by Snow, Nicole
“Grady...you don’t have to answer this, but is the pet thing because of your wife?” I whisper slowly.
His eyes sharpen, fully leveled, naked and vulnerable and ever so slightly pissed off.
A storm in a glance that makes my heart wobble.
“Watching someone die is pure hell, Willow Wisp. Death can get fucked,” he snarls, his knuckles turning white around his beer bottle.
I’m half expecting the glass to shatter in his hand.
I know I should stop.
Just shut my mouth and leave him to his agony, this raw wound I’ve poked at without having any right to. Better to cut my losses before I find out how much of a cornered bear he is.
But if he’s saving me...I owe him something, don’t I?
“You’re a good man and crazy smart, but you know it’s also a part of life, right?” I say gently. “You can’t protect them from something as big as death forever. Eventually, they’re going to experience it head-on.”
“Not if I can help it,” he rumbles. “Not if I can spare them that shit, that arrow to the heart. Not if I’m the dad I always swore I’d be.”
God.
His voice rips through me like a current, an ache oozing to my knees.
He sounds so fierce, so stern, so firm that I let it go there. But I do feel sorry for him, his heartache cuts me open and makes me bleed for his sad, brave delusions.
He’ll have to figure them out on his own.
In his state of mind, he’s not going to believe what anyone else has to say about it.
“So...” I take another nervous swig of beer and gesture to the screens with my bottle. “What convinced Faulk that something’s happening tonight? Did he give you a reason?”
“The burn on Bruce’s paw.”
I sit up straighter.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Besides the numbers matching the stickers, we found time stamps. Multiple dates. Faulk thinks one’s meant to be a delivery date.”
I see there’s more on his stony face, so mellow and dark in the basement light.
“And?” I whisper, tensing in my seat. “What about the rest?”
He looks at me for a long moment before sighing. “And the other’s probably one of two things: a pay date or a kill date.”
Holy hell.
I don’t know what falls faster, my heart or my stomach, and shatters like a glass ornament.
All the awful blue stickers I’d seen at the rescue since arriving flash through my mind.
I never checked the other animals that went missing for burn marks, but they all must have had them somewhere, those sickening tattoos. A setup marking their price, their transfer, their doom.
Oh, no.
No, no, no.
“Tell me more,” I urge, swallowing the lump lodged in my throat. “Grady, I have to know...”
“From what he’s caught, Faulk believes the deaths occur shortly after the animals are shipped, though payment would explain it too. It’s usually several hours after the original stamp, which is what he believes is the pickup time.”
His angry glance at the screen tells me he’s looking at the time.
“Bruce was supposed to be transported tonight?” I ask.
“About fifteen minutes from now,” he says. “Unless the tiger disappearing scared them into delaying business, we should see action soon. Especially if these sick fucks are as greedy as you say, and they’ve got more animals to sell.”
My head hurts, a dull, brutal throb spun by my heart banging on my ribs.
Everything he’s said hits me harder then.
“So Bruce was scheduled to be transferred and...what, killed?” My question comes out hoarse.
“Yes. Last date is marked for roughly twelve hours from now.”
“And picked up in fifteen minutes?”
“Right.”
I wouldn’t call it exhilaration, but a form of grim righteousness that I’d been right hits. Along with sickly gratitude that Bruce is still alive. Relief slams through me like catching myself on a ledge before a ten-story fall.
“Damn them,” I spit, my head spinning as I glance at the screens. “So, even without Bruce, you think they’ll still show up? You think they’ll transfer...”
“Another animal,” he finishes. “Did you ever see more than one go missing at a time?”
“Sometimes. Smaller ones, mostly, but usually with larger animals, it was always just one.”
“We’ll wait and see,” he growls. The edge in his tone says it’s the last thing he wants to do.
My spine quivers as I stare at the screen, staring into the blackness.
It’s like we’re not in his safe, quiet basement, but there, helpless in the night with sinister things on the prowl.
The room grows so silent I jump when the fridge kicks in behind the bar. I rub the tension in my neck, stretching, fighting the urge to grab a second beer and slam it.
I need to be numb for this.
“Want another drink?” Grady asks, reading my mind. “Something stronger, maybe?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Want something else? Water? Coffee?”
“No, thanks. I’ll be up all night with caffeine.” I take a deep, shaky breath and release it, trying to regain control.
I wish like hell I’d acted sooner.
It would have saved so many animals. But if I’d taken off like I did with Bruce and hadn’t smacked into Grady—then where would I be?
Those thoughts freeze when the screens shift over.
“Look! Lights,” I whisper, leaning forward.
We both stare intently, our eyes glued to the scene.
All six cameras, each showing different angles, pick up a cube truck coming up the road. It stops next to the airstrip.
A man climbs out then, and his image makes me suck in air so I don’t faint.
“You recognize him? Willow?” Grady asks, his gaze wild with concern.
“That’s...that’s the conservation officer. Wayne Bordell.”
Crap.
There’s no mistaking that face, his block of a head, or his boxy build.
Starting near the truck, he places lights in the poles along the airstrip, illuminating the entire length of it.
