“Looks like the south quadrant…” Griffin said. “What do you have out there?”
Some military-sounding jargon was exchanged, and suddenly we were back down the road and across the street talking to the group of men.
“The little girl’s on this area right here,” Griffin said, handing them a piece of paper, a square area highlighted in the center, that I assumed was a map of Mr. Johns’ property.
When I went to follow them, one look from Griffin had me stopping in place.
“You won’t be coming,” he said menacingly.
I blinked.
“Okay,” I agreed.
There was no use arguing.
I could tell whatever my argument would be, he would easily counter it.
So I sat on the porch steps and waited for all of the menfolk to come back.
And they did twenty minutes later, with the little girl in tow.
My heart finally slowed. Standing, I ran forward.
“Where’d you find her?” I asked excitedly.
The little girl was ushered quickly to a waiting ambulance, and suddenly my body was hauled against Remy’s for a hard, unyielding embrace.
Then his mouth came down on my cheek before he let me go.
“You remember that time we were trying to get our baseball back?” Remy asked, letting me go only enough for him to sling his arm around my shoulders.
At my nod, he winced.
“Yeah, she was right there. Stuck in that stupid fuckin’ net that you got caught in,” Remy added.
I breathed out a sigh.
“Glad you found her,” I said, patting his belly and laying my head against his arm.
It never occurred to me that Griffin would be upset by the harmless show of affection between the two of us.
Remy and me…we were just that, Remy and me.
We’d known each other forever, and we were very close.
But, apparently, it was something that Griffin wouldn’t tolerate.
And when I saw him walking away with a murderous expression on his face, I pulled away from Remy and started running to him.
I caught up to him when he got to the woods, and leaned forward to grab his hand.
“Hey,” I said. “Stop.”
He ripped his hand away from my grip and turned around with a glare.
“Don’t touch me,” he growled.
I blinked. “What’s wrong?”
He raised a brow at me.
“What? Me?” I asked when I realized he was just staring at me like I was infected or something.
“I didn’t do anything.”
He leaned forward and ran a finger along the seam of my lips.
“If anyone can have it,” his eyes went to Remy in the distance. “Then I don’t want it.”
With that parting comment, he turned his back on me.
I hauled back and punched Griffin in the ass with my fist.
He whipped around and glared at me.
All six-foot-two-inches of pissed off Texas Ranger motorcycle man.
“Don’t hit me, little girl,” he growled.
I raised a brow at him and crossed my arms.
“Little girl? That’s not what you were calling me the other day,” I snapped.
He lifted a lip at me. “That was before I knew you’d forget me so quickly.”
I pulled back and let loose another punch, but he caught it with hilarious ease before it could make contact with his stomach, twisting my arm so I had no other recourse but to turn and face the tree that was at my back.
I didn’t back up in wake of his anger.
No, not Lenore Lane Drew!
“I didn’t forget you,” I hissed, leaning into him. “What is your malfunction?”
“You’re here kissing him when you should be kissing me,” he growled.
I narrowed my eyes.
“You just told me three days ago that we couldn’t be seen together! And I wasn’t kissing him out of passion! He kissed me because the kid was found!” I growled.
“I don’t care if it was on your fuckin’ pinky toe. Your mine, not his. So his goddamned lips don’t need to be on you without my explicit say so,” he continued, leaning closer to me.
My back hit the tree, and my knees started to go weak.
“Okay,” I breathed, the only thing I could think to say.
He blinked, I guess surprised by my easy acquiescence.
“You’re such a weirdo,” he said.
“I’m your weirdo.” I said. “What’s that say about you?”
Only inches separated our lips, and I couldn’t help it.
I closed the distance.
My lips pressed firmly to his, his tongue licked across my lips seeking entrance into my mouth.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” he whispered. “It’s going to backfire.”
“Everybody already knows we’re together. Everybody. Everywhere I turn people are asking me where you are. I lie, and they know I’m lying because I’m a shit liar,” I told him breathlessly.
He sighed.
“Should’ve know this wouldn’t work,” he said under his breath. “I know this’ll backfire. I know it with every fiber of my being.”
I shrugged. “Well then, protect me. I’m not a stupid girl. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, all you have to do is tell me. And I only go one of two places, work or home.”
“What about when you volunteer?” He countered.
I shrugged. “I just won’t do it until we have this figured out.”
He rose a brow at me. “You’d be willing to do that?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I would.”
He let out a slow, relieved breath.
“As long as you listen, we won’t bother to act like we’re not what we are,” he grumbled, looking into my eyes as he did so.
I smiled, and his eyes dropped to my mouth.
But when he leaned in for a kiss, my father’s rude voice interrupted us. “Get your hands off my daughter.”
Chapter 14
Dad’s. Scaring men, law abiding or not, since the beginning of time.
