Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
LEX
"Did they find anything?" Tiger looked up from where he was taping up his favourite stick. Every wind of his hand around the shaft was more violent than the last. He worked like a man ready to use the stick on someone's head.
I eased myself down to the bench beside him. "What we suspected. Minute traces of a known hallucinogen. Enough to give her a dose of paranoia before putting her to sleep."
Tiger voiced my annoyance eloquently by growling from deep in the back of his throat. He gripped his stick so tight his knuckles turned white. "If I get my hands on whoever did that—"
I ignored the way my dick twitched in response.
"You'll tell me about it first," Aidan stopped a metre or two away. He gave us both a stern look, as though we had a history of keeping secrets from him. Some of the guys on the team did, but we'd done our best to keep him in the loop.
"Unless they accidentally get shot in the head before we say anything," Tiger said, unapologetically. "Don't say you wouldn't act first if it was Elenna they drugged."
"I'd absolutely act first, but I'm already in charge here, I don’t have to report to myself," Aidan said. "You have a list of all the employees at the bakery?" He directed the question to me.
"You should have it on your phone." I nodded toward him. "None of the names stand out, but that's what we expected. They wouldn't have anyone high-profile pull something like this."
"Anyone high-profile would stand out like dog’s balls," Aidan agreed. "The minute they stepped foot in Dusk Bay, we'd know about it."
He sounded confident. I wished I felt the same way. Dusk Bay was a big place. Hiding wouldn't be difficult. Although, people like that had contacts and if you use enough of those, word eventually gets out. Rumours. Whispers.
That was too much risk to pull off something like this. Wren was important to us, vital, but not so much to Nicholas Fiorelli.
At least, she didn't used to be, until Tiger started sniffing around. I didn’t blame him, not really. He was doing everything he could to protect her because of Fiorelli. The point was, if Nicholas put in that much effort, he'd go for a bigger target. Why, then, did he have someone drug Wren?
"We could kill them all. Then we'd know we got whoever messed with Wren," Tiger said.
"As tempting as that is," Aidan drawled, "I can't condone the murder of innocent people. And it wouldn't assure us of anything. Whoever drugged the muffin might have been someone passing by. Someone else might have been the intended target. They might have expected Caleb to drop in for a muffin."
Tiger looked disbelieving. "Seems more likely someone like Wren or Elenna would have bought it."
"Men eat chocolate chip muffins too," I told him. "It could have been meant for me."
Under other circumstances, I might have craved chocolate cake after this conversation. Seeing what it did to Wren, I was much less inclined to touch any of it unless I made it myself. Since I couldn't bake for nuts, I wouldn’t be eating it any time soon.
"It could have been meant for anyone, but Wren was the one who ate it. I'd rather find out if she was the target and why, than go off half-cocked and spill blood," Aidan said calmly.
"Who are you and what have you done with Aidan Draeger?" I asked.
He rolled his eyes at me. "When have I ever advocated for killing innocent people?"
"Never," I agreed. "But if an innocent person was standing between you and Elenna, all bets would be off."
"No one with half a brain would stand between me and her," he said darkly. "If they did, they wouldn't qualify as innocent." He pulled out his phone and tapped on the screen. "I'll run a check on these people and see if we can find anything."
"From what I found so far, they're all squeaky clean," I said.
"Clean like a murder scene when it's been scrubbed to remove all evidence?" Tiger asked. He tore the end of the tape off the roll and pressed it down to his stick.
"Exactly," I said. "Not even a speeding ticket."
"I've never had a speeding ticket," Tiger said.
"The point is, on paper all of the bakery employees are perfect. That's as suspicious as fuck," I said.
"Like I said, if we just kill them all, we know they're dealt with." Tiger shrugged. "They all sound guilty as shit to me."
"By that logic, someone should kill all of the Demons," Aidan said dryly. "Should we start with you?"
Tiger glanced up at him and smirked, but didn't respond. Probably just as well. Swearing at the head coach, or flipping him off, tended to be a bad idea. Aidan had a hair-trigger temper at the best of times.
"If it turns out they were all involved," I started slowly.
The idea of anyone coming after my woman in any way, even accidentally, made my blood boil. On the surface, I kept my temper even, but underneath I was as ready to do violence as Tiger was. When we found out exactly who did this, he might have to get in line behind me to deal with them.
Seeing Wren as scared as she was when she opened the door to us… The thought of it made me crazy. She didn't deserve to be caught up in any of this bullshit. The fact they got to her so easily, that was something that would keep me awake at night. She could have died.
"We'll deal with them," Aidan said. "Assuming it was the muffin in the first place. Someone could have slipped something in her coffee."
