Chapter 19
Tomás saw it happen. He’d been in the back of the store when the two men came in.
Not the tattooed one. Two others. New ones.
He stayed in the back because Pax had told him a week ago to be present and watching without making himself a target, and he’d done his best to follow orders.
He’d found a task near the back that gave him a clean sightline to the front counter.
The two men didn’t look at merchandise. They walked straight to the counter where Mr. Leeland sat with his newspaper.
Bree was out on an errand, and the timing of that felt less like luck and more like somebody had been watching and waiting for just such an opportunity.
They stood over Mr. Leeland and talked at him for a few minutes.
Tomás couldn’t hear the words from the back. He didn’t need to. He just watched Mr. Leeland’s face and read the body language of the men looming over him.
Mr. Leeland didn’t flinch. He set down his newspaper and looked up at the two men with a calm expression, giving them nothing. He said something short, two or three words at most, then went back to reading his paper.
The two men looked at each other. One of them leaned down and said something close to the old man’s ear. Mr. Leeland just turned the page noisily. Then, they left.
Tomás was at the front of the store before the door finished closing, and Mr. Leeland looked up at him over his newspaper.
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Mr. Leeland said, lying with a perfectly straight face.
“Mr. Leeland,” Tomás said in a chastising tone. He wasn’t stupid. He knew what he’d just seen. Those two goons had tried to intimidate the hardware store owner.
“I’m fine.” Mr. Leeland folded his newspaper. “Where’s Bree?”
“She went out on an errand.”
“Then I’m going upstairs until she gets back.” He stood, steadier on his feet than Tomás expected. “Don’t tell her about that little visit before I do.”
He went upstairs, and Tomás stood at the front counter and called Pax.
Pax heard the anger in Tomás’s voice before the words landed. The young man was controlled and clear, relaying everything in the right order, but underneath ran something tight and furious that Pax recognized. It was what he felt when someone touched people he was responsible for.
“Is he upstairs now?” Pax asked.
“Yes. He walked up on his own. He seemed—” Tomás paused, searching for it. “He seemed like he was deciding something.”
“Stay in the store. Turn the sign to CLOSED and lock the doors. Nobody comes in until I get there.” Pax was already moving. “Where’s Bree?”
“Still out, but she texted me five minutes ago. She’s on her way back.”
“Call her. Tell her to come straight through the back. Don’t tell her why over the phone.”
He drove too fast and knew it and didn’t slow down.
His jaguar was doing something he rarely felt from it.
Not the sharp alertness of a fight coming.
Something older and colder. Somebody had aimed a threat at an old man who couldn’t defend himself any longer, and every instinct Pax owned wanted blood for such a transgression.
He’d trained himself out of most of his dangerous reflexes, but not that one.
He pulled up behind the store, finding Bree’s truck, which was really the store’s delivery vehicle that read “Leeland’s Hardware” on the sides, was already there. He went in through the back.
He heard them before he reached the stairs. Her voice, low and careful, asking something. Her father’s voice answering, calm and unhurried. Pax went up the stairs and stopped in the kitchen doorway.
Mr. Leeland sat at the table. Bree stood with her back to Pax, her hands braced on the counter behind her like she was holding on for dear life.
The old man regarded Pax over his daughter’s shoulder. His eyes were clear.
“Come in,” Mr. Leeland said, sighing hard. “You might as well hear this too.”
Bree turned. She’d known he was there. She always seemed to know now, when he was around. Her face was locked down tight, and he could tell the tight control was costing her.
“I heard you had a visit. Please tell me exactly what they said,” Pax said to her father, doing his best to stay polite and keep his voice even.
Thankfully, Mr. Leeland cooperated and recited the conversation for him.
None of it was specific enough to interest a police officer, if the police had been an option, which they weren’t in this case because of the careful wording.
It was all implication. The new business coming to town expected cooperation from the existing ones.
It would be better for everyone if the Leeland family understood that cooperation meant not noticing certain things.
It would be less good for everyone if they didn’t.
The second part, the words spoken close to Mr. Leeland’s ear, had been more direct. The store had been drawing unusual attention lately, they said. It would be a shame if that attention brought complications for the woman who ran it.
Pax sat with that and kept his face calm. Inside, the jaguar wanted out. It wanted blood.
“You should have called me immediately,” Pax gently chastised the older man.
“I wanted to tell Bree myself,” Mr. Leeland replied, without a shred of apology. “I wasn’t going to let her hear it from anyone else.”
Bree’s jaw was set. She was staring at a point past Pax’s left shoulder, not quite looking at anyone.
“Bree,” Pax said.
“I’m fine.”
He knew that tone. He’d heard it from soldiers. It meant the opposite of fine, and it meant she needed space, not pressure. He turned back to her father.
“I don’t want just Tomás here alone with you anymore. He’s too young and inexperienced to help if you get into real trouble. Instead, I’m going to ask two Clan members to be around the store for the next few days. You won’t always see them, but they’ll be close.”
Mr. Leeland nodded his acceptance.