-Lenore’s secret thoughts
Griffin
I watched in stunned silence as Rodney leaned over, picked up a massive fishing pole with a lead weight the size of a small pinecone on it, and casually cast the monster across the water at the boat that had just passed.
The lead weight smacked the boat so hard on the aluminum side that the boat driver instantly let off the throttle and shifted into neutral to find out what had just hit him.
“This is a no wake zone, asshole!” Rodney yelled, sounding so much like Lenore that I wanted to laugh.
I didn’t dare, though.
The man that’d been driving looked livid. So mad, in fact, that he turned the boat around and did it three more times before Rodney picked up a different pole.
This one he picked up had a weight that was just as big, if not bigger, than the previous one, but this one had a sharp edge on it.
I never worried that Rodney would hit the person for some reason.
I knew he had excellent control. It was likely that this wasn’t his first time doing this.
And he hit dead center on the boat’s hull, right under the letters that marked it as a registered boat, just at the water line.
No sound was made this time due to the water muffling it.
The weight didn’t completely puncture the aluminum in the same size diameter of the weight, but it did enough that the water started to pour inside the boat, and the man didn’t even realize it.
He was oblivious and continued to do donuts in front of the dock.
A dock that was moving, due to the waves put off by the stupid man’s boat.
When the boat turned, Rodney yanked, and the weight popped free of the aluminum siding.
He reeled it in slowly, and I watched avidly while the man’s boat slowly started to
fill with water.
“Shit!” The man suddenly shrieked, the horrid sound carrying out over the water.
I snorted.
“You do this often?” I asked him.
A grin kicked up the corner of my mouth as the man had to go tie to the dock four down from us.
The one that marked it as private.
He was able to get himself onto the dock just in time for his boat to sink under the water.
The man snapped his gaze up to Rodney’s, and I could tell there was a fight on the horizon.
Rodney surprised me, though, by standing up and making his way to the other dock and pressing a button at the very end of it.
Then, as if in an action movie, chains started to move up around the sunken boat, where earlier they’d been hidden by the water. Lifting the boat up and out of the water, allowing it to drain.
Rodney had clearly done this before.
Twenty minutes later he was back, none the worse for wear.
“Can’t stand it that they continuously disregard the rules of the lake. If you’re not going to follow them, then you shouldn’t be able to be on it,” he grumbled, taking a seat once gain.
I smiled and raised the beer I was holding up to my lips.
I was ‘officially’ off duty.
Although I’d been doing a whole bunch of nothing all day.
This was one of the drawbacks of being stationed here.
There was a lot of traffic on this lake, but it still wasn’t the same ‘pace’ I was used to.
After doing it for a year now, it was still just like it was yesterday, and the day before that.
Boring as fuck.
“So, tell me, how did you meet my daughter?” He asked, looking over at me.
I sighed. “I met her at her store when I came in for batteries.”
“She made you buy a dildo, didn’t she?” Rodney laughed softly.
I turned to look at him, “Actually, yeah. She did.”
Rodney smiled. “Taught her the way of business, I did. You do know she has batteries underneath the counter, right?”
My eyes widened slightly.
“No…I didn’t know that,” I told him. “Wish I’d have known that. Wouldn’t have been embarrassed at buying one of those things if I had!”
“You weren’t embarrassed.” He scoffed. “My Lennie is a model saleswoman. She uses what she has to her best advantage, and doesn’t bat an eye at fleecing a big man like you. I taught her everything I know,” he grinned.
I rolled my eyes to the rapidly fading sun overhead, and leaned my head back against the chair.
After we’d found the little girl, she’d immediately been taken to the hospital, freeing the boys and me to spend the day in Ronda Drew’s kitchen where she practically force fed us all of the food she’d been cooking while we were searching.
Remy had left to pick up his kids, but then he’d arrived back with them less than fifteen minutes later, and I got to see, once again, how well him and his children fit into the family.
And it hurt.
Mostly because I wished I could’ve had that with Tanner and me.
I wished that Tanner could’ve sat in the Drew kitchen and eaten fifteen cookies too many just like Remy’s girls had.
I also wished Tanner had met what would’ve been his future step mother and her family.
Because, as I was eating a piece of fried chicken and watched the way Lenore’s face glowed, I knew I wouldn’t be able to function without her by my side.
The last few days had been pure hell as I tried to stay away from her.
It hadn’t worked too well.
I’d found myself riding past her place…hanging out at the waffle house to see her sitting at her counter at work flipping through magazines.
I’d watched as she pushed her cart through the supermarket.
I literally hadn’t gotten a damn thing done all fuckin’ day long, and I hadn’t liked it.
If I wanted to be with Lenore, not a damn thing would stop me.
Especially when I knew that she was safer with me, than she was without me.
Which had been figured out only moments before I’d gotten the call that a little girl was missing.
