Page 24 of Covert Affections (Shadow Agents/PSI-Ops #5)
Chapter Twenty-Two
Lindy
Lindy stood near one of her living room windows, peering out into the darkness, wishing the property had better lighting. She’d been sure she’d seen something large moving in the darkness outside of her window. There didn’t look to be anything outside.
“I’m hearing things now, great,” she said, letting some of the fear seep away.
She was overly tired but couldn’t sleep and had to be up in a few hours and back to work.
After her soak in the tub, she’d gone straight to bed, thoroughly exhausted.
Less than an hour later, she’d woken from a nightmare about Cigarette-Man, terrified he was in the room with her.
That he was back to finish what he’d started behind the grocery store, calling her his little sweet thing the entire time.
Lindy could have sworn she smelled the same cheap brand of cigarettes he’d smoked, along with a weird smell that reminded her of artificial cleaners.
Between the phantom smells in the air and the vivid memory of Cigarette-Man’s glowing amber eyes and inhuman growls, Lindy had been too rattled to go back to sleep.
She’d admitted defeat, gotten up, and gone through her house, checking for signs that she might not be alone. She’d seen too many movies and television shows about people gaining entry to a home and then hiding in closets or in attics until the time was right to sneak out and murder the homeowner.
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head and drawing her arms even tighter to her chest.
Very few of her windows had working latches and locks.
Two didn’t even stay closed, and she’d been forced to cut dowel rods to length and use them to wedge the windows down.
Her house was old and didn’t have central air, so to open the window, she had to pry the rod out.
It was a pain in the ass. So much so that she’d given up using the dowel rod on her bedroom window, which was one of the two that kept popping open on its own.
Her back door’s lock was broken to the point that Lindy had to wedge the door shut by jamming a chair back under the handle.
Robert had been threatening to make her move in with him if she didn’t let him fix it.
She knew it was born partially out of him being a good guy who wanted her to be safe, and because, being in law enforcement, he saw a lot of bad things happen to people.
Since they were no longer in a romantic relationship and decided (at her behest) to just be friends, that wouldn’t work.
And allowing him to come over and fix everything that was broken in her house would mean spending time alone with him—something she wasn’t sure she had the willpower for.
Not with how long she’d gone since last feeding her darkness.
It would be all too easy to fall for his charm and then fall right into bed with him.
That could never happen again.
Not with him.
Seeing his lifeless body in her bed would haunt her forever, and it wasn’t something she ever wanted to see again. That meant keeping the wall of “friends only” firmly in place.
She closed her eyes, trying to push away thoughts of what she’d done.
She moved away from the window, realizing sleep deprivation had probably caused her to see things that weren’t there.
Her attention went to her open laptop. When she’d woken from the nightmare, she’d made herself a cup of peppermint tea and checked the internet to see what, if any, interest her post had generated about the job fair she was hosting tomorrow at the bar, and then she grabbed a book from her bookshelf.
The book was by an author who was new to her and who wrote in her favorite genre—dark paranormal romance.
Lindy rolled her eyes at the irony of waking from nightmares centered around a man she’d been told could turn into an animal, only to then select reading material centered around shapeshifters.
She let out a long breath, returning to the sofa and the book she’d been engrossed in.
Lindy sank into the sofa’s cushions as she flipped the page of her dark romance book, trying to get lost in the story once again.
The book was about a woman who caught the eye of a local alpha shifter who headed a lion pride.
The book had some dark elements to it, but it wasn’t the darkest thing she’d read in the last week—but it was good.
Plus, reading about a group of lion shifters was a fun change up from the normal wolf ones she tended to prefer.
There had been a point in her life when she’d thought it all nothing more than fiction. That changed behind the grocery store thirteen years ago. When Teresa showed up, her infamous bat in hand, saving the day like a superhero, rescuing Lindy from whatever fate Cigarette Man had in store for her.
A tiny sliver of fear raced up her spine as her gaze slid toward the front windows. Living alone sucked, but she’d never tell anyone that. It would take from her I-have-my-shit-together-and-can-take-on-the-world persona. In truth, she was a hot mess and scared to be alone.
Maybe Lindy needed to let Robert fix all her broken locks. She understood none of them would actually keep a supernatural out, but it would give her a little piece of mind and possibly make her sleep a little better at night.
With a sigh, Lindy lifted the paperback book she’d been reading and settled in to read more.
Movement near her window caught her attention.
The hair on the back of her neck rose, and she had the strangest feeling that someone was outside, in the darkness, watching her.
She didn’t have blinds, and the curtains she did have were sheer and didn’t provide anything in the way of privacy, so she didn’t bother closing them.
A coyote’s howl pierced the darkness, causing Lindy to jump in place near the living room window and her heart rate to increase.
Every muscle in her body tightened. It took some time for her brain to catch up with the fact that she was overreacting to the sounds of nature.
She wasn’t new to the area. Nor was she new to coyotes.
Of all the predators native to the area, coyotes tended to be the boldest when it came to wandering into residential areas.
She didn’t have a small pet to worry about and knew they’d lose interest in her property and move along.
Still, the hairs on her arms rose as if trying to tell her to be more worried than she already was. She tried to dismiss the feeling that something was off and that she was being watched, wanting to believe it was because she’d had very little sleep.
It didn’t work.
The feeling remained. It felt as if someone was out there in the darkness, their gaze fixed on her with an intensity that both thrilled and unnerved her.
She clutched the paperback book to her chest like a shield and stood before taking hesitant steps toward the window.
It was late—too late for anyone to have a legitimate reason to be lurking outside her home.
Not that there was ever a good time for it, considering how far out her home was from the rest of town.
“I’m making something out of nothing,” she said softly, staring out into the darkness. “I’m letting my imagination run wild.”
Movement in the tree line at the edge of her property, near the detached garage, caught her attention, and she pushed her glasses up more, positive a monster was going to walk out and announce it was there to eat her—that or Cigarette-Man had found her.
“I prefer the monster,” she mouthed as fear kept her in its grip.
She waited, crossing her fingers that it was a coyote and not the monster from her past. Then again, Teresa had said Cigarette-Man could change forms into a coyote. Trepidation crept up her spine. Was it him? Was he back and in coyote form? Was he here to finish what he started?
While an animal did emerge from behind the garage, it wasn’t the one she was expecting.
A mountain lion stepped out from the darkness, and the sight of such a majestic creature nearly stole her breath.
The animal was native to Colorado, but she'd never seen one anywhere near her property before.
They generally stayed in the mountains, away from homes and people, occasionally wandering closer to farmland and ranches but not houses.
Lindy’s mind raced as she tried to remember if she'd left anything outside that might have attracted the animal. Food scraps or trash could have lured it from its natural habitat. She was normally careful about that since bears sometimes wandered through the area during certain times of the season. Once, she’d been on a nature hike with Robert while on a camping trip in Wyoming (his idea, not hers), and they’d encountered a bear.
Lindy had tried to whip out the can of bear spray Charley had given her before the trip, only to have Robert get into a staring contest with the bear.
From everything Lindy had ever been told about grizzly bears, that was the stupidest thing to do—if you weren’t a shifter male—like Robert. He was an alpha wolf shifter and feared very little. He’d won the staring contest thankfully.
“I should call Charley or Robert,” she whispered, only she made no move to go for her phone, which was in her bedroom on her bedside table.
Robert would be up since he worked the night shift, but if she dared to call him, sounding the alarms, he would come racing over with the lights and sirens going like she was about to be murdered.
Since the mountain lion was only guilty of wandering onto her property, calling Robert in to deal with it seemed like overkill.
He’d go all alpha on it for no reason other than to prove he could.