Despite her resolution during her conversation with Gavin, the sight of Lucien on the rooftop patio, the sun setting behind him giving his hair a burnished tinge, set her core on fire. The mojitos Eleanor had prepared for them made her second-guess her reservations.

Sure, they had a rogue to catch. And a village to save.

But the problem would still be there when they’d finished their drinks and their dinner alone and anything that followed.

And the bad stuff tended to happen in the middle of the night anyway.

So, she relaxed further into the lounge chair and took another sip of the mojito.

“I didn’t expect to drink the best mojito I’ve ever had in Africa,” she said, staring out at the village and beyond to the coffee plantation from their perch above the compound walls.

“Eleanor told me she used to work for a Cuban diplomat,” Lucien said. “Lucky us.”

Ryenne laughed, warm and relaxed. The view right next to her was damn good, too.

“You’re the first shifter hunter I’ve met who is actually a shifter.” She was used to shifters being cruel and vicious and aggressive, but Lucien wasn’t any of those things. She also wasn’t used to thinking of a shifter as hot.

“And you’re the prettiest shifter hunter I’ve ever met.”

She rolled her eyes. Like she hadn’t heard that one before. Hunters seemed to think it should be a male-dominated profession. They could be a rough-and-tumble group, the sort who thought any female with long hair and boobs was pretty.

He shook his head. “It came out wrong, but right at the same time. The only female hunters I’ve worked with are my sisters, and all the rest were men. You’re much prettier than the men.”

“And your sisters?” She couldn’t keep the grin from her face.

He leaned toward her, his angular face in shadow. “They’re my sisters and I love them. It wouldn’t be gentlemanly to say more.”

Her laugh was interrupted by Jomo announcing dinner.

They carried the dregs of their mojitos down the narrow stairs to the dining room where they again found themselves alone.

“I could get used to these intimate dinners,” Lucien said.

“I bet.”

Jomo and Eleanor brought in plates of steak and roasted potatoes and wilted greens. Ryenne smiled her thanks and then decided to take it a step further.

“Mr. Muteti is very lucky to have you both.”

Jomo gave her a shy smile.

“We are lucky to have jobs in his household,” Eleanor said. “This village almost died before he came back and built the warehouse down the road. All the young people left for the city and there was no work, except in the coffee plantation, which is hard, backbreaking work. Eh, and now there is famine all over the country. If I did not have this job, I do not know what I would do. I would have to move somewhere else or become a burden on my children.” She poured them glasses of wine and left the room.

A heavy silence descended on the room. Ryenne had grown up in a small town outside New York City that had depended on easy access to the larger towns nearby and the city. But when shifters started going rogue and attacking people in the darkness, many small towns didn’t survive. When shifters terrorized her town and destroyed her family, no one felt safe and the townspeople moved away in droves. She and her mother had moved into the city, just as so many of her neighbors.

She knew how devastating the death of one’s home could be. Steven had saved this village by offering an alternative to his family’s plantation.

“So, what’s the plan, partner?” Lucien asked, changing the subject and pulling her out of her morbid thoughts. “Patrol the compound or the village tonight? We could take it in shifts.”

Forcing herself out of thoughts of the demise of her hometown, she considered their options and what they were up against. This rogue had shown more cunning than she’d seen in rogues in the past. It had laid traps for them and looked at her with...familiarity. This rogue had targeted Ryenne.

“Considering its past actions,” she finally said, “being alone on patrol isn’t smart.”

He nodded. “No, even though we could cover more ground, we won’t do this village any good if one of us dies.”

“I’m not sure we’re doing this village much good as it is.” She took a sip of wine. “Those guards are laughable. Sweet, yes, but they aren’t any match at all for a rogue shifter.”

Lucien stared at her and she couldn’t read his expression. Finally, he raised an eyebrow. “I suppose it’s why Steven hired us.”

“Hired us to find a rogue who has turned out to be more cunning than we first imagined. He’ll probably kill again while Steven goes about his business. We have to do something.”

“What do you suggest?” The hint of a smile on his lips and in his eyes loosened another piece of the hard shell of her suspicion.

Shaking her head, she reminded herself: he’s a shifter. Shifters killed my family. To hide her lust, she slugged back the contents of another of Mom’s vials.

“Well, aside from the obvious action of hunting down this rogue and putting him in the ground, we could train the men. Teach them to actually protect themselves, this compound, and the village.”

