As I turned the steaks over in the marinade, I heard his car drive up. My hands began to shake, and I didn’t know why. Was I really just that excited to see him and get my ass chewed out for not calling him?
I peeked around the corner of the kitchen and was met with an unexpected sight.
Chaz dropped his olive duffle on the floor and looked up at me with the blackest eye I’d ever seen.
“What happened?” I gasped and left the steaks to fend for themselves.
“Rough weekend.”
I slid my hands around his middle and was met with a layer of bandages. “Chaz, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he grunted as he leaned against me.
I dropped my borders and felt his golden warmth slowly opening up. “Do I need to get you anything?”
“Drugs,” he groaned.
“I can do that.”
I guided him to the couch and helped him get comfortable. Going back to the kitchen, I took the steaks from their marinade and tossed them onto the grill I hadn’t heated up yet. Panther Warrior, yes. Domestic Goddess, no.
I grabbed the infamous first-aid kit and a bottle of water and headed back into the living room. He’d managed off his shirt and the bandage on his left side was soaked through with blood.
“What happened?” I gasped.
“Someone wanted what I was carrying.”
I stopped fretting around the first-aid kit and looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “That’s it? That’s all the detail I get? You show up skewered, and I get the abbreviate version.”
Chaz licked his lips, and I noticed an already healed scab on his lip and another one at the edge of the purple crater that was his eye.
“I was carrying a talisman and someone found out and they jumped me at a gas station in between and I fought them off and got back on the road.”
“Who patched you up?”
“Andrea in San Antonio.”
“Who’s Andrea again?” The stories of the weekend flybys Cristina eluded to flashed across the darker side of my brain.
“The Avion. The one who gives me my assignments.”
“And what’s her shtick?”
Chaz shifted as we began to unwind the gauze from his waist. I took note of how it was done, just in case.
“She’s the Avion.”
“I don’t know what that means, Chaz,” I said as I pulled away the last of the bandages and prepped the same size gauze that he held to his side.
“She organizes us.”
“Like a chess master?”
I let Chaz think about that as I peeled off the bloody bandage. There was a long gash down his side. “Looks like we will have matching scars.”
“Not exactly the type of bonding that I was looking for.”
I pressed the clean gauze against his side, and together we wound bandages around his middle, using tape to secure everything.
He rested his head back on the couch as I cleaned up.
He never told me about his other jobs. He barely told me how his power worked, why he was such a hot commodity in the Cause family. “I think there’s a kettle black conversation that needs to happen.”
He shook his head. “I can’t have you worrying about me.”
“I think its part of my job now,” I snapped.
“As my Prima or my girlfriend?”
It felt like he’d smack me. I jumped up, shaking the couch and him, roughly. He doubled over and held his side.
I went into the kitchen, tossed the bandages, and washed my hands. I leaned against the sink. Why did it always go straight into the fighting? Why couldn’t I just let sleeping dogs lie? Right, because they’d only come back to bite my ass.
I felt him walk up behind me.
“Is that’s what been happening lately?” I asked.
“What are you talking about?”
I turned around to face him. Conversations like this should be done facing your opponent head on. “Am I getting too powerful for you?”
Chaz sighed and leaned exhaustedly against the door frame. “No, Violet.”
“Then what is it? Why do you harp on me but not tell me that you were shanked?”
Chaz snorted at my choice of words, which made him curl over on his painful side. He held it gingerly. “You’re strong enough to be a Prima, Violet. But it doesn’t mean that your ready.”
“I’m not,” I agreed enthusiastically. “But I’m trying to surround myself with people that I trust. I’m trying to learn and find out what I can do to help people. And I can’t trust people who don’t tell me everything.”
“Neither can I.”
My skin prickled with the honesty raining down in my kitchen.
“Okay,” I said. “But do you really want to know everything? Do you really want to know that every time I’ve been out of the house in the past two weeks that something has gone wrong? That someone’s attacked me, or I find out that a girl was murdered because I killed the only man keeping the really bad guys at bay.”
Chaz licked his lips.
“Do you really want to know that I felt like I had to face it down all by myself because the only person I did trust couldn’t be there?” Tears sprung from my eyes and my lips began to quiver. “Because I can tell you that. I can tell you that I have to be strong for Tucker and the boys and I have to be strong for Jessa to make sure that she can reweave the rips in the Veil and not murder her contractor and I have to be a Shala because if I’m not I might have yet another rapid panther on the—”
And then he was kissing me. His lips caught me by surprise, and I froze. His hand slipped around my waist as he pulled my body flush with his, his strong hands wrapped around that spot right underneath my ribs.
He suckled at my lower lip until I could move again. I parted my lips and wrapped my arms around his bare shoulders. He tasted just as I remembered, but there was an urgency in his kiss, a fear that I matched with a constant insistence that I was his.
His warm golden center widened around us and enveloped me, and I didn’t want to be anywhere else. I felt him and wanted to take a little piece of it with me.