“They can’t leave them out there,” Grady explains with a sense that’s better than mine for this sort of nightmare. “Lights would get picked up by other airplanes, sooner or later, causing someone to grow suspicious and come check it out. So they have to put them up and take them down every trip. Every transfer.”
We both continue watching while I try to remember how to breathe.
Sometime in the next ten minutes, a plane lands. It taxies to the end of the single runway and turns around, stopping next to the truck.
A man climbs out of the plane, and though it’s definitely a smaller civilian jet, it has a back hatch in the underbelly, completely in view of one camera. When the door slides open like a gaping mouth, it shows an empty cargo hold.
Empty except for a dolly that the man retrieves, rolling it down the short ramp onto the paved airstrip.
Another man climbs out of the plane. He’s short, wearing a black jumpsuit. The camera doesn’t show his face close up, but I can tell he has a faint pencil mustache.
“Do you recognize him?” Grady asks.
“No,” I whisper, half afraid the people on the screen will hear us. “But I definitely recognize her.”
I point at the woman climbing out of the box truck. Even doing a dirty deal in the middle of the night on a secret runway doesn’t faze her.
She’s wearing one of her signature outfits, a tight skirt and leopard print short jacket, along with zebra-striped heels. Every bit the money addicted junkie looking for another hit to fuel her bad habit for chic designer fashion and comfort bought in blood.
“That’s Priscilla Foss from the rescue,” I tell him, wishing I didn’t have to say those words.
She saunters over and meets the man with the mus
tache on the airstrip in one fluid devil walk.
We can’t hear them from this distance, but I can tell by her movements—mainly her hands as she talks—that she’s trying to smooth something over.
The evil witch always presses a hand to her heart like she’s oh-so-wounded whenever anyone doubts her.
Guess how many times she did it when she wanted me to shut up, stop asking questions, and believe her.
Now guess what she’s doing right now.
Mr. Mustache shakes his head, his face a scowl. He points at her—or is it something behind her?
She folds her hands across her chest with a haughty eye roll, talks some more, and then gestures for Bordell. He stomps over to the box truck to retrieve something while Priscilla waves her hand at the man with the dolly, as if it won’t be needed.
Wayne returns carrying what looks like a large blue storage tub.
Are those...holes poked in the top?
Sweet Jesus.
I know what’s coming before the nausea washes over me.
There’s an animal inside, and these horrible pukes don’t even have the decency or intelligence to transport it in a proper cage. But a second later, I realize there’s no need to.
Not when Wayne sets it on the ground next to Priscilla, undoes a makeshift wrap of bungee cords holding the lid on, and peels off the cover.
Priscilla reaches in with a sour expression and comes back with a small tan-brown lump, squirming in her hands.
A lion cub.
“No!” I hiss, gasping, stumbling onto my feet.
There’s nothing I can do from here, but my fight-or-flight outrage doesn’t want to accept it.
I wish for its sake the baby lion was sedated, but it’s movements tell me otherwise.
It’s still very much alive, but if Grady and Faulk are right about that other time stamp, that vicious, final one...maybe not for long.
My soul rips in two.
The Queen Bitch holds it up by the scuff of its neck, as if the poor thing is just one more baggy purse.
“Willow? If it’s too much, say the word...” Grady’s right behind me, laying those big hands on my shoulders like a comfort blanket.
God.
“No, no, I have to keep watching. I have to know.”
I think his huge, powerful hands are the only thing that keeps me from breaking apart.
“That’s one of Tilda’s cubs,” I whisper, my voice shaken and beat. “A perfectly healthy baby lion cub, born just weeks ago.”
“They must be trying to placate whoever wanted Bruce,” Grady says. “These cubs must be awful valuable, even if it’s less than a full-grown tiger.”
“Yes,” I whimper, entirely sick to my stomach.
The man examines the cub like a butcher inspecting a cut of meat, and I wish to Lord Almighty I could hear what’s being said.
From the looks of it, it’s not an easy discussion. An altercation, some kind of heated talks.
The mustache man finally waves at his assistant who’d pulled the dolly out of the airplane, and Priscilla plunks the cub back into the big blue tub.
Wayne puts the lid back on the container, and the dolly-man picks it up, carrying it to the plane’s yawning cargo hold.
My heart dives in my chest.
Mustache Bastard mutters a few more mushy-looking words to Priscilla, and she nods, her frustration fading off her face.
They shake hands before returning to their vehicles, their crisis seemingly defused.
The plane takes off in no time.
Then Bordell collects the lights, loading them in the truck. A minute later, they’re gone like they were never there, leaving nothing but still, eerie silence.
The entire scene probably lasted less than ten minutes. But I know it’ll affect me for the rest of my life.
My knees are weak. My nerves are tangled ropes. My breath clogs my lungs.
Mostly, my eyes fucking burn for that poor baby lion.
And for Tilda, losing one of her cubs like this.
I try to walk across the room, try to breathe, but my knees don’t want to work any better than my lungs.
I just know I’m more thankful than ever for Grady’s arms, which catch me from behind, pinning me to his huge, warm slab of a chest.
