Chapter Four
It had been over thirty years since Shadow had been to New Mexico, but it hadn’t changed much. It was still hot and way too bright. The sun felt hotter here because there was hardly any breeze to blow in the blessed cloud cover. The heat he liked, but the lack of shadows to dissolve into wasn’t a good thing. He was on edge enough being back here, but to not have a way out was almost intolerable. It made him long to be back in Idaho.
Even though he’d never fully adjusted to the cool, damp weather up in north- central Idaho, where Killian’s pack resided, he did like the cloudiness and the gloomy days. Even the nights in New Mexico seemed brighter than at Killian’s remote wooded ranch. There, it was quiet. Here, his senses were overloaded by city noises.
His target had an Albuquerque address, which fell outside the Santa Fe Pack boundary. His former pack had been in the northeastern part of the state and had rarely travelled to the more populous parts. Albuquerque was the largest city in New Mexico, and before he left, Cooper researched the existing packs and their boundaries. Shadow was able to find the gray areas in between pack boundaries that were safe for him to stay in. He didn’t like that he was here and liked even less what he was about to do, but Connell’s parting words rang in his ears: Abigail is pack. Dr. Whitman is not.
Shadow sat up from the lumpy motel mattress. The squeak of its old box springs annoyed him. He eyed the small, illuminated clock on the cheap particleboard bedside table and sighed when it told him it was only two in the afternoon. To avoid being sensed by another wolf, it would be wise to venture out to find his target’s home during the day. Killian’s best guess was his target was a half- breed, so it was possible the doctor was working amongst humans and would be at home in the evening. But traveling during the day would further weaken Shadow. He was already in his weak human form.
Sitting around the foul-smelling motel room for another four or five hours until it got dark was surely a recipe to drive him insane, so he lurched to his feet and headed into the bathroom to shower and dress, his feet making no noise as he padded across the old floor. He didn’t bother with the bathroom light. He didn’t need it to see and had no desire to look at his reflection.
His shower was efficient, but he lingered under the hot spray, mentally preparing for the task at hand. He didn’t like killing, but it was something he’d detached himself enough from that it didn’t bother him anymore. He was eliminating a target. He couldn’t think about that target as a sentient being with thoughts, hopes, or feelings. He couldn’t think about how that person’s family would never know what really happened to him, because when Shadow eliminated a target, the body was never recovered.
The severing of the wolf’s connection to the pack Alpha, and the fact that the target was never heard from again, had always been good enough proof of his success in getting the job done. But would the Council feel the same way, or was he supposed to send them the doctor’s head in a box?
He probably should have figured that out before he left, but he was in such a hurry to leave so he could be done with this miserable assignment that he hadn’t thought to ask. Well, it was too late now. He’d go about business as usual, and he was certain he would hear if that wasn’t good enough. He’d never failed to eliminate a target yet, and he was sure the Council knew this when they assigned the task to the Samhradh Pack and ultimately to him.
Bending, he shut off the water and stepped out, not bothering to towel off. He shook his head to clear the water, the droplets falling off his cropped black hair like water off a duck’s back. In the cooler air of the room, the water felt good on his heated skin. His wolf itched to come out. Shadow never made the beast wait too long, and he’d grown accustomed to the freedom. But he couldn’t shift right now, and he willed the beast down.
The drive down here had taken over twenty hours. He’d stopped once at a remote campsite in Utah and had let his wolf run. He’d hunted some small animals, and although his wolf didn’t like the limited time, this is how it had to be. Shadow didn’t know how long scoping out his target would take, and the longer he was in the area, the greater risk he ran of being discovered. If he were to be discovered, the Council would disavow all knowledge of his assignment, and Shadow would end up on the receiving end of some local pack Enforcer’s punishment.
Despite the heat, he dressed in his usual clothes for his missions, form-fitting black cotton pants and a long-sleeve black cotton shirt, with his weapon secured in its sheath and strapped to his right thigh.
He always used the same knife and never let it out of his sight. His mother had given it to him on his tenth birthday, telling him it was a gift from his grandfather. Only the males in the family had the “shadow” gift, and the blade only got passed down to the males. It was expected that Shadow would pass the blade on to his own male pup.
