by Zoe Chant
"You gonna kill me?" Maddox asked. He wasn't afraid at all. Instead he was perfectly centered, at one with his bull at last. Its confidence—his confidence—lifted him up and straightened his spine.
"I haven't decided yet," the sheriff said. "Walk."
They walked away from the cruiser, into the brush and rocks, until the rumble of the engine faded behind them. A nearly full moon lit up the desert like wan daylight punctuated with stark black shadows. The sky was perfectly clear overhead, the stars so sharp and bright it seemed to Maddox that he could reach out and touch them.
He was intensely aware of every sound the sheriff made, the crunch of boots behind him. When Maddox stopped abruptly and turned around, the sheriff took a step back, and drew his gun halfway out of the holster.
"What's in this for you, anyway?" Maddox asked. "What do you get out of being Ducker's attack dog?"
The sheriff drew the weapon the rest of the way. "You better stop calling me that."
"Listen, I've been where you are. I used to let rich bastards like him pay me to do their dirty work too. There's no pension in a job like that, know what I mean?" Maddox stiffly stuck out his gimp leg. "If you're lucky, you end up like me—broke, half crippled, and hitchhiking from one little town to another, with nobody in the world who cares about me. And that's one of the good outcomes."
"Shut up," Hawkins said, but he hadn't shot him yet, so at least he was listening.
"Is it just about the money? He got some kind of dirt on you?"
"I said shut up."
"Because if it's the money, trust me, you can make money some other way. Maybe you won't make the kind of money that men like Ducker pay for loyalty, but that kind of money doesn't just come with strings attached, it comes with industrial-sized steel cables." Maddox risked taking his eyes off the sheriff for a moment to flick a glance at the rocky wilderness around them. "You ever think, when you first put on that uniform and that badge, that you'd end up doing the kind of things you do for him? Is this what you wanted—to end up here?"
"You don't know what you're talking about."
The gun didn't waver. Maddox hadn't thought he'd be able to successfully talk Hawkins around to his side, but while he was talking, he'd been quietly working his left hand out of the cuff, hidden behind his back. Now he gave it a terrific wrench and pulled it out, raking the skin from his wrist all the way down to the fingers. He was gonna be feeling that when the adrenaline wore off. But at least his hands were free, the cuffs rattling loosely from his right wrist.
The sheriff squeezed the trigger, but it was a reflexive jerk, more of an instinctive reaction than an actual attempt to kill him, and Maddox was already flinging himself to the side. The shot hit the ground and kicked up dust and rock chips, while Maddox rolled into the brush.
The sheriff cursed. Maddox picked himself up on his hands and knees. Hawkins was turning wildly around, the gun held out in front of him. The moonlight was bright enough to see by, dimly but Maddox was now cloaked in ink-black shadows.
This would be the perfect opportunity to get out of here. Maddox was pretty sure he could make a run for the cruiser in his bull form (he still had three good legs, after all) and leave the sheriff to make his own way back out of the desert. But that wouldn't solve anything; it would just mean that he'd have an even more pissed-off sheriff to deal with.
No. He wouldn't run. This had to be dealt with here, just the two of them.
The sheriff seemed to have realized the vulnerability of the cruiser as a getaway vehicle, and he was backing toward it. Letting him get all the way to the car would be a mistake.
Maddox lunged to his feet and shifted.
It felt good. It was like two pieces of a puzzle coming together, like the broken pieces of himself suddenly fitting into a new, whole shape. He didn't feel damaged anymore, despite the deformity of the hip that was never going to heal right. He felt whole, powerful, strong.
Maddox's bull was no ordinary Black Angus. No fence had ever contained a bull like this, enormous and shaggy, kin to the ancestral wild aurochs that had been painted on cave walls, from which all domestic cattle came.
He charged out of the brush, out of the darkness and the night, the empty handcuff rattling above his hoof.
