“We good?” asked Kaleb as he pushed back from the table, ready to find out what the blonde at the end of the bar had in mind for them.
“Haven’t you been smacked silly enough for one lifetime?” Dean questioned, but Kaleb was already starting off. “You’d think a slap across the face would slow him down,” he said to his brothers on the whole, who collectively recalled the last fiery woman that Kaleb had hit and quit.
Leeanne something-or-other, who worked tables at Angel’s Food, had had higher expectations for her night of tipsy passion with the second eldest Quinn. When reality set in to her great disappointment the following week, Leeanne hadn’t held herself back from marching right up to Kaleb in the middle of Angel’s Food and smacking him clear across his smug face for all the diners to see. In retrospect, Kaleb had agreed two-fold, his first mistake having been that he thought he could breeze into her place of work and get himself a cup of joe, unscathed.
As thoughts of Leeanne receded from Troy’s memory, they were quickly replaced by the one woman he himself would never want to take advantage of or offend.
Reece Gladstone.
He really hadn’t wanted to leave her all by her vulnerable self in that tiny cottage of hers. He wondered what she was up to, and hoped like hell she wouldn’t dare set foot outside until the sun had long since risen tomorrow morning. He had half a mind to shift the second he sprang loose from Libations, dart through the thick stretch of woods that separated the heart of Devil’s Fist from her house on Berry Road, and prowl around the perimeter of her property, guarding her for the rest of the long night from danger. In fact, he decided right then and there that that’s exactly what he would do.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of Jack and Rick bursting into cackling laughter, however.
“How good ol’ Jack can stomach the sheriff,” commented Shane, “I’ll never understand.”
***
“I’m telling you,” laughed Rick as he tried and failed to regain his composure, “that girl doesn’t know her way around a cruiser console well enough to shut the damn flashers off, how in the holy hell is she gonna know how to fire a Glock with any sort of accuracy?”
“Beats the piss out of me,” Jack chuckled.
That’s what he liked about Jack Quagmire. The man hadn’t bought into all this gender equality horseshit that had ruined the country.
“But seriously, though,” said Jack, sobering up from his laughter, his shifting mood being just as contagious as Rick’s hilarity. “How’re the van Dykes handling all of this.”
To fortify his emotions, Rick took a long drag from his pint, sending a waterfall of beer into his sour stomach to cool the acidity that had nearly formed an ulcer.
“Maggie damn near collapsed on the kitchen floor,” he said in a solemn voice. “Had I known she was in the house, I would’ve had her sit down with Jim in the living room.”
“Oh, shoot, Rick,” said his friend, pained.
“That old dusty station wagon of hers wasn’t out front and I just assumed she was off in Jackson Hole with her sister again. You know how they’ve been having problems.”
Jack refilled Rick’s empty glass, on the house.
“Course Jim straight up ‘n lost his mind over it. Losing his little girl. His only girl.”
“His only child,” added Jack with a remorseful grimace.
“Don’t think I’ve ever said what I’m about to, but a thing like this, I wish lil’ Holly had been murdered by a psychopath. There’d be some justice in it. We’d find the guy. I’d look the other way at the station so Jim could wail on him or return the favor. But an animal attack? I doubt if Jim shot the thing in the head himself, he’d feel any sort of justice about it.”
If Jack Quagmire had had kids of his own, he might’ve been more on board with the comparison, but Rick appreciated that his longtime friend was nodding in contemplative agreement.
“Did you all find the animal? A wolf was it?” Jack asked.
Rick shook his head, bringing his pint to his mouth and taking another long pull. As he set his pint glass on the counter, he said, “I know we will. Only a matter of time. Once an animal gets a taste for human blood, it tends to stick around where it can get another taste. We’ll find it before it attacks anyone else. I know it. Only a matter of time,” he repeated, though he realized he’d just lost Jack’s attention.
Rick didn’t have to turn his head to know what had stolen it. The way his friend’s dark eyes had brightened and his creased face had lifted, a fan of crow’s feet thickening at the corners, told him that Ms. Angel Mercer must’ve just walked in the door.
