by E. A. Copen
I swallowed and shook my head. “I don’t think so. It might be related to the election. Why else would they do it tonight? Everyone in Paint Rock knew I’d be at Tindall’s. Maude’s people had to be pissed. My money is on them.”
He nodded. We sat in awkward silence while I thought about how it might be easier to just tear the house down than to try to fix it.
“Don’t you worry about the house,” Sal said as if he’d read my thoughts. “The rest of the pack and I are going to fix it up for you.”
“I can’t ask you to do that, Sal.”
“You didn’t ask. It’s done and arranged. In the meantime, you and Hunter can stay here.”
I shook my head again. “No, I couldn’t. That’d be… I just don’t think…” My voice trailed off, unable to find the right excuse.
“I’ve got two bedrooms that aren’t in use, Judah, and I barely use the rest of the place. Besides, Hunter already knows his way around. This way, if you need me, I’m right there.”
You mean you’ll be there to protect me, I thought with a frown. I didn’t want to be protected or avenged or taken care of, at least not in the way he meant to do it. Sal meant well, but he was more accustomed to getting things done himself rather than thinking them through. I didn’t want him to make whoever messed up my house and things eat shit and die. I wanted them to rot in prison. My version of punishment was far worse.
Try as I might to argue, he wouldn’t have it. He’d already called in favor after favor to make sure I had everything I needed: new clothes, a new laptop, cleaning supplies, repairmen. He’d taken care of everything. When I asked where the money was coming from, he cited the pack’s funds.
“I’m not taking money from them,” I answered. “I’m not part of your pack, Sal. Those funds are for Chanter’s medical expenses.”
“Dammit, Judah!” Sal wiped his hands over his face. “I want to do this for you and Hunter. They want to help. Is that so hard to accept?”
I crossed my arms on the table and put my head down.
Sal sighed. “Look, at the very least, let me put you up for a few days while we clean the place out. You should tell Marcus what happened.”
My head shot up and I glared at him. “Why? Why the hell should I tell him anything and not the police?”
“This might come as a surprise to you, Judah, but he won’t let that kind of thing stand. Marcus might be an arrogant, self-centered prick, but he won’t tolerate someone singling you out like that for doing the right thing.”
“No,” I snapped. “Not Marcus, and not anyone in your club. You haven’t told them, have you?”
He drummed his fingers on the table. “No. I just talked to Valentino. He, Shauna, Daphne, and Ed are coming over to get started while I run Chanter out to his appointment at the hospital. I can keep it quiet, but they’re going to find out, Judah. You were singled out because of your association with Chanter and me and the rest of the pack. I think that message was clear. It’s not going to go away just because you don’t tell people about it. They’ll do something else. This was a warning of things to come.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Focus on what’s important—you and Hunter. Do your job for Marcus, and let me take care of the rest. That’s what you do.”
I wanted to object, to kick and scream and cry and punch life in the face for dealing the hand I’d just picked up. But there wasn’t time, and Sal was right. There was a little girl in the hospital who needed my help. His little girl. His secret little girl. If I didn’t save her, I’d be facing something a lot worse than a wrecked house.
“Just promise not to make it weird for Hunter, okay, Sal?”
He made a sour face. “How would I make it weird?”
“And do me a favor and call Tindall. Tell him to drop Hunter off here in the morning. I don’t want him to see. As far as he knows, there’s an electrical problem or a gas leak or something stupid. Okay?”
Sal agreed and went to the back of the house to make up one of the other two rooms so I could pass out. I wandered over to the sofa and picked two empty Corona bottles and a Pulp Fiction DVD case out of the cushions, depositing them on the coffee table. I only meant to sit down, not to fall asleep. After the night I’d had, I like to think I earned sleep on Sal’s sofa.
Chapter Six
I woke up lying in a twin-sized bed with three pillows, a down comforter, and no idea how I’d gotten there. The light filtering in through the blinds was still a pale blue and my phone alarm wasn’t going off, so it was early. But there were also clothes on the floor that weren’t mine, along with a mostly empty tequila bottle. My head was pounding and my stomach felt woozy. The last clear memory in my head was a pleasant dream mixed with the kiss Sal and I had shared outside my house.
