Picture this (Birds of a Feather Book 3)

by Lena North

  Then I focused on getting us toward Norton as quickly as I could. It felt as if time had stopped and we were in a bubble, moving through the forest on the narrow, curving road. I scanned the sides, looking for other attackers but we were moving too fast, and I couldn’t see anything.

  “Is your bird okay?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Miller grunted. “Scanning the area. Says he can’t see anyone ahead of us.”

  The phone rang suddenly, and I yelped.

  “Yeah,” Miller grunted when he’d connected the call.

  “We’ve got you on our screens, two more curves and there’s a turnaround area. Stop there and wait for us, we’re five minutes away. Carson will put the chopper down there.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  My belly felt mostly like a mass of quivering jelly, and I had to squeeze the steering wheel to keep my hands from shaking, so it made me proud to hear how calm I sounded.

  “Okay,” Hawker echoed and disconnected.

  I stopped the car when we got to the open area and leaned back to get the rifle I’d tossed in the back seat. Then I got out, went to the back and got the ammunition, reloaded the weapon and placed myself in front of the car. I put the box with the rest of the bullets on the hood in front of me, raised the rifle and started twisting from side to side, looking at the forest and listening for any sounds that would indicate people being there. As the minutes passed I heard nothing, and there were no movements, but I kept turning slowly, back and forth. If anyone wanted to harm us, then I’d do my damndest to hold them back until Hawker and the others arrived. I wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

  Suddenly cars approached from both directions. I hoped that the black truck coming from Norton was Hawker, took a step toward the road and aimed at the smaller car coming at us from the south. It could have been someone just passing by but they were driving way to fast, and I didn’t want to take any chances, so I fired a warning shot right in front of the car, and took another step toward the road. The car slowed down a little, turned around abruptly and sped away back down the road. Hawker passed me without even looking, following the car, but behind him came Wilder and she pulled up next to me. She had her phone to her ear, and stayed in the car, talking animatedly. Mac jumped out and ran over to check on Miller.

  I didn’t move, but kept my eyes on the forest, still moving slowly from side to side, searching for a trap, or any kind of shift among the trees. Another car stopped next to us, and Olly got out with his mother. They had apparently been in Norton all of them, and I gave Byrd a tight smile but didn’t lower my gun.

  “How is he doing, Mac?” I called out.

  “He’ll live,” Mac replied calmly.

  I frowned because I didn’t understand what that meant exactly.

  “We’ve got you covered, Mary,” Olly murmured next to me. “Go check on him.”

  I didn’t move. My whole body was strung up so tightly I just couldn’t make myself unclench my jaws or lower the rifle.

  “Wilder,” Olly called out.

  Then Wilder was at my side, although she didn’t touch me, and just spoke softly in my ear.

  “Lower the rifle, sweetie. Dad will come back up the road just about now, and I don’t want you to accidentally shoot him.”

  “I won’t,” I whispered.

  Then Hawker’s black truck sped up the road again and stopped just in front of me. He got out, cast a glance over at where Mac and presumably Miller was and walked over to me. He took a firm grip of the barrel to lower my rifle and twisted it out of my hands.

  “I apologized to you, Mary,” he murmured, and my eyes flew to his face. “I should have been on my knees when I did because I still didn’t get it.”

  “What?” I breathed.

  “Didn’t see the strength, honey. I thought you were –”

  He cut himself off, and his eyes moved over my shoulder.

  “Baby,” Miller said, and I turned.

  Mac had helped him out of his tee, and they’d put bandages on his side and tied his arm across his chest. There was blood on his jeans and in his hair, probably from him pulling his hand through it, and he looked a little pale. He smiled a tight smile, and then he turned his eyes to Hawker.

  “I thought I knew, man, but I didn’t either. My tiny girl, calm as you please, holding them off with my rifle, and driving us out of there.”

  Hawker snorted something under his breath, and without any warning, I fainted.

  Ch

  apter Twenty-two

  Pizza

  The first payment from my aunt and uncle was deposited in my bank account, and Miller and I had our first real fight. I wanted to use the money to fix up a small house next to his. It had been a barn or outhouse, but now it was empty and looked like it hadn’t been used in years.

  I wanted to use it as a studio. There were plenty of rooms I could use in the huge house we lived in, but I didn’t want paint fumes to spread in our living space. If I cleared out the other building, cleaned it up a bit and had a couple of roof windows installed, it would be close to the perfect working space for me.

  Miller agreed with everything except me paying for the small renovations I wanted to do. I patiently explained that since it was my working space, I should pay. He told me I was ridiculous and that I’d said that he could pay for the house.

  From there, things went downhill, and we ended up shouting at each other. Then I glared at the frustrated man in front of me, grabbed my jacket and purse, and walked out. I needed to calm down, and he did too, so I walked around town for a while and then I found myself outside Johns. It was late afternoon, so I didn’t think there’d be a huge crowd inside, and I didn’t want to go to Jack’s coffee shop because they’d ask questions that I didn’t want to answer. Inside it was quiet, and I’d been right – except for a couple of men sitting at one of the tables at the back, and Hawker’s brother Hare standing behind the bar, the place was empty.