Angel Mercer was a stringent woman of forty-two, who believed that if a woman wanted to be treated like a lady, she ought to look and act the part. For Angel, that wasn’t always easy, since she spent a good sixteen hours a day running Angel’s Food, wearing a blue uniform, and padding around between the kitchen and her customers. That being said, she kept her makeup fresh, never failed to put on the false eyelashes, and with a little sprucing up at home after a long day’s work at the diner, she had a habit of floating into Libations dressed up like a woman of class.
Whether it was all an act of make-believe or just the way her mama raised her, Rick couldn’t decide. All he knew was that the only man in town who, without fail, jumped at the chance to be the gentleman to her lady was Jack Quagmire.
“Excuse me,” said Jack without taking his eyes off her.
Angel settled into a small table in front of the big picture windows that faced Main Street. As she crossed her long legs, shifting the pink cocktail dress she wore and lacing her dainty fingers in her lap, Jack rushed around to pour her favorite chilled pinot grigio into a long-stem wine glass so that she wouldn’t have to go to any trouble ordering at the bar.
Rick almost felt bad for the guy. Almost. See, Angel Mercer was way out of Jack’s league. Hell, she was in the big leagues and poor Jack was still in the minors. He knew it, and she knew it, which was why she’d never accepted a single date offer from him in all the years she’d been running Angel’s Food and coming into Libations after hours. Regardless, Jack persisted, and whether Angel admitted it to herself or not, it was clear to Rick that at the very least she appreciated the way the dusty bar-owner doted on her.
After observing Angel smile her lipstick-painted mouth up at Jack as she accepted the chilled glass of pinot—on the house, no doubt—Rick glanced over his other shoulder towards the very back of the bar.
He knew they were there. The Quinn brothers. Occupying the table and area they liked to monopolize whenever they were here. One of them had broken off from the bunch to try his hand with some empty-headed blonde that Rick knew by face but not name. They must’ve left together by now. Kaleb worked fast.
He narrowed his eyes at the brothers, full on glaring at all four of them. Quinn Security, he thought with a snort of a disgusted laugh. Bringing his beer to his mouth again, he reminded himself of what a joke they were. Their whole business was laughable.
First of all, there was no greater authority in all of the Fist than Rick Abernathy’s police precinct. It was the first and last line of defense in this town. Who needed bodyguards and military-trained expertise, when they could be protected and served by the local police… for free? That was the second clincher. Quinn Security’s services did not come cheap. This wasn’t Jackson Hole, for Christ’s sake. It was Devil’s Fist. Working class. No money and little crime, thanks to Rick himself. Troy Quinn was just being boastful, he decided. What else could be said about it?
“Daddy?”
The melodic voice of his sweet Whitney jarred him from furious rumination and he turned to find his daughter nearing. She planted her hand on the bar, fisted the other against her hip in mock confrontation, and pitched those delicate brown eyebrows of hers all the way up to her flaming auburn hairline.
“Don’t you have a rabid animal to catch?”
“Don’t you have a—” he was about to retort so
mething humorous until he saw what his daughter was wearing. Oh, hell no. Whitney might be a mature twenty-six years old, but she’d always be his little girl, and those shorts of hers, casual jeans as they might have been, were much, much too short. And why in the holy hell couldn’t she find a tee-shirt that covered her midriff properly? She was only 5’3” and her torso wasn’t that long, for Christ’s sake.
Quickly, he slid off the bar and jerked out of his uniform jacket, gave it to her to cover up.
“I’m not cold,” she told him.
“I’m not asking,” he shot back.
Reluctantly, she pulled her arms through the oversized sleeves of his jacket, and looked so damn cute, just like she had went she was a tyke trying on her mama’s clothes and trying to fit her teeny, tiny feet into high heels.
“Thanks,” she muttered dryly.
