“She has?” That was good. Right? Or rather at least she wasn’t telling them that he was the last person she wanted to see ever again in her life or blaming him for what happened. “Is she okay?”
“Yes, sir.” The policeman was bobbing his head. “Landry is going to be fine. They never touched her. It appears that the vandals might be the same bunch who have been chased out of a local cemetery several times. They’ve been bothering other houses in the neighborhood when they believe there is nobody at home. They picked the wrong house though.”
“Did she catch them and call the police?” Zane guessed. He could see Landry doing that, especially given her past experience.
“Actually your lady pinned one of their hands to the back door. The young man broke out a window in the kitchen door and put his hand through. Landry stabbed him with a butcher knife so hard that it pinned him there.”
Zane’s gut clenched as he thought about Landry having to be there to face them alone. “Holy shit!”
“Yeah, she’s really something!”
They had finally penetrated the outer layer of emergency personnel and were getting close to the front door. Every light in the house seemed to be on. Landry was sitting in the front room. He could see her through the picture window. It was almost like she was frozen to the spot.
Right then and there Zane could not wait another second. He pushed his way into the house and straight to the couch. “Landry!”
“Zane?”
He wasn’t sure if it made him feel good or bad that she looked both so very surprised to see him and so grateful. Yes. They had fought. They had left things completely unsettled. Had she thought that they were through? Had he? Somehow right now he wasn’t even sure that it mattered.
“Oh my God, Zane!” Landry whispered as she launched herself into his arms.
Zane caught her and held her close. He gathered her as close to his body as he possibly could and held her as tight as he dared. She felt good. It was absolutely perfect to have her with him. It was exactly what he wanted and the only thing that he needed, and for some reason he knew that he had to make her realize that it did not matter what his reputation was or what had happened in the past—fact or fiction—Landry Fisher was his only future.
“Baby, I am so sorry that I wasn’t here.”
“Don’t be,” she whispered against him. “You’re here now. I didn’t think you would come. I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure because of how I left. I was so mad!”
He stroked her long red hair and tangled his fingers gently in the strands. “I know. But it doesn’t matter now. Nothing does. Are you all right?”
“Oh God, Zane, I stabbed him.”
She sounded so upset that for a moment Zane wasn’t sure if he should be reassuring her or just trying to explain to her that anyone would have done the same. “Baby, you did the right thing. I think it would have been all right if you had stabbed him in the heart.”
“I could never!”
Then Zane looked out of the picture window and discovered that the young people were all gathered there with a knot of policemen as though they were trying to talk their way out of this. A fireman walked around the side of the house from the direction of the alley. From right here in the middle of the house Zane could see through the kitchen into the backyard. The lights were blazing bright and there were firefighters roaming about. It was obvious someone had attemped to start a blaze in the firepit. Zane could only imagine what they’d decided to try and use for fuel.
“Baby, I need to go out front and find out what they’re going to do with those teenage losers,” Zane murmured to Landry. “I want you to stay here in the living room. Do you understand me? There are news vans out there too. I don’t want them to put two and two together and call us the Calamity Jane of Dallas couple. All right?”
She sniffed and pulled her blanket closer around her shoulders. “All right.”
He noticed the old yearbooks scattered about. Had she been reminiscing? That wasn’t a bad thing. He seemed to remember that their school years had been some of the best of his memory. Pressing a kiss to her forehead, Zane gently sat Landry on the sofa. “Sit here where it’s absolutely safe. There are so many cops and firemen around here all you need to do is shout if you want help. Do you understand? You say my name and I’ll be here in a millisecond.”
She nodded and curled up in a corner of the sofa. That left Zane to be the one to turn around and march out the front door toward the gathering of police officers, detectives, firemen, and of course the teenage losers.
“Yeah, we don’t mess with cemeteries!” One of the hooligans sported blue hair and an honest-to-goodness bull ring in her nose. “We had some friends that were over in that cemetery a few blocks away the other night and they got attacked by a freaking wolf! But it was like huge. So like the Bigfoot of wolves, right? The thing just came out of nowhere and howled and nearly killed them! I’m serious. It almost ripped their heads off!”
The police officer was looking skeptical. They all were. There were so many emergency personnel on the scene that Zane could not even begin to wonder whether or not he had met some of them before. They were milling about snorting and laughing as they contemplated the Bigfoot wolf.
Of course, that was not such a stretch for Zane. He could have shifted right this second into the Bigfoot wolf if he’d wanted to. But there was no doubting the smell and sight of this group of kids. They weren’t the same ones from the cemetery the other night. This was another group. Where in the hell were they coming from and why did they seem to be torturing regular old homeowners all over Dallas?
“I don’t care about the wolf,” said a detective sarcastically. “The five of you broke into a backyard. You busted the gate lock. You trespassed. You destroyed the trees, the garbage cans, and then you started a fire with her lawn chairs. What in the hell were you thinking?”
A boy with gauges in his ears big enough to stick soda cans inside shrugged his shoulders. “We were bored.”