  “Hey there, Mary,” Hare said. “What can I get you?”

  “Whiskey,” I muttered.

  “Uh, honey…” he said, and I could hear laughter in his voice, “If the rumors I hear are true I guess that when you say whiskey, you mean tea.”

  I glared at him, and he promptly burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” I asked sourly.

  “Miller,” he replied, and when I growled, he explained. “All the old biddies in this village think he’s the best thing since sliced bread. They always blame every fight he’s in on the other guy, and they’ve been doing it forever, so there’s a lot of us who has taken a plenty of crap through the years.”

  I kept looking at him, waiting for the part where he actually explained what he found so amusing.

  “Now that you’re here, I guess life will be difficult for poor Mill.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  “Yup. Because they like him, but I hear they like you more, so when the two of you fight they’ll start realizing that their gloriously innocent boy is actually a bit of a jackass.”

  “He isn’t,” I said.

  I wasn’t happy with my boyfriend, or whatever you called a man you were living with, but that didn’t mean I’d allow others to insult him, and Miller was acting ridiculously, but jackass was an exaggeration.

  “He totally is,” Hawker muttered as he sat down next to me.

  I turned, and he leaned in to give me a quick one armed hug.

  “Hey there, sweetie,” he murmured.

  My mouth curved a little as I watched him make a gesture toward his brother that apparently meant something because Hare nodded and walked off. I’d never been afraid of Hawker the way Jinx had been, and never understood why she found him so frightening, but I had not liked him very much. Things had improved after he’d apologized, though until that day when we were attacked, I’d held back a little, remembering what he’d said about me to Miller.

  I’d fired two shots, and taken the car u
p the mountain for less than ten minutes, and then I’d fainted. Hardly the material of a hero in my mind, but when we got back from the hospital, word had spread in Norton about what I’d done. To my embarrassment, it seemed as if the stories had been exaggerated into absurdity, and as a result, everyone in the village was even friendlier than before. The biggest change was in Hawker, though. It felt as if he was calmer, or more at ease around me, and since he was, we were building a totally unexpected friendship.

  “What did you fight about?” Hawker asked curiously.

  I told him, and he nodded.

  “Fu-” he started, but I interrupted him immediately.

  “Hawker, really? Your language is absolutely –”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he interrupted right back. “I know.”

  I raised my brows and waited for him to explain why he’d tried to be crude this time.

  “I really wanted to be on your side because Hare is right. I’ve taken a lot of flack over the years for fighting with your man when it was his fault from start to finish.”

  “Then tell him that –”

  “It’s just that you’re wrong, Mary.”

  I closed my mouth and narrowed my eyes, which made him chuckle, and I put my elbow in his midriff which made him laugh even more.

  “It’s his house.”

  I blinked.

  “I know it is,” I said.

  “So, any changes are his responsibility.”

  “But –”

  “You’re wrong,” he said softly. “Let him pay for the things you want done. It’ll come out of the fund anyway. All renovations within reason do.”

  “But –”

  “He needs a new TV,” Hawker said.

  I blinked again. The one we had seemed brand new.

  “Yeah, okay,” Hawker sighed. “He doesn’t exactly need a new one perhaps, but he’d love to have a bigger one.”

  I wasn’t sure if the wall would hold a bigger set or if the house would come crashing down on us, but I got Hawk’s point. I should find a compromise, which seemed annoyingly logical.

  “Hm,” I said.

  “Exactly,” he grinned.

  Then the door slammed open, and Miller walked in.

  “There will be builders starting on the house tomorrow,” he said as he sat down next to me.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You need to be there to tell them what you want.”

  “I can totally do that,” I said, and when he didn’t say anything else, I turned to look at him.

  He didn’t look angry exactly, but his jaw was set, and I knew he expected me to continue our argument.

  “You’re not paying,” he said.

  “I’m buying a pizza oven,” I whispered.

  His brows went up a little.

  “Hawker said I should buy a TV, but I don’t want to. I want to make pizza.”

  “Okay, baby,” he said, and his face had softened.

  “You’re not paying,” I said, echoing his words.

  “Okay, baby,” he repeated.

  I turned to Hare, who was grinning widely. “Can I have that whiskey now?” I asked, and since I made air quotes when I mentioned the liquor, he put a mug in front of me and plopped a bag of tea in it.

  “You can thank me later,” Hawker muttered, leaning back a little and clearly aiming the words at Miller.

  Since I knew the price of a pizza oven and guessed neither of the men did, I struggled a little to hold back laughter and scrunched my nose up at Hawk. His face had softened too, and the lines around his eyes deepened with his smile. I felt Miller’s hand slide up my back, and settle at the nape of my neck, and I smiled too.

  While I drank my tea, they talked about the latest in their investigations about the attack on Miller and me. We’d spent the night at the hospital in Twin City, but Miller’s injuries had turned out to be eminently treatable. They had put a lot of stitches in him, and ordered him to make sure he did his physiotherapy, and then sent him home. Both Miller and Carson had been beyond livid about me though, to the point where the doctors had threatened to have them thrown out of the hospital, bullet in shoulder and everything. I’d been passed out for less than a minute and was sure it had been a reaction to the stress of meeting my family again after several years, combined with being shot at. After a call to Jinx who had laughed so hard she had to put the phone down when she heard Miller shouting in the background, they’d done all kinds of tests on me, and the only one showing anything of interest was the one confirming that I was indeed pregnant.