She’d covered up in his jacket just in time, too. Shane Quinn was staring over at her like a dog who smelled fresh meat. If any of the Quinn boys ever got their grubby hands on his Whitney…
Well, Rick couldn’t bear the thought.
***
It was a rare day in hell that Shane would quirk the hard line of his angry mouth into something that might even slightly resemble a grin, so when he did Troy had to glance over his shoulder and take a gander at what his brother was staring at that was giving him all the trouble.
Whitney Abernathy?
Huh.
If Kaleb hadn’t run off with the blonde, he’d have noticed Shane slipping into lala land and busted his balls some, so, as the eldest Quinn, Troy took it upon himself.
“Like what you see?”
Shane growled, lowering his eyes and lifting his beer to his mouth, but the glass was empty.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Troy told him before Dean anchored their conversation back into the territory of how they all ought to approach their mother, Nikita, and paternal grandmother, Sasha, about the possibility that a nearby werewolf pack might be messing with them.
“I say we all go. Make it a family affair.”
“I’m not so sure about that,” Conor countered, while Shane stole more glances at the spitfire redhead as she walked the sheriff out of the bar. “Grandmother Sasha has upheld her vow of silence.”
It was true. At Xavier Quinn’s passing from this world, his mother had stopped speaking. In public. To the pack. Whenever she was with company. But not one on one. Troy knew his grandmother had been communicating with Nikita, verbally. No one would know more than Sasha about the longstanding history between the surrounding werewolf packs, which meant that if they wanted to gather information, they were going to have to get her talking.
Shane mentioned, “Sasha can’t deny you,” as he looked Troy in the eye. “As our leader, if you question her, she has to speak. Period. She knows that.”
“She’s not going to talk to all of us,” Dean agreed. “But she’ll talk to you if it’s just the two of you.”
“I’ll see what I can do, then,” Troy concluded before downing the rest of his beer and pushing off from the table. “I’ll speak with her at first light. In the meantime, let’s keep our ear to the ground and our eyes up.”
As he strode through the bar and out into the crisp Wyoming night, he was already counting the hours he would have outside of Reece Gladstone’s cottage before he’d have to rush off to confront his grandmother about legends past.
Chapter Six
REECE
Reece was tangled up in a dream. Sweaty. Kicking. Thrashing. She felt strangled, the bedsheets bunched terribly around her throat as she fought to free herself from the nightmare. When finally she regained consciousness, her eyes frozen wide open and chest heaving, she surged up in bed, trying desperately to catch her breath as she glanced around her familiar bedroom.
Paisley bedspread. White vanity mirror. Antique dresser with framed photos of her late parents on top. The nightstand to her left was as it has always been, same with the one on the right. Her bedroom door was slightly ajar. Had she left it like that? Probably.
Everything was fine.
Just a bad dream.
But when Reece attempted to recall even one detail about the nightmare that had plagued her sleep, there was nothing. Only a stark sense of doom where recollections should have been.
She could use a glass of water, she decided, so she pulled the bedsheets back and slipped into her comical bunny rabbit slippers. There was a chill in the air and her satin t-shirt and shorts, which were a feminine, peach color, did nothing to keep her warm.
Wind howled across the curtained living room windows as she padded through, making her way into the kitchen. She didn’t turn on a single light as she went. The moonlight pouring through the kitchen windows was enough.
She had to squint a bit when she opened the refrigerator, having poured herself a glass of tap water from the kitchen faucet. Her cottage wasn’t connected to the town’s water, but rather drew from its own well, so it always tasted spring-fresh. There was a bag of oranges in the crisper. Taking one, she leaned against the counter, began peeling its thick skin, and debated booting up her laptop computer since she felt wide awake.
What had that dream been about? She wracked her brain as she sank her teeth into a juicy piece of orange, but there was nothing there.
Her heart skipped a violent beat then began racing in her chest when the black shadow of some moving thing darted across her kitchen window, outside. She stared at the window, but could only see the dim tracing of her own reflection.