Had his grandfather still been alive, he’d be terribly disappointed to realize that the next generation of Jafadi was not going to exist. Shadow had no intention of ever passing his defective genes to an unsuspecting pup. He would rather slit his own throat than force another child to endure the pain and suffering he did simply because he was a little different and had what most people considered cursed blood in his ancestry.
No, the world would be much better off if his lineage died off with him. He was the last of his kin, and although he didn’t seek out death, he also didn’t fear it. If it came for him, he’d put up a fight, but he would inevitably go.
He flipped the switch to turn the phone on silent and saw that he’d missed a call from Killian. Killian knew he acted on stealth mode when on assignment and probably remembered after he left the message. But Shadow pushed the button to listen anyway.
The message was from Killian’s phone, but it wasn’t Killian’s voice. It was Abby’s. “Nasir,” she began in a hushed tone.
His heart sped up at hearing the soft way she said his name. No one else besides Abby and Killian knew his given name, and Shadow had tried so hard to forget the male he was when he went by the name Nasir. But something about her calling him that seemed right.
“I’m sorry to be calling in such a sneaky way, but I had to get a message to you. I knew if you saw you had a message from Killian, you’d figure it was important and listen to it.”
Shadow smiled in the darkness despite the nervousness he heard in her voice. He closed his eyes and savored the sound.
“Fin insisted I call to warn you. I know you don’t want to hear about her vision, but she’s beside herself in agitation. She says you can’t—”
Shadow disconnected the call without listening to the rest of the message. Abby had brought the subject up every time she’d been out to visit him during the day about the vision Fionnoula had right before the Samhradh Pack had left to come rescue him and Abby from the Council.
Shadow didn’t want to hear about it, and he’d thought his repeated rejection of the subject had gotten through to Abby. Apparently, he’d underestimated her tenacity.
Back in his homeland, the Alpha relied on the information of the seers and soothsayers to make pack decisions, so Shadow was used to the activity and never thought anything odd of it. That wasn’t the reason he didn’t want to hear about the vision. He just didn’t want to encourage Fionnoula to suffer because of him.
The young female suffered every time she had a vision, and if the vision was about him, well, in his mind, he might as well have struck her across the head with his fist. She was in pain because of him, and he vowed never to let another female suffer because of him after his mother died.
He’d heard Fin tell Abby that she had no control over the visions, so, since he couldn’t stop her from having the vision about him, the least he could do was not benefit from it. It was an asinine solution, he knew, but it was hard enough sleeping each day with his heavy, dirty conscience as it was. He didn’t need to add Fin’s suffering on top of it.
He thought it best not to carry the phone with him when he dissolved into the shadows, in case the device decided that was the time it was going to stop working. Knowing his luck, the time he would need the phone would be the time it fried when he solidified, and he’d be in big trouble. Tucking the small phone in the front pocket of his black canvas duffel bag, he pulled out his Beretta with custom silencer and stuffed it in the back waistband of his pants. He’d never had to use the weapon, but he always carried it as a precaution.
After checking the small room one last time to remove any traces of his presence, he slung the duffel over his shoulder. Covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve, he sprayed the room with a hideous fruit-scented deodorizer to mask his scent and stuffed the can in the pocket of the bag before closing the door behind him.
He pushed the key fob to unlock his SUV and pulled open the door, tossing the duffel in the back seat before sliding into the driver’s seat. He pulled down the dark sunglasses he had in the small compartment above the rearview mirror and put them on. The day was bright, and at least for now, the temperature was a comfortable fifty-three degrees.
His job could have been easier if he knew how to operate those satellite navigation devices the others had in their vehicles. But an old-fashioned paper map had never steered him wrong, and he opened the one he’d purchased the last time he’d fueled up the vehicle.
Cooper had printed him out the last known address of his target, and he held the map up, so he could read the small print until he found the street he was looking for. He traced the location back to where he was, memorizing the turns and street names. Tossing the map on the passenger seat, he started the vehicle and turned on the air conditioning, flipping the lever to recycle the cabin air to try to minimize his scent in the surrounding area. After a long look around to make sure no one was watching him, he pulled out of the motel toward his destination.
