Body Thief by C.J. Barry Page A

of his pride. Blood thrummed in his head, burning away at his soul. “Yes, sir.”
    “Damn right,” Harding said and hung up.
    Cam was watching him as he set the phone down, carefully. Otherwise, he’d throw it across the room. Griffin braced himself on the counter for a moment to put his emotions back in check.
    “I should have killed him when I had the chance,” Cam said.
    Griffin raised his head to look at her. Blue eyes peered back at him. “I need him.”
    She set the printouts on the counter. “I know. I’ll just have to wait until you don’t.”
    He’d pay to see that.
    “You really need to let that anger out,” she said.
    He regarded her with surprise. “Excuse me?”
    She sat on the stool across from him and leaned forward. The front of her bathrobe opened just enough for him to see silky skin. To his dismay, he felt himself getting hard. He moved closer to the island to hide his indiscretion. What was he thinking?
    “If you don’t, it’ll eat you alive,” she said and smiled wickedly. “Want to arm wrestle?”
    Wrestle. That could possibly be the one thing that would release the tension he was carrying. It would also be a very bad idea. “You’d go down.”
    Challenge flashed in her eyes. “You could try.”
    For a moment, he forgot that she was a Shifter. That her people were the reason for all his misery. For a moment, he imagined wrestling. And then he remembered all his sleepless nights and merciless collectors. He reached out and tapped the papers. “Let’s save our strength for the bad guys. Find anything?”
    “Not yet. On the surface, the companies that were hit don’t appear to have anything in common.”
    “Told you,” Griffin said, and turned back to the sink to dish out the pasta.
    “On the surface, I said.”
    He grinned out of her line of sight.
    “It’s a little like doing a puzzle and finding the edge pieces,” she continued. “You know there’s a pattern, but there are big gaps that don’t make sense. One thing is for certain; they all deliver a service or product to someone else.”
    “That’s called business, Cam. Everyone does it.”
    She wasn’t giving up. “What I need is a list of their customers, particularly any that they have in common.”
    Griffin spooned sauce on the pasta and sprinkled on grated cheese. “Maybe Ernest can figure it out.”
    Cam was staring at him in shock when he turned around with the plates. He held them for a moment. “What?”
    “Well, number one, you cook. I didn’t see that coming.”
    He slid her a plate. “It’s not cooking. It’s pasta. Any moron can make it.”
    She shrugged. “I can’t.”
    Griffin pulled up the stool on his side of the island. “And?”
    “You are giving me Ernest—free of charge. He already used his three hours,” she said warily. “Why?”
    Griffin loaded spaghetti on his fork, not wanting to admit that something felt wrong. The way Harding reacted to his questions. The way Ernest was being watched. The big rush to get this job done. And as much as he didn’t want to look for trouble, he also didn’t want to have this end badly. Right now, it had that feeling. Besides, Harding had pissed him off.
    “You might be onto something,” he finally said.
    Cam raised her hands. “Halle-frickin’-luiah!”
    A fork full of pasta was poised at his mouth. “Don’t get used to it.”
    She laughed. “Are you kidding? Dinner and a confession? Doesn’t get any better than that. Happy here.”
    He swallowed his pasta. “I’m not confessing anything. I’m just covering my ass. I don’t trust Harding.”
    Cam sucked a long string of spaghetti between her lips and licked off the sauce. “Right.”
    Griffin finished his meal thinking of wrestling.

     
    The sad truth was all bars were the same. Whether they catered to humans or Shifters, male or female, the games were all the same.
    Cam led the way through the third bar they’d visited tonight, her nose on alert. She was getting pretty tired of