Gen Pop

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “Either you tell us what in the fuck is going on, Melody, or I’m going to kick your ass right here in the middle of the entirety of Souls Chapel,” Nora growled in frustrated rage.

  “It had some sort of syrup in it,” Rockett said. “Alpaca… paca…”

  “Ipecac,” I supplied helpfully.

  Rockett snapped her fingers and pointed at me. “Yes! That!”

  My gaze switched to Melody once again. “You just fed her cookies that induced vomiting. How much did you give her?”

  Because that was important. In small doses, it was possibly safe. In large, it wasn’t.

  Melody looked positively green now. “I… it was a very small dose. I made sure it was safe.”

  With that, I’d had enough.

  Because, in all the time that Melody was being questioned about her antics, not once had Crockett’s father spoken up in defense of her. No, he looked bored. Disconnected.

  “You are no longer welcome at the store,” I said to the two of them, making sure to give both eye contact to let them know I was talking about them. “You are no longer welcome within fifty feet of her. If I find out that you are within fifty feet of her, you will regret it. Don’t come knock on her door. Don’t walk past her house. Don’t talk to Danny to tell her something through him. Same goes for Nora. You are no longer welcome in her life.”

  Murphy 2.0 narrowed his eyes. “You can’t tell me that I can’t see my own kid.”

  “Is she your kid?” I challenged him.

  “Yes!” he cried.

  “Then why the fuck haven’t you acted like it?” I questioned. “Why is she telling me things that you and that horrid bitch you call a wife have done to her over the years, and cries her fuckin’ eyes out after she does?”

  Murphy 2.0 snapped his mouth shut.

  “Out of everyone here, you know the only person that has shown her unconditional love? Her grandfather. A fuckin’ felon. What does that say about y’all?” I wondered.

  With that, I walked back to the bathroom and was thankful to see Murphy already making his way outside.

  When he arrived at the car with me on his heels, he opened the door for her and looked on as I deposited her passed-out body in the front seat.

  “You know how to drive a motorcycle?” I asked.

  Murphy grinned. “Once upon a time. But I don’t trust myself on it much anymore. Why?”

  I looked at the passed-out woman in the front seat. “I wanted to bring her somewhere in town and give her some meds. Help her recover faster. Thought it’d be easier if I had you go home.”

  “I’ll take him home,” Danny said quietly. “And I can bring your bike wherever you need me to.”

  I looked back to see that he, Belinda, and Nora had followed us out.

  Murphy gave him a disgusted look. “I don’t ride in foreign cars.”

  “I have a Ford. Made in the USA, Murphy. You won’t burst into flames if you get into it,” Nora teased.

  “But it’s a minivan.” Murphy looked even more disgusted.

  I didn’t listen to the rest of the conversation.

  Instead, I took Crockett to Lynn’s house where I kept a small room in his pool house as my office.

  CHAPTER 11

  2050 is as far away as 1990.

  -Zach to Crockett

  ZACH

  “You are sure that she’ll be okay?” Six asked, rubbing her stomach warily.

  Six was pregnant with her first child, and she was always doing that whole touching the stomach absently thing that all pregnant women did.

  Only, when she got caught, she stopped doing it because she didn’t want to appear anything other than the badass she was.

  Today, however, she didn’t even pretend. She was worried for her friend.

  “She’ll be fine,” I said as I bent over Crockett’s hand and started the IV.

  Once I had the catheter in place, I hooked the fluids up and sat back on my heels.

  “I’m impressed,” Wyett, Six’s best friend and Hunt’s wife, said. “I haven’t seen a doctor start an IV in forever.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I used to be the guy everyone called when they needed IVs on difficult patients. I could do it with my eyes closed at this point.”

  “Well, try that on someone that’s not me,” Crockett croaked.

  I grinned down to see that she was staring at me, a little color having returned to her cheeks.

  I winked at her and touched the tip of her nose with my pointer finger. “I’ll try it out on my next patient.”

  She rolled over so that her body was lying more comfortably on the couch.

  “I thought when I heard you say office that it would be an actual office with hospital-grade stuff. Not a really nice pool house with a comfortable couch that I’d like to move in to,” she murmured, her eyes taking in the room beyond her.

  I looked around, too.

  The pool house that Lynn had declared would be our ‘medical’ room was nicely decorated.

  There wasn’t much to give it away as a medical anything, other than the medical equipment that was stuffed into the overly large closet.

  “We’re working on getting more stuff,” Lynn said. “I have a big-ass hospital bed coming next week. And an X-ray machine as well as a gurney. You can have the couch if you want. I was about to get rid of it anyway once the equipment started arriving.”

  Crockett blinked. “I’ll take it.”

  Lynn nodded. “I’ll have one of the boys drop it by.”

  Crockett shook her head and tried to sit up, but the moment she did, she moaned and clutched her head.

  “Wow, my head really hurts,” she admitted, pressing her palms into the skin on either side of her eyes.

  I helped her get back into place, then started explaining to the others what happened.

  “Just go ahead and tell them the rest,” she said when I skirted around her family issues.

  I hesitated, not wanting to share that, so Six did it for me.

