AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wow. I didn’t expect the news to spread so fast,” he said lamely.
“So, it’s true? I didn’t even know you were dating anyone!” Becca sounded hurt.
Now, Holly was staring at him. Her inquiring look had transformed to a concerned one.
“It’s my sister,” he explained. “She heard you moved in with me. And that we started dating.”
“Wait a minute!” Becca said in his ear. “What do you mean, ‘started dating’? She doesn’t know you mated her?” Without waiting for his response, she continued, “Oh, Ice! How could you?”
“She knows I’m courting her,” Ice said shortly. He didn’t want to give too much away and possibly spook his new mate. “And I’ll explain everything else the next time I see you. But Holly’s special. I think you’re gonna love her.”
“Well, I can’t wait to meet her,” Becca said with enthusiasm. “When?”
He chuckled. “Soon. She broke her leg just before the storm hit, and the doc told her to stay off her feet and take it easy.”
“Well, can I come by?” Becca pressed.
“How about you give it a couple of weeks? I don’t want to scare her off.” He grinned at Holly, and added, “I’m bringing Holly to the pride’s Christmas dinner. How about then?”
Holly returned the grin as Becca asked indignantly, “Are you seriously going to make me wait that long to meet my new sister-in-law?”
“I want her all to myself for a while,” Ice told her.
Chapter Fifteen – Faking It
Idaho Fish and Game Offices
Bearpaw Ridge
One week later
The weekly IDFG project status meeting ended, and the small group of wildlife biologists rose and headed for the conference room’s door. It was the last meeting of the day, and everyone was eager to get home and eat dinner.
As Holly reached for her knee-crutch and prepared to strap it on, her boss, Arnold Beckworth, raised his hand to stop her. “Holly, stay. We need to talk.”
Evan Swanson, who trailed behind the rest of their colleagues, turned in the doorway and glanced at them with curiosity.
“Swanson, you can close the door behind you on your way out,” Arnold said briskly.
Evan shot her a concerned look, but followed their boss’s order.
Arnold steepled his fingers and studied her from his place at the head of the conference table. He was a deeply tanned man in his late fifties, with thick, wavy salt-and-pepper hair brushed back from his forehead, and a short, grizzled beard. He had pale green cat’s-eyes and a penetrating stare.
“Did you know that all of our work laptops’ documents and images are automatically backed up to the department’s cloud servers?” he asked.
Holly shook her head. Sudden dread squeezed her chest.
“Well, I was reviewing your data backups last night, and I ran across some very interesting footage.”
Oh shit. Holly felt like someone had dumped a bucket of icy water over her. “Uh, which footage was that?”
She fought to keep her tone neutral. It was difficult when what she really wanted was to scream and tear her hair out.
As promised, she had deleted the video of Ice in his sabertooth cat shape from both the SD cards and her laptop… after she’d connected to Ice’s wireless network. She remembered that she’d spent a few hours typing up her weekly report of her findings, and had only gotten around to reviewing and censoring the trail cam footage after Ice had left to work his evening shift at the restaurant.
She swallowed hard. Shit!Did my laptop upload that sabertooth footage to our cloud before I erased it?
Arnold leaned back in his chair. “It appears that someone—” He pinned her with his sharp gaze. “—decided to use government resources to create an elaborate hoax. Want to tell me what you were thinking?”
