by Natalie Ann
“Why didn’t you tell me you were off and here?” he said sliding her burger in front of her, then sitting down with his own burger in the seat Nic just vacated.
“I didn’t want to bother you. How did you know I was here?”
“Aiden called me to say you were in the bar picking a guy up.”
“What?!” she shrieked, the food almost falling out of her mouth after taking a massive bite. She chewed fast. “No. I was hungry and didn’t want to bother you. I was talking with Aimee and Nic.”
Brody started to laugh after having made his way down for a bottle of liquor, obviously hearing the comment. “Mason made a joke,” Brody said. “I’m so proud of him. He’s growing up before my very eyes.” Then Brody walked away to the end of the bar, ignoring the daggers Mason had shot him.
“You’re joking, right?”
He reached over and wiped something off her face—probably ketchup—but she was starving for some reason and didn’t know why. Maybe not for food at the moment either, with the way Mason was looking at her.
“Of course. I wasn’t doing much other than some notes and research on a brew I want to try. Nothing that couldn’t have waited.”
“Oh. If I’d known, I would have let you know. But I’m glad Aiden did. Maybe you could come to my place later?” she asked, tilting her head.
“I’d like that. Just for a bit. Then I’ll go home for the night. I know you’ve got class tomorrow.”
She’d take anything she could get at this point.
All Replaceable
Mason had planned on leaving but ended up falling asleep in bed with Jessica. Until his phone went off and he grabbed it, saw it was almost midnight and then swore.
“What is it?” Jessica asked.
“It’s the alarm system at the brewery alerting me someone swiped their card and went in.”
“Are you going to call the police?” she asked, sitting up when he threw the covers off and started reaching for his clothes.
“No reason. If they’ve got a card, it’s an employee. I just want to know what they’re doing there. No worries. Go back to sleep. I’ll talk to you later.” He leaned down to give her a kiss, then grabbed his keys off the bedside table with his phone and left.
When he pulled into the parking lot, he noticed Petie’s truck and frowned. There was also a light on in the hallway when normally it was off. It was visible enough through the tinted windows in the front of the building.
He got out and swiped his card to get in, then locked it behind him, making his way toward the hall. When he turned the corner, Petie jumped out of his skin and grabbed the wall. “What are you doing here, Mason?”
“That was going to be my question to you. Why are you here in the building when no one else is?”
He held up his wallet. “I forgot it in my locker. I was going out to get some food and realized I couldn’t find it. I remembered I owed Mac twenty bucks that I borrowed the other day and ran to my truck to get it this afternoon and threw it in my locker.”
Mason eyed him for a second, saw his white face and that he was looking around some, but nothing stood out more than he was startled.
His staff had been keeping their distance after Dale had been fired. He wasn’t sure why or what was going on other than maybe there were some other guilty parties and they were hoping they wouldn’t get caught.
“So that is all you needed?” Mason asked, though he’d be checking the security tapes himself for sure.
“Yeah. I wasn’t coming in to steal anything. Honest. How did you know I was even here?”
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not. I’ll leave now.” Petie started to walk toward the door, but Mason wasn’t moving. “Aren’t you coming too?”
“No. I’m just going to walk around since I’m here. You go ahead,” he said.
Petie nodded and took off fast. Mason walked into the locker room, then went through all the bathrooms, up to his office, saw it was still locked and went back down the stairs through the brewery.
Everything looked fine, so he went through the bottling plant and into the warehouse, flipping the lights on in every room as he made his way through the building.
When he went to turn and leave, he was wrapped up by someone from behind. Shit, he thought, but deep down he’d had a feeling something was off.
All those years of not wanting to fight were going to be put to the test now. There would be no walking away with words or illusions. This wasn’t fleeing, this was fighting back. Or taking another beating. Those days were long gone.
“You shouldn’t have come through. I would have been gone in five more minutes.”
Dale. And Dale was bigger than him, beefier, but he wasn’t smart. He was a barroom brawler and Mason was much more, only no one knew that and now he’d have to put it to the test to get out of here.
“Let me go, Dale. What are you going to do now that you’ve got ahold of me?” Mason wasn’t struggling, wasn’t doing anything other than staying calm, throwing the bigger guy off, maybe seeing if he could talk his way out of it.
“I’m just gonna knock you out and get out of here.”
“You think I’m not going to remember?” Mason said, snorting. If there was such a thing as smelling fear, that’s what was in the air right now, mixed in with the liquor on Dale’s breath, giving him more courage than brains.
Dale started to turn, taking Mason with him, wrapped up tight from behind like being in a straitjacket, and he’d had enough. Something in him just took over, the same thing that caused him to lift Cade against the wall, and taunt Chuck.
He threw his head back, knocking it into Dale’s, dazing him, and himself a little, but he shook it off fast and turned quickly, his training kicking in, his right foot connecting with Dale’s chest, sending the bigger man into a row of cases, knocking them to the ground.
