“Hello,” she said into it, voice firm. “I can’t let you talk to the cubs. If you want, I’ll take a message and have their father call you back.”
“Who—” The word cut off, and there was a long silence at the other end of the line.
Addie suspected that the Who? had been the first word of Who the hell is this? But Seamus—if it were Seamus—obviously didn’t want to speak to Addie.
“I’ll tell him you called,” she said. “Good-bye.”
Another startled exclamation came through before Addie clicked off the phone and closed it.
This wasn’t Kendrick’s phone, she was certain. Kendrick had broken and flushed her phone, and she was pretty sure he’d done the same to his, not wanting it to give away their position. If he’d had a phone, he wouldn’t have had to ask Ben to deliver messages for him.
Should she take it into the mare’s stall and let her stomp on it? A thousand pounds of horse would probably smash it pretty well.
Addie brushed off the last of the hay from the device, slid it into her pocket, and pasted on a smile for the waiting cubs. “Come on. Let’s go see about those groceries.”
* * *
Kendrick walked the bounds a good long time before he trusted himself back in the house with Addison. The small taste of her hadn’t eased his need; it had only flared it to life.
He didn’t sense anyone else out in the wide vista behind Charlie’s house, not another creature like Ben, no other Shifters. They were alone, for now.
When Kendrick believed himself calm enough—or at least convinced himself to go make sure Addison and the cubs were all right—he shifted back to his human form, recovered his jeans from the barn, and entered the house through the front door. He was ready to slip down the hall and find another shirt to cover his sunbaked torso, but Robbie saw him through the open kitchen door.
“Dad! We’re making a list. What do you want?”
Brett and Zane added their chorus. Kendrick made his way across the giant living room to the kitchen, pausing in the doorway.
Addison was talking with Charlie, the two getting along famously, as they debated how many eggs they’d need for breakfasts to come. Kendrick had anticipated Addison being awkward with him, or even fully afraid of him, but she broke from Charlie and came close to him without worry.
“Found this,” she said in a low voice, pressing something cool and hard into his hand. “Seamus called.”
Addison gave him a significant look, then turned around and went back to drawing up her shopping list.
“We’ll pay for all this, of course,” Addison said in a loud voice. “Kendrick?”
“Yes,” he said, distracted. He always made sure he had a stash of money where he could easily get to it. The five thousand the police had taken from Addison was a drop in the bucket.
The advantage of not wearing a Collar was that he could walk into a human bank, open an account, and pull money from it whenever he wanted. Unless he decided to shape-shift in the lobby, the humans would never know the difference.
More pressing was this unfamiliar cell phone in his hand and Addison’s words, Seamus called.
His heart beating faster, Kendrick moved down the hall to the bedroom, opened the phone, and pressed the keys to call back the last number.
The phone rang twice before a familiar voice with a Scots accent answered with a cautious, “Who is this?”
“Me,” Kendrick said.
“Kendrick?” Seamus’s voice went soft and at the same time filled with relief. “Where the hell are you, man?”
“Safe. Tell me how I got this phone. It’s not mine.”