Kitty Goes to War Read Free Page B

shoulder, where I rested my head and took in the scent of him. “I dream about them.” The ones I hadn’t saved; Ben knew.
    He pulled away and smoothed my hair back. “Youthink maybe you should talk to someone about this? Get some counseling?”
    Ben’s gaze was full of concern, and maybe a little frustration. He’d skirted around the subject before, and I’d dodged because I liked to think I was a tough girl.
    I scratched my head and rubbed my eyes, which ached. I needed more sleep, and I was starting to hate sleeping. “I thought I could handle it.”
    “I know,” he said. “I would just really hate to wake up one night and find your wolf tangled up in the sheets. How would I explain the growling to the neighbors?” The condo complex had a no-pets policy. If I ever did lose it and turn Wolf—yeah, that might get a little noisy.
    “That would almost be amusing enough to try it,” I said, turning a lopsided grin.
    “How about I let you talk to them when the complaints come in?”
    “How about I just try real hard not to turn Wolf in the house?”
    His brow furrowed, giving him a perplexed look. “Do other lycanthropes have house rules like that? No shape-shifting indoors? No silver in the silverware drawer?”
    Ben was still getting used to being werewolf. He was good at overanalyzing the situation, which I found endearing. Even in the dark, I could make out his form and features: his lean frame, handsome face, shadowed eyes that would be hazel in the light, andscruffy hair sticking out, begging me to comb it with my fingers. So I did. That pulled him close to me, and we kissed, his warm mouth lighting my nerves. Lingering tension melted away, and I pressed my naked self to his naked self. He pulled me under the covers, and sufficiently distracted, I felt much better.
    M ONDAY, BACK at the office, I spread the map from the show across my desk. I’d marked a dozen spots, locations where people had told me intriguing stories about Speedy Mart. The marks were spread all over the country, in no discernable pattern. So much for that idea. I was about ready to pass it all off as some statistical anomaly—it wasn’t that crazy stuff only happened at a Speedy Mart, it was just that no one talked about it when it happened anywhere else.
    I was still pondering when I got a call. “Hi, Kitty? This is Lisa down in reception, I’ve got a letter here that you need to sign for.”
    “Really? Okay, I’ll be right down.” Now this was exciting. I wasn’t expecting anything fancy. Certainly nothing I needed to sign for.
    I went down the hallway from my office, and down the stairs to the lobby of the KNOB building, where a reception desk against the back wall faced the glass front doors. Lisa, a prim, professional twenty-something, was standing with a delivery guy. He looked to be from a courier service rather than from the postal service or one of the big parcelcompanies. He wore a jacket with a company logo, but a plain shirt and slacks rather than a uniform. They both looked up at my approach.
    “Are you Katherine Norville?” the guy said. He held an nine-by-twelve manila envelope and a clipboard.
    “Yeah.”
    “Could you sign here?” He pointed to the line of the form on the clipboard, showing that, yes, I did receive the envelope in question. Then he handed me the envelope.
    “Have a nice day,” he said, with kind of a leering smile, then sauntered out of the building.
    “What is it?” Lisa said. “You expecting anything cool?”
    “Not a thing.” I’d started to have kind of a bad feeling about this. The envelope wasn’t all that thick; it probably had some kind of document in it. Something official and important, no doubt, to be delivered by private courier. I opened it right there at the reception desk.
    It was indeed a document, only a few pages thick, fairly innocuous looking. But the cover letter was printed on linen stationery and had an intimidating logo and letterhead with a string of names