He slapped his hand down on the table. “Excellent idea. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to any of them. Ready? On y va.”

Down in the yard, Ryenne practically bounced on her feet. Despite the late hour, she couldn’t wait until morning to talk to the guards and start teaching them to fight.

But a tension hovered over the yard. The men stood in a clump, speaking in low voices with an intensity she could hear and feel from the doorway to the house.

Lucien strode forward. “What’s going on?”

The man in the shirt with “Randy” stitched on the pocket pulled away from the group. “Innocent didn’t come to work. We’re scared something bad happened to him. Like Kyeri.”

Ryenne and Lucien shared a look. Were they too late? While she’d been staring into his eyes backed by a gorgeous sunset, had the rogue struck again?

She tamped down her anger. “Has anyone checked his house?”

Several of the men shifted their weight from foot to foot. Again, “Randy” spoke. “That’s what we were just talking about. Some of us want to go look for him, but some of us...” He darted a narrowed-eye glance over his shoulder at the others. “...are too scared.”

She blew out a sigh. They were right to be scared, but they couldn’t wait for morning to see what had happened. “We’ll look for him. Can one of you show us where Innocent lives?”

A couple of the guards took a discreet step backwards. “Randy” huffed out a breath. “I will show you.”

Ryenne smiled. “Awesome, thanks. But, dude, what’s your real name?”

“Heh, I am Teddy. But this is my favorite shirt.”

“Sometimes we forget and call him Randy,” one of the guards said.

“I answer to it,” Teddy said with a smile.

On this lighter note, the three left the compound and Teddy led them down the street and around a few corners. The night was chilly and the sky clear. Stars twinkled overhead and the sight made Ryenne smile. This was the same sky Gavin was looking at, and her mom. It made her feel closer to them even while so far away.

Teddy stopped in front of a small mud house with a freshly swept dirt yard. “This is the house.”

“Does he live alone?” Ryenne marched up to the front door. She didn’t know anything about Innocent or any of the other men. The lack of knowledge didn’t sit well with her, as an investigator or as a human being. To be fair, she’d been preoccupied by the job and the leopard and the dead body.

“No. He lives with his elderly parents. He is the youngest of his brothers and sisters, who are all married now.”

Ryenne knocked and immediately heard sounds of movement from inside the house, but it took thirty seconds or more for the sounds to reach the door. It finally swung open, revealing a small, wrinkled, stooped woman in a t-shirt and wrap skirt made of colorful local cloth.

She looked into each of their faces, frowning. When she recognized Teddy, her frown became a smile.

“Good evening, auntie,” he said. “We are here for Innocent.”

“Innocent? He left for work at the usual time.”

Ryenne wasn’t surprised by her answer, but hearing the words struck a death knell.

They left Innocent’s mother with assurances to let her know when they found him and paused in front of the house.

“Maybe we should gather as many people as we can for a search party. We’ll send them out in groups of at least five,” Lucien suggested.

Back home, someone missing for a couple of hours wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. But this village was living under different circumstances. A vicious leopard shifter was on the loose and he had already shown himself to be brazen and fearless. Innocent was no match for such a creature.

No single person was.

“Excuse me,” a voice said from the darkness. A tall, thin man approached them from the neighboring yard.

Teddy didn’t tense up so Ryenne assumed he knew the neighbor.

The two men greeted each other in the local language and shook hands and jutted their chins at each other.

“This is Manuel,” Teddy said. “He lives next door.”

“You are looking for Innocent?” Manuel asked.

Ryenne nodded. “Did you see him tonight? Do you know where he’d go if not to work?”

“Hmm. He has been dating a girl from Njoro. The bigger town on the way to Nakuru.” He gestured vaguely behind him. “Maybe he went to see her.”

“But he was expected at work.”

“Sometimes we change shifts and cover for each other,” Teddy explained.

“Mmm,” Manuel said. “Maybe he did not realize he was supposed to work tonight. Or he thought no one would notice his absence because Muteti has so many guards these days.”

“They did notice and they’re worried.” Ryenne couldn’t keep the note of annoyance from seeping into her voice. “We all are.”

Every hour, even every minute could mean the difference between Innocent’s life or death.

“Let’s go back to the compound but a different way than we came,” Lucien suggested. “Then we can look for signs of him as we go and we’ll see if there’s been a change since we left.”

A change. Like, his dead body left in front of the gate? Ryenne reined in her anger and strode down the street.