“And I need you to tell me immediately if anyone comes in again. Not after you talk to Bree. Immediately.” Pax tried to be polite but also make his point.
“Understood.” The old man stood and straightened his shirt. “I’m going to go read.” He said it plainly, as if two men threatening him in his own store was a thing that happened all the time. He put his hand briefly on his daughter’s shoulder as he passed her, and went to the stairs.
The kitchen was quiet as Pax waited for Bree’s reaction. She stood at the counter with her back to him, hands still braced against it, and he watched the rigid line of her shoulders and let her have the moment she needed.
When she turned around, her eyes were bright and her chin was up. “They threatened him.”
“Yeah, they did.”
“They stood over my father in his own store and threatened him.” Her voice rose along with her outrage.
“Yes,” he agreed again, trying to be calm in the face of her very justified anger.
“Because of me. Because of all this.” She meant the store, the Clan traffic, the connection to Pax.
All of it. “He could have been hurt. He is hurt, he just won’t show it, and that’s—” She stopped.
Pressed her lips together. Started again.
“He sat there and stayed calm on the outside because he wasn’t going to give them a reaction, and that is the bravest and most infuriating thing I have ever heard, and I wasn’t here. ”
“You couldn’t have known they’d come in while you were gone.”
“I should have been here.”
“Bree.” He crossed the kitchen. She let him come close, which was something.
“You can’t be in two places at once. Your father handled the situation better than most trained operators would have.
” He put his hands on her shoulders and felt how rigid she was holding herself.
“He’s not hurt, honey. He’s made his peace with it, and he’s waiting for you to make yours. ”
“He made his peace, as you call it, because he trusts you to handle it.” Her voice dropped, the heat going out of it, something more emotional underneath.
“He trusts you. I trust you. And I need you to tell me this will end, and that he’s going to be safe.
Because I have spent my whole adult life keeping him safe and I can’t—” She stopped.
He pulled her into his arms. She didn’t resist. She pressed her face into his chest, and he felt her take one long, shaky breath. Then she went still against him, her arms around his waist, and her hands fisted in the back of his shirt.
He held on and said nothing. She didn’t need words yet. After a while, her grip loosened. She didn’t pull back, but the rigidness drained out of her.
“He just sat there and took it,” she said into his chest.
“I know.”
“He didn’t let them see his reaction. He just went on with his life like they were beneath his notice.” A sound that was almost a laugh. “Only my father would have the nerve to do something like that.”
“He was probably thinking about you the whole time,” Pax said, amusement in his tone.
She pulled back enough to look up at him. Her eyes were wet, but the raw fear was hardening back into the controlled anger she wielded so much better. “This threat needs to end, Pax.”
“We have options.” He kept his hands on her back. “Hernandez made a mistake today. He showed us his method and confirmed the intel we have on him. He’s still mapping us. Which means he still isn’t sure what he has. He’s still building his picture.”
“Which means he still doesn’t know about the Clan.”
“That’s what I’m thinking.”
He watched her turn it over, fear converting into analysis right in front of him. God, he loved watching her mind work.
“His mistake,” she said finally, “is that he thinks the hardware store is a soft target.”
“Yep.”
“It’s not.”
“Nope,” Pax agreed. “It’s not.”
She gazed at him, clear and direct. Then she stepped back and straightened her shirt. “I’m going to check on Dad.”
“I’ll be working with Tomás for a bit.”
She moved toward the stairs, then stopped. Turned back. Crossed to him and kissed him, brief and fierce, both hands on his face, then stepped away again.
“Come back tonight,” she whispered.
“I’ll be here.”
She went to her dad. He stood a moment in the afternoon stillness, then went to find Tomás.
That afternoon, Pax worked with Ari to refine their options, then went back to town to spend the night with Bree. By the time Pax drove back to the store, the town was dark, and the light in the apartment above was the only one burning on the street. He found her at the back door, waiting for him.
They locked up, then went upstairs together. They sat down in the kitchen to talk. He wanted to run the plan he and Ari had devised by her and see what she thought.
She listened. Then she said, “You’re going to use the store.”
“The store is already part of his picture of the town. We use what’s already there.”
“You’re going to involve me.”
“If you’re willing.”
She looked at him across the table. The lamp made a warm circle between them, and the rest of the kitchen sat in shadow.
“Tell me what you need,” she said.
So he told her. She seemed to consider his words, then said decisively, “My father can’t know the details.”
“Agreed.”
“He’ll want to help.”
“I know. But the less he knows, the more natural he stays, and natural is what we need from him.”
She sat with that. He watched her weigh the discomfort of keeping her father partially in the dark against the reasons it had to be that way. “All right,” she said. “But after this is over, I tell him everything.”
“After this is over,” Pax agreed, “you can tell him anything you want.”
She nodded once. Decision made. He reached across the table and she took his hand.
Outside, the desert lay absolutely still, and somewhere in a rental house on the eastern edge of town, Alexander Hernandez was planning. But Pax was here, at the kitchen table, with his mate’s hand in his and a plan of their own taking shape.
For tonight, that was enough.