Eternal (Shadow Falls: After Dark #2)(59)

Staring at the phone, she forced herself to speak. “It’s Burnett.”

Chase readjusted in his seat, making the leather crinkle. “Making sure we haven’t done something stupid, no doubt.”

“We did do something stupid,” she said.

“That wasn’t stupid.” He looked at her with a sexy hooded-eye grin. “Hate me if you want, but I enjoyed it.”

She growled at him. “See, you are like every other guy. All you think about is sex. I was talking about going inside their house.”

“Oh, then that was definitely not stupid. We found out what we needed to know.”

She agreed with him, but couldn’t stop from making a point. “It would have been stupid if we’d gotten caught.”

“But we didn’t,” he said. He looked at the road and then back. “And that’s not all I think about. Not with you.”

“Right.” She looked back at the ringing phone.

“You’d better answer or he’ll have an aneurism.”

She cut him a disapproving look. “You need to get over your animosity toward Burnett.”

“He’s way overprotective.”

“Because he cares.” She answered the call. “Hey,” she said into the phone.

“Where are you at?” Burnett’s voice boomed out of her phone into the car.

Della picked up a shitload of tension, but decided to ignore it and hope it was just the vampire’s normal I’m-worried-therefore-I-roar voice.

“Just left the Owens’ house about fifteen minutes ago.”

“And?”

“It’s her,” Della said, feeling Chase looking at her. And unable to stop herself, she shifted her eye to him. He looked concerned and held out his hand as if saying he was willing to do the talking. She shook her head.

“And the parents? You didn’t rock the boat?” The question came off almost defensive.

Maybe a little. “We didn’t turn the boat over,” she answered, hoping to talk around a lie.

“Then friggin’ explain to me why the cops are on their way there now?”

Chapter Twenty-five

Della reluctantly explained everything to Burnett. Yeah, he’d been pissed that they’d gone into the house, but not as pissed as she thought he’d be. It seemed he had obviously done a little breaking and entering of his own in the past. Why else hadn’t he gone ballistic?

She wondered if the reason Burnett and Chase butted heads so much was because they were just too much alike. She recalled how Kylie had told her the reason she and Burnett were so confrontational was because they had similar traits. That had been Kylie’s way of saying they were both hardheaded punks who didn’t think before they spoke.

Was that the same reason she and Chase butted heads? No, they were not at all alike. He was a pain in the ass.

And that ass was really firm, too. Della gave that thought a good goal-winning kick from her mind. Leaving an empty spot in her brain. And wouldn’t you know what slipped in to fill it?

A certain shape-shifter, whose butt was equally cute. Whose butt had left her. Whose butt was now in Paris, probably flirting with all the French beauties. And in a culture where the television and books made it appear sex was as common a practice as brushing one’s teeth. There had been a time when that culture might have intrigued her, but not when the guy she cared about, a hot guy, was visiting said culture.

Damn! Damn! Damn!

Trying to move from that thought, she landed back on the phone call Natasha’s mom had received. As much as Della hated the idea, if they didn’t find another lead soon, she was going to have to go see her aunt.

And her aunt would probably tell her dad. And then her dad would probably pull her from Shadow Falls. Yeah, she remembered overhearing her dad telling her mom about taking Della over to see her aunt: We don’t hang out our dirty laundry.

Dirty laundry.

Della’s dad considered her to be his dirty laundry.

Her breath shuddered in her chest. Sorry, Dad!

The thought of her dad led her back to the vision, to seeing either him or her uncle standing over her aunt’s body with a bloody knife. Correction, seeing her uncle. She’d already mentally established that her dad wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t. She knew him better than that. She did!

“We going to get out, or just sit here?” Chase’s voice brought her out of her little pity party.

Looking up, she realized he’d parked and they were sitting at the fast-food restaurant where they were supposed to meet the other agent—a backup, in case they ran into trouble.

“Nah, I think I’ll just stay here,” she smarted off and got out of the car.

He met her as she rounded the back of the car and started walking into the restaurant. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

Just the question, or maybe his caring tone, brought a knot to her throat. She swallowed the damn thing down whole, too. She wasn’t about to start unraveling right now.

“Let’s just do our job,” she said, trying not to be so snappy. She looked up at the neon sign hanging over the small building. Buck’s Burgers, but the B was out, so it read: UCK’S BURGERS. Not a very appetizing name.

She opened the door to the restaurant and took a noseful of air to catch the scent of any supernatural. The smell of old ground beef and outdated French fry grease filled the air so thick, she couldn’t be sure.