Melinda’s Wolves(70)
Keegan didn’t meet her gaze where she stood leaning against the kitchen counter. Even though the stir fry looked and smelled fantastic, she didn’t’ move yet. “Hon, I’m not discounting your foresight—”
“Oh, but you are.” She interrupted him, stomping closer to where he stood next to the table. “I know neither of you has any experience with my tribe or the ways of my people, but you need to open your minds and listen to me. Maybe it’s not a coincidence that the three of us were brought together. Did you ever think of that?” Her entire frame shook. It wasn’t so much anger toward her stubborn mates, but more fear now. Stubborn could get a man killed.
She glanced from one man to the other. “I mean, consider how crazy it is for a cop from Cambridge, a building inspector on the reservation, and a medicine woman from Sojourn to suddenly find themselves thrust together for eternity two days before this shit hit the fan.”
Trace reached for her hand and pulled her closer. “You’re right, baby. It can’t be a coincidence. Fate has to be involved.”
“Thank you.” She let her body relax marginally. “You know better than Keegan. You saw what happened with your brother, my brother, and Rebecca. If it hadn’t been for their mating, who knows if Rebecca would even be alive?”
Keegan pulled out a chair. “Sit, hon. Please. Let’s eat while we talk.”
Melinda took a seat in the chair and let Keegan push her up to the table.
He rounded to the other side and sat across from her, leaving Trace at the head of the table. As he scooped a heaping serving of stir fry onto his plate, he spoke. “Remind me how things went down with Rebecca that week.”
Trace surprised Melinda by fielding the question, even though she was sure she knew all the details better than him. “Rebecca was entered in a Spartan Race that month, a few weeks after she met Miles and Griffen. So many unexplained obstacles got in the way she eventually pulled out of the race.”
“At my urging,” Melinda added. She leaned forward, setting her elbows on the table and ignoring the food in the wok as best she could. “This isn’t an exact science. I’ll never promise you that, but you both have to trust my instincts. I’m rarely wrong, even when I can’t logically back up what I’m sensing around me.
“Believe me, Rebecca was not happy for me to tell her she needed to drop out of that race. I was scared out my head we would never know why she wasn’t supposed to be there that day—and even more scared that we might actually find out why.
“As it turned out, the earthquake caused a tremendous amount of damage to the race route moments after it began. Who knows what might have happened to Rebecca if she’d been on the street at that second, but instead she was on duty at the hospital. Her nursing skills saved countless lives. Maybe my premonition saved her own life.” She shrugged. There was no way to definitively say what the outcome would have been otherwise, but Rebecca was a believer.
Keegan stopped moving. He stared at Melinda and then nodded. “Okay, hon. I get it. What do you want me to do?”
“I have no idea.” She blew out a long breath and relaxed. “I may never be able to deliver that kind of advice. But when I have a feeling about something, I need you to listen. A man is dead.”
He nodded again. “I thought you were just aggravated because you don’t agree with the casino being built there in the first place and because you’re instinctively protective of the land.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re right. I hate that damn casino. It doesn’t belong there. Like I said, it’s an eyesore. It will cause countless changes to Sojourn that half my tribe is opposed to. It will bring crime to the area. It blocks the view of the land. It draws chain stores into town that will drive the rest of us out of business.
“But, none of those personal feelings have anything to do with the way I felt when I got out of your truck at that job site. It gave me the willies on a scale I haven’t felt in over a year. There are forces at work I can’t explain. And I don’t think all of them have to do with your dead guy. There’s more.”
Trace reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Okay. I hear you, babe. I don’t know what we can do differently, but we promise to listen closer.”
“Yeah. Trace is right. Sorry for being such an ass about the casino.”
Trace spoke again. “I’d suggest Melinda go back to the site again and see if she feels anything else, but I don’t really want her anywhere near there.”
“Hell, I’m far more worried about either of you being there without me than I am about myself. At least if I’m around, I can head off anything imminent. I can’t predict much from miles away from the scene.” Melinda grabbed a glass of ice water from the table and took a long drink. Suddenly, she was parched. Fear seemed to leach the fluid out of her.