“Look,” Devon said, his tone sliding toward reasonable. “At this point it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing or not because you do have a reputation in the company. I don’t know where it came from. I guess I always assumed it was just something you did that was stupid.”
“Says the guy with the cleaning lady girlfriend,” Zane spat.
Orion frowned at Devon. “What is he talking about? What cleaning lady?”
“Nothing!” Devon snarled. He glared hotly at Zane as though he were warning him to shut the hell up. “He’s just trying to take the spotlight off himself. That’s all.”
At this point Zane did not care why Devon kept brushing this off. He just cared that his brother was basically throwing him under the proverbial bus. “It’s not nothing. The woman’s name is Kami. She works for the cleaning service and she has lots of meetings with Devon in his office. That’s all I know. But apparently in this company it’s enough to pretty much make everyone in the whole effing world think that you’re sleeping with every female employee on the roster!”
“Kami?” Orion seemed very interested in this. Hmm. Maybe there was indeed something to it. Scratching his chin, Orion cleared his throat and gave Devon a very pointed look. “You need to be careful right now, Devon. This whole thing could go south at any second.”
Devon glared at Orion and pushed himself off the corner of the desk. “This from the guy who has spent the entire last month drunk off his ass! And for a damn shifter that’s saying something.”
“He has a point,” Zane said with glee. “You have to want to get drunk pretty back to try and murder your liver with pure Absinthe.”
Devon wasn’t done. He pointed at Orion. “You need to keep your nose in your own business and stay out of my personal life. Do you get me? I have a handle on what’s going on in this company far more than you could ever say. When you’re still trying to shower off your hangover I’m already in the office making phone calls and trying to make sure our customers don’t walk!”
It was apparent that Zane’s questions had opened some pretty old and ugly wounds between his two older brothers. They were still yelling and sniping at each other when Zane closed Orion’s door and headed back to the elevators.
He ignored Candace this time. There was no more reason to talk to her. It was apparent that Zane had a horrible reputation at his family company. He had made a few mistakes, but nothing on the level that had been described to him. That meant someone was telling tall tales. He just needed to find out who before those tales managed to destroy everything that mattered.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Landry did the only thing that anyone in her position would have done. Well maybe not, but it felt pretty obvious to Landry. By the time she finally managed to make it home on the bus system by changing busses what felt like a million times, it was already four o’clock in the afternoon. The day was overcast and depressing. It was the kind of afternoon that just made you want to curl up under a blanket and forget that life existed.
So instead of doing that, Landry dug out her old yearbooks. It had been ages since she had looked at the tattered old volumes. Even opening one was like taking a trip to the way back past. It hadn’t really been that long. Not really. She well remembered her grandmama talking about her fifty-year class reunion. It had been less than ten for Landry.
“Oh good gracious, the hair!” Landry moaned. “How on earth did that seem like a good idea?”
Landry giggled and sighed and tried to read the scrawled writing that had been left behind by her friends on the inside of the hardcover books. They had been so very young. And, of course, by her senior year in high school the shit had hit the fan and Landry’s parents had been destitute. She had continued at the private school only because the tuition had already been paid and there was no reason not to finish out her last year.
Oh, but it had been different! Landry gazed at pages and pages of photographs of the activities her senior class had done together. But Landry hadn’t been a part of the same popular crowd. She’d had to get a job in order to continue to pay for her own expenses. The working had interfered with her membership in clubs and her ability to contribute to any kind of activities. In the end the only one who had treated Landry normally in those days had been Zane King.
Landry brushed her fingers over the top of a huge photo of Zane. During their senior year the three youngest King brothers had been at school there. Jason, Edward, and Zane. Zane had been the life of the party. Every picture showed him surrounded by both young women and men. They had fawned over him and tried to earn his favor. They’d wanted to be his best friend. They’d wanted to go out with him.
As she stared at his photograph, it was impossible to notice how little he had changed. She felt as though she had aged a million years since her senior year in high school. Zane did not seem to have aged at all. He still had that devil-may-care smile and the kind of looks that made every female within miles swoon. But he had never been the type to take advantage of that. Never as long as Landry had known him.
The shadows stretched long. As the days wound down toward Thanksgiving and the end of the fall loomed, the daylight was getting more and more sparse. Soon it would be barely four-thirty before darkness fell. The house was cold and it felt unfriendly. She had the heat turned down because it cost money to keep a house warm. Right now she was curled beneath two blankets on her old sofa.
Zane wasn’t here. She didn’t really expect him to come back to the house tonight. She didn’t know where he was going to stay, but maybe she didn’t necessarily care. Or maybe she did. Her feelings were so tangled!
Landry nibbled her nail and thought about Candace. It was true. People changed as they got older. They made mistakes and developed habits. But it was very rare in Landry’s experience for someone’s nature to change completely from one thing to another. Zane had never been anything but respectful to her even when he had been nothing more than a randy teenager. He’d never pressured Landry for anything.
