Quiet Man

by Kristen Ashley

  “I’d really rather you not do that, Tex,” I told him.

  “Then you better be really fuckin’ good to her,” he told Mo.

  “We haven’t even been out on a date!” I snapped.

  Tex finally looked down at me. “Don’t try that shit with me, girl. I’ve been in on it since the beginning. I’m not sure Lee and Indy have even been on a date yet, and they’ve been married for years and got two kids.”

  “You really kinda haven’t, have you?” Hank asked Lee.

  “Can we talk about the lunatic with a basement covered in plastic sheets?” Mitch asked.

  And my body went ice-cold.

  “A word. Now,” Mo grunted, and didn’t wait for Mitch to agree to said word.

  He turned on his bare foot and stalked to the back door.

  Mitch looked to me, the men, and followed.

  Brock went after him.

  “You didn’t know?” Eddie murmured to me.

  I stared at the dining room table.

  “Lottie, querida, you didn’t know?” Eddie repeated.

  I tipped my eyes up to him. “Plastic sheets?”

  Eddie’s face got hard and he looked to Lee.

  Tex’s big mitt fell on my shoulder and squeezed.

  “He was…he was getting ready to follow through, wasn’t he?” I asked.

  Eddie looked back to me.

  “Yeah, Lottie,” he said gently.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed.

  Tex pulled out the chair beside me and settled his bulk into it.

  His hand covered mine on the table.

  “Safe now, girl. All good,” he low boomed.

  I stared at his hand covering mine.

  “Lottie, look at me,” Tex urged.

  But something was wrong with me.

  “Lottie, my girl, look at me,” Tex repeated.

  “I love you, Tex, you know that, don’t you?” I said to our hands.

  “I do, darlin’, and I love you too,” Tex replied.

  The astonishing and magnificent event of Tex actually saying the words and not getting tongue tied and feeling awkward at open emotion didn’t even register with me.

  “I love you, Eddie, you know that,” I told Tex and my hands. “I love you for my sister and my nephews and I love you for me too.”

  “Love you too, sweetheart,” I heard Eddie murmur as I felt my hair gently pulled off my shoulder and a hand land reassuringly on my neck.

  I wasn’t reassured.

  “I love all you guys,” I said.

  No one replied but I felt the goodness all around me.

  It just didn’t work.

  “I need Mo,” I whispered in a voice even I barely heard.

  “Sorry, darlin’?” Tex asked.

  Abruptly, I turned my gaze to his, totally lost the hold I’d been keeping now for a week, and shrieked, “I need Mo!”

  The back door opened even before Vance and Ren took off toward it.

  I heard heavy, fast steps then I was in strong arms and after that I was sitting in a wide lap, burrowing into a big body, trembling from head to toe.

  “Victim’s Assistance?” I heard Hank ask quietly.

  “Give her a minute,” Mo replied in the same tone, holding me close but pulling me closer. Then in my ear, “What do you feel?”

  Terrified.

  Plastic sheets.

  His arms tightened further. “What do you feel, sweetheart?”

  “Y-you.”

  “Me,” he agreed. “Where am I?”

  “R-right here.”

  “Right here. With you. Are you safe?”

  I forced myself to nod, but the movement felt foreign, like I’d never done it before.

  And I couldn’t stop shaking.

  Man, it was so cold.

  “Get her sister here,” Mo ordered.

  “On it,” Eddie said.

  “And her mom,” Mo went on.

  “Got that,” Tex replied.

  “I’m okay. I’ll b-be okay. Don’t worry them,” I said to Mo’s chest.

  “Lottie?”

  “Y-yeah?”

  “Shut up.”

  “’Kay.”

  Still trembling (okay, more like shaking), I pushed closer to Mo.

  And he held on.

  Chapter Eleven

  I Hit the Mother Lode

  Mo

  “Fuck, Mo. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  Lawson hit him with that the second his foot hit the ground floor after he left Lottie in bed with her mother and sister.

  Mo looked to the man.

