Chapter 17

Chapter 17

One Month Later…

Williams Mansion

He was going to kill the little bastard, Kale thought as he dropped his bags by the door and walked into the large office covered in flatscreens and every type of technology known to man to find the small woman that he was looking for staring intently at the screen in front of her as she absently ate a large slice of chocolate fudge cake that looked really fucking good at the moment.

Beyond fucking exhausted, Kale dropped down in the chair next to her as he plucked the cake out of her hands and took a bite. He watched as the small Sentinel female that he adored went still before she slowly, so fucking slowly, turned around in her chair to glare at him.

“That was the last slice,” Izzy bit out in warning as she held her hand out in silent demand with a look that told him that she’d go for his balls first if he didn’t hand it back over.

Ignoring the implied threat because they both knew that she’d fucked up the moment that she took her eyes off the cake, Kale leaned back in the comfortable chair and asked, “Were you able to find him?”

Keeping that glare aimed at him, Izzy folded her arms over her chest as she said, “Give me half and maybe I’ll tell you.”

“I don’t share,” Kale simply said, already knowing that she would tell him anyway.

For a moment, Izzy simply sat there, glaring as she waited for him to hand the plate back to her only to realize that she was wasting her time. With a muttered curse and a glare that promised revenge, she turned around in her chair, yanked her bottom desk drawer open somewhat violently, grabbed a bag of peanut butter cups, slammed them on the desk, and set to work.

Deciding that a peanut butter cup would go rather nicely with his late-night treat, Kale reached over and-

Sighed heavily when the selfish woman grabbed the bag of peanut butter cups and shoved them out of his reach. Wondering why he put up with her, Kale reached under the desktop that ran the entire length of the wall and opened the mini-fridge door as his gaze shifted to her left leg and-

“It’s fine,” Izzy said, not bothering to stop typing to lie to him.

It wasn’t fine.

She was in fucking pain and it was only getting worse. When Cloe moved in with her mate Christofer, she’d started giving Izzy daily massages to try to work the tension out of the hip that had been shattered by the little prick that Kale fully planned on killing one day, and for a while, they’d helped. But now, nothing was working.

“Are you going to tell me why you’ve been so bitchy lately?” Izzy asked, trying to change the subject away from what Joshua, her one-time best friend and her mate’s little brother, had done to her. Since he knew how much it upset her whenever anyone mentioned the little asshole, he let it go.

“You’re imagining things,” Kale said, grabbing two Cokes before shutting the fridge, hoping that she would drop it because the last thing that he wanted to do right now was think about the woman that he’d spent the last month trying to forget.

He’d made sure that Ashley had everything that she needed. He’d opened a bank account for her with a line of credit, managed to get her on the delivery list for shifter blood, and made sure that Jacob had everything that he needed to watch over her and keep her safe so that he could get back to his life. He’d forced himself to focus on finding Andrew Vane and when that wasn’t enough, he took side jobs, working himself into exhaustion, but no matter how fucking tired he was, he couldn’t stop thinking about her.

“Did you get a chance to look into that blood delivery?” Izzy asked, reminding him that he had to tread carefully. He knew when he put the request in for shifter blood that it was going to attract attention, mostly because it had been his idea to have Tattletale sort through the orders, looking for anything that stood out that would lead them to finding more Pytes.

“Demon,” Kale said, taking a sip of his soda as he shrugged off her question.

“They drink shifter blood?” Izzy asked, squishing her face up adorably as Kale nodded absently as he found himself glancing down at his phone and-

Wondering what the hell he was doing, Kale shoved his phone back in his pocket and forced himself to focus on the reason that he was here. “Where’s Vane?”

“Up until a week ago, I would have told you that he was still in Manhattan, but now…”

Shit!

“What was his last location?” Kale asked, wondering how he’d managed to fuck this up so badly. He should have had the little bastard a month ago, but instead, he’d allowed himself to get distracted and the little prick had managed to escape.

“That’s just it,” Izzy said, gesturing to the wall of screens in front of them. “I have no idea where he is. Everything’s gone quiet, the Masters aren’t talking and neither are the shifters. One minute, they’re at war with each other, tearing each other apart, searching for allies, and then…nothing. It’s completely quiet.”

“Maybe Tattletale fucked up?” Kale suggested only to earn a murderous glare as Izzy bit out, “My baby didn’t mess up.”

“Then what happened?” Kale asked as he pulled his phone back out and swiped past the picture that Jacob sent a week ago and opened the app that couldn’t be accessed without a code and an invitation.

“No clue. I was kind of hoping that you had an idea,” Izzy said as Kale took in the forum that they made sure the Sentinels didn’t know about, making sure that the site was still running, noting all the new jobs listed that he was going to have to look into before he closed the app and once again found himself looking at the picture that he should have deleted as soon as he saw it.

“None whatsoever,” Kale murmured absently as he found himself staring down at the picture of Ashley sleeping.

God, she was beautiful.

“What about Jacob?”

“He’s doing a job for me,” Kale said, forcing himself to look away from his phone as he closed it only to find Izzy watching him.

“You mean the super-secret job that you don’t want me to know about?” she asked, blinking innocently at him as she popped a peanut butter cup in her mouth.

Narrowing his eyes on his best friend, Kale reached over and helped himself to another peanut butter cup before he shifted his attention to his phone, opened his messages, scrolled down until he found the one that he was looking for and did what he had to do.

“What are you doing?” Izzy asked only to whimper when Chris, who he was guessing had no idea that his mate had snuck out of bed in the middle of the night to play on her computer, walked into the room.

“It’s not what it looks like?” Izzy asked with a hopeful smile as her mate narrowed his eyes on her, giving Kale the excuse that he needed to call it a night.

After stealing the rest of her peanut butter cups, Kale grabbed his bags and made his way to the other side of the mansion. A few minutes later, he dropped his bags on the floor and dropped down on the bed with a groan. He was fucking exhausted, Kale thought even as he reached down and grabbed his iPad from his bag, deciding that it was time to come up with a different plan to find the little bastard when the app that he’d downloaded for the security system at the house only a few miles down the road caught his attention.

Curious, Kale opened the app and-

Found himself looking at a completely different house than the one that he’d left a month ago. There was furniture in every room, the rooms were painted, there were pictures on the walls, and…it looked like a home. Frowning, he pulled up the video feed for his room and was surprised to find the large room that he’d slept in while he’d been stuck taking care of Ashley now had a large bureau and matching nightstands, an oversized leather chair in the corner, a fresh coat of paint on the walls, and a quilted comforter on the bed along with a few throw pillows.

He swiped through the rest of the video feed until he found Ashley, wide awake, sitting on the couch with all the lights in the house turned on. For several minutes, Kale sat there, watching her, wondering why she was wearing headphones and a gasmask only to toss the iPad aside, telling himself that it wasn’t his problem.