I glanced back at Ashley to make sure she was fine.
She stood in the aisle, holding a prospective broom like a butter-churner and awkwardly swiping the bristled end back and forth on the floor.
Great. I was going to have to teach her how to sweep, too. I nearly face-palmed as I wondered what kind of fee Peter could charge her dad.
She realized I was staring at her and looked up, giving me a big grin. “I like this one!”
Well, alrighty, then. I just shook my head and headed back up to the end of the aisle as Zeke came passing by. “Hey, Zeke, you got a minute?”
“Sure, Frank, what can I do you for?”
“That guy over there?” I asked, my voice low enough that it was nearly a whisper. “The Russian guy?”
“Yeah,” he replied with a nod.
“He come in here a lot?”
He shook his head. “First time.”
“Got it.”
“Everything okay, Frank?”
“Sure,” I slowly said, drawing out the word. “Just curious is all, cause he seems so out of place. Haven’t ever heard an accent like that around here. Thanks, Zeke.”
Leaving Ashley in the aisle with the brooms and mops, I brushed past the hardware clerk and went over to the aisle with screws and nails, where I’d last heard the Russian.
There he was, about fifteen feet away from me, and there was that scent of Marlboro Reds and vodka right in the air with him. Old vodka, like it had been drank late in the night. Fresher cigarettes, though. His broad shoulders were hunched forward beneath his dark coat, his cap pulled down low over his scarred face. He wore thick cotton twill pants, Dickey’s maybe, and his combat boots had tracked a little mud in on the stained tile floor.
I turned to my right and began digging through a set of bolts as he glanced over at me, my finger tracking as I went from 3/8” to the 1/4” size before pulling open the drawer.
He turned and came a little closer down the aisle, a length of heavy chain and locks bundled in his hands. His step was even, his shoulders perfectly aligned, his stance just the perfect width. The right hem of his coat hung lower and more rigid than his left.
He’d definitely had military training—at least a few years in the military, maybe longer. I sniffed the air and smelled the same gun oil from the cabin. The Russian was armed. I knew it. His coat was intentionally tailored so he could get to his shoulder holster faster, which was why the right side was so rigid and hung differently. Peter’s suit coats always had the same modification done to them.
I kept my eyes on him as he approached.
What did this guy want? What had he been trying to find in her cabin?
His scruffy, unshaven face, though, didn’t betray any emotion or intent.
Our gazes locked just for a moment.
If I’d been in my wolf form, my hackles would have been raised. I’d seen eyes like that before. At one point, serving over in Iraq, I’d looked in the mirror and imagined for just a moment that they were staring back at me.
They were the eyes of a killer.
We nodded once to each other, then he brushed past me and turned towards the front counter. After a moment, I followed.
“This all for you, sir?” Zeke asked as the Russian piled the chain and locks on the counter.
“Yes. Thank you.”
I walked up front and opened up the little drink refrigerator where they sold cold twenty-ounce sodas. I slapped it up on counter next to the Russian and looked at him.
He glanced over at me, his lip curled slightly. His eyes flickered down to the holster on my belt, to the gun just barely concealed by my jacket.
“Lot of chain there,” I said, nodding to his purchase on the counter. “Need it to mount a kill or something? Truss one up and dress it?”
He blinked his heavily-lidded, cold eyes at me. “No. My brother is up here hunting. I am just on, how do you say, vacation?”
I smiled like an idiot. “Don’t hunt, huh?” I glanced over to Zeke. “Kind of weird to come all the way up here and not hunt, don’t ya think? Best hunting in the country in these hills, right around fall.”
Zeke’s face stayed neutral, his hands going through the motions on the cash register on autopilot, his eyes flickering back and forth between us.
The Russian licked his full, chapped lips. “I do not think it’s fair to hunt wild animals. Not until they’re allowed guns, as well.”
I smiled briefly, without feeling. “Don’t eat meat or something? Everybody eats meat, don’t they, Zeke?”
