“Heya, Percy,” she called out, trying for a friendliness she didn’t feel.
“Do I know you?” Percy twisted and spat a stream of tobacco juice on the dirt, just missing the porch.
Krista couldn’t believe his teeth hadn’t rotted out of his mouth by now. He’d been chewing since the fifth grade. “Percy, come on. I haven’t changed that much. I lived in your house for two years. It’s Krista Ellis. I’m here to pay my respects to Dawnie.”
Percy snorted. “Ma ain’t here, and she wouldn’t have a word to say to you if she was. She knew you were comin’, and she said she was going to make you into a rug the minute she sees you.”
Blake let out a low, rumbling growl. Krista put her hand on his arm. She knew Percy was lying because if Dawnie wanted Krista dead, she’d already be dead.
Percy liked to see people scared. The trick was to stay calm and not give him what he wanted, because the more fear he sensed, the happier and meaner he got. “I know your ma didn’t leave you in charge. So where’s Eva-Jo?”
His upper lift lifted in a sneer. “Womenfolk ought to know their place.”
The air stank of testosterone and hate.Blake took a step closer, one hand on his belt. Percy’s dull eyes lit up.Oh, goodie, a fight.He was enormous in bear form, but she suspected that Blake’s military training would have included how to take down bigger shifters.
But if they started fighting, everything was lost. Dawnie would side with her son even if he was wrong—she always did—and then Krista would never get answers about Ethan. She’d be instantly banned from setting foot here—if she even made it out of the holler alive. She set her hand on Blake’s arm and leaned against him, trying to calm him. His growl sounded more animal than human; that wasn’t good.
“You talk about her like that when she can hear you?” Eva-Jo’s scent filled her nostrils.
“And when I’ve got a damn shotgun in my hands, too.” Eva-Jo’s voice was higher-pitched than her brother’s, but still low enough to carry across the meadow with ease. She stepped through the door, her sawed-off in hand, pointed at the ground—for now. “Hey, Kris. Don’t mind my brother, he’s just flappin’ his gums. Ma didn’t say nothing like that. We ain’t even talked to her today, she’s out at the mines. So, look at you. Didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“Didn’t reckon on comin’ back.” Now Krista sounded as if she’d never left. She couldn’t believe how easy it was to just slip back into the way of things, like putting on an old sweatshirt or pair of shoes.
“What you been up to since ya left?” Eva-Jo set the butt of the shotgun on the porch and leaned it up against the post before stepping onto the grass. She shoved her blonde hair off her shoulders and folded her arms over her chest. She was wearing grimy dungarees and a red and white plaid shirt. At least, unlike her brothers, she showered a couple of times a week.
Blake must be doing an excellent job of keeping his expression neutral because folks in this area were always on the watch for an outsider looking down his nose at them. Probably not good enough, though—Eva-Jo was sharp enough to cut yourself on.
“Went to school, now I’m a nurse practitioner working at a clinic.”
Eva-Jo nodded, with a faint smile. “Well, it’s what you said you was gonna do.”
Krista glanced at Blake, who was shifting impatiently now. She knew he wanted her to cut to the chase, start getting information on the missing kid, but that wasn’t how things worked out here. Things were done in a certain way. The words that were spoken didn’t always line up with what was actually beingsaid—for example, Eva-Jo knew damn well what Krista had been doing since leaving the holler. She probably knew more than Blake and his team of professional snoops did. There was no way Dawnie had let one of hers go without keeping tabs on her. But Eva-Jo had to pretend it was news to her, and Krista had to go along with it. It was just the way things worked.
The two women eyed each other warily for a few moments, each weighing up what this encounter was going to be—a call on family for old time’s sake, or the first shot fired.
With a sigh, Eva-Jo dropped her arms, relaxing her stance. She tipped her head to the side, thinking, then approached, stopping a couple of arms’ length from Krista. “Things have changed around here since you been gone, Kris.”
Tension coiled in Krista’s chest. If that was the case, Krista might be even less help than she had hoped, and the blackmail Blake was threatening to use against her could end her career. For good. Then what would happen to the patients like Ruth who relied on her?
Eva-Jo heaved a sigh and rolled her shoulders. “You need to see your momma. She misses you. Talks about it all the time.”
Yes, because her mother always had to be center stage—playing the victim.
“You forgotten what she put me through, Eva-Jo?” The Reed girl knew better than most how little Maybelline Ellis deserved to be called a mother. After all, it was her own ma who’d taken Krista in when Maybelline picked a coyote with wandering hands over her own flesh and blood.
For two years, Eva-Jo and Krista had lived side-by-side in the Reed cabin. Krista used to do Eva-Jo’s homework for her after she did her own. Out of the three Reed kids, Eva-Jo was the only one who’d bothered to finish high school; Percy and Gummi had stopped going to school when they turned twelve.
“Not sayin’ that at all.” Eva-Jo folded her arms over her skinny chest. “Just that family is family. And pack is pack.” Weird. Clan loyalty was important around here, that was true, but Krista hadn’t realized Eva-Jo had any time for anyone other than her ma andmaybeher two dipshit brothers—when she wasn’t threatening them with shotguns, that was.
Eva-Jo cocked her head to one side. “That’s why you come back, right?” she said. “Family reunion. Catch up with the folks back home. Raise a few jars of moonshine, eat some of that potato salad Hattie makes by the gallon, maybe parade your handsome new beau around in front of a few of them girls from the pep squad?”
Krista nodded, and Eva-Jo relaxed a little, but not all the way.“That’s good, Kris,” she said quietly. “That’s what you should do. And then you should go home. You been out way too long to be playin’ in the kind o’ dirt we roll in now.” She stepped back, finally glancing at Blake. “’Sides, you’re finally clear of this place. Don’t get sucked back in. See your momma, show your face at the shindig, then get out and don’t come back.”
Krista wished she could. “Everything okay around here?” she asked. Hinting, but not coming out and saying it.
Eva-Jo arched an eyebrow. “Everything’s just fine, Krista. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Well, there was her answer. The Reeds either didn’t know anything or weren’t going to say anything. This would have been Eva-Jo’s chance to talk if she wanted to.
“No reason at all. Good to see you again,” she said. She slid her arm around Blake’s waist and they turned and walked back down the trail.
They’d only gotten a few hundred yards when they heard the crack of a gun, making them start. The bullet whizzed past them, burying itself in a tree.
“Percy, you ree-tard!” Eva-Jo screamed, and Krista knew that was mostly for her benefit, to tell Krista that it hadn’t been her doing, and then she heard horrendous growls and snarls.
Blake swung around as if he were going to charge right up the hill. Krista put her hand on his arm to stop him.
“They’ve shifted, they’re going to fight til they bleed, and we do not want to get in the middle of that,” she said in low, urgent tones. “Percy’s a crack shot. If he wanted to hit either one of us, he would. Let’s go. Blake, I mean it.Let’s go.”
