We made it almost back to the truck before a preteen girl, thankfully fully dressed, ran up to us.
“Are you here about Tammy?” She caught me by the arm. “Please, ma’am. Are you?”
A cold stone sank to the bottom of my stomach at the bright hope burning in her eyes.
“I’m here about Shonda Randall. Do you know her?”
Her shoulders slumped, defeated. “No.”
“All right.” I guided her to the rear of the truck to give us privacy. “Why don’t you tell me about Tammy? Why did you think I would be here about her?”
Worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, she checked to make sure no one was paying us any attention, though no one appeared to care how the underage crowd entertained themselves. “Do you mind if I hold your dog while we talk?”
“Snowball, do you mind?”
Butt swishing, she padded right up to the girl and reared on her shin.
“I’m guessing that’s a no.” I smiled like it was a joke, but it was far from it. “So, who’s Tammy?”
“She’s my big sister.” She glanced up then. “I’m Jessica.”
“Nice to meet you, Jessica.” I leaned against the tailgate. “Where are your parents?”
“They died.”
Must not have been recently based on her matter-of-fact delivery.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I noted her clean face and neat clothes. “Who takes care of you now?”
“The pack.”
From what I had read on wargs, most packs shared parenting duties. That must be the case here. She was a healthy weight, showed no physical signs of abuse, though I knew from experience how easily those could be hidden, and gave no indication she was afraid of approaching outsiders. She appeared healthy and well-adjusted, which meant the Mendelsohn pack was doing one thing right.
“When was the last time you saw Tammy?”
“Two days ago.” She set her jaw. “Tam’s birthday is tomorrow. She’ll turn eighteen, and she was worried the alpha might…”
I connected the dots, and my gut twisted. “The alpha wanted her.”
“Yeah,” she whispered. “Tam didn’t have a boyfriend or anything, but she didn’t want to…you know.”
“No woman should ever be forced to have sex.”
“Yeah,” she said, stronger this time. “That’s what I think too.”
Heart breaking, I made a promise to myself that we would find a way to sever her ties with this pack and situate her with a new one. “Do you have access to a phone?”
“Tam bought me a pay-as-you-go cell before she left,” she said quietly. “No one knows I have it.”
The radio silence between them bothered me given Tammy’s forethought in ensuring Jessica could stay in touch. With so many unclaimed bodies from Perkerson waiting on an ID at the morgue, I had to acknowledge there could be a grave excuse for Tammy not contacting her sister to let her know she was okay.
“Keep it that way.” I pulled a card from my back pocket. “Here’s my number. Call if you hear from Tammy, or if anyone tries to make you do anything you don’t want to, okay?”
“Okay.”
Our chat had finally drawn notice, so I got her number before she scurried away to where three other girls about her age congregated in a tent too small to hold all the cots lined up in neat rows. Jessica draped her arms over the shoulders of two of the girls and led them inside while the third one closed the flap behind them.
“They’re watching each other’s backs,” I murmured to Ford. “There are empty tents, but they’re crammed in together.”
“Lee.” He placed a hand on my arm. “Violence is not the way to fix this.”
Until he touched me, jarred me out of my own head, I hadn’t felt the comforting weight of steel in my hand, and that terrified me.
Laughter jarred the shadow unspooling from my feet as Ambrose relished my fear.
Laugh all you want. I rallied before he gained the upper hand. I go down, you go down with me.
Thankfully, we didn’t share a mental bond, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t catch the drift of my thoughts or emotions. Hard to miss when he was bound to me. The reminder of just how tight we were tied sobered him into quiet reflection, which I trusted about as much as the aforementioned lion with a steak on my palm.
“You’re right.” Done playing with Ambrose, I turned my attention back to Ford and set out for the truck. “Let’s go.” I waited for him to get in the cab before I hit him with my request. “Give me Midas’s number.” Fine, it was more of a demand. “Please.”
“I can’t do that.” He had the grace to sound sorry about it. “Midas guards his privacy.”
“Then take me to him.”
“I’m not his PA. She’s drooling on your thigh. I have no idea where Midas is tonight.”
“Take a wild guess.”
“Probably on a date.” He shrugged. “The alpha wants him mated sooner rather than later.”
The slight hitch in my breath pissed me off that much more. “Where does he take the candidates?”
That’s how he would think of them, I was sure. A man who avoided touch, limited his contact with women to self-defense classes hosted at various shelters, wasn’t going to view them as mate material. He was going to see them as a duty to be fulfilled, one of the terms of his new position. All he had to do was decide which particular cross he wanted to bear.
“Joelle’s.”
“I’m hungry. How about you?”
“I could eat,” he said with a laugh. “Might as well make it good. Once Tisdale catches wind we invited ourselves to dinner, this could be our last meal.”
Seven
Midas shredded his buttery roll into pieces so small he would need a toothpick to spear one into his mouth, not that eating was on his mind. He had trouble choking down more than a drink on these dates, and he made a point to keep it nonalcoholic.
“What do you think?”
The voice, as buttery soft as the roll, perked his appetite just as much. “About?”
Forcing a smile, Rebecca took a breath. “Where did I lose you?”
At the beginning.
Then again in the middle.
And, oh yeah. Also there at the end.
A commotion at the front of the restaurant spared him from admitting he hadn’t paid attention to her since the moment they sat down except to make sure she ordered whatever she wanted from the menu, regardless of the price, as payment for enduring his company for a painful couple of hours.
A blonde tornado with a brewing storm in her eyes whirled past the startled hostess, all bouncing curls and attitude, and aimed her path of destruction right at him.
For the first time all night, he found his interest piqued, and he regretted that the woman across from him could tell. More than that, he resented she would rather grit her teeth through the interruption than lose her shot at landing him.
He wasn’t a damn whale.
Hadley wore jeans with blood crusted on her thigh in a sharp line. She must have cleaned one of the twin blades she often carried on her pants, which made him curious who had pissed her off enough to earn the bite of her swords. Sweat made her tee cling to her, and corgi hair stuck to her like glitter.