She rolled onto her side and stared out the front picture window. The street lights were on. Cars zoomed past throwing up a spray of water mixed with dead leaves. This was the time of year for fires and warm nights spent at home smelling the wonderful spicy scents of fall. Landry well remembered those times from her childhood. The applewood her father had always put on the fire and the wonderful way that her mother had cooked ham and turkey and so many pies and cakes that the kitchen would always smell like the most amazing foods when Landry got home from school.
There would be plates of apple strudel piping hot on the counter for Landry when she got home. Their big house—the one that Landry had grown up in—had been only a short walk from her private elementary school. That meant each and every day during the very wet fall Landry could mosey down the sidewalk in her rain boots kicking puddles and anticipating the yummy treats and hot chocolate waiting for her at home.
Now all these years later, Landry was not sure if those memories were like a talisman or a form of torture. It was rather difficult to tell those two things apart. With a groan and a stretch, Landry pushed the blankets aside and stood up. A chill slid down her spine as her sock-covered feet hit the freezing wood floor.
Food. There was a little bit of the barbeque leftovers still waiting in the fridge. Her belly rumbled in happy anticipation of that food and she could not help but wonder whether or not Zane was eating with his family tonight or was maybe out on a date. Surely not. Surely he would not be that openly disrespectful to Landry after proposing in front of a television crew only that morning.
“Doesn’t matter,” she whispered.
Yeah. Maybe if she said that enough times over and over again she might start to believe it. She opened the refrigerator to grab the leftovers occupying the center of the otherwise bare wire shelves. At some point she realized that there was a very strange set of noises coming from her backyard. Laughter and the splintering of wood. Yes. That’s what she heard.
Hasti
ly shutting the door of her refrigerator, Landry turned toward the window positioned over the kitchen sink. She had to put her hands on the counter and hoist herself up a bit to see anything at all. The scene was something out of an apocalyptic movie.
The sun had disappeared from the sky and the backyard was wreathed in shadow. There were five people out there. Landry had no idea how they’d gotten in. The gate should have been locked. It should have been closed to the outside with no way for intruders to get into her backyard again. But they were there and they had brought her trashcans into the yard.
Landry ducked down and stayed low as she went to the back door to peek through the windows for a better look. For some unfathomable reason the five intruders were determined to lodge her trashcans in the tree out back. They kept shoving the cans and the lids up into the branches to have them fall back out again. The cans bounced on the yellowed grass. It was so wet they made a splash. This amused the vandals who then tried it again a few more times before deciding an Adirondack chair would make a much better toy. When Landry saw them starting to kick the wood chairs to pieces as though they intended to put the remnants in the firepit and start a bonfire, she remembered that there was a phone on the wall right beside her.
Reaching up, Landry dialed 911. It took far too many rings for an operator to pick up. By then Landry was fighting back sobs. “911, what’s your emergency?”
“I have vandals in my yard!” Landry rattled off her address. “Please! They’re trying to start a fire. It’s raining. I don’t know if they can do that. But I don’t want them to try. I want them gone. They’re in my backyard!”
“Stay on the line with me, ma’am.” The operator was making clicking noises on the other end of the line as though she were typing at a furious rate. “I’ve dispatched the police. Do you need an ambulance?”
“Oh God no. No!” Landry whimpered. She squeezed her eyes shut and sank to her butt on the kitchen floor. “I’m not going to let them hurt me. I’m not going to this time.”
“It’s okay, ma’am. Just calm down.” The operator was being very soft and soothing, but it was almost too much for Landry to bear.
She dropped the phone. The cordless unit hit the stained vinyl floor and sat there. The tinny voice of the operator was far away. Landry huddled and waited with a feeling of deep dread in her soul. She didn’t want to chance it. She did not want to take the chance of one of those people somehow coming into her house or realizing that there was someone home to mess with—to steal from.
Then Landry heard it. The tapping at her back door. The tapping on the window as though they were bored with destroying her furniture and had decided to look for other fun. It was terrifying. She bit her lip. The sirens would come. They would come soon. But she needed to be ready. If they broke in she could not just lay here and cry. She had to fight!
Landry forced her legs to work. Lurching to her feet, she felt her foot strike the phone and send it spinning away. The operator was still on the other end of the line, but she could not help Landry right now. Not right this second. The sirens would come, but until they did Landry was on her own.
Stumbling to the counter, Landry groped for the knife block. It was dark now. Full dark outside and full dark inside. Only the green numbers of the digital clock on the stove glowed. The streetlights from the street out front cast dubious strips of light through the front room, but here at the back of the house there was nothing.
Her fingers brushed the knives. She pulled out the largest she could get her hand around. The wide blade was meant to slice through meat. Now it would slice through human meat if any came through that window.
Landry turned to face the backyard. There was a sickening orange glow coming through those windows as well, but it had nothing to do with street lamps. They had managed to set her chairs on fire in the pit. The wanton destruction was horrible to contemplate. What kind of people did that? What sort of person did not care one bit for another person’s things? But the shattering tinkle of broken glass answered that question. It sprinkled the kitchen floor and left a brilliant pattern of glass that reflected the hellish orange light from the backyard.
