Winter Prey

Chapter 39

Chapter 39

Recalling how long it had been since she'd eaten - at the tribal headquarters the day before at noon - Kymbria mixed up a banana and orange salad and made some sandwiches to go with the coffee while Caleb finally made his phone call an hour later. The murmurs and lulls of his conversation in the living room accompanied her preparations. Eventually, she had everything on the table. Still, Caleb hadn't appeared. She found him at the front window, gazing out at a saffron and maroon sunset over the frozen, snow-packed lake.

"It's beautiful..." she began, and he jerked around with a start. "Oh, sorry. I just wanted to tell you the food's on the table."

"No, I'm sorry," he said. "I was lost in thought. Didn't hear you come in here. You're right, the sunset's really nice. I wasn't paying attention to it. And yeah, I'm starved. Glad you unbent enough to do some women's work."

But no smile accompanied his joking comment, and she read confusion in his body language and green eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Is the coffee done, too?" he asked instead of answering.

She nodded and led the way back into the kitchen without prodding him further. She even poured them both coffee before she sat at the table across from him. Caleb had his fork in hand, toying with the fruit salad, ignoring the sandwich. She pushed his coffee cup over to him, and he immediately picked it up.

Kymbria leaned her chin on her clasped hands and said, "I never hid what my mother said to me from you. I told you as soon as I knew myself."

Not all of it, but as much as she'd felt comfortable saying. Now that they'd made love, though, she needed to tell him everything.

He leaned back in his chair, coffee cup gripped tightly. Tenseness radiated from him as she waited for him to speak. Finally, he drew in a breath.

"I called Daniel Goodman back in Colorado, the man who's my best friend and also the head of our paranormal investigation group. I wanted to talk to him about this situation and another investigation he'd told me about a while back. Before I could get into that, Daniel said he'd been getting ready to call me. He handles my personal and business finances, too, and he's a computer whiz."

Caleb swallowed coffee, then put his cup down, his gaze on it as though delaying what he had to say. Finally, he continued, "Daniel said that someone had tried to access one of my accounts. But since Daniel changes the passwords a couple times a week, for protection and to thwart identity theft, all the attempted access did was trigger some sort of computer alarm Daniel set up."

Kymbria frowned. "Who would try to do something like that? Some identity thief?"

"He doesn't think it's an identity thief. He's got too many safeguards in place for that ever to happen to his or my funds. He said the attempt originated out in California. And the person used an out-dated password that had once been on the account." Caleb shrugged. "I can't recall knowing anyone in California well enough for them to understand my finances. And there's nothing I can do from this end about that. Daniel's handling it. He just wanted to make me aware, and give me the new passwords he's already put into place." He frowned. "Something keeps bothering me, though. It's one of those things that's on the edge of your mind, but you can't pull it out. You know?"

"I know."

He shook his head, as though giving up on that part of the puzzle. "The other thing I talked to him about - the reason I called him - was a story he told me about an investigation he'd been on before he and I met. It had to do with an entity - a ghost, I guess, although she evolved into more of a demonic entity - that was out for revenge."