"She's fine," I say, my tone clipped.I fucking hate that he’s still looking at her.
"She settle in okay?” He finally tears his eyes off my woman. “With your pack?"
"Better than okay," I say.
He nods again. His jaw shifts slightly, working something over.
"She ever tell you much about herself?" he asks. "Before the Morder?"
I look at him carefully. "Some."
"She's smart," he says, and it doesn't sound like a compliment exactly. It sounds like something that worries him. "Smarter than she let on at work. I always thought she was overqualified for what I had her doing." His eyes finally leave the window and come back to me. "She has a pharmacy degree. Did you know that? A real one. She spent eight years of school." He shakes his head slightly. "Andshe's standing in a cold tent in the middle of nowhere checking expiration dates on stolen sedatives." He pauses. "That's not a person who ended up there by accident."
I hold his gaze and say nothing.
"She was looking for something," Anton says. "I never knew what. But I knew she was looking." He looks back at the window one more time. "I don't want to see a bunch of assholes take advantage of her," he says flatly. "That's all."
The air sits quiet between us for a moment.
"Nobody's taking advantage of her," I say. "Not anymore."
Anton looks at me. Something in his expression shifts, like he’s trying to decide whether to believe me or not.
"Good," he says simply.
We stand there for another moment, staring down at one another, waiting for the other to speak.
“Anything else?” Anton finally asks. “Or can I go?”
"You can go, but if you decide you remember something about Cassville. I want to know."
Anton looks at me for a long moment, his brows pulling together. His eyes sweep from me to inside the garage. "Does this have something to do with Pérez?" The gravel shifts under his boots as he straightens off the SUV.
I don't answer.
"Did she know the people at Cassville Care?" he asks. His voice is quieter now, stripped of the careful, measured quality it's had for most of this conversation. Like he's asking something he actually wants to know the answer.
I don't answer that either.
But I don't have to.
Anton isn’t stupid. He looks at my face, reads whatever is or isn't there, and then his eyes move past me one more time to the office window. To Elowen laughing at somethingAdam said, completely unaware that we're standing out here talking about the worst thing that ever happened to her.
Anton's jaw tenses, then he reaches for the handle of his car.
"I'll see what I can find," he says quietly. Not a promise exactly. But from Anton, it's as close as I'm going to get.
"Thanks," I say.
He pulls the door open, then stops, one hand on the roof of the SUV, and looks back at me. "Take care of her, Raff."
"I plan to," I say.
He gets in. The engine turns over, low and smooth, and I stand in the lot and watch him pull out onto the road and disappear between the tree line.
Then I turn back toward the shop.
Cliff is standing in the bay door with his phone in his hand and his arms crossed, watching me with an expression that says he has been there long enough to see most of that conversation and has approximately forty-seven questions.