“Bored.” Zane whispered the word and felt like he could not stand it anymore. He shouldered his way through the group of law enforcement men and women and glared down at the hoodlums who had so terrified the woman that Zane loved more than life. “You were freaking bored? Really? What if that Bigfoot wolf of yours gets bored and just decides to stalk you and rip your toes off one by one because he can? What then?”
The kids were staring at Zane with wide eyes. A police officer cleared his throat and touched Zane’s arm. “Mr. King, you really shouldn’t say that sort of thing.”
“Really?” Zane glowered at the officers. “Because I feel like this is getting way out of hand. You’ve told me that there are groups of these kids roaming around completely destroying people’s property at random. This group right here admitting that they were told to stop vandalizing cemeteries because of the Bigfoot Wolf! Do you realize what this means? You have legions of little Dallas turds out here tormenting the citizens and you guys are able to do what about it?”
A detective cleared his throat and waved his hand. “We’re taking these young people in to be processed.”
“Uh huh.” Zane pointed at gauge-eared boy. “How old are you, kid?”
“Sixteen.”
“Exactly!” Zane shook his head in disgust. Then he pointed at the kid. “I guess I have to go track down the Bigfoot Wolf and give him a description of you and your friends. Maybe then you’ll stop acting like the sort of person who will never be any more than a drain on society.”
The kid gave Zane a blank look and let the police officers drag him and his friends away. Most of them were probably underaged. That was the problem. The law didn’t quite know what to do with underage offenders. It kept trying to rehabilitate them and keep them in the general population. The intention was good. You didn’t want to put a bunch of youngsters into a situation where they only learned to become better criminals. You wanted them to have a good example. Or whatever you might call it. But it wasn’t working ri
ght now, and Zane knew that he had the ability and the resources to at least chase this problem from Landry’s neighborhood to somewhere else.
Once the kids were gone, Zane turned to go back into the house. An officer touched his shoulder to stop him. “Mr. King, I understand your frustration, but you can’t be taking this problem into your own hands.”
“Oh, I know that.” Zane flashed the officer a smile. “I’m not law enforcement. I know that. I’m not a vigilante. At least not like you’re thinking. I just wish that we could somehow make a change that would end with my poor Landry not having to be afraid every single day of her life that someone will come barging into her home and try to kill her. This isn’t the first time. I know you realize that. Something has to happen in this city to stop the vandalism before it gets bigger and bigger.”
“Yeah,” the officer snorted and shook his head. “Believe me, we know that you’re right. But short of some superhero deciding to take up residence in Dallas, I don’t think there’s a chance of anything but slow change through the juvenile court system.”
“A superhero, right.” Zane shook his head as though it were the stupidest thing he’d ever heard of. “What? You mean like the reappearance of Bigfoot Wolf?”
“Exactly,” the cop laughed. “Bigfoot Wolf and his ability to fly through the air and attack criminals at a hundred paces or more.”
Zane nodded to the cop. “I need to get back inside to Landry. She’s really shaken up over this whole thing. She’s had enough.”
“Got it, sir, thank you for your help.”
Zane left the polite police officer behind and could not help but wonder if the man would have been so friendly if he had known what Zane was planning to do. Maybe it was time for a reappearance of Bigfoot Wolf. Maybe that was what would keep these gangs of hoodlums from terrorizing normal people in their homes. Something had to give. Otherwise there would be more and more incidences just like this one.
“Hey, sweetheart,” Zane murmured as he took a seat on the sofa right beside Landry. “How are you feeling?”
“I don’t know if I can stay here tonight,” she whispered. “It’s so—I don’t know. It’s just awful. You know? The window in the kitchen is broken. It needs to be fixed. That costs money. I almost don’t want to call my homeowners insurance because I know what they’ll try to charge me for all of this. It’s not fair. And I don’t want to look at the backyard at all. They destroyed my chairs. I heard them breaking. It’s like my whole life became kindling for these people!”
“It’s just not fair, is it?” Zane thought of his truck double parked down the street. “Why don’t you go pack some stuff. We’ll go to a hotel tonight.”
“A hotel?” she sounded panicky. “That costs a fortune!”
“Baby, I’ve got this. Okay?”
She seemed to exhale a breath that managed to let all of the tension out of her body at one time. “All right, Zane. I’ll trust you. This time.”
At the moment how could he even begin to ask for more?
Chapter Twenty-Five
Landry blinked her eyes and rolled over in the huge luxurious bed. The whole thing felt as though it were made of marshmallows. The suite was enormous. It might even be bigger than the square footage of her house in Vickery Meadow. Of course, most of Vickery Meadow was dedicated to apartment buildings anyway, so finding even a tiny house tucked into the cheap Dallas suburb had been a bit like discovering a goldmine.
The palatial bedroom in the hotel suite was painted white. The landscapes on the wall were utterly neutral as were the window coverings, the predominantly white bedding, and pretty much everything else. The whole place was a study in neutral. But perhaps that was something of what made it appealing. It was so white and so bright and so very clean looking. It probably didn’t matter if the place was clean or not. It at least looked clean.
“Landry?”