The sheriff yelled in startled terror and snapped off a wild shot; Maddox felt it burn across his shoulder. He veered just enough to clip Hawkins with his shoulder rather than trampling him. Even a glancing blow from a bull this size would have felt like getting slapped with a concrete wall. Hawkins went down hard, all the breath huffing out of him, and the gun flew out of his hand. Maddox dug in his hooves for a sharp turn. As Hawkins, gasping, struggled to reach the gun, Maddox kicked it away from him into the brush. Then he planted one enormous hoof on the sheriff's rib cage.
He could easily have crushed him, and it was briefly tempting ... but that wasn't who he was now. Not anymore. When the townspeople started looking at him like a hero, they were changing him, though he hadn't even realized it at the time. But now he couldn't bear the idea of not acting like the man they thought he was—the man Verity thought he was.
So he shifted back instead, kneeling and naked with his palm flat on Hawkins' chest. His scraped-raw hand burned and his shoulder stung where the bullet had creased him; he could feel blood trickling down his arm, which didn't improve his mood any.
The sheriff stared at him with eyes as round as saucers. "What ..."
"First of all," Maddox said, "if you tell anyone about this, no one is ever gonna believe you. So just keep that in mind."
"What," the sheriff said again, faintly, and then he lurched upward with a wrestling move intended to throw Maddox off him. Maddox had anticipated this, and he shifted back to his bull. Hawkins found himself slamming into Maddox's massive leg, like ramming a tree trunk, and fell flat on his back again.
Maddox tapped him with a big hoof and then, while the sheriff panted for breath (it would have been like getting punched in the stomach), shifted back again with his hand planted firmly on Hawkins' chest.
"You gonna be reasonable and talk a bit?"
"Huuurrk," was Hawkins' breathless response. Maybe that hoof-tap had been a little firmer than intended.
Maddox waited patiently. When Hawkins could speak again, he gasped out, "What are you?"
"Nobody you want to mess with, but I'm thinking you figured that out already." He eased back a little, since Hawkins didn't seem to be trying to get up this time. "So maybe now you'll answer the question I asked earlier. Is it just about the money for you, or is Ducker buying your loyalty some other way?"
Hawkins was quiet for a minute, and then he said heavily, "It's both. The money's good, hell, better than good. Nobody working for a small-town sheriff's department could afford the kind of house I live in, good debt-free college for both our kids, nice vacations for me and the wife twice a year. But ..." He hesitated. Maddox waited. "I had ... problems, when I was a kid. Ran with a bad crowd. Did drugs for awhile. I did ... things I'm not proud of to get money for those drugs. Armed robbery, that kind of thing. I could've gone to prison for a long time.
"I got myself clean, but when it came to the rest of it, Ducker stepped in to help. He made all that go away. I wouldn't be where I am today if not for him."
"Except he could take it away anytime he wanted," Maddox said quietly. He thought about his own ill-spent youth, the things he'd done while working for men just like Ducker—with far less reason than Hawkins had. For him, it really had been about the money. Or, rather, it had been that he didn't think he was good enough for better work. When all his job skills consisted of strong-arming shopkeepers for protection money and bodyguarding mobsters, what kind of career was he going to move into, anyway?
"Yeah," Hawkins said softly. "And he never let me forget it. Don't get me wrong, he pays me damn well for what he has me do."
"But you both know who's holding the leash."
Hawkins' face twisted.
"And tonight," Maddox said
, with his bull's anger flowing through him, "you set fire to a good woman's business, just because she stood behind me."
"I'm not proud of that."
"But you did it."
"Yeah," Hawkins said. "I did it."
Maddox's bull reared up inside him. He tried to hurt our mate! We will trample him!
For an instant, Maddox was tempted to do just that. No matter what reasons Hawkins had, he wasn't a good man. He'd done terrible things.
But so did I, once.
"You wanna make me a deal?" Maddox said. "I'm after your boss. I'm not even gonna ask you to help me get him. I just want you to stay out of my way. And no more messing with Verity or anybody else in town. They're under my protection now. Whole damn town's under my protection."
"You just pointed out that I'm not the one calling the shots," Hawkins said tightly. "So what happens when Ducker gives me orders to the contrary?"
