If Finn looked out of place, Rafe looked like he was from the outer edges of the galaxy. But if the kid was bothered, he didn’t let on, nodding at a few men seated at tables throughout the dark room. Finn suspected that Rafe would feel at home here if Finn weren’t tagging along. That thought made Finn wonder even more what Rafe’s home life had been like.
Finn kept abreast of Rafe as they walked to the bar, his eyes scanning the room for anyone who looked like they might want to start trouble. Of course, that would be the entire bar, Finn noted, barely managing not to roll his eyes at his own idiocy. He tried not to hunch his shoulders, a byproduct of feeling like he had a giant target painted on his back.
Rafe caught the bartender’s eye; not hard when he was so obviously underage. Words were exchanged—it was hard to hear over the jukebox—and then the bartender jerked his thumb toward the door. Rafe grabbed Finn’s arm and pulled him back outside.
Finn shook off Rafe’s grip almost immediately. “What are you doing?”
“Bartender told me Shane’s out back,” Rafe answered, unconcerned.
“And you believed him?” Finn could just imagine the welcome party waiting for them at the back of the seedy establishment.
He could tell that Rafe was ignoring him, but Finn thought the kid was crazy. They could be walking into an ambush. “How do you know about this place anyway?”
“It didn’t always used to be so rough.” Rafe didn’t take his eyes off the perimeter of the building, naturally watchful. “My dad—before he left—used to bring me here on payday to cash his check. He got me a Yoohoo while he had a couple of beers.”
“How long ago was that?” The Eight Ball now seemed to cater to bikers, possible ex-cons, and some construction workers, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of place for father and young son bonding time.
“Ten years,” Rafe said with a shrug.
Finn shook his head. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure they don’t serve Yoohoo in there anymore.” He followed the young werehyena around the side of the building with no further comment.
Four werehyenas were gathered around an old pickup truck, peering under the vehicle’s open hood. Finn knew they were hyenas because any of them could have subbed in for a runway show should all of Calvin Klein’s male models contract the plague all at once. The four men all turned as he and Rafe crunched across the gravel lot.
There was an uncomfortable silence as the hyenas sized them up. Finn tried to keep his face neutral, but it was hard because he was suddenly seized with the overwhelming urge to laugh. He bit the inside of his cheek to try and keep it together.
Two of the men pushed away from their perusal of the engine and walked over to meet them. Finn could tell they meant trouble; the swagger in their walk and the scent they were putting off confirmed it. His eyes skidded to Rafe, who had stopped, eyeing the approaching men warily.
“We’re here to talk to Shane,” he called.
The two men stood before them, barring the way. Finn knew he and Rafe could go around if they needed to, but he also knew that wasn’t the point of this exercise. He crossed his arms over his chest and waited. He had no doubt that there was going to be some kind of fight involved. In the meantime, he eyed the man standing in front of him. Dude was old, perhaps late forties, and solidly built. He had a few inches on Finn, but Finn was definitely bulkier than this guy.
The one in front of Rafe was more of a problem. That guy was big, bigger than Finn. He wasn’t as tall, but he more than made up for the difference in bulk. He was younger, perhaps mid-thirties, but the scars on his hands and face made it clear that here was a guy used to fighting for a living. He could snap Rafe over his knee without breaking a sweat.
“Shane’s not available,” the younger of the two hyenas said.
“He called me.” Rafe’s frown deepened to a scowl. Clearly the kid didn’t like being jerked around anymore than Finn did. “Not the other way around.”
The two men didn’t seem to care. Either Rafe had been given bad information by the bartender or else Shane had changed his mind about speaking to them. The kid seemed to come to that conclusion too, because he sighed and said, “Fine.” He called out to the two men standing next to the truck, “If you see Shane, tell him I stopped by.” Rafe turned to Finn. “Let’s get out of here.”