  He looked wrecked.

  Mitch Lawson was about doing what he could to make things right, not the other way around.

  Freaking Lottie like that wasn’t in his DNA and knowing he did gutted him.

  But that was on Mo.

  She’d shown her level of fear that first night.

  He should have known something like this would happen and the second Mitch and Slim showed, he should have been on that.

  “I know you didn’t,” Mo replied. “She knows you didn’t. She’s a together woman. Puts on a tough front. Even I didn’t know she wasn’t hangin’ in there, Mitch. And you couldn’t know, Lottie bein’ how she is, that we hadn’t kept her up to date. That’s on me. I should have warned you. But like I told you outside, she doesn’t know anything. The first letter, that’s it.”

  Lawson nodded.

  “Right. Let’s just get this done,” Mo said, moving into the living room.

  He was shocked as shit when they settled in, the Nightingale brothers (Lee and Hank), the Chavez brothers (Eddie and Hector), Tex, Vance, Luke and Ren all stood at his back.

  Guess his approval rating went up.

  In that moment, he couldn’t care less. He needed to focus on getting this done so he could get back to his girl.

  He leveled his eyes to Lawson and Lucas who sat next to each other at the dining room table after Mo sat in the chair at the head, where Lottie had been.

  Lawson had dealt with it (for now) and had his game face on.

  And Lawson started it, taking point as bad cop, though Mo suspected Lucas might not take the role of good.

  “Axl reports he locked this guy down because you called him in the crowd.”

  Axl would not report that.

  Fuck, this wasn’t going to go easy.

  But it couldn’t.

  If they appeared to be sweeping shit under the rug, this whackjob could walk.

  “I didn’t get a good vibe from him, but he wasn’t notable, which is why I didn’t clock him at King Soopers where I saw him first,” Mo somewhat confirmed. “But I made the call and Axl said he was on him. I don’t know anything about locking him down and that wasn’t our remit, so I can’t confirm if he locked him down. But I’d be surprised Axl would do that unless the man gave Axl a reason to lock him down.”

  “The suspect reports, when he was approached, he tried to leave and wasn’t allowed. Were you a witness to that?” Lucas asked.

  “I was on Lottie in the dressing room. So no.”

  “You just tagged him as a person of interest and then you took care of Lottie,” Lawson said.

  Mo nodded.

  “You need to make a statement on the record of that and the King Soopers sighting,” Lucas remarked. “You sure it was him at the store?”

  “A hundred percent, honestly, no. But gut, the second I saw him in the club, I’d bet all I had on the fact it was him checkin’ out cucumbers.”

  Lawson and Lucas looked at each other.

  “Receipt,” Lawson muttered.

  “Noted,” Lucas muttered back.

  That meant they’d search through the guy’s stuff and try to find a receipt to place him at the store, verifying Mo’s statement so Mo didn’t have to be a hundred percent on placing him there.

  And Mo hoped that guy bought something and kept the receipt.

  “I’ll go on the record about it,” Mo added. “When I clocked him at t
he club, he wasn’t watching Lottie. He had eyes on me.”

  “He threatened your life in the last letter,” Lucas noted.

  Mo felt the men behind him shift and wondered if they knew that part.

  “Yup.”

  “And you didn’t want the police called in?”

  “Smithie’s call. Letters addressed to him.”

  Neither Lucas nor Lawson looked happy about that.

  “But you were directly threatened,” Lawson reminded him.

  “I look like a guy who can’t take care of myself?” Mo asked.

  “No,” Lawson replied. “The man states his wallet was forcibly taken from him in Smithie’s office and he was detained against his will.”

  Well, hell.

  No, this wasn’t gonna go easy.

  “I was on Lottie,” he reiterated.

  “You don’t know about that?” Lucas asked, watching him closely.

  He did.

  “I was on Lottie.”

  “You don’t know about that,” Lucas repeated, not in question form this time, but it was still a question.

  “Asked and answered,” Lee declared. “Move on, Slim.”

