Thug One said his name was Bob, and Thug Two claimed to be Joe.
“I’m betting those aren’t your real names,” I told them.
This time, even Jack gave me a look.
“She’s not very good at this,” Bob said.
Jack bared his teeth at the man, who took a healthy step back.
The parking lot outside Beau’s was not exactly the OK Corral. We weren’t going to have a shootout in the direct line of sight of the hardware store. I wasn’t sure that Jack, Bob, or Joe agreed with me on this basic principle, though.
“We know who you are, Mr. Shepherd,” Joe said, shuffling his feet in the gravel.
The Quindlens walked out of the diner just then, and we all smiled at them and waved, even the thugs, and tried to look friendly (me) and unthreatening (the rest of them) until the couple made their slow and careful way to their car and drove off. Mrs. Q pinned the thugs with one last warning glare as her husband drove by us and pointed her gun at them through the window.
When their car finally turned at the corner by the bank, travelling at Mr. Q’s top speed of fifteen miles per hour, Bob started to reach in his pocket.
Faster than I could form a thought, Jack sprang across the space between us and grabbed Bob by the neck. His sudden violence sent a wave of far-overdue fear through me, and I realized I’d been treating this all like some sort of game—playing detective—meddling in things I knew nothing about and had zero qualifications to do.
It was Dead End, though. I’d lived here all my life in relative safety and the absolute knowledge that I was loved. It had only been over the space of the past year that I’d started getting caught up in violence and evil; I still wasn’t accustomed to it.
Maybe I still hadn’t believed it.
But seeing Jack go from bantering with me over the lunch table to looking like he could rip a man’s throat out without even blinking his now-amber-colored eyes—that shook something loose inside me that might take a long time to put back together.
Suddenly, the smell of fried onions and car exhaust combined to make me feel sick. I clutched my stomach, and Jack caught me doing it. His face hardened, and then he turned back to Bob.
“Geez, I was just reaching for my handkerchief,” Bob said, his face now shiny with sweat that the cool March temperatures couldn’t account for. “Calm down, man.”
“Maybe don’t stick your hand in your pocket until we get this figured out,” Jack drawled, his voice laden with menace. He was every inch the soldier and rebel commander at that instant, and it scared me.
Jack scared me.
I’d known what he was, and I’d seen him in action, but that had been before the word relationship had popped up in my brain. Now I was seeing him through the measuring lens of a possible future, and it was…frightening.
“Look, Mr. Shepherd,” Joe said. “We’re not your enemies. We’re not here for anything to do with you. Hell, we’d like to give you a medal for the things you’ve done. When you took out that nest of vamps in Chicago, single-handed—wow. The boss didn’t stop talking about it for days.”
Jack stepped away from Bob, and the man took a deep, wheezing breath.
“Can I get my handkerchief now?”
“Slowly and carefully,” Jack ordered.
Bob pulled out a jarringly bright-pink cloth, and wiped his face with it, then shoved it back in his pocket. “Yeah. What Joe said. Respect, man.”
“I’m not interested in your respect,” Jack said, his voice a low rumble.
I knew that voice. That voice usually came just before he shifted to tiger form and started tearing into people. Swallowing my sudden attack of good sense, I spoke up.
“Why are you here?”
Joe and Bob both looked surprised, like they’d forgotten I was there. Smart, I guess. Better to keep your eyes on the biggest predator in the room. Or the parking lot.
Jack leaned forward, and his eyes were still flaring hot amber. “Answer the lady.”
“We’re just passing through,” Joe rushed to answer. “We’ve got a little competition problem, and we came down to this snake pit of a state—”
“No offense,” Bob said, elbowing Joe.
“Yeah, sorry, no offense. But we came down to check it out. Everything’s computer these days, all this new talent is on the internet, and old-school just can’t compete,” Joe whined.
I blinked. Either I’d fallen down a rabbit hole, or I was standing outside of Beau’s Diner listening to a hit man complain about marketplace competition.
A flash of pink and white caught my attention. Lorraine was standing in the window, waving to me. I waved back. So, yes, it was really happening. My new reality was an episode of Survivor where the contestants killed each other instead of voting them off the island.