Oh, no.
Panic overrode confusion and I bolted upright. The werewolf stretched out across the floor popped his head up, canine ears perked. It began to sink in that I had desperately misinterpreted the situation. I hadn’t had the night I thought I had.
Last night’s events came back to me slowly. The pounding in my head wasn’t tequila. It was another stress headache that fed the uneasiness in my stomach. Sal had stripped down to shift and taken up a protective position in wolf form near the door because his senses would be keener should danger arise. He’d probably downed the tequila just prior. Werewolves being how they were, he could process that much and only get sleepy while I would have blacked out. Yeah, it’s not fair. I know.
I let out a deep breath and rubbed my face while Sal stretched and let out a squeaky yawn.
“Yeah, it’s early. I’ve got stuff to do, though.” I threw the covers off me, stood, and stretched before I grabbed my phone. I had two hours before I had to get Hunter and try to explain why we’d moved in with our neighbor without bringing anything with us. That, I wasn’t looking forward to.
Things with Hunter were complicated, as it often is with teenagers. He was embarrassed by his mom but thought his pack mentor walked on water. I hadn’t told him yet that Sal and I were dating, mostly because we hadn’t been on a proper date yet. I wanted to make sure we weren’t better off as friends before I talked to Hunter.
He didn’t like it when I dated. The last man I brought home to him was a co-worker from BSI, and Hunter didn’t speak to me for a week. He was going to feel betrayed. Maybe. Or maybe he’d be okay with it being Sal. I didn’t know, and that was what worried me the most. That and it was kind of weird dating a guy who could turn into a wolf if he didn’t want to talk.
I sighed and trudged to the door, still rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Sal’s paws thumped lightly down the hall after me, stopping abruptly when I closed the bathroom door to pee. When I opened the door, he was waiting there, head tilted quizzically to the side as if he were a Doberman and not a werewolf.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I grumbled and passed him. “I know I look like shit in the morning.” I went to hold open the front door, thinking maybe he wanted to go out. Werewolves in wolf form don’t like closed spaces, and I reasoned he wanted to go stretch his legs, maybe sniff around and chase off a jackrabbit or two. That was what wolves did, right?
But Sal sat down short of the door, gave a wolfy sigh, and sneezed in protest.
“Well, I’m sorry. I’ve never lived with a werewolf before,” I snapped and pushed the door shut.
Sal coughed.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, but I never saw Alex as a wolf. Best I can do is draw on my experience with a collie I owned.”
He growled at that, got up, and stalked past me, swishing his gray-white tail in the air and carrying his head high. That was a clear message. Sal thought himself far superior to a collie, and I’d probably just insulted him, treating him like a dog.
“Well, if you don’t want to be treated like a dog, don’t look like one,” I mumbled and shambled into the kitchen.
Having paws instead of fingers, Sal wasn’t going to make any coffee, and I wasn’t
going to function without it, so I fumbled through getting a pot on. I’d been to his place for dinner enough times that I had a decent handle on where everything was, although it was awkward to do everything with his eyes following me around. I couldn’t tell whether he was judging me or something else. Maybe he just wasn’t in the mood to talk. I knew I wasn’t.
Two cups of coffee later, I looked down at my rumpled clothes. “I need something to wear. Something whoever was in my house didn’t touch.” I knew it sounded weird, but I just wanted to burn the place down rather than let the pack clean it up. Someone had been in my house, someone I didn’t know. I felt violated in ways I couldn’t even put into words.
Sal, who had been sitting attentively on the floor nearby, turned his head toward the front door and pushed his ears back. A minute later, I heard the tell-tale sound of a motorcycle pulling into the driveway and rose to look out the window. The sour feeling in my stomach worsened. “Shit. It’s Istaqua. You’d better go get changed.”
