by Alyssa Day
“Please,” Eleanor said, clasping her hands together under her chin. “I can spend all my time with my beautiful grandson. Did I tell you that I have new pictures?”
I sighed. “Does a goat poop in a pawn shop?”
We both looked at the goat, who let rip with another very loud mehhh and then let rip with a giant load of something that was all kinds of wrong, right in the middle of the floor.
“Apparently yes to both questions.” Eleanor leaned over the counter. “Is that a beer can?”
I just started laughing. “What else could go wrong?”
The bell over my door made its tinkling sound, and Jack walked in. “The guys say we have at least one, possibly two, teams of professional assassins in town. Why is there a goat in your shop and goat shit on your foot?”
I threw the rest of the carrots at him.
Chapter 10
One quick stop at Uncle Mike’s, and the goat was safely secured and fed, and I had clean, poop-free shoes on my feet.
“We need to go to Beau’s for lunch,” Jack said, tapping his fingers on the steering wheel of his old truck.
I wrinkled my nose, still smelling goat. “I have never been less hungry than I am now. Also, I can’t believe you threatened to barbecue that goat.”
“Hey. She ate my favorite hat.”
I slumped down in the seat. “Well, I’m sure we’ll probably see it again.”
“You can keep it,” Jack said dryly. “We need to go to Beau’s, because Dallas told me that one of our suspected assassin teams is there.”
“And Dallas knows this how?”
“He was there picking up lunch, and he texted me while you were finding clean shoes.”
We drove another mile or so in silence, and then I ventured the ten-thousand dollar question. “So if they’re assassins, why are we going to confront them in a diner, instead of, I don’t know, calling the police?”
Jack glanced over at me, eyebrows raised, like I’d asked a stupid question. In reflection, I kind of had.
“Because you’re a big, bad tiger, and you don’t want Susan or Deputy Kelly to get hurt?”
“Got it in one.”
I turned that around in my mind until the edges of it started to scratch at me. “Soooo, you don’t mind if I get hurt?” I started to regret the words almost before they came out of my mouth, but Jack just shook his head.
“Tess. Of course I don’t want you to get hurt, but we both know that if there are two teams of killers running around, you would be absolutely sure to find yourself right in team two’s crosshairs while I was dealing with team one.”
“I liked the goat better,” I told him.
“I’ll never shit on your shoes.”
“Huh. Point to you.”
We pulled into the parking lot at Beau’s and saw the usual—a lot of old trucks, a few motorcycles like the one Jack had back at his place, and an assortment of cars and minivans, all American made.
All of which made the gleaming black Mercedes sedan stick out like a vampire at a tanning salon.
“Seems like assassins would drive that to Dead End,” I said.
“Stupid assassins. If I had a contract in a place like this, I’d be wearing jeans and driving an old Ford truck.”
I pointedly looked at his blue jeans and then patted the dash of his old Ford truck. “So should I start worrying now or later?”
His gaze fell to my lips. “Depends on what you’re worrying about.”
A flash of heat swept through me, and I jumped out of the truck. “Well, the only thing you get to murder today is a cheeseburger or seven.”
“Seven?”
“I’ve seen you eat.”
I opened the door before he could get to it, and the delicious scent of grilled burgers and deep-fried everything surrounded us and tempted us to come in, sit down, and clog our arteries. The place wasn’t completely packed, since it was a Tuesday, but it was still doing a brisk business.
When we walked in, a lot of people said hi to me, a few said hi to Jack, and several gave us flat-eyed looks that said they were reserving judgment. It washed over Jack like water off a tiger’s back, but it bothered me a little. I’d lived in Dead End all my life, and I didn’t like knowing that there was anti-shifter sentiment here.
Lorraine, head waitress and former mayor, bustled over and gave us big hugs. “Jack. Tess. How are two of my favorite people?”
“Hungry,” Jack said, smiling down at her. “It’s a miracle how you keep that uniform spotless in this joint.”