Jack gave me a weird look, and then he put his arm around my waist and pulled me closer, as if he could tell I was feeling a little bit woozy. Surprisingly, even though he’d just scared me a few moments ago, he felt like safety to me now.
My central nervous system might need a tune-up.
Rooster ambled out of Beau’s and caught sight of us. “You okay, Tess?"
I nodded and smiled a big, fake smile. Luckily, Rooster was never one for the subtleties of human communication, so he nodded back and headed for his truck.
“We could use him,” Bob said admiringly, watching as the cab of Rooster’s truck sank several inches when the big man climbed into it.
“About that competition problem,” Jack said, waving his hand in the universal signal for “keep going or I’ll hurt you.”
Joe took up the story. “Yeah, the boss’s niece is a computer whiz at the University of Chicago. She thought she tracked the guy’s communication down here, but then it changed or something, but the boss thought we should drive down and check it out.”
“The origin location,” Bob put in, clearly proud of his mastery of the tech lingo. Then he sneered at Jack. “What I don’t understand is why the hell we’re telling you all this.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “Respect, remember?”
I was suddenly sick to death of all this and ready to cut to the chase. I moved away from Jack and squared my shoulders.
“Did you find him? Your competition? And do you know anything about the banshee killer?”
“The what?” both thugs said in unison.
The blank looks on their faces were pretty obviously sincere. They didn’t know anything about the person who was killing banshees, which actually made sense to me. I thought this sounded more like a rage-motivated crime, perpetrated by a killer for whom this was excruciatingly personal—either for reasons of fear or hatred, or both.
Contract kills on banshees didn’t make much sense.
Still, I had to clench my jaw against a dull wave of disappointment.
“Did you find him?” Jack asked.
“No. There’s nothing down here that looks anything like the operation this guy would need, with the stuff he’s pulled. Plus, he’s got money,” Bob said.
“A shit-ton of it,” Joe added helpfully.
“Nothing down here looks like the kind of place a person with money would live,” Bob concluded, but then he glanced at me. “No offense.”
“We’ll just be on our way,” Joe said, inching toward their car.
Jack nodded. “Fine. But spread the word—Dead End is my territory now.”
They both nodded enthusiastically. Tigers have that effect on people. Also, whatever Jack had done in Chicago must have been brutal, to impress hired killers so much. A shudder went through me.
Jack pointed at Joe. “One more thing. Have you heard anything about another team sent down here?”
Joe looked at Bob, who shook his head. “Nope. Might be those damn Russians, though. They’ve been following us around, trying to horn in on our jobs. Watch out for them. They hate shifters.”
With a parting gift of a nasty smile, Bob slammed the door, started the car, and peeled out of the parking lot. The second they were gone, Jack touched my arm.
“Tess. Are you okay? For a minute back there, you looked almost afraid.” He cleared his throat. “Of me.”
I started to deny it, but Jack deserved better. “For a minute back there, I was.”
He started to say something, but I stopped him. “I’d like to go visit my…Leona now. Will you take me back to the shop to get the truck?”
Jack looked unhappy, but I really didn’t want to talk about it. I think he figured that out, because he didn’t say another word until we were in his truck, driving the wrong way.
“I need my truck, Jack.”
“No. I’ll take you to see your grandmother. I’m not leaving you alone when there are killers roaming the streets.”
There was no use arguing with him, so I didn’t bother. I just nodded and stared out my window, not seeing a thing. I was getting tired of overbearing men wanting to run my life, and suddenly the thought of listening to another one of Owen’s long stories about comparing brands of fluoride seemed like a small price to pay for a little less alpha male.
I also really needed to get another car, so I could quit borrowing Uncle Mike’s ancient farm truck, but car shopping was the last thing I wanted to do right now, with six kinds of killers invading my town.
Maybe when Molly got back from touring with her band. Scarlett’s Letters was enjoying national popularity, and my best friend had been gone for a while, playing bigger venues than they’d ever booked before. I suddenly missed her with a fierce ache, but I wasn’t going to call her and add more stress to her life. Her drummer, Dice, did a good enough job of that.