His target lived in a modest subdivision, and Shadow discretely watched the activities as he drove through the streets surrounding his target’s white stone house. The houses looked well cared for, and there were no obvious signs of a wolf community, reinforcing Killian’s theory that his target was probably a half-breed.
Pulling out of the subdivision and parking a few blocks away in the back of a convenience store, he slipped out and sprayed his clothes with the fruit-scented deodorizer before closing and locking the door. He already hated the smell of oranges, so the deodorizer did nothing to change his opinion of the citrus fruit.
The houses looked mostly empty, and the driveways looked vacant, leading him to the conclusion that most of the occupants worked outside the home during the day. That made his job a little easier. He could monitor his target from the shadows until he was asleep, and then Shadow could eliminate him in the cover of darkness.
Usually his target was another wolf, and he often had to be creative in getting rid of the body unseen in the bright daylight hours. By spraying his clothes, he not only masked his scent but also dulled his own sense of smell, so he did his best to keep his eyes and ears sharp for any signs of other wolves.
The white stone house came into view as Shadow bounded over the privacy fence along the back of the property and ducked behind a utility shed. Closing his eyes, he listened for any activity inside the house, but all was quiet. Taking a few calming breaths, he advanced on the back door, checking to see if there was an alarm guarding the dwelling. When he saw a small wire along the side of the door, he stepped into the shadow where the angled roof blocked the sun, and he dissolved. Slipping through non-metallic surfaces was easy in his shadow form, and after making sure the house was empty and there were no motion sensors inside, he solidified in the kitchen.
The kitchen was small but clean. One odd thing he noticed right away was there was absolutely nothing on the white granite countertop. Ordinarily there would be a coffee pot or some other small appliance, but the counter in this room was completely bare. Almost against his will, he wondered why. He mentally shook his head. It didn’t matter why. He was here to eliminate the target, not delve into the doctor’s personal life.
Even as he told himself that, he exited the kitchen and looked around the small living room. There was no coffee table in front of the couch, as was often the case. Odder still, there were no pictures on the wall. In fact, there were no decorations of any kind. Nor were there any useless knick-knacks sitting around on shelves collecting dust. There was no television, and aside from the couch and an obviously well-loved chair by the gas fireplace, the room was empty.
It was not unlike his own room at Killian’s house. He was almost never there, so he never bothered to furnish it with anything other than a bed and a chair. Maybe his target was never home either and didn’t feel the need to decorate it with personal effects. The thought crossed his mind that this could be a trap set by the Council to get revenge, but his instincts told him that someone lived here, even if he wasn’t here often.
Shadow moved over to the only thing he’d seen so far that indicated use. From the wear marks on the large white chair, this was where his target sat when he was home. Bending down, Shadow caught a whiff of something over top of the horrid orange deodorizing spray. He silently cursed the spray for drowning out his sense of smell. He’d never needed to rely on his sense of smell before on an assignment. Masking his own scent was of primary concern, but he wanted to strip off his citrus-scented clothes and just smell.
Shadow lifted the small white pillow to his face and inhaled. The delicate scent of roses entered his nose, and he had to wonder if either the doctor had a cleaning service that used a floral-scented cleaner or else he had a female who lived with him. The thought crossed his mind that the address Cooper had given him was an old one. Maybe his target didn’t live here anymore. He’d always had a picture to go by to ensure he was eliminating the correct target. Not knowing what the doctor looked like was a serious disadvantage.
Setting the pillow in the exact place he’d picked it up, he wandered out of the living room and into a room that probably served as an office or den. There was a large wooden desk at the one end of the room. Again, the surface of the desk was completely barren of any objects. No little cup of pens, no notepad by the phone ... no phone. The desk and the chair were the only furniture in the room.
Walking around, he slipped the sleeve of his shirt over his fingers and quietly opened the center drawer. He needed to find something to verify that this was in fact his target’s residence. The drawer contained an organizer with exactly one pen, a stapler, a roll of tape, and, curiously, a clasp envelope the size of a standard sheet of paper.