Rafe turned to leave, putting his back to the two men. Finn was a bit more circumspect and kept an eye on them as he backed up. The older man stood there, eyeing him, but stayed where he was. Finn suspected they didn’t have orders to hurt them, just mess with them a bit. He didn’t really understand what was going on, but he thought it a good idea to get the hell out of Dodge.
“Not a good idea to turn your back on me,” the younger man said, shoving Rafe hard in the middle of his back. The teen stumbled forward, nearly going down before regaining his balance. He spun growling, but he was nowhere near a match for this guy.
Finn had enough. If this guy wanted to prove he was tough, he should do it with someone more his size—not mention someone who wasn’t still in high school. With a glance at the older man, who still hadn’t moved, the werewolf grabbed Jerkwad—as Finn was now calling him—by the shoulder, stopping him from swinging on Rafe.
Unfortunately, that meant Jerkwad swung on him. Finn was ready though, already ducking. Jerkwad was big, but he was also slow, which made Finn’s job a lot easier. He’d grown up with an older brother; if he hadn’t learned how to take down bigger opponents, he wouldn’t have been able to hold his own in the pack. “How’s about you wait until he’s out of diapers before pummeling his internal organs to paste?”
“Hey!” Rafe shouted, sounding indignant.
“You want to take his place?” Jerkwad snarled.
Finn shrugged. “Sure.” He took a look at the three hyenas, but they seemed more curious than anything. He wouldn’t have to worry about them, unless Jerkwad over here called for backup, which was unlikely considering how big the guy’s ego was. Still, he’d need to keep an eye out for blindsides.
Jerkwad rushed him, apparently planning on bowling Finn over. He laughed at the obvious move, sure that this guy had never had a younger brother. He was all force and brawn, something that Finn could counter with evasion and cunning. After a few more exchanges, Finn felt he had Jerkwad’s measure.
The man was already breathing heavily and his slow punches had gotten even slower. He had no stamina, whereas Finn was used to running for miles and miles each day. He could spar with a guy like this all day long and still be fine for supper. Finn shook his head. This was going to be easy.
Finn didn’t plan on beating Jerkwad up. He went with wrestling, using the bigger man’s weight and leverage against him. This was how he’d eventually fought Burke to a standstill; it was the tactic of younger brothers everywhere: weasel your way out of everything until you could pin your opponent. Finn now used all of his tricks to great effect.
Jerkwad struggled in the hold Finn had him in, but the werewolf didn’t let up. The man tried to swing his arms, but Finn held him in such a way that it was useless. Jerkwad just flailed around, not hitting anything. Finn swept the man’s legs out from under him, taking him to the gravel and pressing his head against the rocks. The man was breathing like he’d just run a marathon; Finn felt like this had been a pleasant warm up.
“Enough!” A low voice boomed from the parking lot behind the truck.
Finn looked up, not letting Jerkwad go. He saw another man, this one in his mid-forties, coming out of a shed at the edge of the gravel parking lot. “Who’s he?” he asked, turning his head to look at Rafe.
“The man we came to see.”
Shane walked quickly past the truck and the men standing by it. He didn’t look happy. Jerkwad began to struggle in earnest against Finn’s hold, but the werewolf just ground the man’s face in the gravel. No way was this guy getting up until Finn had some assurances that he wouldn’t be an asshole again.
“I think you can let him up now,” Shane said as he
approached. Then he asked the older man who had been with Jerkwad, “Is he the reason you didn’t tell Rafe where I was?”
Finn watched Shane carefully, assessing the man and the mannerisms. He was almost functioning like a pack leader, with the way the men seemed to look to him for direction. Not the usual matriarchal dynamic at all. If they were independents, that might explain some of the strange behavior, but a mini-pack might spell trouble for Kess and their council. Finn made a mental note to bring this up with the wereleopard when they got back to Miami.
Finn released the man he was holding, but not before one last grinding of flesh against rocks. He got out of Jerkwad’s way quickly, not wanting to open himself up to an “accidental” shove or punch. Finn rejoined Rafe where they both waited to see what Shane would do next.