Bringing her face very close to the glass, she peered out, but all she could see was the epic stillness of vegetation and half the porch.
“Oh!” she exclaimed the second she saw it again, this time in the darkened, moonlit distance of her front yard.
It was too big to be a wolf, but too fast to be a bear. The way it leapt out from the bushes reminded her of some kind of sleek jungle cat, but it had been black as coal with hunched shoulders and a long snout.
Reece realized she was clutching her tender throat and fighting to catch her breath—her dream, the nightmare. Had a beast like that been after her?
No.
Something else had been at her heels in the dream, and the dark, darting animal that was black as coal had been the safe haven she’d been running towards.
She yelped, stumbling back from the kitchen window, when she saw it again outside, or thought she did.
What in the heck was she waiting for?
Padding quickly in a brisk step, she rounded into the living room where the landline telephone was resting on the end table beside the couch.
Troy crossed her mind as she pressed the phone to her ear, but she’d already dialed 911, having categorized this as an emergency.
“This is Reece Gladstone!” she exclaimed the moment she heard the 911 operator’s voice come through the line. “I’m the white cottage on Berry Road,” she blurted then relayed the exact address and stated that the rabid wolf that had attacked poor Holly van Dyke was stalking around her front yard.
She was assured that the sheriff would be alerted immediately and that dispatch would send an officer over. The operator asked if Reece would like her to stay on the line, but another flicker of Troy Quinn flashed through her mind.
“No, that’s okay. I know I’m safe inside. I’ll trust that the sheriff will be here shortly,” she told the 911 operator before pressing her finger onto the plunger to disconnect the call.
Did she even have Troy’s number? Quinn Security was listed in the telephone book, but she had no reason to hope he or any of the Quinn brothers would be there, awake at this hour. It was nearly three in the morning, she realized, glancing up at the flower wall clock above the mantel. Nevertheless, she found an old telephone book in one of the kitchen drawers reserved for odds and ends. Dog-eared and faded as it was, it wasn’t older than a few years and soon she found an ad for Quinn Security in the yellow pages.
“Ha!” she blurted, tapping her finger against a se
cond number listed in the ad. Recognizing the area code as one only used for cell phone numbers, she skirted back to the living room couch with the phone book in hand and dialed. Troy’s outgoing voicemail message started up and her heart sank. When she heard the beep, she rushed through stating, “This is Reece! It’s a little after three in the morning and I saw that wolf! The one that must’ve killed Holly! The sheriff’s on his way! Did I mention this is Reece? Reece Gladstone,” she clarified in a dumb tizzy. “The librarian.”
As soon as she placed the phone in its cradle, she heard a firm knock at her front door and realized she was barely dressed in her skimpy, satin sleeping shorts and matching top.
“Rachel?” she called out as she raced to the door.
“Yes, Ma’am!” she called out from the other side. “It’s Officer Clancy.”
Reece threw the door open, never minding her state of undress, and ushered the officer inside, eager to shut and lock the door.
Rachel was holding a shotgun that looked longer than she was tall. “Sheriff’ll be here shortly,” she assured her. “Where’d you see the animal?”
“I was standing right here,” Reece explained, having led Rachel into the kitchen where she’d left the uneaten orange on the counter, its corkscrew peel beside it. “And I saw the beast right through this window.”
Rachel took a gander out the little window, noting that the far end of the front porch was on the other side.
“Did you notice which direction it ran off towards?”
“It was prowling all around,” Reece insisted. “It darted that way, then the other way.”
“Chasing after something?”
“I don’t see what,” said Reece, thinking for a moment. “I felt like it knew I was in here. I think it was trying to scare me.”
Rachel quirked her serious mouth into a sympathetic smile and told her, “The good news is that animal’s motives aren’t nearly so sinister, trust me. The thing’s probably rabid and stuck in some kind of fit. But I promise, it’s not about you and it wasn’t after you. Don’t worry, Sheriff Abernathy and I will put the thing out of its misery.”
Quinn Security Page 5