Silent Wolf (Return To Fate Mountain #10)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

The bus tub hit the stainless-steel counter.

Reese Walker grabbed it and cleared it quickly.

Scrape, stack, spray. Plates in one rack, glasses upside down in another, silverware into the soak bin.

She slid the rack into the dish machine, dropped the door, and pulled the next tub toward her while it ran its ninety-second cycle.

The dish pit sat at the back of the diner's kitchen, past the grill line and the walk-in. It was a corner full of steam and stainless steel that was near the door to the alley. She worked with the door propped open so that the mountain air could cut through the steam.

From the spray sink she could see part of the line, but she couldn't see any of the dining room. No one in the dining room could see her either, and that was how she liked it.

Her boss, Stella Keenan, had offered her a waitressing position in her second week. It offered better money plus tips, but Reese had said she was hopeless with people. She wasn't hopeless with people. She didn't want to be out front any more than she had to be.

The dishwasher finished its cycle. She racked the clean plates, still hot enough to bite, and fed the machine the glasses.

The cook bellowed order numbers over the sound of the hood fans as the breakfast rush continued.

Early summer had filled the town with tourists, and tourists ate pancakes like it was a competitive event.

Three months ago, she'd been Reese Sutton of Spokane, Washington. Wife of Wade Sutton—owner of Sutton Residential Contracting. They'd been married for four years, and for most of that time she'd been afraid in her own home.

She got good at reading his footsteps, the set of his shoulders, and the quiet that came before he got violent. He'd been arrested once in their second year of marriage, when a neighbor heard enough to call 911.

The prosecutor dropped the charge for lack of evidence. After that, Wade hit her less. But he started imposing more rules. He told her what she could spend, where she could go, and who she could talk to.

Then she saw those two pink lines one morning. She had taken the pregnancy test in the pharmacy bathroom after she bought it. Nothing in her own house was private, not the trash, not her phone, not her.

As she looked at the results, she felt two emotions together. Terror and love. She loved the baby as soon as she knew it was inside her. And she felt terrified for her own safety and the safety of the child.

She knew that Wade would never let go of either of them. He would believe he owned the baby as much as he already believed he owned her. She was not going to bring her child into that kind of environment.

When he left for a three-day job in Post Falls, she packed two bags in the trunk of her old Corolla and drove south, watching the gas needle and the rearview mirror every few seconds.

Every white van on the highway stopped her breath for a second. In The Dalles she pawned her wedding ring. The man behind the counter gave her ninety dollars, and she stood in the parking lot braced for regret that never came.

She filled her tank and pulled back onto the highway lighter than she'd been in a long time. She drove until it was dark, and somewhere past Hood River she pulled onto the shoulder and cried for the first time since the test.

The next exit had a sign for Fate Mountain. The diner on Main Street had a help-wanted card taped inside the window. She slept in the car, washed her face in a gas station sink, and stood at the front door the next morning when the locks turned.

She gave Stella her maiden name. She had not been Reese Walker since she got married, and she missed the person she used to be.

Stella walked her through the job, asked the usual things, and put her on the schedule for the next morning.

Stella never questioned the gaps in her resume, the missing address, or the references Reese didn't have.

Stella ran a tight house, so the not-asking was a kindness Reese recognized for what it was.

Three months later, she had a furnished one-bedroom apartment with a month-to-month lease three blocks off Main.

The apron and extra-large diner shirts helped cover her growing belly.

Plus, nobody looked at a dishwasher very long.

She'd changed how she lifted, knees instead of back.

And she used a bussing cart whenever there was a large table.

In her first weeks at the diner, the smell of garbage and food scraps had sent her to the bathroom twice a shift. Now it didn't bother her nearly as much. She dumped stale coffee out of a mug, breathed through her mouth, and ate two saltines from the sleeve she kept on the shelf above the machine.

The rush ended suddenly at about eleven. Reese caught up on the last tub and was scrubbing the soak bin when Stella appeared in the pit doorway.

"Can you take the Saturday close?" Stella asked. "The closer needs the day off." She leaned against the doorframe, one hand braced on the swell of her belly. Stella was seven months pregnant and still worked the floor all morning.

"I'll take it."

"I knew you would." Stella watched her for another moment and then pushed off the doorframe. "Take your break before the lunch rush."

Reese liked Stella, which she typically didn't let herself do. Because she might have to run at any moment.

She carried a rack of clean glasses out to the wait station behind the counter.

The corner booth under the bear mural held two men from Steel Protection, the security outfit up Main Street.

The older one had silver at his temples and a newspaper folded to the crossword.

The younger one talked enough for both of them.

She'd picked up the history of Steel Protection her first week because Stella's mate was one of them.

Where Stella and her family were grizzly bear shifters, all the members of Steel Protection were wolves.

Shane Keenan had banned the whole crew from the diner years ago.

But he removed the ban after they rescued Nell Meadows from a human trafficking ring.

Stella's whole face changed, and Reese turned around to find Blaze Mercer walking through the front door.

Stella's mate came down the center aisle with a shoebox in his hands. He was big through the shoulders, with full sleeves of tattoos and a nose that had been broken and set crooked. Whenever Blaze was around the diner, his eyes were fixed on his wife.

"I noticed your good pair of shoes is still drying from the mop bucket incident last night," Blaze said. "You shouldn't be in those flat ones all day. I got you these to replace them."

He steered her into a booth, and Stella took a seat, her face lighting up. Blaze crouched in front of her, worked the backup shoes off her feet, and then eased the new ones on while she braced a hand on his shoulder.

"Oh, Blaze, that was thoughtful," Stella said.

"Can't have my pregnant wife standing on shoes without support."

He placed a hand against the side of her belly and said something Reese couldn't hear. Stella smiled and put her hand over his.

Reese stood at the wait station with the empty glass rack in both hands until she realized how heavy it was. She put it down.

She had been married for four years, and never once had Wade done anything so sweet and thoughtful for her. When Wade put his hands on her, it was usually to hurt her. She had decided a long time ago that men like Blaze happened to other women.

Reese set the rack down, squared it against the others, and walked back through the kitchen to the pit. She fed the machine the next tub of dishes, dropped the door, and stood inside the thundering sound.

Nell Meadows, the assistant manager, came back to drop a bus tub in the dish pit. She was a small, quick young woman who Reese couldn't help but like.

"Blaze just brought Stella a new pair of shoes.

" Nell leaned on the counter. "He drove two towns over last spring because she wanted a specific kind of pretzel.

Isn't that romantic?" Nell swooned. "Did you know they met on mate.com?

I check my matches every night. Nothing yet.

But Stella found her fated mate, and it's the realest thing I've ever seen.

" She shrugged. "I have to keep believing it will happen for me too. "

"It will," Reese said, knowing that finding a fated mate was much more likely for a wren shifter like Nell than it was for a human like her.

"I hope so." Nell pushed off the counter. "You should sign up too. Lots of shifters have human mates." And she was gone, back out to the floor.

Reese put one wet hand on her belly.

"Just us," she said under the noise. "We'll be fine on our own."