Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
Diana dressed with care. No short skirts, no low-cut tops, nothing to encourage Brent Gannon to leer or touch. He would anyway, but she wasn’t planning to make access easy.
She chose a pair of tight skinny jeans that tucked into black ankle boots, a long-sleeved rust-colored top, and a black leather bomber jacket. She applied makeup. Just enough to highlight her eyes and lips.
Her hair was long and loose, curled at the ends. She liked the look, though she hated wasting it on Gannon.
She’d far rather it was for Alex.
A curl of heat unfurled in her belly. Damn the man. She’d thought he would show up today, try to talk her out of meeting Gannon, but he hadn’t so much as texted. She’d actually spent the day in a state of half-arousal, expecting him to storm up to her door like a thundercloud.
And then expecting him to strip her naked and take control the way he had last night. Ordering her not to meet Gannon while attempting to fuck her into compliance.
She still wasn’t over the things he’d done to her body.
The way he’d taken her to places she’d never been before.
She wasn’t sure if he was joking about spanking her or not, but she half thought she’d let him if he tried.
Just to see if it was as exciting in reality as it sounded when he growled the words.
She was more tender between her legs than she’d expected. It’d been a couple of months since she’d had a man in her bed, though she had to acknowledge that Joel was no Alex Bishop. Joel was the perfect beta male, and that’s what she liked. Or thought she’d liked until last night.
Why had she accepted the diet plate for so long when she could have had the whole damned buffet? And how was she supposed to go back to safe, acceptable beta males ever again when she’d had a bossy, growly, ultra-competent alpha between her legs?
It had been stupid to allow her desire for him to override her common sense. She blamed it on all the things that’d happened yesterday at the militia gathering, and on her gratitude to him for saving her from the assholes who wanted to hurt her.
If not for those things, surely she could have resisted the itch that bloomed beneath her skin every time Alex Bishop sauntered into a room looking good enough to eat with a spoon.
After a last check in the mirror, Diana slipped her handbag over her shoulder, placing the strap diagonal across her chest so she could have her hands free.
There was a Glock 23 inside her purse and a Sig P320 at her back.
Gannon would notice it, but that was the point.
No dumb blonde act tonight. Just competence and confidence combined with manufactured interest in his manliness.
She locked her door and headed downstairs. The building was quiet, the only sounds muted televisions behind apartment doors. The sun was dropping behind the horizon and dusk stretched pink and purple fingers across the sky as she emerged into the parking lot.
The leaves were beginning to turn colors on the trees, but it was the barest hint.
The days were still plenty warm, though the nights were starting to cool considerably.
Diana hit the button to unlock her car, slipped inside, and started the engine.
A motion at her window nearly made her leap out of her skin, but it was only Colleen Wright in a black kaftan and turban, both of which sparkled with silvery stitches made to resemble spider webbing.
She motioned for Diana to lower the window.
“Hi, Mrs. Wright. Did you need something?”
“Hello, dear. I wanted to tell you about our cemetery ghost tour specials.” She thrust a flyer through the window and Diana took it. “Ten dollars off your first tour. No guarantees we’ll see a ghost, but it does happen.”
“Thank you so much. I’d love to join a tour one of these nights.”
She wasn’t lying. Small town quirkiness was her jam.
“The spirits have guided me to tell you something, dear.” Colleen put a hand on the windowsill, bent closer so that Diana could smell the stale cigarette smoke wafting from her. “Open your heart. Love will come.”
Diana hesitated. Pasted on her best debutante smile. “Thank you so much. That’s very helpful.”
Colleen laughed. “No, it isn’t. But you’re sweet to say so.
” She rotated her hand with a flourish. “I but pass on the messages I am told. I’m not here to make sense of them, but the spirits know what they’re doing.
Open your heart, dear. The love and acceptance you seek is very close or the spirits would have said nothing.
Oh, good gravy,” she said, snapping upright like a rabbit sensing danger.
“Reba is tottering about on the back stoop again. I think the kombucha is still too strong. Ta!”
Diana couldn’t help but smile as Colleen trotted toward The Mystic Chick.