There was a very small knock at her door. Landry pulled the covers up over her pink camisole. The threadbare garment was one of her favorites for sleeping, but it was so old and stretched out that it didn’t make for a very modest piece of clothing to receive company.
“Come in,” Landry called out. Then she yawned. “I’m kind of awake.”
The door began to open very slowly. Within a few moments Zane had poked his head into the bedroom. He appeared to be tiptoeing across the plush carpeting until he could perch on the edge of the bed. Finally he seemed to settle in enough to smile at her. Was he afraid that she was angry this morning?
Landry exhaled a long sigh and propped her head up on the huge mound of pillows. “I suppose we never really discussed anything about what happened at the King Security Solutions building yesterday. Did we?”
“No.” He exhaled a long sigh. “I know that my reputation there is bad, but…”
Landry held up her hand. “Don’t. I was looking through yearbooks yesterday.”
“Yeah. I saw them.”
Landry could not believe how important it was for her to make this point with him right now. “And you know what I remembered?”
“What?” He was almost looking apprehensive, like she was going to tell him that she recalled him being a total ass or chasing every girl on the cheerleading squad or something.
“I remember you in your football uniform. I remember all of those girls who used to chase you around and just act like they were begging you to ask them out on a date. They all talked about you. And thank goodness back then young ladies weren’t quite as forward as they are now. This generation would have basically tied you up and taken turns with you until you gave in.”
“Nice.” He shook his head and flopped back on her bed. The motion made the duvet fluff up like a big cloud. “You make it sound like we’re either a million years old or like young people today are total freaks.”
“Both.” Landry started laughing. She felt almost giddy. “Don’t you feel old? I do!”
“Only on days like yesterday when I came face to face with kids around sixteen or seventeen that somehow believe it’s okay for them to destroy everyone else’s stuff just because they’re bored,” Zane said immediately. “I don’t remember being like that in high school. My brothers and I were obnoxious as hell but not like that.”
“No.” She was shaking her head now and nearly dropped the covers she was trying desperately to cover herself with. “You weren’t that way. You were always respectful toward other people’s stuff, toward others in general, and even toward girls who were trying to treat you like a side of hot beef.”
“Hot beef?” He snorted and rolled his eyes at her. His legs were hanging off the bed. In this position his athletic pants were riding down low on his hips and his T-shirt was coming up far enough to reveal a trail of dark hair stretching down the center of his belly. “You think I’m hot beef, huh?”
“Actually, I believe I insinuated that other girls thought you were hot beef. I wasn’t including myself. I knew what you were.”
“Oh?” He made a twirling gesture with his hand to indicate that she should continue. “Come on. I’m waiting to hear what you thought of me.”
This was so embarrassing. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe this was the moment that Landry could come clean about a few things. “I suppose I felt smug. I knew you weren’t just hot beef. I knew that you were way more than just a handsome face. I knew you were a real guy with real feelings and a heart. You used to take me out for pizza after football games. Do you remember? We would go to that place that nobody else liked but us. The team and their groupie girlfriends would go to the big pizza parlor right down the street from the school and we would go to the other one over by your house in Highland Park.”
“I remember,” Zane murmured. He was staring at her with a really strange expression on his face. “You were a lot more fun to be around than they were. After a game I usually felt pretty spent. I didn’t want to hang out with a bunch of people who needed me to be the life of the party.”
“But that’s the way people hav
e always seen you, haven’t they?” Landry realized what she was actually insinuating. “Is that still how they see you?”
“Apparently.” He grumbled the words as though he really did not approve. “I never thought that being friendly to the opposite sex would end up with me being accused of sleeping with most of them. It’s kind of depressing.”
Now Landry felt bad for buying into the lies. “I can imagine.” She swallowed back the lump that had appeared in her throat and twisted her fingers into the sheets. “Can I ask you about Candace the receptionist?”
“You can ask.” His sigh suggested he wasn’t interesting in talking about it. “It’s not like we have a relationship or something.”
“I got that. Even from her. I think she told me she was hoping to coax you back into her bed.” Landry had to swallow back the angry words that wanted to follow that admission.
He sat straight up and folded his legs in front of him. His expression was angry, but she could tell that it wasn’t directed at her. “That’s good to know I guess. The two of us slept together once. It was a mistake. I don’t know why she went on a business trip with us. But we were all in a hotel and there was far too much alcohol.”
“You don’t get drunk,” Landry murmured. She thought for a moment and then realized something very significant. “None of you do! You King brothers drink and drink like fish and nothing happens! How is that even possible?”
“Just our metabolism, I guess,” he murmured. “But this night we were all in New Orleans for this conference. I had only been with the company for a few weeks. She was warm and willing and really friendly. I think I actually believed that there might be some kind of possible relationship brewing between us, you know? I thought we actually had a connection. For all that everyone believes I’m some kind of sex god, I’m not. I don’t sleep around much. And I guess I don’t need to sleep with very many people to get the reputation of being a totally wonderful bed partner.”
Billion Dollar Wolves: Boxset Bks 1-5 Page 66