  By the time that Six was done, I’d learned even more things that her family had done to her, which only pissed me off more.

  “I thought we had bad parents,” Wyett looked at Six with wide eyes.

  “Your family tried to kill you,” Crockett told them. “Mine, on the other hand, are just selfish assholes. There’s a big difference.”

  “Hey,” Hunt spoke up from his spot at the bar. “There seems to be a man that’s hanging around Crockett’s place. He’s looked in her window twice in the last five minutes.”

  Crockett didn’t miss a beat. “My stalker is still making his rounds.”

  The way she said it so casually, at first, appeared as if she was joking.

  But then, she went on to say, “I’ve been seeing flashes of movement at my house and at the store, and I’m pretty sure that he’s harmless. But it’s only gotten worse since he first started.”

  Irrational anger rose inside of me at her nonchalance.

  “You really do have a stalker?” Six asked, looking alarmed.

  “He’s just always at the store.” She shrugged. “Watching.”

  “You’re not concerned with this?” Wyett asked, her voice raised slightly.

  Worried.

  Just like I was.

  “I mean…” She paused. “He never comes close enough for me to ask why he’s there.”

  I gritted my teeth and looked at Hunt. “Can you identify him?”

  That night, I’d gone to confront the fucker, he’d been gone when I’d finally made my way back outside.

  I’d thought that he’d taken the hint seeing as Crockett had never mentioned it again—which I thought she would if he’d continued.

  Guess I’d been wrong.

  “How are you even seeing him?” Crockett asked in confusion, her eyes going heavy. “I don’t have a security system.”

  “I’m in your parents’,” he answered. “And if he’ll turn toward the camera and stop only staring at her house, sure. I can do that. I have
plenty of facial recognition software. But he hasn’t taken his eyes off her house since I plugged into their cameras.”

  “What about any old feed?” Lynn asked. “You could go back and see if it…”

  Hunt was already shaking his head. “I had to turn this camera her house’s way. It was set on their back yard. I highly doubt that it would’ve caught anything.”

  Lynn sighed. “What about turning on a motion sensor light in their back yard?”

  “What about,” Bruno said from the spot all the way across the room, “someone just goes over there and confronts his ass, and doesn’t bother with stupid electronics to do a real person’s job?”

  Laric stood up, clapping his hands. “Well let’s go.”

  Bruno stood up and they both disappeared, making Crockett frown in confusion. “I don’t understand what the big deal is.”

  “If Beckham had a stalker,” Trouper supplied from his perch across the room on the bar’s countertop. “And she was so cavalier about it, I would spank her ass.”

  “You could try,” Beckham countered as she walked the floors with her baby, who was seconds away from falling asleep if the look in his eyes was anything to go by.

  “I would accomplish,” Trouper countered.

  She snorted loudly, making the baby’s eyes open wider, then droop once again.

  “Same with Swayze,” Trick murmured. “I wouldn’t be very happy if she wasn’t a little more concerned about having someone that’s always there. I would be pissed as hell, to be honest.”

  Crockett’s eyes turned from Trouper to Trick, who was leaning up against the counter, his back to the kitchen and his eyes to her.

  Crockett sighed. “I’m not sure what, exactly, I’m supposed to do about it, though. It’s just… weird.”

  “How about you let us take care of it,” Trick suggested. “You don’t worry about anything.”

  “I…” Crockett trailed off when Hunt snorted in laughter.

  “Damn, they got there fast as fuck,” Hunt drawled. “They had to have raced.”

  Bruno and Laric had done that quite a few times since I’d been around, and didn’t really show any signs of stopping.

  For this one instance, though, I wasn’t going to be concerned about their lack of care for themselves.

  “Oh, there, he turned.” Hunt started clicking away on his phone, then pulled out a second phone from his pocket and started clicking away on that next.

  “One Donahue…”

  My phone rang, and I answered it.

  “Donahue Ferrera,” Bruno said into the receiver. “Thirty-nine. Lives two houses down from y’all. He says that he’s in love with your woman and just wants to ask her out, but he’s too scared.”

  I looked at my woman.

  And she was mine.

  After tonight, dealing with her family, I’d realized a few things.

  One, I was overly protective of her.

  Two, to be overly protective, there had to be something there.

  Three, well, the thought of her being poisoned today, even with something that was so clearly mild, had enraged me.

  Still, I was enraged. I wanted to go over to her father’s house and shove my size fifteen boot up her father’s ass.

  Then shove it down her stepmother’s throat once it was thoroughly coated.

  I was that mad.

  “He says that he tries to work up the courage to talk to her, but always freezes up when she looks at him.” Bruno paused. “The guy is a little mouse-like, so I believe it. I told him it was creeping her out and to stop. He agreed and all but ran home.”

  The thought of some mouse-like guy having to talk to a wolf-like Bruno was actually quite amusing.

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “You believe him?”

  “I believe him,” Bruno admitted. “Guy about pissed himself when we said that we were in an MC. He blabbered his entire life story. Single guy. Lives with his mother. Investment banker. Trust fund baby. Never had a girlfriend because he’s so shy. His mother called him and told him to come home because dinner was getting cold.” He paused. “There’s one other thing about him.”