Carefully pulling out the envelope, he kept his fingers covered as he squeezed the clasp to release the top flap. Peering inside, he found it contained several smaller envelopes. Tipping it at an angle, he let one smaller envelope slip out and land on the desk. It was from a bank, probably a bank statement or credit card statement, and was addressed to Riley L. Whitman.
Tipping the larger envelope further, three other smaller envelopes slipped out: one an electric bill and the other two pre-approved offers for establishing a credit account, all addressed to Riley Whitman. Were these in the large envelope because the doctor no longer lived there, and the current occupant was collecting his mail? Why else would it be in an envelope in the desk? An ordinary person would keep unpaid bills either in a stack or basket waiting to be paid and either would have acted upon or discarded the credit card offers. It was an odd situation, and Shadow had a cool thread of doubt tingle up his spine.
He wasn’t sure he was at the right place.
Carefully replacing the mail in the larger envelope, he set it back in the drawer where he’d lifted it from and closed the drawer. Looking around, he again didn’t find any pictures or other decorations on the walls. A photo would have been useful. Walking from the room, he went to the next room and paused in the doorway.
This was a bedroom and the plain white quilt covering the bed gave him the reason to pause. The modest décor didn’t strike him as something a male would choose. A male normally had darker furniture and bed coverings. Everything in this house, from what he’d seen so far, was white. There wasn’t anything colorful anywhere.
Stepping into the room, the scent of roses got stronger, and he smelled it over the orange spray. He would bet his right paw that a female lived here. Stepping over to the dresser, he cautiously opened the top drawer and looked inside. After examining the contents and finding several pairs of female’s underclothes, either his suspicions were right, and a female lived here, or the doctor had some interesting preferences.
Maybe the doctor’s female lived here. From his experience, though, females tended to like decorations more than males. The house he was in looked sparse and utilitarian as many males resort to, but the furniture and clothing in the dresser were feminine. Maybe this was the doctor’s guest house? Or maybe Shadow just had the wrong place.
Before he could ponder further, he heard a beep and the front door opened. Shadow noiselessly slipped the drawer closed and stepped back into a shadow to dissolve. He was about to have his answer.
Even though he’d never fully adjusted to the cool, damp weather up in north- central Idaho, where Killian’s pack resided, he did like the cloudiness and the gloomy days. Even the nights in New Mexico seemed brighter than at Killian’s remote wooded ranch. There, it was quiet. Here, his senses were overloaded by city noises.
His target had an Albuquerque address, which fell outside the Santa Fe Pack boundary. His former pack had been in the northeastern part of the state and had rarely travelled to the more populous parts. Albuquerque was the largest city in New Mexico, and before he left, Cooper researched the existing packs and their boundaries. Shadow was able to find the gray areas in between pack boundaries that were safe for him to stay in. He didn’t like that he was here and liked even less what he was about to do, but Connell’s parting words rang in his ears: Abigail is pack. Dr. Whitman is not.
Shadow sat up from the lumpy motel mattress. The squeak of its old box springs annoyed him. He eyed the small, illuminated clock on the cheap particleboard bedside table and sighed when it told him it was only two in the afternoon. To avoid being sensed by another wolf, it would be wise to venture out to find his target’s home during the day. Killian’s best guess was his target was a half- breed, so it was possible the doctor was working amongst humans and would be at home in the evening. But traveling during the day would further weaken Shadow. He was already in his weak human form.
Sitting around the foul-smelling motel room for another four or five hours until it got dark was surely a recipe to drive him insane, so he lurched to his feet and headed into the bathroom to shower and dress, his feet making no noise as he padded across the old floor. He didn’t bother with the bathroom light. He didn’t need it to see and had no desire to look at his reflection.
His shower was efficient, but he lingered under the hot spray, mentally preparing for the task at hand. He didn’t like killing, but it was something he’d detached himself enough from that it didn’t bother him anymore. He was eliminating a target. He couldn’t think about that target as a sentient being with thoughts, hopes, or feelings. He couldn’t think about how that person’s family would never know what really happened to him, because when Shadow eliminated a target, the body was never recovered.