  Several weeks had passed, and they were not getting any closer to finding out who it had been, or what they’d wanted. Hawker had followed the car a while, but they’d not slowed down, and since he’d been worried about his friend he’d sent his bird out to follow it and gone back. It turned out that I’d almost shot at one of my childhood friends from Thend, who had been innocently passing by. He’d not recognized me and had been so frightened by the shot that he’d turned and gone straight home. According to Ronnie, he’d not appreciated the visit from the local police, but they’d talked him out of pressing charges against me for endangering his life.

  They had found traces of blood in the forest, so I had indeed managed to hit two of our attackers, but they’d not been able to track where they’d gone. Hawker was incredibly pissed off about this, and Miller was worried. I was apparently allowed to walk around in Norton, but when I’d gone down to Prosper to do my final exams, I’d been accompanied by him, Olly and Carson.

  It all seemed unreal to me, and I tried to not think too much about it. Maybe that was a coward’s approach, but it worked for me, and as I sat there in the roadside bar, sipping my tea, I only listened with half an ear. I was planning the pizza oven I’d have installed, thinking that I’d make it a brick structure on the outside of the kitchen wall so we could use it from the back deck, but let it pass through the wall and have a nice framing made that worked with our rough country style kitchen.

  Later that night we sat on the back porch, and I told Miller about my plans for the oven.

  “I’m sorry, baby,” he muttered suddenly. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”

  “Mill, I shouted too,” I reminded him.

  “Yeah,” he sighed, although he still didn’t look happy.

  “It was just a stupid fight,” I said, crouching down next to him.

  “There was no need for me to get so angry,” he muttered.

  “I was angry too.”

  “Yes, but you’re…”

  “Miller, please. What’s the real problem? I’m not angry with you anymore, and we sorted it out, didn’t we?” I asked.

  “We’ll fight again,” he sighed.

  “I’m sure we will,” I agreed, and giggled a little. “Hare said that you could be a jackass.”

  I’d meant it as a joke, but he pulled me up toward him. The stitches were out, and he was healing well, but I was still afraid I’d somehow do damage to the ugly wounds. He ignored that, and then I was on his lap and curled up in his arms.

  “The wildness, Mary. It’s in all of us, to a certain degree,” he said slowly. “All who have a bird. It comes with the heritage, that temper. That… jackassability,” he said and smiled ruefully at me.

  “I know,” I said.

  He seemed to have forgotten that I’d been friends with Wilder for the past two years.

  “We’re all hot-headed, Mary,” he said. “In a way, it’s easiest for the Johns’. Everyone knows how they are, so they can snarl and growl, and walk around being supreme assholes as much as they want and people just shake their heads and step out of the way. Plus, Hawker and I, we take it out on each other.”

  “I know,” I repeated and felt his grin against my hair.

  “Yeah,” he sighed. “Everyone thinks I’m the most laid-back of us, but it’s not true. I just have a way to get it out of my system.”

  “Who is the most laid back th
en?” I asked curiously. “Kit?”

  He laughed outright and snorted, “Absolutely not. He’s best at hiding it, though. I’d say that it’s Mac. His uncle treated him like shit for years, and he just went with it. And being with Wilder… Well, she’s a Johns, isn’t she?”

  I smiled because she certainly was that. I also understood the fights I’d heard Wilder and Mac have better.

  “It’s hardest for Olly. He’s big, and the best fighter I’ve ever seen, but he got more of the wild in him than any of us, and sometimes he loses it. You’ve seen it, baby. How he disappears.”

  “Yes,” I said, remembering the blank look in his eyes and how Mac had asked him if he was back. “Can’t you help him?”

  “We do what we can, and his ma has been fantastic. She’s the same, but since she’s smaller and not the natural fighter that he is, it was never the same issue with her.”

  I blinked and realized when I thought about the older woman with her kind smile and sweet ways that you truly never knew what went on inside someone else’s head.

  “He spends time in Marshes now, helping Dante train his guys,” Miller went on. “He spars with Dante too, and that helps. They’re about the same size.”

  “Dante fights?” I asked and leaned back to look at him.

  Calm and collected Dante with his diplomatic manners and nice looking clothes had not struck me as someone who’d be a good fighter.

  “Sure,” Miller replied. “He’s actually not bad at it, but too slick to bring it out for everyone to see. He’s also incredibly mellow, although I’d guess that if anyone tries to lay a finger on his girl, they’ll quickly find out just how strong he is.”

  “Wow,” I breathed.

  We sat in silence for a while, and then he murmured, “Baby, we’ll argue again.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, wondering why he was so worried about that because it hadn’t been such a big deal, at least not to me.

  “Don’t always end so good for me when you’re around a fight.”

  I got it then. I’d left the last time there had been a fight.

  “Miller,” I said and leaned my head on his shoulder. “I promise, I won’t leave.”