The door to Sal’s bedroom closed in answer. I turned around and found him gone, leaving me to answer the door whenever Istaqua worked his way up the stairs to knock. I watched through the window as Istaqua trudged up the stairs, put his hand on the doorknob, and came in uninvited.
I didn’t know what tribe Istaqua hailed from. Like Chanter and Sal, he was some sort of Native American, and you couldn’t miss that looking at him. He wore his long, silver-black hair in two messy braids. A pair of aviators hid his eyes. Judging by the brewery smell he gave off, I guessed he hadn’t slept. The black leather vest he wore announced for all to see that he was the president of the Tomahawk Kings.
I narrowed my eyes when I spied the one percenter patch. While his vest was decorated in lots of other embroidered patches, that was one of the few I knew the meaning behind. It comes from an old saying by the American Motorcycle Association that ninety-nine percent of all motorcycle riders were good, law-abiding citizens. Only one percent were criminals. Istaqua wore that label as a literal badge of honor right under the patch announcing his rank as president of the Kings.
He hadn’t expected to see me there when he came in. His pause in the doorway said that. A sly smile spread over his face after a minute, and he stepped in, closing the door behind him. “Well, then. They told me you two were an official item, but I had you pegged as a bit of a prude. Looks like I owe Flash twenty bucks.”
I put a hand on my hip as he came in and sat down on the sofa, putting his dusty boots up on the coffee table.
“I smell coffee,” he said. “Good. I’ll take mine black.”
I thought hard about telling him where he could shove his coffee order. After all, I wasn’t his waitress, and I wasn’t some girl he could order around. If he thought he could snap his fingers and get me to jump, he had another thing coming, especially this early in the morning. I gripped the handle of my own coffee cup tightly and imagined pouring the entire steaming pot on his lap. I wonder what you’d think of that black coffee, asshole.
The bedroom door opened, and Sal stepped out in human form again, still working on buttoning the shirt he’d chosen for the day. He stopped in the kitchen, giving me a look that said, play nice.
“Fine,” I grumbled and pulled another coffee cup down.
“Didn’t expect to see you this early.” Sal strolled into the living room. “Did I miss a call?”
“Is it early?” Istaqua shrugged. “I didn’t want to do this over the phone. Too much gets lost in translation when you can’t look a man in the eye and ask him questions face to face.”
Sal crossed his arms.
I walked into the living room and dropped the coffee cup onto the table between Istaqua’s boots, letting some of it slosh over the edge. Istaqua didn’t take the hint. He lowered his feet, and casually picked up the mug, frowning after he took a sip. “You should train your pet human better, Saloso.”
I took a step forward but found Sal’s hand blocking my advance. He might have stopped me from hitting Istaqua, but Sal couldn’t stop my mouth. “You should think twice before showing up in front of a fed piss-drunk wearing a criminal billboard.”
He showed me a mouthful of yellowing teeth. “So, that’s how it is, huh, brother? You going to sell out for a little pussy?”
“I’m not selling out,” Sal answered. “And you and I already had this discussion.”
“And I’ll tell you what I told you then. It ain’t none of my business who you’re fucking, so long as it ain’t the club and it ain’t me or anybody else with a patch.”
“What’s the problem, then?”
Istaqua leaned forward and put the coffee cup back down with a loud bang. More coffee spilled onto the wood surface of the coffee table. “The problem is, I had to hear from Phil that you were in the bar last night with this broad. We don’t shit where we eat, son. I thought I made that clear.”
I folded my arms over my chest. “You got a problem with me?”
He pointed at me. “I ain’t talking to you.”
“You are now.”
Istaqua raised his sunglasses to reveal bloodshot eyes. “Girl, if two of my brothers weren’t already firmly on your side, I’d belt you across the mouth for the way you’re looking at me. I’d break out some of those pretty teeth of yours, give you something better to put in that mouth of yours than spiteful words. I bet you’d change your mind real quick about me.” He grabbed his crotch.
I gagged at the idea.
