Savage by Nancy Holder Page A

hadn’t found a comfortable place with each other yet. She wasn’t sure they ever would. Now that she knew he was safe, her wariness of him reasserted itself.
    “You really were worried,” he said in a low voice.
    “I really was. Did you camp in the snow? Where did you go? Did you see anything?”
    He led the way into the kitchen. “I’m cooking up some soup. There’s enough for two. And yes. We camped in the snow. Trick complained all night.” He chuckled and shook his head. “You want grilled cheese, too?”
    “Sure,” she said. “I’ll make it. You sit down. I was so, so worried.” She went to the stove and stirred the soup.
    “You really were.”
    She looked at him. He’d been through so much. He looked exhausted. But he said, “You play poker?”
    “No.”
    “Good. Then I can fleece ya.” He gave her a wink and disappeared into the living room. He came back out with a big plastic wheel of brightly colored poker chips and a double set of playing cards. He set them on the kitchen table and she lifted an eyebrow.
    “Aren’t you too tired?” she asked him.
    He took the lid off the box of cards and gathered the two decks together. He shuffled them with the finesse of a seasoned cardshark. “I had a lot of time to think up there,” he said. “About things that matter.”
    “Poker,” she said, but she knew he meant her.
    He pulled out a stack of white poker chips. “We’ll start with a thousand bucks. Cheese is in the fridge,” he added.
    “Right. Sorry. You must be starving.” She tried Trick again. Still no luck. Her mouth watered as she bypassed the salami and got out the block of cheddar cheese. “Mom hardly ever bought cheese, except for that six-cheese macaroni she used to make.” She stopped talking. The last time Giselle had made that dish had been the night Katelyn’s father had been murdered.
    “Your mama had some odd notions about food,” her grandfather said as he pulled out a stack of blue plastic discs. “These are worth the most. It goes blue, red, white. Got that?” He began dividing them into two stacks.
    She had so many questions. She wanted to talk about John McBride. And her father. And all the silver bullets. But she wanted this moment even more. She might have lost him. Lost her grandpa.
    He stopped as she tried Trick again.
    “He’s probably asleep,” her grandfather said.
    “Oh.” It seemed odd that he wouldn’t call her right away. Maybe that was the reason. She began to slice the cheese. “I was kind of hoping he’d come home with you.”
    “His folks wanted to see him,” her grandfather said, and she thought a moment. When she’d broken into Trick’s room, the rest of the property had seemed deserted. She pictured Trick home alone, wondering who had broken into his little house, and felt a twinge of guilt. The last thing she had wanted to do was freak him out.
    “You get by okay without your grandpa around?” he asked her, stirring her from her reverie. Mordecai’s tone was deliberately casual, but she detected the uncertainty.
    “Of course not. I forgot how to drive my car and I starved to death.” She smiled gently at him and turned on another burner on the stove. She set a small frying pan on the burner. “But I missed you. It scared me when you all went out like that.”
    “Scared me, too, danged fools. Half of ’em would shoot their own shadow if they could get it to hold still long enough.”
    She smiled. “They didn’t have you to teach them.”
    “Katie . . .” He searched her face. Then something changed in his eyes, and he turned away from her. “After the blue ones, the reds are the ones you want.”
    “Got it.” She buttered two slices of bread and put them face down in the frying pan. She covered them with pieces of cheese.
    He began to deal the cards. A text message came in, but it was from Justin, not Trick. It said: HUNTERS R BACK?
    Why bother asking? He already knew the answer. She finished making the sandwiches and