Leona and Ned were hard at work at the RV’s dining table when we arrived, as we saw after Ned unlocked the door and put down his shotgun.
“Precautions,” he said tensely, and I was glad. I wasn’t yet entirely sure how I felt about my…Leona, but I knew I wanted her to be safe.
If you’ve ever wondered what the inside of a three-hundred-thousand-dollar RV looks like, it’s kind of a cross between the cockpit of a 747 and the interior of a corporate penthouse. Or so I imagine, having never seen either of those things. I gaped like a country mouse for a minute, and then I focused on the ugly elephant in the middle of the room.
They had set up a giant folding screen as a murder board. It looked exactly like the thing that cops and serial killers used in movies. Eight-by-ten glossy photos of six different people were posted at the top, and there were maps, notes, and newspaper clippings posted on it.
“We’re working on the case,” Leona said unnecessarily. She held out her arms to hug me, but I flinched away.
“These are the six who went missing,” Ned said.
“There were actually eight,” I blurted out.
Jack looked at me, and I shrugged. “Alejandro said keep it between us, and she’s my family, so that’s ‘us,’ right?”
Leona sank down on the bench, her face drawn and older than I’d ever seen it. This case was clearly too much for her. “Who is Alejandro?”
I filled her in on Special Agent Vasquez and what he’d told us. “So they are taking it seriously, they just don’t have any leads.”
“I want pictures of them. Names, dates, information about their lives,” Leona said. “It’s important.”
I sat down across from her. “Why? Why is it so important that you be the one to do this? It puts you in danger, and I don’t want you to be in danger.”
A smile of singular sweetness spread across her face, and I caught my breath. I recognized that smile. It was my mom’s smile; the same one that shined at me whenever I looked at the old photo albums.
“You’re so much like her,” Leona and I told each other at almost exactly the same time.
Then her smile faded. “It’s important that I do it because I know all about being erased. Trey erased me from my family, from the world, and even from myself. I stayed with him because he threatened to take my daughter from me, and even after she’d moved away and died, I stayed with him because he’d managed to destroy almost every part of me.”
Ned laid one thin hand on her shoulder, and looked at her with all the love in the world in his eyes. “He could never destroy all of you. You are tough, and you are a fighter. Steel is tempered by fire, my dear.”
Leona reached up and patted his hand, and then took a deep breath. “You’re right. I hope you’re right. But I have to do this for the ones who aren’t here to fight anymore. The ones who are probably in unmarked graves, with no one to find them or mourn for them. No one to bring them flowers.”
I swallowed the painful lump in my throat and reached for her hand—a leap of faith for me. Thankfully, my one-and-done history stayed intact, and I didn’t see any deaths. Not those she’d foretold, and not hers, for which I was doubly grateful.
“We’ll find them. We’ll bring flowers,” I promised, and it had the sound of a vow.
“See? You’re exactly alike,” Jack said gently to Leona. “Warrior women.”
When she looked at him, I know she saw what Shelley had seen in that burning shed—a super hero. It struck me, then, that of course he was dangerous. All super heroes were dangerous.
They couldn’t keep the rest of us safe any other way.
I smiled so brightly at Jack that he blinked, but the sadness that had clung to him since the incident at Beau’s dropped away, and I was glad.
Leona’s phone shrilled on the table between us, startling us all. She looked at the display and started to shake.
“It’s Everett again. He won’t stop calling.”
Ned pulled Leona up and into a hug. “Don’t answer it. We’ll get you a different phone.”
Jack grabbed the phone. “Oh, I think we need to have a chat with old Everett.”
He answered the call, put it on speaker, and nodded at me.
“Hello,” I said, trying to sound like Leona.
“It’s about time you answered my call, you nasty bitch. I know where you are and I’m coming for you,” a man screamed. “You took my father away from me and my mom. You hideous monster. Now I’m going to take everything from you. I know you’re in Dead End, and I’m coming for you.”
I started to shake, too, from the sheer level of toxic hate. Jack’s expression turned deadly, and he leaned forward to speak directly into the phone.
“We’ll be waiting, asshole.”
Everett was still sputtering when I hung up on him.