The severing of the wolf’s connection to the pack Alpha, and the fact that the target was never heard from again, had always been good enough proof of his success in getting the job done. But would the Council feel the same way, or was he supposed to send them the doctor’s head in a box?
He probably should have figured that out before he left, but he was in such a hurry to leave so he could be done with this miserable assignment that he hadn’t thought to ask. Well, it was too late now. He’d go about business as usual, and he was certain he would hear if that wasn’t good enough. He’d never failed to eliminate a target yet, and he was sure the Council knew this when they assigned the task to the Samhradh Pack and ultimately to him.
Bending, he shut off the water and stepped out, not bothering to towel off. He shook his head to clear the water, the droplets falling off his cropped black hair like water off a duck’s back. In the cooler air of the room, the water felt good on his heated skin. His wolf itched to come out. Shadow never made the beast wait too long, and he’d grown accustomed to the freedom. But he couldn’t shift right now, and he willed the beast down.
The drive down here had taken over twenty hours. He’d stopped once at a remote campsite in Utah and had let his wolf run. He’d hunted some small animals, and although his wolf didn’t like the limited time, this is how it had to be. Shadow didn’t know how long scoping out his target would take, and the longer he was in the area, the greater risk he ran of being discovered. If he were to be discovered, the Council would disavow all knowledge of his assignment, and Shadow would end up on the receiving end of some local pack Enforcer’s punishment.
Despite the heat, he dressed in his usual clothes for his missions, form-fitting black cotton pants and a long-sleeve black cotton shirt, with his weapon secured in its sheath and strapped to his right thigh.
He always used the same knife and never let it out of his sight. His mother had given it to him on his tenth birthday, telling him it was a gift from his grandfather. Only the males in the family had the “shadow” gift, and the blade only got passed down to the males. It was expected that Shadow would pass the blade on to his own male pup.
Had his grandfather still been alive, he’d be terribly disappointed to realize that the next generation of Jafadi was not going to exist. Shadow had no intention of ever passing his defective genes to an unsuspecting pup. He would rather slit his own throat than force another child to endure the pain and suffering he did simply because he was a little different and had what most people considered cursed blood in his ancestry.
No, the world would be much better off if his lineage died off with him. He was the last of his kin, and although he didn’t seek out death, he also didn’t fear it. If it came for him, he’d put up a fight, but he would inevitably go.
He flipped the switch to turn the phone on silent and saw that he’d missed a call from Killian. Killian knew he acted on stealth mode when on assignment and probably remembered after he left the message. But Shadow pushed the button to listen anyway.
The message was from Killian’s phone, but it wasn’t Killian’s voice. It was Abby’s. “Nasir,” she began in a hushed tone.
His heart sped up at hearing the soft way she said his name. No one else besides Abby and Killian knew his given name, and Shadow had tried so hard to forget the male he was when he went by the name Nasir. But something about her calling him that seemed right.
“I’m sorry to be calling in such a sneaky way, but I had to get a message to you. I knew if you saw you had a message from Killian, you’d figure it was important and listen to it.”
Shadow smiled in the darkness despite the nervousness he heard in her voice. He closed his eyes and savored the sound.
“Fin insisted I call to warn you. I know you don’t want to hear about her vision, but she’s beside herself in agitation. She says you can’t—”
Shadow disconnected the call without listening to the rest of the message. Abby had brought the subject up every time she’d been out to visit him during the day about the vision Fionnoula had right before the Samhradh Pack had left to come rescue him and Abby from the Council.
Shadow didn’t want to hear about it, and he’d thought his repeated rejection of the subject had gotten through to Abby. Apparently, he’d underestimated her tenacity.
Back in his homeland, the Alpha relied on the information of the seers and soothsayers to make pack decisions, so Shadow was used to the activity and never thought anything odd of it. That wasn’t the reason he didn’t want to hear about the vision. He just didn’t want to encourage Fionnoula to suffer because of him.