“Ha,” she said, poking him in the side. “Trade secret. Now follow me to that table by the window, and I’ll get you your lemonade with extra ice.”
Lorraine had been serving hungry Dead End citizens for fifty years, rain or shine, and her pink-and-white starched apron was still the same size it’d been on her first day on the job, she liked to say. She was maybe five feet tall in her orthopedic shoes, and she still scared the pants off the more rowdy teens in town. She’d once locked a teenaged Dave and Jack in the restaurant overnight to wash dishes and think long and hard about their wicked ways. They’d deserved it, Jack had admitted. But he hadn’t figured out how to pull clothes into his shift back then, so he’d had to wash dishes in an apron with his butt hanging out. It had been a long while before Dave had let him live that down.
After we sat and ordered (six cheeseburgers with the works for Jack, a grilled cheese for me, no fries), Jack started stacking sugar packets into a pyramid shape.
“Don’t look, but our friends are at the table by the bathrooms,” he said.
I tried to look out of the side of my eye without moving my head, and Jack stopped building a sugar tower and tilted his head.
“Are you constipated?”
I kicked him under the table. “No. Shut up. That’s my stealthy look.”
Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose, like he was getting a headache. “How about this—I’ll be the detective, and you can be the pawnbroker.”
“Hey, you brought me here, Sherlock Holmes.”
I drank some of my water and then jumped up. “Oh, what an unexpected development. I need to use the restroom.”
Since I was speaking in a weirdly bright and loud voice, everybody at the tables nearby gave me a funny look.
“Tess,” Jack warned, trying to grab my hand, but I danced out of the way. I’d dodged an exploding goat already today, so I wasn’t about to let a boring old tiger shifter catch me.
As I got closer, pretending not to look, but totally looking, I checked out the two strangers at the table. Jack was right. If they were trying to fit in, they were going about it all wrong. They were wearing suits and ties, and their expensive shoes were polished to a high gloss.
They were both bald, and they were both big. They looked like they could hurt people and enjoyed doing it. Thug One was eating a burger, and Thug Two was eating a salad.
“So you’re clearly not from around here,” I said, pasting a welcoming smile on my face and stopping at their table.
Thug One grunted, but Thug Two looked at me and his eyes widened. “Miss? Are you feeling sick?”
My shoulders slumped. Apparently I’m not good at stealth or welcoming smiles. “No, I’m fine. Just saying hi. I haven’t seen you in here before.”
“Oh. I’m married, and he’s gay,” Thug Two said. “Move along.”
“I’m not trying to pick you up,” I said, forgetting to be stealthy.
Lorraine walked behind us. “True. She’s dating the tiger.”
I groaned. “I’m not dating the tiger.”
But both thugs perked right up at the news, and they stood and loomed over me. I hate loomers, so this did not make me happy.
“What tiger?”
“Is Jack Shepherd the tiger?”
Thug One grabbed my arm, but I yanked it out of his hand and mentally vowed not to call out to Jack for help. I was a tough, independent woman, and… I glanced around and then made my move.
�
��I have a fork, and I know how to use it,” I declared, waving it around.
The thugs looked at each other and then back at me, and they both smiled scary, shark-like smiles. Neither had been very good about proper dental care, I noticed in the Stupid, Irrelevant Observations part of my brain.
Thug One opened his jacket. “Gun.”
Thug Two showed me an identical gun.
I suddenly felt stupid standing there waving a fork around, and I could feel a rumble of movement barreling through the diner toward me, so I knew Jack was on the way.
Before he could get to me, though, old Mr. Quindlen stood up and pulled a bigger gun out of his jacket pocket and put it on his table. “Colt Commander.”
Mrs. Quindlen didn’t stand up, because her walker was over by the door, but she rummaged in her purse and then put her gun on the table. “Beretta. Laser sight. Tess, how’s Ruby doing?”