“You boys follow me.” The werehyena led the way back to the shed.
Jerkwad glared at Finn. The werewolf gave him a huge grin as he passed.
“That was fun,” he said to Rafe.
“What, the part where we almost died?” The teen frowned at him.
Finn smirked. “You sound just like Kess.”
Rafe glared. “I should have locked you in the car but there’s the whole cruelty to animals thing.”
“Jackass.”
“Dillweed.”
* * * * *
They sat inside the shed, using overturned ten gallon paint buckets for chairs. The small outbuilding was filled with car parts, everything from spark plugs, hoses, and alternators, to an engine in the process of being rebuilt—currently laid out on a table like a murder victim. The quarters were close, but manageable so long as nobody wanted to spread out.
Rafe opened with, “So what’s up with the guys outside?”
Shane didn’t say anything for a moment, focused as he was on lighting a cigarette. He took a deep drag, then answered, “They work for me at the garage. We’re trying to fix Tucker’s truck for him before he gets off work later tonight.”
“Seems a lot of hands for one job,” Finn remarked.
“Perhaps you’ve been struck blind in the last five minutes, but this is a bar. The guys like to go where the beer is.”
Finn could see Rafe barely suppressing a smirk. He wanted to smack the kid upside the head, but subsided back on his overturned drum. He could wait.
Shane was saying, “You should have told me you were coming.”
“I wanted to check some things first,” Rafe answered, not giving the other werehyena any further details. Finn nodded approvingly. Keep things close to the vest, especially if they didn’t need to know. Rafe was learning. “So what’s going on?”
“I got to say, I’m surprised you came,” Shane acknowledged. “I figured with you in Miami, we were on our own.” He didn’t wait for a reply from Rafe, just continued on. “A couple of days ago, we get some strangers here, sniffing around, no offense meant,” he said, inclining his head to Finn.
“How many?” he asked.
“Two that we know of,” the werehyena answered. “One guy was tall and thin, reedy looking fella.” Shane blew out a puff of smoke, waving it away from Finn and Rafe. “The other one we didn’t see much, but when we did he was with the thin guy. They seemed to be looking around—not asking questions, mind you, but just sticking their heads in where they weren’t wanted.”
“Did they do anything other than look around?” Rafe leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees.
“Not that we saw.” Shane shrugged. “Could just be coincidence. Maybe White just left without telling anyone.”
“But you don’t believe that, do you?” Finn countered. The way Shane spoke made it perfectly clear that the man wasn’t buying into anything to do with coincidences. “Why not?”
“Those two were just...,” he paused, trying to come up with the right word. He took another pull from his cigarette. “Not right. Something off about them, especially the skinny one. Creepy, that guy was.”
Rafe pulled Shane back to the missing hyena. “Other than the creep factor, is there any other reason why you think White didn’t just leave on his own?”
Shane shrugged. “Doesn’t feel right. His stuff’s still here. If he were leaving, why wouldn’t he take it with him?”
Rafe shared a look with Finn. They needed to tell Kess that something wasn’t right up here. It might be nothing, but Finn highly doubted it. He nodded at Rafe.
The young werehyena stood. “We’ll do some more looking around, but if anyone else goes missing, you call me.” He pointed his chin at the doorway. “We’re going to tell Kess as soon as we head back, see if we can’t get more eyes on this place. You think of anything else, you let me know.”
“She really going to do anything?” Shane asked in a jaded voice, blowing another cloud of smoke into the air.
“If there’s something going on that shouldn’t be, she will.” Rafe’s voice was firm, solid as a rock. Finn backed him up with a nod of his own. “She’s not one to just look the other way because it’s convenient.”
The two werehyenas shared a look that made Finn wonder, once again, what Samara must have been like as a leader. And a mother. He shook it off and reminded Shane, “You call about anything, no matter how small, like Rafe said.”
“Got it.” Shane rose from his sit. “And Rafe,” he called as the young man stepped out of the shed, “good to see you again.”