The young female suffered every time she had a vision, and if the vision was about him, well, in his mind, he might as well have struck her across the head with his fist. She was in pain because of him, and he vowed never to let another female suffer because of him after his mother died.
He’d heard Fin tell Abby that she had no control over the visions, so, since he couldn’t stop her from having the vision about him, the least he could do was not benefit from it. It was an asinine solution, he knew, but it was hard enough sleeping each day with his heavy, dirty conscience as it was. He didn’t need to add Fin’s suffering on top of it.
He thought it best not to carry the phone with him when he dissolved into the shadows, in case the device decided that was the time it was going to stop working. Knowing his luck, the time he would need the phone would be the time it fried when he solidified, and he’d be in big trouble. Tucking the small phone in the front pocket of his black canvas duffel bag, he pulled out his Beretta with custom silencer and stuffed it in the back waistband of his pants. He’d never had to use the weapon, but he always carried it as a precaution.
After checking the small room one last time to remove any traces of his presence, he slung the duffel over his shoulder. Covering his mouth and nose with his sleeve, he sprayed the room with a hideous fruit-scented deodorizer to mask his scent and stuffed the can in the pocket of the bag before closing the door behind him.
He pushed the key fob to unlock his SUV and pulled open the door, tossing the duffel in the back seat before sliding into the driver’s seat. He pulled down the dark sunglasses he had in the small compartment above the rearview mirror and put them on. The day was bright, and at least for now, the temperature was a comfortable fifty-three degrees.
His job could have been easier if he knew how to operate those satellite navigation devices the others had in their vehicles. But an old-fashioned paper map had never steered him wrong, and he opened the one he’d purchased the last time he’d fueled up the vehicle.
Cooper had printed him out the last known address of his target, and he held the map up, so he could read the small print until he found the street he was looking for. He traced the location back to where he was, memorizing the turns and street names. Tossing the map on the passenger seat, he started the vehicle and turned on the air conditioning, flipping the lever to recycle the cabin air to try to minimize his scent in the surrounding area. After a long look around to make sure no one was watching him, he pulled out of the motel toward his destination.
His target lived in a modest subdivision, and Shadow discretely watched the activities as he drove through the streets surrounding his target’s white stone house. The houses looked well cared for, and there were no obvious signs of a wolf community, reinforcing Killian’s theory that his target was probably a half-breed.
Pulling out of the subdivision and parking a few blocks away in the back of a convenience store, he slipped out and sprayed his clothes with the fruit-scented deodorizer before closing and locking the door. He already hated the smell of oranges, so the deodorizer did nothing to change his opinion of the citrus fruit.
The houses looked mostly empty, and the driveways looked vacant, leading him to the conclusion that most of the occupants worked outside the home during the day. That made his job a little easier. He could monitor his target from the shadows until he was asleep, and then Shadow could eliminate him in the cover of darkness.
Usually his target was another wolf, and he often had to be creative in getting rid of the body unseen in the bright daylight hours. By spraying his clothes, he not only masked his scent but also dulled his own sense of smell, so he did his best to keep his eyes and ears sharp for any signs of other wolves.
The white stone house came into view as Shadow bounded over the privacy fence along the back of the property and ducked behind a utility shed. Closing his eyes, he listened for any activity inside the house, but all was quiet. Taking a few calming breaths, he advanced on the back door, checking to see if there was an alarm guarding the dwelling. When he saw a small wire along the side of the door, he stepped into the shadow where the angled roof blocked the sun, and he dissolved. Slipping through non-metallic surfaces was easy in his shadow form, and after making sure the house was empty and there were no motion sensors inside, he solidified in the kitchen.
The kitchen was small but clean. One odd thing he noticed right away was there was absolutely nothing on the white granite countertop. Ordinarily there would be a coffee pot or some other small appliance, but the counter in this room was completely bare. Almost against his will, he wondered why. He mentally shook his head. It didn’t matter why. He was here to eliminate the target, not delve into the doctor’s personal life.
Even as he told himself that, he exited the kitchen and looked around the small living room. There was no coffee table in front of the couch, as was often the case. Odder still, there were no pictures on the wall. In fact, there were no decorations of any kind. Nor were there any useless knick-knacks sitting around on shelves collecting dust. There was no television, and aside from the couch and an obviously well-loved chair by the gas fireplace, the room was empty.
