Page 125 of Piece You Saved

“And after?” Kade calls after him.

Dariel’s footsteps move down the hallway, toward his room. “If we survive it, I’ll do something about my wolf.”

Alarm skitters through me. I don’t like the finality of his words. From Kade’s curse, neither does he.

CHAPTER 33

HARLEY

It’s impossible not to notice the tension crackling in the kitchen.

“Did something happen I should know about?” I ask.

Saige, between bites of the breakfast Aden set down, keeps glancing at Dariel. Then frowning.

She’s wearing a pair of black sweatpants and a long-sleeve black t-shirt, the ends of her hair damp from her shower.

Dariel is blank faced as he leans against the counter with a mug of black coffee cradled in one hand.

Aden and Kade are eating, but, like Saige, their attention keeps swinging to Dariel as well. So, whatever happened to create the tension in this room is about him.

No one says a word.

“Jane?” I prompt, trying not to let being the outsider bother me.

“You look tired,” she says, glancing quickly at me.

“Do I?” I ask, sipping the mug of coffee Aden offered when he let me in minutes before.

Not surprising when I spent last night parked up in my car a few miles down the road watching the house in case trouble reared its head.

“You do,” she says, still not looking at me.

I know why she’s doing it, and I know it’s got nothing to do with not wanting me. From the glares Kade keeps launching my way, he must know it, too.

I shrug. “Just not a morning person, that’s all.”

Dariel pulls his focus from his mug to give me a long look. Out of anyone in the room, he could probably guess what I’d been up to last night.

“Miss Leo, I’m curious about you and Rylan.” Detective Morgan, the last to arrive this morning with a black duffel he set beside the kitchen doorway, places his cup on the table. Not the same one as yesterday, but a white folding one Dariel set up after Aden cleared up the remains of the table Kade shattered. “How exactly did you meet?”

Saige’s hands tighten around her mug. “You think we met in the same way he met your sister?”

He nods once. “Maybe it’s a pattern he repeats.”

And one he seems determined to put an end to in his all-black outfit. Yesterday he looked like a cop. Today he looks anything but in his jeans, t-shirt, and belt with a gun holster. This one doesn’t look police issued.

Saige lowers her gaze to her coffee. “I doubt it. We met in the diner I worked at. I’d just turned eighteen. And my dad had just—” She stops and clears her throat. “When Rylan appeared that day, it felt like someone had sent an angel down to save me.”

“At the Stationer’s Diner?” Detective Morgan asks with the assurance of someone who already knows what the answer will be.

Has be been busy digging into her past? Looks like.

“Yes. He wasn’t an angel. He was the devil.” She glances up at Detective Morgan. Whatever she’s thinking of now still haunts her, from the old pain in her blue-gray stare. “He said his car had broken down outside, and he was looking for directions. Since then, I’ve gotten the impression that he knew I worked there before he took one step inside.”

Kade’s gray eyes narrow as, finished with his breakfast of bacon and eggs, he nudges his empty plate aside. “He was hunting you?Stalkingyou?”

She lifts one shoulder in a careless shrug. As if it doesn’t matter. The pain shadowing her eyes indicates that it does. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s why he didn’t kill me when I did something to piss him off. He always said I was his m—” Again she stops, lifting her mug to her mouth.

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