  “Lee, let them do their jobs,” Hank said quietly.

  Hank, also a cop, knew the game and he knew it had to be played.

  Lee just wanted them out of the house so it could quiet down for Lottie.

  There was a knock on the door.

  Seemed things weren’t going to quiet down for Lottie.

  Fuck.

  “On it,” Hector said, and he moved.

  “I’m sorry, but it wasn’t actually answered, Lee,” Lawson pointed out.

  “Tagged the guy. Waited until the lights went down seein’ as I figured he knew me, and that I might know about him, I didn’t want to tweak him by talking into my radio,” Mo put in and Lawson and Lucas’s attention came back to him. “The lights went down after Lottie’s set. I informed the team. Axl stated he was on him. I got Lottie to the dressing room, she locked herself in. I called it into Hawk. I told him the level of my certainty this was our guy, which was high. Hawk made the call.”

  “And that call was?” Lawson asked.

  “I told you that call, Mitch,” Hawk said, striding toward them in front of Hector. “Now, Mo doesn’t need an attorney, but I’m fuckin’ gonna get him one just to fuck your day up if this shit goes on longer.”

  Hawk knew the game.

  It just got under his skin when his men were forced to play it.

  “Smithie, nor you, nor any member of your team, nor any employee of the club can detain a man, Hawk,” Lawson retorted.

  “Yes we can as hired security for that club,” Hawk returned.

  Lawson knew that to be true, so he let it go and switched subjects. “He reports his wallet was forcibly removed from his person.”

  “I’m not surprised he’s offering false testimony, Mitch, considering what was found in his house,” Hawk clipped. “But at the time, when we shared our concerns, he shared he had nothing to hide, was happy for us to enter his house and do a search, something we did. He thought we were bluffing, didn’t understand the scope of our security remit with Smithie or thought this right here would get what was in his house made inadmissible after what he’ll claim is an illegal search. Now he’s falsifying his story, deciding this will be his defense when his shit got hot.”

  Mo remained silent.

  The shifting behind him ceased.

  “But we got witnesses to the effect of our story,” Hawk carried on. “And he’s got a basement fitted with soundproofing and other things I don’t need to describe since you saw it. He got agitated during the time he chose not to leave Smithie’s office, probably cottoning onto the fact we weren’t bluffing. He was cocky at first, and if you read his letters, you’ll get why. He thought he was on his way, his confidence growing.”

  They definitely knew that last.

  “So we did detain him,” Hawk went on. “Just not forcibly. But we were adamant about it once Jorge found what was in his house and I called you. I made that order. So that’s on me. But Mo wasn’t around for any of that. So how about Mo comes down to make a statement when his woman isn’t upstairs, workin’ off a week’s worth of tension caused by the likes of this man having her in his sights and we move on from here.”

  Mo wondered who’d called Hawk in.

  His guess was Lucas.

  But it also could have been Lawson.

  He’d never know because he’d never ask, and it didn’t matter anyway.

  It was just a game that needed to be played to put a sick man down.

  “By the time we hit that club, Hawk, all the patrons were gone so we couldn’t question them. And none of the employees are reporting the incident where your man Axl forcibly locked down the suspect and took him up to the office,” Lawson noted.

  “That was because Axl and Jaylen asked him up to the office and he came of his own free will,” Hawk replied.

  “And again, he says otherwise,” Lucas pointed out.

  “And again, with what Jorge told me was in his house, I’m not surprised,” Hawk fired back. “Are you? You got him on intent. You got him on stalking. You got him on malice aforethought, times two.” He jerked his head toward Mo, indicating the death threat. “And the Feds got him on using the United States postal service to deliver a threat. Three counts. You call in the Feds?”

  “Yeah,” Lucas said.

  “Now you’re tellin’ me this guy who had that shit in his house is gonna roll into a court of law, whine about Smithie and my boys forcibly capturing and detaining him when the man doesn’t have a mark on him, have pictures shown of that basement, his journals passed around to a jury, those letters read, and he’s gonna get off?” Hawk asked.