And the thought struck me that I could. The smell of cigars filled my senses for a moment and I ripped away from the kiss, my heart beating faster than a thoroughbred in Kentucky.
And then the door bell rang.
Chaz looked at me with golden eyes, the familiar furrow back. “Please tell me you ordered pizzas?”
I slowly shook my head.
“Chinese?”
I kept shaking my head. He hadn’t smelled it or felt it or whatever was infecting my life.
“Is this one of those problems that you were talking about?”
“Probably.”
He kissed me again quickly and my cheeks flushed like a little girl as he slid his hand down my arm and intertwined out fingers. “Let’s go answer the door.”
Tucker stood outside, his hands jammed in his back pockets as he fidgeted.
I opened the door with Chaz at my back. It was more than nice to have this particular kind of back up. Even nicer that he still wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“Something wrong?”
“You broke your phone and I found out more about the Warthogs.”
“Warthogs?” Chaz asked behind me.
Wasn’t that going to be a fun story to tell. And a long one. Maybe I should have ordered that pizza since the romantic notion of a steak dinner was now out the window.
“Come on in, Tucker.”
I moved to walk back into my living room so I only saw it out of my periphery, which is pretty damn good if I may brag.
Tucker attempted to walk through the front door, like I’d imagined he did when he went postal on my living room with the other mutts.
But this time, he was thrown back like he’d walked into an explosion. His burly body flew backward and he landed hard on his back in the sidewalk.
“Tucker!” I gasped as I ran toward him and knelt down.
“The protection spell
,” he wheezed.
The Cleaners had told me that it was powerful, but now I believed them. I offered Tucker a hand and helped him up from the pavement.
“Can you hop the fence out back?”
“Yeah,” he held his chest. “Give me a minute.”
I nodded and headed back to the house. I walked through the first floor. I nabbed the cell phone bag on the dining room table for him and slid the glass door open to the porch. Tucker was already out there.
“I got you presents,” I said as I tossed him the small bag.
“It’s not my birthday,” Tucker said.
“I don’t even know when your birthday is.”
Tucker slipped the box out of the bag and frowned. “What’s this?”
“We’re digitizing the revolution.”
“Huh?”
I sighed. Three weeks and he still didn’t speak Violet. “I got you a cell phone on my plan. You guys can pass it around or whatever you need to do to keep in touch with me.”
“You’ve done so much already.” He tried to hand the phone back, but I glared him into submission.
“This isn’t exactly selfless, Tucker. I still need information. Voicemail is speed dial one, though I never want to have to leave a message. I’m speed dial two.”
“What’s speed dial three?”
“The Pizza Hut by your apartment.”
Tucker nodded and slipped the phone in his pocket. “Thank you.”
There was a clink of glass behind us, and I turned to find Chaz with three open beer bottles in his hand and a shirt covering his gorgeous shoulders.
“Thought we could all use one,” Chaz said as he distributed the cold bottles.
“Chaz, you remember Tucker?”
The men shook hands, just like that. Like nothing had happened five months ago. Like Tucker hadn’t been pummeling Chaz’s ribs on our first date. I watched the two, felt the two interact with each other. It was tentative but respectful. I think I loved Chaz a little bit more in that moment for trusting me.
“So what did we find out about the Warthogs?” I said as I gestured for Tucker to take a seat on the deck chairs that frankly, I didn’t think I’d ever used before. I think I bought them on sale somewhere and they were pretty, but I’d never had people over to sit on them.
“Yeah, let’s start with Warthogs?” Chaz asked.
Tucker looked to me to explain. I sighed. Guess this was my turn.
“Tucker and I discovered that some Warthogs had been involved with the murder of a woman about two weeks ago. It took us a little while to figure out what happened.”
“The Hogs?” Chaz filled in.
I looked to Tucker. He was the one who was here with info.
“I have reason to believe so,” Tucker said.
Chaz’s knuckles went white around the glass bottle, and I was actually afraid that he was going to break it. I wasn’t the only one with super skills.
“How about you tell us what you’re thinking instead of taking it out on the bottle, dearest?”
Chaz set the beer on the arm rest of the chair. “Andrea . . .”
“The other women in his life.” I filled in for Tucker.
Chaz huffed.
I shrugged. “Just laying it out for Tucker.”
Chaz set his eyes on the other man. “The Avion said that she was dealing with the Hogs in San Antonio and then about a month ago, they disappeared.”
“You mean left,” Tucker filled in.
“You mean left and came here.” I completed the thought.
“Did she say anything else about them?” Tucker asked.
“Pack about ten to twelve. Their cover is a biker gang who deals in arms trade.”
“Their cover?” I laughed. “Their cover for being shape-shifters is a biker gang? I can’t write this stuff any cheesier.”
Chaz shrugged. “Haverty was the don of a crime family.”
“No he—” Tucker protested quickly before he stopped. He dropped his gaze to the beer he held tightly between his knees.
“It’s okay, Tucker.” I looked over at Chaz. “So we are thinking that the Hogs came to Dallas for what? Arms sale?”