The hardware clerk didn’t respond.
“I do not. I suppose I am not everyone.”
I chuckled and nodded. “I can see that.”
The man’s goods tallied, Zeke rattled off his total. My eyes on his hand, the Russian carefully dipped into his pocket and pulled out a fat wad of cash enclosed by a simple money clip. He popped the clip, unfolded several bills from the stack, and tossed them on the counter in front of Zeke.
“Been up this way before?” I asked as Zeke took the money and started to make change.
“First time. It is pretty. Reminds me of the much smaller mountains of my home.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “Where’s that?”
He shrugged, taking the money. “Does not matter.”
I smiled, not taking my eyes from the Russian’s face as Zeke started to bag up the chains and locks. “Just trying to be friendly, is all. Russians always clam up like this?”
His eyes flashed with a flare of emotion as he grabbed the bag. “I am not Russian,” he growled.
I didn’t flinch, just watched him take the chains and locks from the counter. “Fine,” I drawled. “You ain’t Russian.”
“Frank?” Ashley asked from behind me. “Everything okay?”
“Yep,” I said, nodding to the Russian that I didn’t dare take my eyes off. Because, as far as I was concerned, he was still the Russian until I knew more. “Just making friends is all.”
Lip curled, the Russian’s eyes flickered from mine to over my shoulder.
“No,” I growled. “Don’t look at her. You look at me.”
His eyes narrowed as they came back to mine. “Be seeing you, Frank.”
“Yeah, comrade,” I said to his back as he turned to leave. “Be seeing you.”
He glanced back at me with the front door half-open. “We haven’t been communist for a quarter century.”
I shrugged as Ashley came up and began to pile stuff on the counter in front of Zeke. “Whatever, comrade.”
The Russian stayed there for a moment longer, our gazes still locked like two predators about to square off over fresh hunting territory. Finally, he broke off his gaze and left.
Ashley glanced over at me as the door shut behind him. “What the hell was all that?”
“Think I just found the guy who broke into your place last night,” I said as I went over and looked out the window at the street, watching as he crossed the street to find his car. There wasn’t a black town car parked on that side of the road, though.
“What?” she hissed as she came up beside me, her arm brushing against mine.
He didn’t go to any black town car I could see. Instead, it was a nondescript gray Toyota Camry with Kansas plates. Probably a rental or stolen.
“No proof, of course,” I said as I watched him climb in and toss the chains and locks on the passenger seat. “But I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts it’s him.”
She swallowed hard. “He was kind of…scary.”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“Why would a guy like that want to break into my place, Frank?” she nearly whispered, shivering a little as she subconsciously pressed herself into my side.
“I don’t know, Ashley,” I said, glancing down as her scent of amber and something else overtook my senses. “I really don’t know. But we’re going to find out, I promise you that.”
Chapter Twelve – Peter Frost
Peter hopped out of his older model SUV as he
pulled up at the gate leading to his spread of land. The sun hung over his head like a giant globe, keeping a little warmth in the air despite the bite of the northwestern wind’s chill. He headed up, unchained the gate, and walked it back, then jumped back in his car.
He’d been meaning to replace the gate with an electronic one, but just hadn’t had the time. Especially not with everything weighing on his mind and the unexpected bundle of teenage angst that had been dumped in his life—Mary Waynescott.
No, she wasn’t dumped, he reminded himself. It was his choice. Just because there was no one else to take in the younger shifter, that didn’t mean it was her fault, or that it had been done to him. He’d chosen this.
Of course, he reasoned as he climbed out and closed up the gate behind his SUV, it had been her choice to get suspended from school today. There was no way around it. That was on her.
Gen, his secretary, had gone and spoken to the principal at Enchanted Rock High and picked Mary up from school. They’d had to commit some light fraud to get Mary up here from Oklahoma, and Genevieve was the one with full legal custody.