  Axl had a talent at that, a capture with no marks.

  Downright skilled.

  Mo did not smile.

  But he wanted to.

  “We’re tellin’ you, if we don’t hand everything to the DA with all of it tied up tight, he’s gonna find a crack to slip through so maybe you can back off and let us do our job,” Lawson replied.

  “And I’ll repeat, I’m good to go down to the station, but I told you what I saw, where I saw it, what I did, what I reported to Hawk, which by the way, turned out to be correct, and that I was on Lottie,” Mo butted in.

  “And Lottie…?” Lucas pressed.

  “Was in the dressing room, then in my truck, then in bed asleep and she doesn’t know dick,” Mo told him. “The only letter she saw was the first, everyone’s call considering the escalation of menacing language.”

  “She might hear it if this goes to trial,” Lawson said carefully.

  “I don’t know why, since she doesn’t know dick, so there’d be no reason to call her as a witness. She doesn’t even know what this guy looks like,” Mo bit off.

  “We’re gonna have to talk to her,” Lucas said even more carefully.

  “You’re gonna have to wait,” Mo clipped.

  Lucas nodded.

  “So are we done?” Mo asked.

  “We’re done, but we’ll need you to come in as soon as you can to make this official,” Lawson told him.

  “And with this whackjob makin’ false statements, what’s my girl up against?” Mo demanded to know.

  “Hawk’s right,” Lucas answered Mo. “We got him on intent to do grievous bodily harm, stalking, malice aforethought and the Feds got a case. He typed out the letters, but handwrote the addresses, which might have been ballsy, but mostly it was stupid. Threats delivered, an employer took action to see his employees were safe. In these situations, bringing in security details is not unheard of. Even hired security using force when a threat has been identified isn’t unheard of and that won’t be a problem. The search of his home possibly against his will…”

  Lucas let that trail, but he wasn’t done.

  “If the judge can get past that and what was in his house is admissible, though, he’s fucked. Our search h
ad a warrant. The judge just factors that, we’ll be fine. As for bail, the letters alone will give any judge pause. The rest, the DA will drive hard to either have bail set out of his price range or hold him until trial since he’s clearly not all there, so not only a likely flight risk, but just a risk. She’s good. But we’ll stay on this and if it comes to a point we’re concerned, we’ll be makin’ a lot of calls, so she’s covered.”

  That was what he wanted to hear.

  Mo got up.

  “Morrison, I’ll tell her myself when I see her again, but if you can get it in, apologize to Lottie for me. Yeah?” Lawson asked.

  Game over.

  Mo lifted his chin.

  Eddie started to make short work of getting Lawson and Lucas out of there, but Mo didn’t hang around to watch.

  He took the stairs three at a time and went to Lottie’s bedroom.

  Lottie was curled up in a ball, her head in her mom’s lap, her mother stroking her hair.

  Jet, on her other side with Lottie’s feet in her lap, caught sight of him and gave him a small smile.

  “Lawson and Lucas are taking off,” he told Jet.

  Lottie’s head came up and her eyes found him.

  “You okay?” she asked.

  “I’m good, baby,” he answered, moving into the room. “You okay?”

  “She needs her sister’s chocolate sheet cake,” Nancy decided.

  “I’ll get on that,” Jet said, scooting to exit the bed.

  “How about you get on this and I’ll get on getting those boys to move along?” Nancy asked him, tipping her head sideways and down to her girl.

  He was one hundred percent down with that.

  Lottie pushed up.

  She was down with it too.

  Jet touched his forearm as she moved around him.

  Mo went to the bed.

  He helped Nancy out of it. Seemed she had something wrong with her arm, not a lot of mobility with that. Though the rest worked fine.

  Probably a lasting result of the stroke Lottie mentioned.

  “Thanks, Mo,” she murmured when she was steady on her feet.

  He didn’t wait a long time to ascertain that before he slid in and took her place.

  Lottie didn’t hesitate to put her head in his lap.