"What happens is you figure out a way around it. Or you leave town. Man like you's bound to have some of those fat wads of cash salted away somewhere. You deny it?" Hawkins didn't speak. "Yeah, I thought so. If it comes down to it, you can take your wife and your payout, and start over somewhere else. That's a better ending that what'll happen to you if you mess with one more person in that town. Especially Verity Breslin."
Hawkins didn't answer.
Maddox shifted. It was starting to tire him out; every shift took a little energy. But it was clear that Hawkins needed a bit of encouragement. This time, with one large hoof planted on Hawkins' chest, Maddox tilted his head so the sharp tip of one of his long horns pressed against Hawkins' throat. He left it there just long enough to make his point, and then shifted back.
"Deal?" Maddox said. "As long as you stay out of my way—and let's be clear, messing with Verity or anybody else is sure as hell getting in my way—you and me can get along. If that doesn't happen, then I won't be this nice the next time."
"Deal," Hawkins said through tight lips.
Maddox leaned back and let him sit up. He held out his hand, with the cuff dangling from his scraped-up wrist. After a long moment, Hawkins shook it.
"Now I'm gonna pick up your gun and hang onto it for safekeeping, and get my clothes, and we're both gonna drive back to town. Fair?"
"Fair," Hawkins said grimly. As Maddox got stiffly to his feet, he added, "Ducker's going to kill you, you know."
"Bigger men than him have tried and failed," Maddox said. "I'm not scared of him."
And he wasn't. Not anymore.
He reached a hand down to help Hawkins up. The sheriff stared at it for a long moment before taking it.
"What the hell are you, anyway?" he asked as Maddox hoisted him effortlessly to his feet, taking the opportunity to display a little shifter strength.
"Something you don't want coming after you," Maddox said simply, and went to get his clothes, or at least what was left of them.
Chapter Twelve: Verity
The neighbors and firefighters trickled gradually out of her yard, but Verity was much too wired to go back to bed. Thanks to an internet search, she now had the numbers of half a dozen lawyers—with no idea how she might be able to pay for their services, but she'd find some way. But there was nothing she could do until their offices began to open.
And all the while, Maddox was in the sheriff's clutches; she could only imagine the terrible things that could be happening to him right now.
Cleaning often made her feel better, and there was certainly a lot of cleaning to be done. It was better than sitting around worrying until morning. She'd started examining the fire damage on the porch with her hands, determining what would need to be replaced, when tires crunched at the curb.
Verity turned. She'd finally managed to stop obsessively checking the time, but she didn't think it was morning yet. "Hello?"
"Verity?" Maddox's voice said, and she let out a tiny cry and threw herself into his arms.
He hugged her back fiercely. He smelled like dirt and blood and the outdoors, but he was here, he was okay, he wasn't locked in a jail cell or lying in a shallow grave in the desert.
The vehicle that had dropped him off pulled away. "Who was that?" Verity asked.
"Sheriff Hawkins. We've got an understanding."
"Hawkins? What do you mean?"
"I mean he's going to leave us alone," Maddox said. "At least I'm reasonably confident he will. If he doesn't, I'll deal with him."
"But how? Did you—pay him off?"
Maddox laughed quietly, a rumble that she felt more than heard; she still had her arms locked tight around him. "No, we just discussed things, and he decided leaving me alone was less trouble than being my enemy. It's Ducker who's the real problem, not him."
Verity's hands had found the ragged mess of his shirt, the stickiness of blood at his wrists, and her blood began to boil. "Did the sheriff do this?"
"I mostly did it to myself, getting out of the handcuffs. It's not as bad as it probably feels to you," he added quickly, with the same odd undertone that he often got when he talked about any of his injuries. She knew a lot of men had trouble admitting physical weakness, but Maddox must have a world-class case of it to get so weird about it. "It's almost healed already," he added.
And there he went again. "If it just happened an hour or two ago, it can't possibly be."
"I told you, I'm a fast healer."
"You sure are." She shook her head in disbelief.
"Verity ..." Maddox began, and then he stopped, like he'd changed his mind about what he wanted to say. "I think I'm going to need a new shirt. I kinda destroyed the one you gave me."