“She’s fine, thank you, Mrs. Q. I heard you got a new cat,” I said politely. Bubba McKee’s pet boa constrictor had eaten her previous cat. It had been quite the scandal.
Just then, Rooster walked out of the men’s room, sized up the situation, and looked down at the men. “Are you bothering our Tess?”
He pulled an enormous hunting knife out of his pocket and drove it, blade down, into the table. Both thugs jumped back, looking a little pale now.
Rooster grinned at me. “How’s my goat, Tess?”
“She pooped on my shoe,” I told him.
“Yeah, she does that.”
Lorraine, now on the other side of the room, called out, “I’ve got a double-barreled shotgun in the back. Rooster, I told you that you’d be buying me a new table if you pulled that trick again.”
Rooster ducked his head. “Aww, Lorraine.”
The thugs were still standing, but now they had their hands half-raised in the air.
“This town is crazy,” Thug Two muttered, and Rooster smacked him on the back of the head.
Jack, now standing behind me, leaned down and murmured in my ear. “I can’t let you out of my sight for five seconds.”
I ignored the chills that raced down my spine, and stiffened it. “Okay, you two. Who are you, why are you here, and are you assassins?”
Jack made a sound like he was choking, but I ignored that, too, and instead uttered the perfect phrase for the situation, the one I’d been waiting all my life to use.
“Why don’t we take this outside?”
Chapter 11
Thug One said his name was Bob, and Thug Two claimed to be Joe.
“I’m betting those aren’t your real names,” I told them.
This time, even Jack gave me a look.
“She’s not very good at this,” Bob said.
Jack bared his teeth at the man, who took a healthy step back.
The parking lot outside Beau’s was not exactly the OK Corral. We weren’t going to have a shootout in the direct line of sight of the hardware store. I wasn’t sure that Jack, Bob, or Joe agreed with me on this basic principle, though.
“We know who you are, Mr. Shepherd,” Joe said, shuffling his feet in the gravel.
The Quindlens walked out of the diner just then, and we all smiled at them and waved, even the thugs, and tried to look friendly (me) and unthreatening (the rest of them) until the couple made their slow and careful way to their car and drove off. Mrs. Q pinned the thugs with one last warning glare as her husband drove by us and pointed her gun at them through the window.
When their car finally turned at the corner by the bank, travelling at Mr. Q’s top speed of fifteen miles per hour, Bob started to reach in his pocket.
Faster than I could form a thought, Jack sprang across the space between us and grabbed Bob by the neck. His sudden violence sent a wave of far-overdue fear through me, and I realized I’d been treating this all like some sort of game—playing detective—meddling in things I knew nothing about and had zero qualifications to do.
It was Dead End, though. I’d lived here all my life in relative safety and the absolute knowledge that I was loved. It had only been over the space of the past year that I’d started getting caught up in violence and evil; I still wasn’t accustomed to it.
Maybe I still hadn’t believed it.
But seeing Jack go from bantering with me over the lunch table to looking like he could rip a man’s throat out without even blinking his now-amber-colored eyes—that shook something loose inside me that might take a long time to put back together.
Suddenly, the smell of fried onions and car exhaust combined to make me feel sick. I clutched my stomach, and Jack caught me doing it. His face hardened, and then he turned back to Bob.
“Geez, I was just reaching for my handkerchief,” Bob said, his face now shiny with sweat that the cool March temperatures couldn’t account for. “Calm down, man.”
“Maybe don’t stick your hand in your pocket until we get this figured out,” Jack drawled, his voice laden with menace. He was every inch the soldier and rebel commander at that instant, and it scared me.
Jack scared me.
I’d known what he was, and I’d seen him in action, but that had been before the word relationship had popped up in my brain. Now I was seeing him through the measuring lens of a possible future, and it was…frightening.
“Look, Mr. Shepherd,” Joe said. “We’re not your enemies. We’re not here for anything to do with you. Hell, we’d like to give you a medal for the things you’ve done. When you took out that nest of vamps in Chicago, single-handed—wow. The boss didn’t stop talking about it for days.”
