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The home itself had three levels - all dove gray with white accents, huge, sprawling gardens on either side of the bluestone driveway, the plants dead and dormant for the winter, but promising something spectacular come spring.
I was almost curious to see it.
Maybe I'd take a vacation in LBI in the summer.
Perfect place, a shore town.
Full of women only passing through, only looking for a casual fling with a guy they'd never see again.
Sounded like a place I needed to be.
Not sure what the exact protocol was, I parked the SUV on the street out front, pretty sure this was not the kind of place you risked leaving an oil spill, climbed out, grabbed the taped-together packages, and headed up the driveway.
The front door flew open, making me slow to a stop, brows drawing together when no figure moved into the doorway.
And then I met Andrew.
He was a living, breathing, barking, well, mop.
Really, that was the only way to describe the fucking thing.
It was a giant fucking mop.
With fangs that he was snapping at me as he got closer and closer.
Instead of fur, what you would find were white dreadlocks that brushed the ground and looked, yeah, mop-like.
"Andrew, Andrew," A man's voice said, calm, unconcerned, like his beast wasn't barreling down on me with his jowls pulled back to show his teeth, snarling like I was attempting to murder his owner with a dull kitchen knife. "Greet our guest. That's right. Good boy."
Henry himself was somewhere in his sixties with graying hair styled short and sprayed to submission. His face was mostly wrinkle-free, artificially deep tanned, eyes an almost unsettling light blue. He was tall, but slight, dressed in a cream-colored, perfectly tailored suit complete with a white and green striped tie and a matching pocket square.
His dog's idea of greeting me was to spin in three fast circles then lunge.
The box flew out of my arm as the beast took me down unexpectedly, making me slam back on the relentless bluestone driveway, knocking out my air, shooting pain up my back and the back of my head.
But that pain was short-lived when razor-sharp teeth sank into my forearm, dragging a string of curses out of me that belonged on the street, not in the driveway of a multi-million-dollar mansion.
"Andrew, boy, why... who are you?" he broke off, voice rising, making something within me stiffen even as Andrew continued to treat my arm like a goddamn chew toy.
A flash of something to my side had my head turning on the driveway, seeing a body bend down, grab the boxes, and run.
I saw nothing except long, dark, shining hair and a wet-dream of a perfect ass as it hauled it down the driveway, flew into a waiting black SUV - almost identical to the one I'd been driving - and peeled away.
Reign had asked little of me.
But he did expect one thing.
For me not to fuck up.
Having twenty-some-odd grand worth of rare guns stolen was practically the definition of fucking up.
"Call off your hound," I demanded, pushing up which manage to dislodge his teeth for a minute before they sank in again in a new spot.
Blood trickled, hot and sticky, filling the air around me with copper as I tried to throw out my arm, dislodge the dog so I could get up, run, try to track the SUV and thief.
"Andrew, my boy," Henry's voice cooed, calm, like he hadn't just lost his precious, hard-to-find guns as his hand finally found his dog's collar, pulling him - and what felt like a giant chunk of my flesh - away. "That's a good boy. Good boy," he consoled his dog whose dreadlocks were stained red with my fucking blood. "No, son, don't," Henry demanded as I tried to get to my feet to run away. "There's no way you'll catch up to them now. They're halfway to the highway already."
"I have to track them down," I insisted, finally finding my feet, pretending to ignore the way blood was trickling off my fingertips, likely staining his pristine driveway further.
The burning sensation was intense, but I was trying to ignore it, refusing to look down at it, to assess the damage. That would only slow me up.
"Yes," Henry agreed, "you do. But I figure perhaps not getting yourself arrested for speeding might be wise. This needs to be remedied. Since Reign is an old friend, I will give you six weeks to fix this situation before I find a new contact. Now, if you'll excuse me, your blood has ruined Andrew's coat. He needs to visit the groomer immediately."
That was a dismissal if I had ever heard one, making me give him a nod. "I will get your guns back," I guaranteed him even though I wasn't sure how the fuck I would deliver on that when I had nothing but an ass, hair, and nondescript black SUV to go off of. But I would do it. I had to. I couldn't cost Reign a contact. He didn't need any more bad fucking news in his life.