  I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know based on the tone that Bruno was using.

  “Yeah?” I asked. “I’m not sure that I can handle any more news tonight.”

  “Well, this actually kind of has to do with that.” He paused. “Or, just adding a little fuel to the same fire.” Bruno cleared his throat. “Apparently the stepmother urged the neighbor to keep at it. That she was more willing to talk to him later at night. That was why most of his attempts came after the sun set.”

  “Jesus Christ,” I grumbled, pinching the bridge of my nose. “Of course, she would have to be involved.”

  When I glanced up to look at the couch where Crockett was lying, it was to find her staring at me with a knowing look in her eyes.

  When I hung up with Bruno, it was to hear her say, “Let me guess. Melody had something to do with this.”

  I grimaced. “Yep. She told him you were easier to get a hold of at night. That was why you always saw him after dark.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Of course, she did. Because why wouldn’t she? Which neighbor did it?”

  I explained, and she shrugged. “I don’t really know my neighborhood all that much.”

  No, she didn’t.

  She hadn’t even realized that I was her neighbor—or that she had a new one at all for that matter.

  “Crockett, I am formally asking your permission to kick your stepmother’s ass,” Six announced.

  Crockett grinned at her friend.

  A friend I hadn’t realized that she was so close to.

  Six was a good friend to have.

  Though, she was a bit crazy around the edges.

  “You don’t need my permission.” Crockett groaned and sat up, her face whitening slightly as she did. “I don’t count them as family anymore. I renounced them a long time ago. Now they’re just neighbors that I don’t consider I know.”

  Six fist-pumped the air, then sobered slightly. “If you need anything more, let me know.” She paused as she looked toward me. “We have a few things going on tonight that we need to focus on. Sorry, but a missing ten-year-old girl kind of trumps you.”

  “Well, she’s not missing anymore. She was picked up outside of her school, but her mom had one of those GPS trackers on her in the form of a watch. When the girl was left alone, she called her parents who then activated the GPS. The GPS led them to an area off the interstate that was a couple of miles from us. The little girl came all the way from Louisiana, though. Anyway, the place being empty meant that they couldn’t find the kidnappers. And that’s what we’re doing tonight.”

  That was also why I wasn’t needed.

  No blood yet meant no doctor needed.

  It would happen, though.

  None of the crew could make it a week without needing some sort of medical attention.

  “For sure, you need to get to it.” Crockett shivered. “Did you know that I was kidnapped?”

  Six stopped in the doorway, her eyes wide. “What?”

  “When I was eight. I was found fairly quick, but not quick enough to avoid causing a huge rift between my mother and father. They were on the verge of a divorce when she died. I think my dad blames me for getting kidnapped. At least, deep down that’s what I think he blames me for. Hell, it could just be that he doesn’t like me. I don’t know.” Crockett shrugged. “Shit, you need to get out there and find whoever did that.”

  Six looked at her friend, then looked at me. Her look was clear. She wanted me to find out more about it and make sure that her friend was okay.

  I would be.

  You didn’t just randomly toss out information like that and expect people not to want to know more.

  Everybody cleared out after that, leaving me alone with my patient.

  A patient that I was highly attracted to and who also looked decidedly sexy despite how sick she was.
/>   Or, at least, how sick she used to be.

  Her color was improving by the second.

  “How did you get kidnapped?” I found myself sitting on the couch beside her, getting close but not touching her.

  Crockett turned in her seat, her toes digging into the couch beneath my thigh before she answered.

  “I was eight,” she said. “It happened a lot like Six just said. I was walking home from school, something that wasn’t out of the ordinary with me. But I didn’t like riding the bus because there was this dude that liked to play his trumpet right behind me. And I hated that. So I started walking even though it added about five minutes to my day.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself, as if talking about it freaked her out.

  I had to fight the urge to reach for her and pull her closer, but the IV going into her arm stilled my hand.

  That needed to finish before she’d feel better. And I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from wrapping her up and never letting go once I had her in my arms.

  “Anyway,” she continued, resting her head on her knees while she gave me direct eye contact. “I was walking home when this van that was selling ice cream pulled up. I’d been buying ice cream from this same dude for months now. And I was super excited because I had enough to buy what I wanted. So I buy this ice cream pop, I’m ripping into it, when I’m picked up from behind. I have a mouthful of ice cream, so all I can do is a muffled scream. Everything goes black after that, and I wake up in an old equipment shed with no memory of how I got there. I couldn’t scream because I had a nasty gag around my face. I don’t know how long I was there before someone walked into that shed and found me. The owners, I think. Luckily, the guy walked in there. I think it was fate. He said he usually had a lawn service that mowed his yard for him, but they flaked out that week so he had to do it himself. Hence him finding me without them wanting him to. They apparently cased our neighborhood for weeks and saw that he never used the shed. Lucky for me, that day he did. I was gone for over eight hours before I was found.”

  “Did they catch who did it?” I asked, my hand twitching to reach out and pull her into me.

  “Yes.” She tilted her head so she cracked first one side of her neck, then the other, making my heart skip a beat. “They turned themselves in. That was also the week that we found out my mother was sick. She was dead within a year.”