Jack stepped away from Bob, and the man took a deep, wheezing breath.
“Can I get my handkerchief now?”
“Slowly and carefully,” Jack ordered.
Bob pulled out a jarringly bright-pink cloth, and wiped his face with it, then shoved it back in his pocket. “Yeah. What Joe said. Respect, man.”
“I’m not interested in your respect,” Jack said, his voice a low rumble.
I knew that voice. That voice usually came just before he shifted to tiger form and started tearing into people. Swallowing my sudden attack of good sense, I spoke up.
“Why are you here?”
Joe and Bob both looked surprised, like they’d forgotten I was there. Smart, I guess. Better to keep your eyes on the biggest predator in the room. Or the parking lot.
Jack leaned forward, and his eyes were still flaring hot amber. “Answer the lady.”
“We’re just passing through,” Joe rushed to answer. “We’ve got a little competition problem, and we came down to this snake pit of a state—”
“No offense,” Bob said, elbowing Joe.
“Yeah, sorry, no offense. But we came down to check it out. Everything’s computer these days, all this new talent is on the internet, and old-school just can’t compete,” Joe whined.
I blinked. Either I’d fallen down a rabbit hole, or I was standing outside of Beau’s diner listening to a hit man complain about marketplace competition.
A flash of pink and white caught my attention. Lorraine was standing in the window, waving to me. I waved back. So, yes, it was really happening. My new reality was an episode of Survivor where the contestants killed each other instead of voting them off the island.
Jack gave me a weird look, and then he put his arm around my waist and pulled me closer, as if he could tell I was feeling a little bit woozy. Surprisingly, even though he’d just scared me a few moments ago, he felt like safety to me now.
My central nervous system might need a tune-up.
Rooster ambled out of Beau’s and caught sight of us. “You okay, Tess?
I nodded and smiled a big, fake smile. Luckily, Rooster was never one for the subtleties of human communication, so he nodded back and headed for his truck.
“We could use him,” Bob said admiringly, watching as the cab of Rooster’s truck sank several inches when the big man climbed into it.
“About that competition problem,” Jack said, waving h
is hand in the universal signal for “keep going or I’ll hurt you.”
Joe took up the story. “Yeah, the boss’s niece is a computer whiz at the University of Chicago. She thought she tracked the guy’s communication down here, but then it changed or something, but the boss thought we should drive down and check it out.”
“The origin location,” Bob put in, clearly proud of his mastery of the tech lingo. Then he sneered at Jack. “What I don’t understand is why the hell we’re telling you all this.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Respect, remember?”
I was suddenly sick to death of all this and ready to cut to the chase. I moved away from Jack and squared my shoulders.
“Did you find him? Your competition? And do you know anything about the banshee killer?”
“The what?” both thugs said in unison.
The blank looks on their faces were pretty obviously sincere. They didn’t know anything about the person who was killing banshees, which actually made sense to me. I thought this sounded more like a rage-motivated crime, perpetrated by a killer for whom this was excruciatingly personal—either for reasons of fear or hatred, or both.
Contract kills on banshees didn’t make much sense.
Still, I had to clench my jaw against a dull wave of disappointment.
“Did you find him?” Jack asked.
“No. There’s nothing down here that looks anything like the operation this guy would need, with the stuff he’s pulled. Plus, he’s got money,” Bob said.
“A shit-ton of it,” Joe added helpfully.
“Nothing down here looks like the kind of place a person with money would live,” Bob concluded, but then he glanced at me. “No offense.”
“We’ll just be on our way,” Joe said, inching toward their car.
Jack nodded. “Fine. But spread the word—Dead End is my territory now.”
They both nodded enthusiastically. Tigers have that effect on people. Also, whatever Jack had done in Chicago must have been brutal, to impress hired killers so much. A shudder went through me.
Jack pointed at Joe. “One more thing. Have you heard anything about another team sent down here?”