Sal stepped firmly between us with a low growl. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Last I checked, I was still running the Kings. I decide what happens and when, and I decide who’s allowed to come and go from the clubhouse. You feel me, brother?”
“I feel you,” Sal answered through clenched teeth. “Now, do you have some other reason you drove all the way out here, or is this just a dick-waving contest?”
He lowered the sunglasses again. “I need to know if she’s going to be a problem.”
Sal turned and glared at me. It was an angry warning look, one I didn’t see on his face often. After a moment, I realized I’d shrunk down and away from him and fought to recover.
“Judah understands the ramifications of being involved with me.”
“You going to lay an official claim to her then?” Istaqua asked, leaning back. “Because that is a mighty fine piece of ass you keep parading around. Better make it known before somebody mistakes her for a hang-around.”
Sal’s hand shot out and gripped my arm tight. “Anybody who tries better have his affairs in order because he’d be a dead man.”
“Good to hear it.” Istaqua stood and picked up the coffee cup. He took a sip and then waved it at me. “Thanks for the joe.” He headed for the door, cup in hand. He paused by the front door and turned back around. “Oh, by the way. I talked to Valentino a little while ago. We’re going to look into whoever trashed your place, Judah. Not as a favor to you or anything, of course, but Paint Rock and Eden belong to the Kings. This is our backyard. Nobody fucks with people in our backyard without expecting to get fucked up in return. Don’t you worry your head about it, little lady. We’ll get this straightened out.”
He left just as he’d come, without another word to either of us.
When he was gone, Sal stormed over and locked the door. “Son of a bitch! I fucking told him not to call the club in.”
“Valentino? Is he a member, too?”
“Val can’t run with us. He’s got…other obligations.” Sal’s voice trailed off and he punched the door. “God dammit!”
“Calm down. You know he only came out here and acted like that to get you all wound up. But he does have a point.”
“About what?”
“I saw the one-percenter patch, Sal. I know Marcus is protecting you guys. We can’t go on pretending I don’t know you’re doing something illegal. I need to know what and how deep you are in it. Without that truth, I can’t trust you, and if I can’t trust you, how are we supposed to build a rela
tionship?”
Sal leaned his forehead against the door. After a long pause, his shoulders slumped and he sank down to the floor. I sat down on the arm of the sofa, facing him, waiting.
“If I tell you, you’ll walk away,” Sal said after a long time.
“Maybe, but I’ll walk for sure if you don’t.”
“Things would be so much simpler if you weren’t a fucking fed.”
A small fire lit in my chest. My heart picked up speed. “But I am a fed, Sal, and that’s not going to change. It’s my job to protect people. I need to know if I should be protecting them from you.”
He leaned forward. “Come on, Judah. You know me. I’ve bled for you. With you. I don’t ask questions about where you go, what you do, and with who.”
“Maybe you should. At least you know I’m not killing people or running drugs and guns all over. Until I know everything, that can’t be true. I don’t know you, and I can’t care about a man I don’t know.”
“You didn’t know Alex,” Sal snapped, his words full of venom. “You didn’t even know he was a werewolf before you fucking married and had a kid with him.”
The fire that had been burning in my chest just a minute ago iced over. Sal might as well have stabbed me. It would have been kinder. He knew, knew that it hurt me that Alex hadn’t been honest with me. He knew I saw that as a mistake on my part, one I wasn’t willing to repeat. Everything about my marriage to Alex hurt to talk about. Even looking at Hunter and seeing Alex in the corner of his smile, or the way he wore his shaggy hair long, or the way he swaggered around the house, those things hurt. It was all a constant reminder of the price I had paid for my ignorance and complacency. It’s what I got for not asking questions. I got my husband, my son’s father killed.
A response formed in my brain, but I couldn’t get it out. My whole chest ached. I felt my jaw tremble as the hurt transformed itself into anger. Sal had said that to hurt me. Did he think so little of me that I would crawl into bed with a criminal without knowing the first thing about him? What if he thought of me like Istaqua did? Just a convenient piece of ass. Property.