Danil’s Mate(20)

“I’ll do it!” she shouted, resigned to joining him since beating this 200 pound Belarusian giant wasn’t in the cards for her.

He turned without a word, hoisting her bag into the air and striding out of the room. Dora heard a car door slam as she hurriedly organized her things into a messenger bag that had been her father’s. She was just hoisting it over her shoulder when her anger came back. What the hell was she doing? Her father would not want her to just go with this brute in order to avoid a fight.

She was Pandora Katsaros. Award-winning journalist and part-time private investigator. She was the daughter of Stavros Katsaros. The wiliest, canniest, most innovative detective in history. She wasn’t gonna stand for this shit.

Tossing her bag onto the bed, she turned just as Danil was reentering the room. She fisted her hands on her hips like before and gave him the most condescending look she could muster, calculating that it would be the only thing that might take the wind out of his sails.

“Danil, this is ridiculous. I’m a grown woman, I’ve paid for this hotel, I’m not letting you check me out and kick me out of town just because I’ve been irritating to you. Because the fact is, I know that this town has secrets and that your family-”

She never got to finish her sentence, though, because Danil was bending down in front of her and tossing her over his shoulder.

Dora barely bit down on the little squeak that threatened to shriek out of her. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. He grabbed her bag off the bed and the clothes she’d never bothered to put on.

And then he was slamming the door behind them and she was buckled into the front seat of his car before she could blink.

Dora clamped down on the traitorous reaction of her body to his car. She had good memories of this car. Well, one in particular. But they didn’t, shouldn’t, apply anymore because now he was erasing all of that by being a complete dickhead and trying to kick her out of town. Just when she was finally getting close. Circling in on something really good.

Dora clamped her arms over her chest and glared at him, doing her absolute best to ignore how handsome he looked, wearing only suit pants and an undershirt, like he’d rushed out of the house before getting all the way dressed.

“Fine. You know what? I don’t give an earthly fuck, Belarus. Drive me to the city limits. Drive me to Montana before you kick me out. I don’t care. I’ll just find a way back here. Because it’s what I do. You can’t get me off the trail. I’m going to get to the bottom of this fucking story if it’s-”

Danil slammed the brakes of the car and swung into the driveway of a house. It was on the outskirts of a little domestic neighborhood, but it was set back into the woods a little. It was a little, two-storey brick house with a messy garden out front. She realized that the shutters were blue. It gave her a little jolt in her stomach. She’d always had a thing for blue shutters.

“Where are we?” she demanded, but Danil didn’t answer. He simply slammed his car door, grabbed her suitcase in one hand, her messenger bag over his shoulder, and Dora over his other shoulder.

“Danil!” she yelped as he strode into the house.

But he didn’t stop until he’d gone all the way upstairs into a neat little room with a white comforter and a small wooden desk in the corner. The walls were painted an appealing shade of blue and the windows looked out onto a rolling green backyard. Dora could see lawn chairs and a hammock back there before she was dumped, rather heavily, onto the bed.

“There are hunters in the woods! You could have been shot!” Danil roared, pacing back and forth in front of her. “There’s mountain lions for Christ’s sake! And bears!”

Dora raised a wry eyebrow but Danil plowed on.

“And then what? A fucking medical testing site or whatever the hell that was? Just prancing through at midnight? Did you know it was abandoned, Dora? Did you know it was abandoned or did you think there was a chance that it was active and that you might run into the people who were committing those atrocities?”

He wheeled on her, his dark brown eyes like fiery ice as he demanded her answer.

“I wasn’t sure what I’d find,” she admitted. Answering him honestly, in part, because of how confused he had her. Where the hell was she and what the hell was going on?

Danil threw his hands up in the air. “Well, aren’t you the lucky one that it was just the cops that found you! Do you even know what could have found you? What’s in those woods?”

“No!” Dora shouted back, standing on the bed so that she could, finally, be at eye level with this brute. “I don’t. Yet. But something tells me that you do. Care to share?”