It was not unlike his own room at Killian’s house. He was almost never there, so he never bothered to furnish it with anything other than a bed and a chair. Maybe his target was never home either and didn’t feel the need to decorate it with personal effects. The thought crossed his mind that this could be a trap set by the Council to get revenge, but his instincts told him that someone lived here, even if he wasn’t here often.
Shadow moved over to the only thing he’d seen so far that indicated use. From the wear marks on the large white chair, this was where his target sat when he was home. Bending down, Shadow caught a whiff of something over top of the horrid orange deodorizing spray. He silently cursed the spray for drowning out his sense of smell. He’d never needed to rely on his sense of smell before on an assignment. Masking his own scent was of primary concern, but he wanted to strip off his citrus-scented clothes and just smell.
Shadow lifted the small white pillow to his face and inhaled. The delicate scent of roses entered his nose, and he had to wonder if either the doctor had a cleaning service that used a floral-scented cleaner or else he had a female who lived with him. The thought crossed his mind that the address Cooper had given him was an old one. Maybe his target didn’t live here anymore. He’d always had a picture to go by to ensure he was eliminating the correct target. Not knowing what the doctor looked like was a serious disadvantage.
Setting the pillow in the exact place he’d picked it up, he wandered out of the living room and into a room that probably served as an office or den. There was a large wooden desk at the one end of the room. Again, the surface of the desk was completely barren of any objects. No little cup of pens, no notepad by the phone ... no phone. The desk and the chair were the only furniture in the room.
Walking around, he slipped the sleeve of his shirt over his fingers and quietly opened the center drawer. He needed to find something to verify that this was in fact his target’s residence. The drawer contained an organizer with exactly one pen, a stapler, a roll of tape, and, curiously, a clasp envelope the size of a standard sheet of paper.
Carefully pulling out the envelope, he kept his fingers covered as he squeezed the clasp to release the top flap. Peering inside, he found it contained several smaller envelopes. Tipping it at an angle, he let one smaller envelope slip out and land on the desk. It was from a bank, probably a bank statement or credit card statement, and was addressed to Riley L. Whitman.
Tipping the larger envelope further, three other smaller envelopes slipped out: one an electric bill and the other two pre-approved offers for establishing a credit account, all addressed to Riley Whitman. Were these in the large envelope because the doctor no longer lived there, and the current occupant was collecting his mail? Why else would it be in an envelope in the desk? An ordinary person would keep unpaid bills either in a stack or basket waiting to be paid and either would have acted upon or discarded the credit card offers. It was an odd situation, and Shadow had a cool thread of doubt tingle up his spine.
He wasn’t sure he was at the right place.
Carefully replacing the mail in the larger envelope, he set it back in the drawer where he’d lifted it from and closed the drawer. Looking around, he again didn’t find any pictures or other decorations on the walls. A photo would have been useful. Walking from the room, he went to the next room and paused in the doorway.
This was a bedroom and the plain white quilt covering the bed gave him the reason to pause. The modest décor didn’t strike him as something a male would choose. A male normally had darker furniture and bed coverings. Everything in this house, from what he’d seen so far, was white. There wasn’t anything colorful anywhere.
Stepping into the room, the scent of roses got stronger, and he smelled it over the orange spray. He would bet his right paw that a female lived here. Stepping over to the dresser, he cautiously opened the top drawer and looked inside. After examining the contents and finding several pairs of female’s underclothes, either his suspicions were right, and a female lived here, or the doctor had some interesting preferences.
Maybe the doctor’s female lived here. From his experience, though, females tended to like decorations more than males. The house he was in looked sparse and utilitarian as many males resort to, but the furniture and clothing in the dresser were feminine. Maybe this was the doctor’s guest house? Or maybe Shadow just had the wrong place.
Before he could ponder further, he heard a beep and the front door opened. Shadow noiselessly slipped the drawer closed and stepped back into a shadow to dissolve. He was about to have his answer.
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