Reba was indeed weaving about on the back stoop, though Diana wondered if it was perhaps bourbon rather than kombucha she’d been imbibing.
Falling into an open grave in the dark would addle anyone’s wits, especially when your bestie was continually hollering about ghosts and curses every night as you walked through the cemetery.
Not to mention the seances and alien sightings.
Though she wished she could go explore the Chick, maybe sign up for one of the alien communicating courses Colleen taught (using the produce aisle at the grocery store, no less), Diana had more immediate things to do.
It was a half hour’s drive into Huntsville to the bar where she was meeting Brent.
The fact Alex hadn’t tried to talk her out of it again weighed on her, but she pushed thoughts of him out of her mind and cued up an audiobook instead.
It was a sci-fi story and it was good, but she found herself wanting to listen to one of those steamy romances she’d heard Emma Sutton and Aurora Harper teasing each other about.
She’d read romance in college, and then lost her taste for it after Viktor’s assault. Now she listened to a lot of true crime, sci-fi, and self-help books about attitude and how to keep people from fucking with your head. All good things, but not as stimulating as a steamy romance novel.
Maybe she’d swing by the library one of these days, get some recommendations from Paisley Allen, Sutton’s Creek’s librarian.
Paisley had always been friendly to her, though she was currently living with one of Alex’s men.
Ethan Snow was courteous whenever she saw him, but he wasn’t exactly friendly. None of the men were.
She didn’t have to guess why. As the leader went, so went the pack. And Alex had never made his dislike of her a secret.
The drive seemed to go faster than she wished, but she was soon parking in front of the bar and letting out a slow breath.
Psyching herself up. She was good at the mental game, at shutting down her emotions and doing what needed done.
It was what she liked about her job. She had to take herself out of her own head, figure out how to approach people, how to get the most out of them.
It hurt to be sidelined from the job, but she’d made her choice when she walked into the Huntsville director’s office a couple of weeks ago and told him it was a mistake to let Washington have control of the Dashevsky investigation.
He’d very rightly pointed out he had little choice in the matter, same as her, but that’s where things went astray.
Nobody liked being called a coward and a bootlicker. Not her finest moment, that’s for sure.
But hey, she’d found herself with all kinds of leisure time while she took the mandated time off, and that’d helped her pull the trigger on her plan to join the militia.
She’d already been hanging out at Big Mike’s and chatting people up, but an enforced absence from work was just what she’d needed to take the plunge.
She locked her car and went inside the brewery and bar that had been built in an old school building in Huntsville.
There were a couple of breweries, restaurants, live music venues, and other businesses in the Campus 805 complex.
It was a favorite hangout of Gannon’s. He went to Big Mike’s on occasion, but this was his staple, probably because it was closer to home and a bit higher class than Mike’s.
He perched at a table in the corner, scrolling through his phone, a pint of beer on the table in front of him.
Diana watched him for a moment before scanning the crowd for familiar faces from the farm.
She didn’t see any, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there.
Her powers of observation were pretty good, but a lot had happened yesterday.
Gannon looked up and saw her, a smile breaking over his face. He waved and she went to join him, pasting on her own smile.
“Hey, sexy lady,” he said as she took a seat beside him.
“Hey there yourself,” she purred. “What’re you drinking?”
“An IPA. Seasonal brew. Really good.” He picked up his glass and held it out. “Want a taste?”
“I’m good, thanks.” She said it with a smile, and he didn’t seem to take offense. She picked up the drinks menu and scanned it.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“You and Alex seemed close. Wouldn’t want to poach his woman.”
Like hell he wouldn’t. She laughed. “He’s good for some things but he pisses me off most of the time, so yeah, we aren’t exactly exclusive.”
Gannon put his arm across the back of her chair, leaning toward her. “That’s really good to hear, baby.”
Ugh. She didn’t seem to mind when Alex called her honey or baby, but this was like nails on a chalkboard the way it scratched the inside of her brain.
“Yeah, it is, right?” A waiter arrived then, thankfully, and Diana gave him her order. She got a beer, but she planned to nurse it while she endured this man’s company for the next hour or two. Maybe he’d keep drinking and she’d get something useful out of him. She’d come prepared for it anyway.