He holds me upright like a redwood, slowly turning me around to catch my tears in his shirt.
When my face touches his fabric, inhaling his scent, I’m absolutely over.
His shirt must be soaked with my grief by the end of it.
“Grady, w-we...we have to—”
“We’ll figure this out,” he promises, his voice pure summer thunder again. “Bruce, the cub, the sadists running that place...I made sure the cameras got everything. I’ll show it to Faulk, and somehow, some way, we’ll get it sorted. Don’t doubt me.”
I don’t, even when every frayed thread of hope in my head wants to.
Grady’s words come straight from the heart.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and this man is courage incarnate.
“You know we’re gonna fix this, right? You trust me?” he asks, his very cadence so soothing.
I nod, but I can’t unsee that sweet helpless cub in my head.
The image keeps repeating like an old video reel from Satan’s crawlspace, a gut-punch reminder of just how heartless, savage, and cruel this world can be.
“I-I should have stopped it. Before I grabbed Bruce, I mean,” I say, shaking through my words. “I just...I didn’t know. I didn’t know if they would hurt me, but I should have stopped it!”
“Woman, you’re stopping it now,” he growls back. “This shit takes time, so take my patience in the meantime. And you’re right, if you’d breathed a word without being safe first, there’s no telling what these people would do.”
I don’t know what he means until he squeezes me so tight I forget my pain.
For a hot, anguished second, I’m so sweetly bundled up in this gorgeous man that there’s nothing but us.
Nothing but his words and warrior-throated promises.
“How, though?” I whisper, lifting my head. “How the hell do we stop them?”
He presses his forehead against mine, urging me to hush. For a second, I’m equally scared and overwhelmed at the thought that he might kiss me to shut me up, his lips only inches away.
“We’ll figure it out. For now, it’s enough that you aren’t alone. You’ve got me and friends I’d trust with my life. I’ll exhaust every damn resource I’ve ever had to put a stop to this crap, Willow. I promise you, I want to save those critters, too.”
I’m beyond grateful for his help, his support, and his glorious strength pressed so snug against my body. But I’m still worried, still terrified for the animals.
“Time for bed,” he says, walking me to my room by the hand.
Just before the door closes, I pull back at his hand, lacing my fingers through his and holding on for dear life.
It’s almost silly how Gothic this feels—the moon splashing through the bedroom window, the halo on his face, the dark heat in his eyes, the freaking tiger in the barn, this sad, hot mess of passion and secrets we’ve become.
Call it absurd, or just my imagination, but an invisible, fraught message passes between us, silent as a grave.
We both whisper “good night,” almost simultaneously, but that’s not what I hear.
It’s something else, and it ripples off every beautiful inch of Grady like static.
You’re not alone anymore.
This is my fight.
This is my promise.
And somehow, after closing the door and collapsing in bed, a very confused part of my heart wants to believe he doesn’t just mean my quagmire with Exotic Plains.
* * *
I lay in bed for hours, too tired for sleep.
At least it’s a clear night. When counting imaginary sheep gets boring, I resort to staring out the window at the moon and stars and nothing in particular.
The sickness inside me turns to raw anger.
I’ve been around animals my entire life. I’ve confronted death and sad things plenty of times in nature, but this...the transfer of a lion cub to monsters for nothing but filthy money makes me so furious I want to get up, drive back to the rescue, and slaughter Priscilla and Niles Foss with my bare hands.
Tonight, I’m thankful the truck is still broken down.
Because if it weren’t, I might be tempted to go berserker, and that wouldn’t turn out any better than running away. So I let my anger speak, and allow my revenge fantasies to pop off in my head through a haze of red.
I question calling Dad again, but I know he can’t do more than Grady.
Actually...
Dad wouldn’t even be able to help as much as Grady is.
Not when his contacts are official, and if the Fosses have minions like Bordell from the state helping them, there’s no telling how deep this goes.
I’m just more thankful than ever that I broke down at the Purple Bobcat, and not somewhere else.
That was Fate looking me dead in the eye and smiling.
Now, I just have to hope my luck holds and brings an end to this mess for everyone involved.
The next morning, after sleeping in short fits, I check on Bruce before returning to the house to cook breakfast. Grady’s up, sitting at the table with a bowl of cereal and a steaming mug of coffee.
His bearish presence makes me grin. I think he’s smiling back with those eyes full of mahogany shadows.
“I was only joking about the food poisoning, ya know.”
“I know, but I don’t expect you to cook every meal. Aunt Faye never cooked breakfast. That’s always been my job. She’d usually come over in the afternoons, to be here when the girls got off the bus, and she’d head home when I got back from the bar. If it was early enough, she’d leave before dinner, or if it was too late or too cold, she’d stay over till morning.”
The girls told me most of that, too.
I walk over and pour a cup of coffee.
“She’s been doing that for what, years? Spending her free time looking after you guys?”
“Yep, we’re her main family now. Uncle James died while I was in the Army, and my brother moved out of Dallas years ago. Faye’s kids, two boys and a girl, are all grown with families now, and they also live out of state. So Aunt Faye’s happy as hell to get her time in with the girls.”