When they reached the compound, Lucien filled in the other guards on what they’d learned. Some of them nodded and murmured.

“Eh, there’s that girl, Eugenia,” a man named Daniel said. “He has been talking about her a lot. It is possible he went to see her.”

“Mmm,” Teddy said. “He probably went there.”

“Why don’t we borrow one of Steven’s cars and drive to this Eugenia’s house and look for Innocent?” Lucien suggested. He raised his eyebrows at Ryenne and she nodded.

Yes, they had to do something. They couldn’t stand around talking about what might have happened to Innocent and where he might have gone. All this standing and talking was making her anxious.

The men mumbled and murmured again and Ryenne’s head spun.

“Guys, what’s the deal?” she asked. “Let’s go get Innocent. Then we’ll know for sure he’s safe and everyone can get back to what they’re supposed to be doing.”

Teddy stepped forward. He had become their mouthpiece, it seemed. “We have all heard him talk about her. And Peter remembers him saying he was going to visit her tonight. We are sure he is fine.”

“Then why didn’t he tell his parents?” she asked. “They thought he went to work.”

“His parents don’t like her,” Teddy said, his eyes open and uncomplicated. Ryenne believed he was telling the truth. “She wants to go to university in Nairobi instead of getting married. Her parents are very modern.”

Ryenne stared at him a moment. “Okay, but we’re going to look for him. None of you have to come,” she said. “Are the keys to the car in the guardhouse?”

Teddy said something in Gikuyu and one of the other men reached into the guardhouse and tossed a set of keys to Lucien. To the guy, how typically sexist, she thought.

“I will come with you and show you how to get to Njoro,” Teddy said. He led them to the small red car parked in one corner of the yard, the same one they’d taken to see Mr. Ruto in the hospital the other day.

As they bumped over the rutted roads in the direction of Nakuru, Ryenne thought about Teddy’s words about Innocent’s parents. Here in Kenya, only modern parents would allow their daughter to go to university instead of getting married. What a different world. She couldn’t imagine anyone having to make a choice between the two, especially when so young.

University was when Ryenne thought she’d really found herself and discovered her calling as a shifter hunter. She wouldn’t be here today without her college experiences.

And marriage was a foreign concept. Love was barely something she understood. Gavin fell in love every other month. Her mother had stayed unmarried after her father’s death and didn’t even date. She seemed completely fine alone.

Ryenne had always been fine alone, too.

Within a few minutes, they passed a sign for the town.

“It is here,” Teddy said, staring out the windshield at the dark night. “I do not know where Eugenia lives and it is too late now to knock on doors and ask people.”

“The hell with that.” Ryenne pointed to the nearest house. “Park there. A man is missing and a leopard is on the loose.”

Lucien pulled over to the side of the dirt road in front of a dark shape. Ryenne flew out of the car and raced to the door. She banged until a skinny man with a confused expression opened the door. Teddy had caught up by then and did the talking.

“He says Eugenia lives on the other side of the village and he gave me directions.”

Ryenne nodded and started to turn away.

“He also says we should not wake people from their sleep who have to get up with the sun to work in the fields.”

Ryenne’s urge toward action dampened and she hung her head. “Please tell him how sorry we are. We wouldn’t have woken him if it weren’t an emergency.”

They drove about a mile along the same road and then Teddy directed them through a series of turns that made Ryenne glad for Teddy’s presence and language skills. She’d never get out of here on her own. They found the house the man had indicated and Ryenne rushed to the door. Eugenia’s parents weren’t happy about being woken up either, especially for “that skinny brown boy who will not leave our daughter alone.”

But they hadn’t seen Innocent. “He has not been here since before Kyeri died,” Teddy told them. “Eugenia told her parents he did not want to come alone on the road and risk being mauled or killed by the rogue leopard.”

“Shit! Where could he be?” Ryenne spun on her heels and stomped to the car. “Let’s drive in a circle around Batanga, just to be sure there’s nothing else we can do.”

Lucien nodded and put the car in gear.

Their search yielded nothing. Exhaustion overwhelmed Ryenne but so did determination. Back in the compound, she scrambled out of the red car and headed to the gate.

“Where are you going?” Lucien called.

“To search the village and woods on foot.” If she couldn’t find Innocent, at least she’d know she had tried everything.

He jogged to catch up to her. “Wait up. We’ll be safer together.”

They waved to the guards and slipped out the gate.