Once the waiter was gone, Gannon leaned back again and took a drink of his beer. “I don’t think you ever said what you did, Diana. I’d guess supermodel, but not sure there’s much call for that around here.”
She tried to giggle, honest to God she did. And maybe she succeeded because he grinned.
“You’re too sweet. I’m in law enforcement, actually.”
She said it bluntly because she wanted to see the look on his face.
She wasn’t disappointed. His eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Wow, really? Are you an officer?”
“FBI. I met Alex through the range. But I don’t know how much longer I’ll be there, quite honestly.
I’ve been put on administrative leave while they investigate an incident.
” She finger-quoted the word incident. “Total bullshit, but you know how it is these days. The pussies in charge are all about political correctness, blah blah blah.”
Gannon looked interested. “Yeah, I do know. So tell me, what did you do?”
She made up a story about arresting someone and the bosses saying the evidence wasn’t good because she’d collected it illegally, even though they all knew the guy was a scumbag.
Then she ranted about criminals getting away with too much, and about the kinds of people who should be thrown in jail and/or shot without costing taxpayers the money for trials or feeding and housing them.
Gannon ate it up. She’d thought about saying she was with a sheriff’s department somewhere, but if she got into the organization and they did any research on her, they’d uncover that lie pretty quickly.
So, FBI it was. Lots of people who joined militia movements came from professions like the military and law enforcement.
They were usually white and male, but women and people of color joined too.
Gannon ordered more beer, got progressively tipsier and more handsy. Diana endured it, but she wanted to break his fingers every time they caressed the underside of her breast on the pretext of touching her arm.
“Women shouldn’t be in charge,” Gannon said when they’d been talking about President Willis and how the country was worse off under her leadership. “They don’t have the stomach for it. No offense, baby. You are clearly the exception.”
Diana simpered. “I think I’d do all right, but it’s better if a man leads. People respect a man in a way they don’t respect a woman.”
That part was true, and it pissed her off. Men weren’t automatically better leaders, but they were often treated like it.
“Too right. Damn, you’re a reasonable woman. Fucking gorgeous, too.” He leaned in to kiss her. Diana turned her head, so his lips landed clumsily on her cheek.
She took a sip of her beer as he straightened, glassy-eyed, weaving a little in his seat. She was on the same beer, not the fourth like him. “Tell me about you, Brent. I’m so impressed that you were a colonel, and you work in Missile Defense.”
He grinned at her, downed the rest of his beer, signaled the waiter for another, and launched into the Brent Gannon show where he was the most capable dude ever and the rest of the world was against him for being so fucking competent.
Oh, and his wife was a bitch for leaving him.
His daughters were ruined by their mother, and they didn’t speak to him either.
Her stomach twisted at the delusions this man labored under, but she had to keep him talking. See if anything useful popped out of that disgusting brain of his.
“You know, baby, if you wanted to take this somewhere more private, I could tell you some things you’d fucking love to hear about.”
Diana perked up. It could be bullshit, but it could also be that Gannon talked too much when he was looking to get laid. “Oh, really? Like what?”
“Shit’s happening, baby. Big shit. Can’t talk about it.” He put a finger to his lips with an exaggerated shhhh sound. He was weaving and slurring, but the worst of it hadn’t hit yet. She’d like to get something out of him before it did. “But it’s gonna happen here. Right fucking here.”
Her heart tripped. She deliberately pretended to misunderstand. “In the brewery?”
“No, baby.” He leaned toward her. She stiffened but forced herself not to pull away. “The Arsenal,” he whispered.
A chill rolled down her spine. “Oh my.”
“Yeah, oh my is right.” He put a hand on her leg, skimmed upward. “You ready to go? My place is close, and we can talk more privately. While naked.”
“Well, I...”
His head snapped up, focusing on something behind her. She could tell the moment the shutters went down and the walls went up. She spun around to see what’d spooked him.
And came face to face with Alex Bishop. Dark, delicious, infuriating Alex Bishop.
“Hey, baby girl, what’re you doing here?”