me.”
His jaw hardened. “I owe it to Melena to keep you safe. That is all.”
“If that excuse helps you sleep at night.” She stretched, making a big show of it. With the thin camisole she wore, her nipples peaked right through the material. “But I know different, and you’re here for more reasons than you want to admit.”
Bartol’s gaze dipped for the briefest moment before lifting to meet her eyes, and his expression hardened. “Has anyone told you that you’re infuriating?”
She relaxed from stretching and ran a hand through her hair, horrified to find it a tangled mess. No wonder he’d appeared amused when she’d woken. She had to look horrible. Then again, he hadn’t fled, so that was a good sign.
“Yes, I’ve heard that before,” she replied, finger-combing her hair and wincing when she caught a knot. “You’re gonna have to try harder if your goal is to insult me.”
“It’s not.”
Cori lifted a brow. “Then why are you here?”
“I met your former husband’s parents yesterday. They haven’t seen him and neither has anyone else we’ve talked to.” Bartol went on to describe how his and Tormod’s previous day went.
Their first stop after visiting Martin and Ruth had been to take the picture they got of Griff over to Derrick. The alpha werewolf confirmed he had not seen that particular vampire, but he would copy the photo and send it out to the sups in the area so they could be on the lookout. After that, Bartol and Tormod had gone to visit a few of Griff’s former friends and co-workers. Every one of them, even under compulsion, swore they hadn’t seen him in years. If Cori’s ex was somewhere in the Fairbanks area, he was doing a damn good job of hiding his presence—except when he came around to harass her.
She sighed. Her life had a way of twisting and turning on her, especially whenever things became too good. She should have known something would put a wrench in the new life she’d built for herself after losing her daughter.
Griff had always been cunning and a master at manipulating circumstances to go his way. It didn’t help that he knew the area well from when he used to hunt and fish during his spare time. The man could be anywhere within a hundred-mile radius for all they knew, which was a lot of ground to cover. Alaska was a large place with difficult to reach areas where he could hide for months without them finding him.
“I’ll call Melena and see if she’s got any other suggestions for what to do,” Cori said, wondering if she could talk the sensor into doing an active search with her supernatural radar. It would be massively time-consuming, especially with Mel’s schedule already being rather busy, but even if she just spent an hour or two per day scanning areas with her senses, it might turn up something.
“No need. I already talked to her, and we came up with a simple solution.”
Cori lifted a brow. “What’s that?”
“Do you know the mystic, Yvonne?” he asked.