But, damn, did everything bad always have to happen at once? First, there was this thing with Ashley Maxwell, with somebody actively watching the place and breaking in to find something. They’d signed on to protect her. And, despite Frank’s feelings about Ms. Maxwell, Peter still sensed there was something deeper. What was he doing, anyways, cleaning up the cabin with her? Peter had gotten his first good belly laugh in a while when Jake told him that last part.
Peter had a sneaking suspicious that, if he decided to pull the contract on this one because it was getting outside their scope of operations, Frank O’Dwyer would stick right by Ashley’s side through the thick of it. Of course, Frank probably didn’t know he would. But it was part of Peter’s job to know his men better than they did. That was part of being the leader. Knowing your men’s strengths and weaknesses, even if they, themselves, denied them.
But damn. Now this, with Mary?
He drove up the gravel road to his cabin, his eyes sweeping over the land he’d purchased when he first moved to Enchanted Rock, at the stands of firs and spruce, the little creek that provided fresh running water.
He wished he understood the girl living in his spare bedroom the way he understood this bit of property. Here, he could tell someone the depth of every section of creek, the exact length of the road that led from the road to the cabin, both in feet and in meters. Where the snow would pile highest, where the deer and elk liked to graze when they came passing through.
Everything.
People weren’t like that, though. And, he was pretty damn sure teenage girls were even more complicated, and that was without throwing shifter blood into the mix.
He’d used the proceeds from the sale of his own family’s land to buy this land, after his parents and younger brother had passed. Their cabin had burned to the ground, their bodies butchered in the bedroom.
That was the reason he and Mary actually had something in common besides their blood. It was also the reason he’d taken her in.
He pulled up to the cabin and killed the engine. He didn’t get out at first, though. He just sat there, his chin propped on a fist as he stared out the window.
Not for the first time, he considered that maybe it had been the wrong decision to bring Mary here.
But where else would she have gone? Into the foster care system? The kid was sixteen and not completely human. No, if he’d left her in the state’s care, she’d have just run away, gotten into worse trouble in the long run. He’d seen this before with other orphaned shifters.
“Mary, Mary, Mary,” Peter breathed. “What the hell are we gonna do with you?” He shook his head and climbed out of the car. He opened the back, grabbed his coat from the seat, and threw it over his shoulder before heading up to the cabin.
After unlocking the front door, he pushed inside. “Mary?” he called from the entryway as he hung his coat up on the coat rack just inside. No answer. “Mary?”
“In here, Pete.” Her voice was down and full of fear. She knew what was coming. Or, well, thought she did.
He walked into the kitchen and found her sitting at the little breakfast table that only seated four, a half-eaten sandwich on the plate in the front of her. Baloney, from the smell of it. Mary brushed her long blonde hair out of the way as she glanced up at him. “You’re home early.”
“Just for lunch,” Peter said.
Tension hung in the air. They both knew they were going to have a talk. What kind of talk, though, Peter wasn’t sure.
“Want me to make you a sandwich?” Mary asked.
“Nope. Not really that hungry, to tell you the truth. Rather talk.”
“About what?”
He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down in it, and readjusted his shoulder holster. “Oh, I’m pretty sure you know.”
She looked up at him from her sandwich with those inscrutable dark eyes of hers. “About me getting suspended, I guess?”
He nodded. “Got it in one. Mind telling me what happened?”
She smirked. “I won a fight.”
“You almost put those girls in the hospital, Mary.”
“Bitch shouldn’t have stolen my gym clothes, then.”
He leaned back in his chair, sighed. “Mary–”
“The Stephanies and their little bitch friend Carrie started it, Pete. I was just defending myself.”
They’d been giving her trouble for weeks, he knew. Sneers, laughter, little jokes at her expense. But nothing like this. Peter shook his head. “Why didn’t you say something about them stealing your clothes?”
“Why?” She pushed her plate and her lonesome sandwich away from her. “So you could go yell at someone over it? Or the school could get involved? You know I can’t do that, Pete! Daddy always told me to stand up for myself, no matter what, and that’s what I did!”