"Come on. There's plenty more where that came from. And we can get your wrists cleaned up."
They went around the side of the house with their arms still around each other. "I'd feel a lot better if you'd go away for awhile," Maddox said. "Go stay with Bailey, or better yet, you two get a hotel for awhile, somewhere far away from here."
"Not a chance," Verity said firmly. "If nothing they've done so far has run me off, this isn't going to change that."
"They could have killed you!"
"I'm not afraid," she told him. "Not with you here to protect me."
"Verity, listen—"
"No, you listen. I've been dealing with Ducker and Hawkins by myself for a long time. You've only been in town for a couple of days, and you've already made Hawkins back off. At this rate, you should have Ducker out of our hair in a week or two."
He gave a faint chuckle. "Pretty high opinion of me you got there."
"You've earned it."
She could feel him limping heavily, and she let him go up the stairs ahead of her. As she swiped a hand to touch his leg, she was startled to find his jeans in rags; he must be barely decent.
"Okay, I understand your shirt being torn up, but how did the sheriff do this to your jeans?" She could only think of a few ways his clothes could get torn up like that, all of them terrible. "Did he drag you?"
"We scuffled and both of us got pretty wrecked on the rocks."
But that evasive quality was back in his voice.
"Well, you're going to need new ones. I don't know if I have anything that'll fit you—oh, I know what I can do. I'll go next door and borrow something from a neighbor."
"Not right now," he said quietly, reaching back to capture her hand in his. "I just want you with me for awhile."
They showered together, Verity gently bathing his scrapes and other hurts, as he washed the smoke-smell off her. And then they fell into bed together, and he was right, there was definitely no need for pants until morning.
***
Verity had hoped to sleep in, but the phone calls and knocks on the door began at first light.
Before too long, she'd talked to the town reporter, another reporter from a county paper, her insurance company, and every neighbor who had somehow managed to sleep through the fire trucks and impromptu block party down the street. In the middle of it all, she found the time to run over to Ed and
Betty's, and came away with an armload of men's clothing they'd been planning to take to the Goodwill. Ed wasn't as tall as Maddox, but he was a hefty guy, and she left Maddox sorting through the pile while she went downstairs to deal with yet another concerned neighbor.
Which was why she was out on the porch when Ducker showed up.
"Good morning, Ms. Breslin," his smooth, cultured voice declared, and Verity stopped in the act of reaching for her front doorknob. "I hear you had some trouble last night."
"Yes," she said coolly, turning around. "Yes, we did. Are you here alone, or do you have your pet sheriff along?"
"It's just me." His footsteps tip-tapped up the porch steps, no doubt the sound of expensive Italian leather shoes. Verity reminded herself that, as far as she knew, Ducker had never been violent himself. He preferred to pay other people to do his violence for him. Still, she wished Maddox would come downstairs.
As if he had somehow sensed her nervousness, she instantly heard his heavy tread on the back steps, and smiled to herself.
"As you can see, Mr. Ducker," she said, "I'm quite busy cleaning up the damage from last night. If you'd like to help out ..." She held out a broom in his direction and was unsurprised when no hand took it from her.
Maddox's arrival was announced with stomping footsteps and a growled-out, "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Oh good, Mr. Murphy." If anything, Ducker's voice became even smoother and plummier; Verity distrusted it immediately. "You're both here. That'll save some time."
"You want me to throw this guy off your property, Verity?" Maddox asked. His tone suggested he'd be more than happy to.
Verity was tempted, but she didn't want to give Ducker cause to sue Maddox or have him arrested (again). She crossed her arms. "Let's find out what he wants."
Maddox touched her arm lightly and then his arm slid around her. "You heard the lady. Talk."
"Not going to invite me in for a cup of tea?" Ducker asked lightly, and was met with stony silence from both of them. "Ah well. This is mainly information that I think Ms. Breslin would like to know, though you may find this conversation enlightening as well, Mr. Murphy." Papers rustled. "I had an interesting chat with Sheriff Hawkins this morning."