A hand emerged through the broken pane of glass. It pushed the filmy curtains away and Landry did not have to be a crime expert to know that they were trying to find the lock in order to let themselves into the house.
“No,” Landry whispered.
“Ma’am? Are you all right? What happened?” The operator’s voice was insistent, but still so far away as it came out of the phone lodged beneath the edge of the kitchen cabinets.
The knife handle was cold and hard against Landry’s palm. She viewed the hand groping her kitchen door as though she were seeing it through a tunnel. She gripped the knife. She could not let them open the door. In the back of her mind she registered the sound of sirens. But they would be too late. She needed to act. Now.
Lunging toward the door, Landry sank the butcher knife into the very center of the hand sticking through the window pane. A shriek of pain ripped through the darkness. The knife blade pierced the back of the intruder’s hand and sank so deeply into the flesh that it went through the palm and then into the door where the weapon lodged into the wood and stuck fast.
Blood gushed from the hand. Landry heard a second scream join the first. It took her a full minute to realize that it was her own. Someone was struggling against the door. She could hear another person join the first, and then another until the whole group was trying in vain to get their friend’s hand free.
Sirens blared out front. The swirling light of blue and red lit the landscape and cast crazy patterns of light and shadow on the walls. Landry’s mouth was dry. She could hardly breathe. All at once she realized the police would need to know where to go. She had to get out of here. She had to get to safety. She had forgotten the phone with the operator on the floor. She needed to find the rescue personnel and help them discover the bad guys.
Bolting for her front door, Landry scrambled to unlock it right before she fell out onto the front porch. “Here!” she shouted. “They’re here! In the backyard. There’s a knife stuck in my back door.”
There was no doubt in her mind that this was not enough information to make sense. But it at least brought the authorities running. Cops streamed into her house. She heard them unlocking the back door. There were shouts. More cops ran around the side of the house to the alley. They entered the yard that way and the sound of men shouting to each other and calling out the word freeze gave Landry a shot of relief she had badly needed.
“Ma’am?” A police officer lightly touched Landry’s arm. “Ma’am, are you all right? It’s doesn’t look like they got into the house. Did we get here in time?”
“Yes.” Landry was nearly sobbing with relief. “Yes. You got here in time.”
“Call the fire department!” someone else shouted. “There’s a huge bonfire in the backyard!”
“Why me?” Landry whispered.
The policeman gently led Landry back into her living room. The lights were on now. Had she even noticed? She picked up the blanket that she had been curled under such a short time ago and pulled it around her shaking body. She was alive and unharmed. That was the only thing that mattered.
“I believe these young people just chose a house at random that had no lights on.” The officer looked grim. “We’ve had reports of them vandalizing a cemetery not far from here. We think it’s the same group of vandals.”
“What is wrong with people?” Landry whispered as she sank down onto her sofa.
Her gaze happened to glance off the yearbook and a wave of longing hit so hard she almost doubled over in pain. Zane. How she wished that he was here with her! If he had been here none of this would have happened. She knew. Nobody would ever cross Zane King. Nobody. Ever.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Zane navigated the traffic on Landry’s street with rising apprehension that made him feel absolutely sick to his stomach. What in God’s name was going
on? There were police cars, an ambulance, and even a huge fire engine parked all over the place. The closer and closer he got to Landry’s house the denser the traffic. There were even news vans. Dammit, what had happened now?
Finally pulling off the side of the road, Zane double parked his truck and finished the trip down to the house on foot. The darkness was absolute. The rain had slowed to a fine mist that coated everything and made him feel as though he were constantly needing to shake his fur—er—his head to keep the water from building up.
“Sir!” someone shouted at him. “Sir, what’s going on here? Can you answer any questions for us?”
Great. News people. It was dark and with the flashing red and blue lights all over the place it would be unlikely for them to recognize Zane King. That was good. About the last thing they needed right now was to realize that this was the finishing move of a day that had started with a teacher attacking poor Landry Fisher followed by a proposal of marriage from Zane King, and now—well, Zane didn’t even know what was happening now.
He trotted down the sidewalk, ignoring the news crews trying to give some kind of breaking news update for the nightly stations. Since it was going on six o’clock the news was probably hungrily trolling the city for something else to crow about. Zane was disgusted at the idea that he might be basically dominating the news between the idiotic story in the Dallas Star and now his very public proposal to Ms. Landry Fisher of Washington Middle School.
“Sir?”
Finally. A policeman. Zane grabbed the man’s arm. “Are you at Landry Fisher’s house?”
The cop was taken aback at first, then he seemed to peer at Zane’s face. “Mr. King?”
“Yes.” Zane was already nodding and dragging the man toward the house. “Is it Landry? Just tell me she’s okay. Is she all right? What happened?”
“Mr. King. Thank goodness.” The policeman was now dragging Zane in the direction of the knot of emergency personnel and cars that seemed to be nearly parked in Landry’s front yard. “She’s been asking for you.”
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 65