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WILD GIRL
Chapter 22, Kent:
“I’ve been looking for you, Koa.” Kent’s recognition of the woman standing with a hand on her knife was instant.
He hadn’t meant to blurt like that. The words landed heavy as rocks tossed into water in the stillness between him, the dogs, the snared boar, and where she stood.
Koa’s eyes widened; they were hazel. His cop training assessed her at 5’5”, a hundred and ten pounds, Caucasian, with a long blondish tangle of hair. She wore a dirty-looking bikini top and shorts.
The boar lunged to its feet, shaking its mighty head with a deep sound, as if offended to find it was still restrained.
Pipi and Inu, eager to show Kent they were on the job, whirled to attack.
But Koa moved faster, leaping toward the boar. She plunged a long combat-style knife hilt-deep into that spot just behind the left shoulder, piercing he pig’s heart. The animal fell to its knees with a surprised grunt.
Kent caught his dogs’ collars and held them back as the it died, which didn’t take long.
Koa removed the knife and slashed the boar’s throat to bleed the meat. “I could use some help with this,” she said.
Kent bade the dogs stay. By the time he had them settled, she had removed the wire snare from the giant hog’s neck. She knelt to gut the thing, every movement confident and efficient. He waited as she removed the organs, showing no squeamishness as she sectioned off the liver and mangled heart.
“I’ll share the meat with you.” She spoke without looking at him. “Even though this was my pig. Obviously.”
“Obviously,” he echoed.
Once the pig was gutted, the work of minutes, she stood up, gore on her hands, still turned away. She wiped her hands on the leaves beside the hog. “Did you want to help or not.”
“You seem to have things under control.” His tongue was a brick in his mouth; his hands and feet were enormous, frozen with ineptitude.
“We should hoist it to drain completely. So the butchering is easier.” She spoke to the corpse of the pig. “But I left my rope at home. Maybe you have one.”
“I do, but it’s in my pack. I left that down the trail. Back a ways.”
“Go get it then.” Koa squatted and began flaying the pig’s hide. The vertebrae of her back stood out against golden skin like a strand of pearls. “You can leave the dogs here.” Her busy hands stilled a moment. “What are they called?”
She hadn’t asked who he was, though. She didn’t even want to look at him.
“The ridgeback is Pipi. The Catahoula is Inu.” The dogs wiggled and whined at the sound of their names. “And my name is Kent. Kent Higa.”
Koa resumed the flaying without further acknowledgement.
He’d never seen it done so fast; he wanted to keep watching. He forced himself to turn away.
“Stay,” he told the dogs. They whined briefly, but remained where they were, gazes intent on the woman skinning the boar.
They’d never acted like this with anyone else—as if she were their alpha. Not him. As if they were under a spell.
Maybe he was, too.
Kent forced his leaden feet into a trot, leaving the scene of the kill—but only a few hundred yards away, he came to a halt.
What direction was the main trail from here?
The kukui grove around him sighed in a slight wind; bright, palmate green leaves fluttered overhead. Branches squeaked.
Kent turned in a slow circle.
“Fuck,” he murmured. He’d been so fixated on following the dots on his phone, so urgent to get to the dogs, that he’d hardly registered his surroundings in getting there.
The nape of his neck prickled with a flush of embarrassment. Hell if he’d go back and ask her for directions; she already thought he was an idiot.
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