The two men exchanged glances, but Tucker was the one who spoke. “This a little more primal, Violet.”
My brain raced. A vast city. No, not the city a jungle. A jungle without a predator. Warthogs. A pack of hungry, opportunistic beasts who invade when they are not threatened. Isn’t that what the little plaque read at the zoo?
“See that little sparkle,” Chaz said to Tucker. “She’s worked it out.”
I gave Chaz a decent smirk before narrating the conclusion I knew too well was correct. “The Hogs heard that no one is running Dallas and decided to move in.”
“And our girls got it,” Chaz took a long swig of his beer.
Before, it didn’t seem like anyone cared what happened in Dallas. The Cause hadn’t sent anyone to help out, rat bastards. The mess of the pack that was left seemed to cause enough trouble among themselves to even notice someone else was invading their territory.
“Refresh my National Geographic, but they won’t leave until a predator forces them out.”
Tucker nodded. “Close enough.”
“Then we force them out.”
“It’s not that—” Chaz protested before his cell phone rang.
I looked at him and he flinched again as it rang the second time. He jumped out of his chair and took the beer with him inside.
“It’s the other woman,” I sighed.
“He is a powerful resource,” Tucker said.
“Wish they would outsource a little.”
I took another swig of beer. And when did I ever drink beer? The sharp taste smacked around in my mouth. Maybe hanging around with so many boys all the time was wearing off on me. “Have you seen these guys?”
“No. But I know where they are?”
“How?”
Tucker lifted an eyebrow.
“Did you seriously sniff them out?”
Tucker laughed and dared to take a sip of the beer. “No, I called a few people in the gang division. They are tracking them too.”
I frowned and stared down at the beer. It was staying cold in the perfectly cool evening.
“How are we, more over you, going to get past a police tail?”
Tucker licked his lips. “I’ve got a few favors that I can call in, give us a window of time for their eyes to be diverted.”
“Does that stuff actually happen?” Sure I’d written it into a movie or two, but this was from the horse’s mouth.
“Less then the evening news makes it seem.”
I nodded. The plan was forming. Somewhere in the back corner of my brain I was already writing the scene, formulating what I was going to say to a warthog. It would probably start out with something like “Dear Pumbaa.”
When Chaz walked back outside, the news wasn’t good. His face had gone pale and his shoulders were about as low as they go.
Tucker took the cue and walked out through the garage, opening the door and into the alley way. Brave man.
“Who needs you this time?” I asked softly.
“I told them no.”
I frowned. “Why?”
“Because you need me here.”
I stood before him, to catch the golden in his eyes from the patio light. “I do, but at what cost?”
He looked down at the cell phone in his hand. “Missing girls in Chicago.”
“How many missing girls in Chicago?”
“Seven, so far.”
My gut twisted. Was my hide worth the lives of seven girls? Was my relationship worth all that lost potential? I’d been selfish, but this would have been a sinful kind of selfish that even I could never forgive myself for.
I reached out and put my hand over his heart. “Go.”
“No,” Chaz protested as he slipped away. “You said you needed me here, so I’m staying.”
“Chaz, you need to be in Chicago.”
<
br /> “But . . .”
I caught his hand and slipped my fingers into his. I pulled him to face me. “Without stomping on your manhood, I’ve got this. I’ve got Tucker and the boys, I’ll grab Jessa in case we need a quick escape. And it’s not like I’m going to run into a fight. That’s plan B.”
“What’s plan A?”
“A simple statement of requests. Please don’t eat the people in Dallas. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”
He chucked but his small smile faded away fast. “And without stomping on your panther, negotiation is not your strong suite.”
I crossed my heart. “I promise to do my best.”
His hand tightened in mine. “And what happens when your best isn’t enough?”
“Then I will rely on Tucker’s best and Tyler’s best and hell even Shadow and Nash are good for a few punches.”
Chaz reached out to touch my face. He brushed his fingers tips across my cheekbone and curled his fingers back into my hair.
“Take Myers. Two panthers might appear better than one, and you need to test that boy’s mettle.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And the revolver.”
“Yes, sir.”
Chapter Nine
WHEN I GOT the text from Tucker Sunday night with the name and address of the bar, I almost didn’t believe it. Hogs and Henny. Seriously?
So I went into my closet and tried to find something to wear. I didn’t quite think the world would end if I chose the wrong top, but I also didn’t want to stick out like a sore thumb. I needed to blend for the simple fact that I needed to make sure that I could slip out if something went horribly wrong.
I called Jessa. “What do you wear to a biker bar that will make you fit in as well as be able to kick ass?”
Jessa was silent. I’d finally stunned her speechless. Point for me.
I clarified my statement. “I need to go kick someone out of town, and I want to look the part. Suggestions?”
“Why do you have to do it?”
It was the one question that neither Chaz nor Tucker had asked. Why did I have to do this?
“I mean, if the mongrels are as domesticated as you say, why can’t they do it?”
I gave Jessa the truth. “Because I’m scarier.”
“I guess a pissed off panther would be more frightening than a bunch of mutts.”
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