Dale didn’t stay down. Whether it was stupidity or the haze of alcohol, he charged Mason, then probably wished he didn’t when Mason sidestepped. Rather than hop around out of the way like he did with Chuck, he lifted his knee right into Dale’s midsection, knocking the wind out of him, then leading with his right fist and connecting with Dale’s jaw, bringing him down for the count.
Mason was standing there looking at Dale on the ground when he saw a motion out of the corner of his eye and turned and saw someone even bigger pointing a gun at him. There was no way he could fight against that and was wondering if he was staring death in the eyes right now.
His first thought was Jessica. She’d never know how he felt about her.
He lifted his hands up in the air and tried to figure a way out of this. “Just take what you want and no one has to get hurt.”
The bear disguised as a man just laughed at him. “Thanks. I might grab a case just for getting my ass out of bed for this.” He put the gun in his waistband behind him. “You’re Mason. Travis McKinley. Ella called me about twenty minutes ago and said the alarms went off and that someone was in the building. She figured you’d be on the way too though, but thought it was just a false alarm.”
Mason took a deep breath trying to find that inner peace his training had instilled now that his life wasn’t in danger. “How did she know?”
Travis tossed something across the floor to him. “Wrap him up while he’s out. I’ll call it in.”
Mason looked down at the clear plastic zip ties that stopped at his foot and bent down to roll Dale onto his stomach and secured his hands behind his back before he could come to.
After Travis disconnected his call, he came over and hauled an unconscious Dale up to a sitting position and propped him against the wall. “Pity about the beer. What a waste.”
“It’s all replaceable,” Mason said, looking at some of the cases on the ground. Beer was spilling out from the bottles that had broken. Not worth a life, that’s for sure.
“You might want to call Cade,” Travis said.
“Shit, yeah. Might as well get his ass out of bed fo
r this too.” Mason ran his hands through his hair, glad to know he wasn’t shaking now. Or at least no one could see that he was. “Thanks.”
“Thank your sister. Not that I’m her favorite person for some reason, but at least she had enough sense to call me first. She was afraid it was a false alarm and was probably ready to ream me for messing up.”
***
A few hours later the entire family was in the conference room discussing the night’s activity. “We’re pressing charges this time,” Brody said. “Assault too, right, Cade?”
“Breaking and entering, assault, attempted robbery. Yep, he’s going down this time,” Cade said.
“What I want to know,” his father said, “is how he got in the building.”
“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Ella said. She grabbed the remote. “We’re going to check all the videos now. Thankfully I don’t need to call Travis in for this.”
“Speaking of Travis,” Mason said. “Damn, he’s huge.”
“Mountain man,” Cade said. “Get it? Mount McKinley.”
Mason shook his head. Cade did have some doozies at times. “All I know is I wouldn’t want to face him in a fight, even without a gun.”
“I can’t believe he had a gun with him,” Ella said, huffing out. “Talk about idiotic.”
“I don’t know,” Aiden said. “It might have come in handy if Mason hadn’t been able to restrain Dale...speaking of mountain men. Dale has at least fifty pounds on you, Mason.”
Mason didn’t address that comment. “Just play the video. Start with Petie entering. I want to see if he let Dale in.”
They went through the videos and all it showed was Petie walking in the front door, hitting the lights in the hall where they followed his path to his locker, he got his wallet like he said, then met up with Mason in the hallway.
“Roll back to earlier in the day. Pull up each door in the warehouse one by one,” Mason said.
“In a minute. Let’s just follow you through the building. Maybe we’ll see something there,” Brody said.
Mason wanted to tell Ella to stop now, that there was no need, but that would only cause more questions.
Everyone was silent, even himself, when he watched Dale attacking him, then the point where Dale was down for the count and Travis had his gun out. Audio was even playing and Mason was mortified that his voice squeaked a little when he told Travis to take what he wanted.
No one commented on that though. Not at all. Not one girly comment in his direction.
Instead, Brody turned to him and said, “Holy shit, Mason. Why didn’t we know you could do that?”
What was he supposed to say? Seemed he didn’t need to say anything, because his mother did. “You’ve all got your secrets, kids. Just remember that.”
He looked at his mother, nodded, and she winked at him.
“Speaking of secrets. Can we keep this all between these walls? No staff needs to know the details of that fight. All they need to know is that he was stopped in the act. Ella, if you could talk to Travis about this?”
Ella sighed like she always did when you bought up the security system. “Why me?”
“You called him last night,” Cade said. “Why are you annoyed over having to do it now? He knows you the best.”
“That’s because you always drop this in my lap,” Ella said.
“Ella,” his father said. “You handle all the pesky business details like none of your brothers will ever be able to. You know it. Be a darling and make sure Travis doesn’t say anything, but we both know he won’t.”
“Fine,” Ella said, smiling at their father. She’d always been a daddy’s girl where the boys always seemed to be taken under their mother’s wing. “But you guys owe me big for all the crap I need to do that you don’t want to.”
“It’s because we love you,” Brody said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ella said. “Now let’s go back and see if we can find out how Dale got in the building first, then we’ll look at that camera.”