“Okay, I understand your father told you one thing, and I’m telling you another, but that’s not the way things are around here. You need to actually get along with people. You can’t just fight them every time something bad happens.”
“Well, what would you have done, then? Let them pick on you for being the new kid?”
“Hey, I’m not saying you should let them pick on you, Mary. But beat them that bad?”
“Oh, it wasn’t that bad,” she mumbled. “I stopped, didn’t I?”
“You stopped because they stopped you.”
Three girls. Almost broken noses. Almost broken limbs. According to the principal, if the gym teacher hadn’t pulled Mary off the other girls, they would’ve ended up in the hospital. As it was, though, they’d just had to make a trip to the school nurse’s office.
She turned away, a little smile on her lips. “It’s only two days.”
Peter sighed, shook his head. “Well, you’re grounded. No TV, no internet.”
The look of disgust on her face was clear. “I didn’t do anything wrong, though!”
“And that’s the attitude that’ll pull you into another fight, Mary. What you did was wrong. Violence is wrong. It’s a last resort.”
“You were in the military, Pete.” She gestured to the gun in his shoulder holster. “You walk around armed all the time!”
He held up a hand. “I do that because, in my line of work, in the real world, I don’t have a teacher or a parent I can complain to for not being treated fairly. Someone tries to start a fight with me, I don’t have any choice but to defend myself. People come to us because we’re equipped to deal with it. We don’t go settling scores or getting into fights because we like it. We protect people, and that’s it.”
Her eyes narrowed, anger practically boiling over out of them, as she ground her teeth. “It’s not fair.”
“Life’s not fair,” Peter said, his voice not betraying a hint of emotion. “Your father taught you many things, so I’m pretty sure he taught you that, too.”
She turned away again and cro
ssed her arms. “None of this is fair.”
He knew exactly what she was talking about. No one deserved to have their family murdered, no matter their species, while they were out on a date. No one deserved to be uprooted when they were little more than a child, moved to the next state over. No one deserved to be put in a strange town with no family or friends. “I agree. No, it’s not.”
She was quiet for a moment longer. “How did you handle it?” she asked eventually. “When your parents…you know?”
“Do you want me to tell you what I’m supposed to tell you, like this is some after-school special? Or be honest?”
“What do you think?”
He gave a little snort of laughter. “It’s hard. Hard enough, I still don’t think I’ve been able to deal with it. And it’s been years for me, not months. But, little by little, it hurts a bit less. I was older, too, when my parents died. I’d served already. But, yeah, my pack’s helped. They’re the closest thing to family I still have.”
“My family was my pack, though.”
Mary still hadn’t run with the guys from Frost Security, gone hunting. She’d shift there at Peter’s place, stay on the property near the cabin so she could get it out of her system. He occasionally found markings of her kills around the place, scraps of fur and blood like mini-slasher movies scattered over the grounds. “You can come with us, you know, out for a hunt.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Too bad I’m grounded, huh?” When Peter didn’t immediately respond, she got up from the table, plate in hand.
Damn, she could twist a knife. He didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how he could respond that wouldn’t make him look like a complete asshole. What was he supposed to say? No, it’s fine as long as you’re spending time with your pack? Or your family? But that was the crux of it, wasn’t it? She didn’t have either.
She didn’t look back at him as she flipped the trashcan lid open and shoved the remains of her sandwich inside. She rinsed the plate and dropped it in the sink before heading back to her bedroom. She didn’t slam the door shut, but still she closed it with some sense of authority.
At least she had finally learned to clean up after herself. There was that, at least. Peter put his elbows on the table, leaned forward, and cradled his face in his hands. He genuinely had no idea what to do. And it wasn’t like he could call Dr. Phil, or something, or even a therapist. He could just picture what the show’s episode title would be: “Help! My adopted shifter daughter is out of control!”
Frost Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 32