I shook my head. "She said the only one that made her coffee was her and her father. She and he are close. There's no way he'd do that to her, and she wouldn't do it to herself."
"Are you sure about that?" Aidan asked. "People who use drugs—"
Tiger shot to his feet, but stopped short of lunging at Aidan. "Wren is not doing drugs. She's not that fucking stupid." His face was red with anger. He sucked in a ragged breath.
"I know what drug use looks like. She had no track marks or anything like that. Someone did this to her, she did not do it to herself."
Aidan nodded. "Fair enough."
Tiger's brother overdosed twice, that was no secret. If it wasn't for his bandmates finding him, he'd be dead now. Tiger was understandably touchy on the subject.
He did his best to hide the fact, but somewhere deep down, he cared for his brother.
"It's okay, Tige," I said softly. "Aidan is just thinking through potential scenarios. No one thinks she took something on purpose." I glanced at Aidan meaningfully until he nodded again.
"They fucking better not," Tiger said with a grunt. He gripped his stick in his fist like it was a club.
"Get warmed up," Aidan said. "Practice starts in ten." He gave us both a last glance before turning and walking away.
"Where does he fucking get off?" Tiger said under his breath.
"Don't let him get to you." I put a hand on Tiger's bicep.
I couldn't keep a mental image of him naked the night before, from popping into my head. Seeing the way his cock…
I swallowed hard. "You know what Aidan is like. He doesn't beat around the bush. So to speak." I smiled.
Tiger snorted. "I don't want to think about him beating." For a heartbeat or two, our eyes met.
Heat roared through my body. I knew the same thing happened to him, I saw the way his eyes darkened.
He was a fascinating guy. A hard, angry shell on the outside, but a regular guy with a soft side underneath. One he'd never admit to, but I saw flashes of it here and there. Particularly when he looked at Wren. He wanted to possess and own her, but he loved her and wanted her to love him.
I felt the same way about her. Could I feel the same about him too? I'd never been around people before who didn't judge me. They accepted me for all my flaws. Fuck knows I had plenty of those. They wanted me to be a better version of myself.
That was exactly what I wanted for them too. I knew things would be interesting, getting into a relationship like this, but I never expected it to be the support system it already was.
"Me either," I said softly, when I realised neither of us had spoken for at least a minute or two. I lowered my hand and stepped away, but my palm immediately felt colder without the connection.
"I should start warming up before the strength and conditioning coach kicks my ass," Tiger said.
I grinned. "Right. I still get to do that, don't I?"
"Not if you want to keep staying at my place." He sat back down and started to lace up his skates.
"You've never got a speeding ticket, but you don't mind a bit of casual blackmail," I said.
He glanced up and grinned. "Nope. Whatever gets the job done."
His smile made my heart do a somersault.
"Since there's no chance I'm leaving you alone with Wren, I'm going to say good luck with trying to kick me out. I’m going to keep doing my job. If that means kicking your ass, then your ass gets a kicking."
I might kiss it better afterward, but I'd do what I had to do to keep him on track. The Demons were going to take the cup this year, whatever it took to get there.
"She's not alone with me, Bray is there too," Tiger pointed out.
"There's even less chance of me leaving her alone with him," I said.
He knew her better than anyone. I wasn't jealous of that past and the connection between them, but it would take time for us to get to know each other as well as that. Time I was more than happy to spend.
"If he starts anything, we can throw him off the balcony," Tiger said as Bray walked past on his skates.
Bray stopped to smirk. "You wouldn't do that. Wren would never forgive you."
"If we don't, that would be the only reason for it," Tiger said. He smirked at Bray, then went back to lacing his skates.
"Deep down, he really likes me," Bray said.
"Keep telling yourself that," Tiger said without looking up.
I shook my head at them both and laughed. They might end up closer than Tiger was to his brother. The pair were a lot alike, even if they wouldn't admit it right now.
"Remember, team unity," I told them. "The Demons and us. Unified, no one can get to us or beat us."
"Did you get that off a motivational meme?" Bray asked.
"No, it came out of my own brain," I said. "The only motivational meme I've seen today said, 'life is like the human body. You get out what you put into it.'"
"So you put in food and get out shit," Bray concluded.
I chuckled. "Something like that."
"Motivational memes are full of crap," Tiger said. "Like the fortunes you get out of fortune cookies. I once got one that said, ‘the next person you see will be the love of your life.' The next person I saw was my reflection in the mirror."
"Sounds accurate to me," Bray said, grinning.
Tiger flipped him off. "Fuckwit."
"Get your asses out on the ice," Aidan shouted.
"You heard the man." I waved them both out and followed behind.