“It was almost an hour later before they’d gone through all the footage and saw the door Dale entered in the back. A side one that was often open to let air into the brewery. One that never had a camera on it before a few weeks ago. This time they caught Petie there checking the lock before he left. Or more likely unlocking it.
“Guess we know how Dale got in,” his father said. “Now the question is why Petie went back, unless he was caught in the act and made that up.”
“You saw what we did,” Aiden said. “It’s like he says. Doesn’t change the fact he was the last one seen checking the door.”
“Nope. I’m going to have Mac bring him over right now and we’ll find out his story.”
It didn’t take long for Brody to go down and get Petie and bring him up, because Brody had always been the muscle of the family and escorted employees in and out when they were fired. Mason would just assume it’d stay that way and this family wouldn’t be looking at him any differently after seeing him on video.
Petie walked in and saw all the siblings sitting there. “Am I being fired?” he asked Mason.
“Have a seat, Petie,” Cade said.
Petie just started talking. “I left my wallet there. I should have called and said I was going back to get it. I told Mason that though. I needed it because all my cash and my credit cards were in it. I was going to the store.”
“That’s not why you’re here,” Mason said.
“Then why?” Petie asked.
“There was a break-in at the brewery last night. The robbery was stopped in the act when I walked into the warehouse,” Mason said. “You’re here so we can find out how this person got in the building.”
“I didn’t let anyone in. Maybe you could see if it’s on the videotapes or anything. Honestly, I just went to the locker room and was coming out when Mason came in.”
“We know,” Cade said. “We saw all the footage. Every single step you took.”
“What?” Petie asked, turning to look at Ella who just lifted the remote and turned the TV on. They watched Petie entering the building and then leaving. “When did those cameras show up?”
“Does it matter?” Mason said. “If no one is doing anything wrong, then it’s a non-issue.”
“Exactly,” Petie said, but he was starting to sweat right now.
“The thing is,” Aiden said. “If someone is doing something wrong, we’re going to catch them too.”
Ella switched it over to the door Dale came in, then placed the video in reverse showing Petie as the last one by the door.
“Why did you leave it unlocked for him?” Mason asked. “Have you two been in on this all along?” Mason wasn’t sure what to think, because Dale never said he had an accomplice when he was caught the first time. Last night he was led away in a daze and didn’t say much at all. Cade was heading down to the police station after this meeting to deal with that.
“I owe him money,” Petie said, starting to crack. His hands were shaking now, sweat dripping down his forehead. “He told me we’d be square if I just left a door open for him. That’s it. I wouldn’t have to do anything and no one would know. I’d never have done it if I knew there were cameras everywhere. Aren’t you supposed to tell us that?”
“You’re fully aware there are cameras on the premises and that cameras are rotated,” Ella said, her business face in place. She complained about this aspect of the job but she was tough as nails when it came to documentation and she had no problem pulling the papers out. “You signed this piece of paper just like every other employee.”
Petie started to cry. It was kind of pathetic to see a grown man do that. “Now what? Am I going to be arrested? Am I going to jail for leaving a door unlocked?”
“That’s up to Cade,” Mason said. “He takes care of the legal issues. I’m going back to the brewery.” He stood up to walk out, then turned and said, “Oh yeah. You’re fired.”
Now he was going back to work and leaving his siblings t
o deal with the rest. He was exhausted. Not just over the fact that his family knew what he was capable of, but the fact he really did see his life flash in front of his eyes when Travis had that gun pointed at him.
What he needed was a beer right now, but what he was going to do was go back to the brewery and explain why there was a huge mess in the warehouse.
Fish for Information
“Why didn’t you tell me what happened last night?” Jessica screeched. She wanted to stay in control but couldn’t. Not after she got a text from Becky about Mason stopping a robber last night and the warehouse was a mess resulting in the staff getting the beer that had been damaged and if she wanted to come over and get some.
Mason looked up, startled. “How did you find out?”
She walked in and shut the door, then stood in front of his desk. “Does it matter? What matters is that you could have gotten hurt and you didn’t think to tell me. You said you’d talk to me today, but you never told me anything. Nothing. I just assumed that it was a false alarm and you went home.”
“I didn’t want to worry you when I knew you had class today. I was going to tell you tonight.”
“I’m here now. So tell me,” she said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
“I didn’t know you could be this bossy,” he said, his lips twitching.
She took a deep breath and brought her hands up to her face and saw they were shaking. “Look at this,” she said, trying to hold her hand steady. “That’s what I’m feeling right now. I have the right to be bossy when I hear my boyfriend interrupted a robbery!”
He got up and went to her, pulling her into his arms. “It’s okay. It’s all good. Nothing happened. Everything is fine. Everyone is okay.”
“What happened? How did you stop Dale?”
“How did you know it was Dale?” Mason asked.
“Becky told me. She said it’s all over the brewery.”
“I didn’t know you talked to Becky,” he said, shifting back.
“I do. Not often, but we’ve texted a few times. She was telling me about the free beer and why. I told you that.”