Shades of Midnight by Lara Adrián Page B

attack?”
    “No, thank God,” she answered quickly.
    Too quickly maybe, because he took a step toward her, scowling now. Sizing her up.
    “What about the video? Is there more of it somewhere? Something beyond the footage shot after the killings had occurred?”
    “What?” Alex had no need to feign confusion now. “What video? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
    “Three days ago, a cell phone video clip was shot out here and posted to an illegal site on the Internet.”
    “Oh, my God.” Appalled, Alex brought her hand up to her mouth. “And you saw it?”
    The tendon that jerked in his cheek was confirmation enough. “If you know something more about the slayings that took place here, I need you to tell me now, Alex. It’s very important that I have all the information I can get.”
    If Alex had been tempted to blurt everything out last night in the town meeting, now, as she stood alone before this man—this stranger who rattled her inexplicably on every level of her being—the words clogged up tight in her throat. She didn’t know him. She wasn’t at all sure she could trust him, even if she did somehow ratchet up the nerve to drag her darkest suspicions into the light.
    “Why are you really here?” she asked him softly. “What are you looking for?”
    “I’m looking for answers, Alex. I’m looking for the same thing I believe you are—the truth. Maybe there’s a way for us to help each other.”
    The sharp trill of Alex’s cell phone broke the lengthening quiet. It rang again, giving her the excuse she needed to put a few paces between herself and the man whose presence seemed to be sucking all the air out of the room. Alex turned away from him and connected to the call.
    It was Jenna, phoning to remind her that they were supposed to meet up for dinner at Pete’s tonight. Alex murmured a hasty confirmation but stayed on the phone after Jenna said her good-byes and disconnected. “Yeah, no problem,” Alex said into the dead air of the receiver. “I’m on my way right now. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, tops. All right. Yep, bye.”
    She stuffed the phone into the pocket of her parka and pivoted back to face Luna’s new favorite person, who was now seated on the sofa with Alex’s dog lying at his feet. “I have to get going. Deliveries to make before sundown, and then I’m meeting a friend for dinner in town.”
    She was anxious to get away now, but why did she feel compelled to make excuses to this man? What should he care why she was leaving as though she couldn’t run out of there fast enough?
    Alex subtly snapped her fingers and called Luna’s name. To the wolf dog’s credit, she ambled over without looking too heartbroken to be summoned away from him.
    “I’ll let Officer Tucker know that you were here today,” she added, figuring it couldn’t hurt to remind him that she was friendly with the police.
    “You do that, Alex.” He didn’t get up from his negligent slouch on Pop Toms’s sofa. “Be careful out there. I’ll see you around.”
    Alex caught his slow-spreading grin as she rounded up Luna and headed out the door of the cabin. Although she didn’t dare look behind her, she could feel those quicksilver eyes at the back of her neck, watching her as she hopped on her snowmachine with Luna and gave the motor some juice. She’d driven out a few hundred yards before another thought hit her.
    She hadn’t seen another sled parked anywhere.
    So just how the hell had he made the forty-plus-mile trip from Harmony all the way north through the open wilderness?

CHAPTER
Seven
    Kade waited out the short few hours of daylight in the cabin at the Toms settlement. As soon as it was safe for him and his solar-sensitive Breed skin to venture outside, he took off on foot once more, this time heading for the ten-thousand-acre plot of land his family owned north of Fairbanks.
    He wondered how he would be greeted in his father’s Darkhaven compound—he, the prodigal, the