“You spend a lot of time out here?” I asked Rodney.
“Yeah, I do. I spend about four to six hours out here a day, if it’s a weekday. About ten or so if it’s the weekend,” he answered. “Why?”
Rodney had the red hair same as his daughter, but that’s where the similarities ended.
I’d never seen a tan red head before, but Rodney pulled it off.
Which I guessed was par for the course if you spent that much time under the sun.
He was also big and bulky, something which Lenore was not.
Lenore had delicate curves, smooth, milky white skin, and a softness about her that her father did not.
“You ever notice anything suspicious? Anything out of the ordinary?” I asked.
He contemplated that for a moment. “Yes. But not often. Mostly, I just see non registered boats that I call in. If I have to pay for that, everybody else should have to, too.”
His defense made me smile.
It was true.
If I had to pay taxes, so should the next guy.
“You got a problem with the lake?” Rodney asked after I remained silent too long for his liking.
“I always have a problem with Caddo,” I sighed.
“Now you sound like my girl. Her and her irrational fear over the lake. Do you know she can go into any other river or ocean in the world, just not this one? How does that make any sense at all? The girl has a screw loose,” Rodney shook his head.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Your girl was traumatized by seeing you hurt in this body of water. I’m sure she has no control over what she feels when she gets near this lake or the bayous. I’m sure it’s a lot bigger than you or me can even comprehend, but regardless. The problems with Caddo Lake are all too real, and not a single river in the nation has the same problem as this one, since the lake runs into rivers at both ends.” I answered.
Rodney smiled. “Stickin’ up for my girl,” he said. “I like it.”
I shrugged. I didn’t care that he liked it.
Nor would I care if he didn’t like it.
What I cared about was the fact that I was possibly putting his daughter into harm’s way by just being in her presence.
I seemed to have a big fat fucking sign on my back that declared me as numero uno.
The big bad man that was trying to fuck with someone’s stupid law getting passed.
I’d gotten a letter, a certified fucking letter, in the mail this morning by a right bitch of a woman filing a lawsuit against me for sexual misconduct during a case.
A case I’d only started a few weeks ago when I handed my son’s case off to Wolf.
A case that I’d yet to question anybody on, let alone some woman.
I knew what it was for.
They were trying to get me off the case, and shoved so far into hot water that I wouldn’t be able to offer any assistance for anything related to my son or his case.
Which was excellent timing seeing as I was the one to file the motion with my superior to execute a wiretap on the phone number I’d gotten from Justin Hayes.
They’d tried the scare tactics, and then moved on to attacking me professionally, thinking that if they got me mired in bullshit lawsuits and charges, they could damage my name or position.
Little did they know that I was so far off the straight and narrow that it no longer mattered.
If I never worked another day of law enforcement in my life, it would be okay.
As long as my son’s killers were taken care of, that was.
“I can keep an eye out for you.”
However, Rodney’s eyes were on the man who was still trying to fix his boat.
It was funny to wa
tch.
I knew he wouldn’t be able to fix that.
He’d have to take it to a welder who could handle aluminum.
“I can see that my dad showed you his trick,” Lenore called from the tree line.
I turned to find her standing as far away from the river as she could without actually being able to see it.
I nodded. “He did.”
She snickered. “Most people know not to speed through here. My dad’s lost way too many fishing poles in the water to deal with them doing it anymore.”
I could imagine.
But it wasn’t the fishing poles he was worried about.
A boat had sunk in this very spot earlier today due to all the tree stumps in the water…and that one had been carrying a kid in it.
I could imagine he was pissed off and had no other way to stop them from doing that unless he took control of the situation.
Rodney couldn’t be out there twenty-four hours of the day.
People needed to learn some common sense.
“I think I’m ready to go when you are,” she called.
I took the hint for what it was and offered my hand to Rodney, who smiled at me.
“I’ll see you this weekend for the BBQ cook off,” Rodney ordered.
I didn’t bother arguing as I took his hand and shook it once before giving him a tap on the back with my opposite hand and turning to leave.
“So…did you have fun?” Lenore asked once I got close enough.
I gave her a look that clearly showed her what I thought about her father’s type of fun.
***
I opened the door to my place and winced as I saw all the piles of shit…everywhere.
Case files were strewn across every available surface.
Beer bottles littered the floor where I happened to be standing at the time I finished them.
The last three days had been long.
“Something happened, didn’t it?” Lenore asked.
I turned to her, studied her face for a few long moments, and nodded.
“Yeah, something happened,” I confirmed.
“Can you tell me what?” She asked softly.
I thought about that for a long moment before nodding.
“Some of it, yeah. You just can’t repeat anything I say to you,” I told her.
She gave me a look that clearly showed how annoyed she was with hearing me say that.
Whiskey Neat (The Uncertain Saints MC Book 1) Page 14
