My heels clicked on the floor as I walked slowly toward the kitchen and living room, waiting, hoping, praying for Sirius to emerge so the foreboding covering my entire body would disappear.
Sirius did emerge. Laying lifeless at the bottom of the steps leading into my kitchen and living area.
I let out a strangled cry, the phone I’d been clutching with a death grip clattering to the floor as I rushed to kneel beside Sirius’s body. My hands trembled on top of his fur, and my throat closed up with grief. I couldn’t touch him. Because the last time I’d touched him his tail had been wagging, and he’d been slobbering all over my hardwood floors. The last time I’d touched him he was alive. I did not want him to be dead the last time I touched him.
“The dog isn’t dead,” a voice said, and my eyes flickered to a woman standing in my kitchen. She was drinking a glass of wine. Her nose was bleeding, and her eye was starting to swell shut. Despite those two things, she was beautiful. An unusual thing to notice about a strange, injured woman standing in my kitchen, drinking my wine and holding a gun. Did I forget to mention that part?
Yeah, a gun.
Her dark hair was a mess of curls, framing her face. Her features were dark, too, large eyes open a little too wide to be sane.
“Just drugged,” she added, nodding to Sirius. “I would never kill a dog.”
I stroked his head, my heart thundering as I forced myself to stand up. “Where is Hades?” I asked. My voice was even which surprised me because I did not feel even. At all. But I knew this woman was a predator. She could smell weakness. Sensed it. If I crumbled here, then it was game over for me.
She grinned, sipping the wine. “This is a good bottle. Pinot from New Zealand. Some of the best.”
I gritted my teeth and wished I hadn’t refused to let Hades take me to the gun range so I could carry one in my purse. My purse which was laying somewhere beside Sirius, who was drugged.
Drugged, not dead, I’d reminded myself.
“I’m a big fan of yours,” she told me. The woman with the gun. The woman who had drugged my dog, the woman who had done something to Hades. Who Hades had tried to fight by the looks of it. It seemed impossible that he had lost said fight. He’d definitely lost because if he had won, she would not be standing in my kitchen. Hades was impossibly strong, impossibly deadly and a man who could take care of anything. So Hades was not okay. And I was alone with a crazy human holding a gun.
Chapter Fifteen
“Where is Hades?” I repeated. Demanded. My heart was pounding against my chest, panic crawling up my throat.
“He was getting chatty, so I had to put him to sleep for a bit too.” She nodded her head over to the sofa.
My eyes went there, and my heart dropped even further. Hades was slumped over, as if he’d just fallen asleep watching the game or something. That would’ve only been possible if Hades was the kind of guy who watched games with a beer in hand and a belly protruding from his tee. Hades was not that kind of guy. Hades was a guy who fought a woman with a gun, and for whatever reason had lost then been drugged.
Every cell in my body called out to me, urging me to go to Hades so I could put my hand on his chest, feel the rise and fall of it. Maybe let some of his courage and strength seep into my body.
But I couldn’t do that. The woman was watching me with eagle eyes. It was my job to figure this out, to protect Hades and Sirius.
“I wasn’t expecting you home,” the woman remarked casually. “I watched you walk into Nordstrom with your girl and your shadow, figured you’d be hours.” She tilted her head, regarding me.
“Oh, I apologize. My bad,” I snapped at her. “I’m so sorry for interrupting your plans.” It was a mistake to get ornery with the woman with a gun, but it was either pissed off or hysterical.
Surprisingly, she didn’t seem pissed off at all. In fact, she grinned. Wide.
“Don’t apologize, you’re being here makes this all the more delicious.” She spoke to me as she rounded the kitchen island. I walked backward, slowly, hating to leave Sirius but needing to get to Hades.
“What are you doing in my house?” I demanded. She was a big fan, she’d said. Had she somehow found out where I lived after becoming obsessed with me? That sounded insane and narcissistic, but I couldn’t think of any other reason why she’d be here.