Rafe smiled, the scars on his cheek bunching up. “And you. Take it easy.”
Finn clapped the kid on the shoulder, guiding him across the lot and back to the car. He’d done well in there, surprisingly so. Not that Finn would ever tell him that, of course.
Chapter Eight
Kess wandered the streets of Little Havana, her mind far from Miami. She found herself thinking about the phone call with Cormac that Finn had roped her into just the other week. They hadn’t been in the best of places when he left to go back to the North Carolina mountains with his family at the end of the summer. She’d originally expected to be going back with him, but until things settled down in Miami, she was forced to stay. It made an already tense situation that much worse; Cormac had said some things to her in anger that she couldn’t just get past, and the distance wasn’t helping their fractured relationship. They communicated via text and email mostly. Hearing the other’s voice was just too hard, especially when there was so much unsaid between them.
Next on her mental agenda was Rafe and his missing hyena—now possibly up to two. Kess had been very careful on who she allowed into Miami following the defeat of Rafe’s mother, Samara. The hyena clan had been decimated, and they had no leader now that Samara and Teresa were both dead. That didn’t mean she wanted the remaining hyenas to come hang out in her clan’s city. These were people who’d been actively trying to kill her only a few months ago; she wasn’t in a huge hurry to interact with any of them socially. She’d left Rafe to handle his pack brethren. He and Finn would let her know when to get involved.
But now something was going on in their old territory. At least one had been confirmed missing, and Finn and Rafe were heading back to check on a possible second disappearance. None were missing from Miami—all of those hyenas here were still accounted for. No, the missing came from the outlying areas of Samara’s old territory several hours outside of Miami. At first, Kess hadn’t been too concerned with the reports, but two disappearances in a short period of time made Rafe suspicious. He knew his pack better than anyone else, so Kess listened to him and urged him—and Finn—to investigate. It didn’t hurt to be careful. If there was one thing Kess had learned from her time on the run it was that if something seemed off, it probably was and it wasn’t worth trusting.
Kess ducked into a corner store and ordered an iced café con leche. It was late afternoon, and the city was still hanging onto summer with both hands. She wished for what felt like the millionth time that she was back in the mountains where the leaves would just be starting to turn and the air would hold a hint of crispness. The mountains had
autumn. They also had Cormac.
Gah. Better not to think about that.
She wasn’t paying attention to where she was walking and stepped down hard as the pavement dipped lower than she was expecting. Her iced coffee splashed out of its cup and doused her hand. Of course she hadn’t thought to grab napkins—usually she could walk and drink at the same time with no problems. She imagined what Finn or Cormac would say if they were here.
Kess turned around to go back to the shop and ended up smacking into someone’s very broad chest. She managed not to carom off of it and into the street, but only because that someone’s hands reached out to steady her. More coffee splashed onto her hand and arm—she might as well just bathe in it at this rate.
“So sorry,” said a voice with the faintest hint of a foreign accent. “I did not know you were turning around.”
Kess shook the excess liquid off of her hand. “It’s fine. It was my fault. It’s not like I used a turn signal or anything.” She felt like a complete clod. If Finn were here, he’d be teasing her mercilessly. It was a good thing he wasn’t.
She looked up at the person she had collided with. He was a tall young man. He was big—not as big as Finn or his brother, Burke, but well-built. Kess could attest that he sported a healthy amount of muscle, having just bounced off of him. He was fair, with pale skin, light blue eyes, and blonde, almost white, hair. She hoped he’d brought his sunblock or he’d be a painful shade of red in just a few hours.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “Did I get any coffee on you?”
The young man smiled to reveal ridiculously even white teeth. He could be in a toothpaste commercial with teeth like those. She half-expected a little bling sound to indicate the sparklingly brilliance of his smile. “No, I am fine.” He paused, as though considering something. “I am Lukas. And you are?”
Hunter Moon (The Moon Series) Page 5
