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It felt like a day where nothing was going right and I should have known that it wouldn’t get any better when the door opened.
I was staring down at my notebook that was filled with my chicken scratch handwriting when someone cleared their throat.
When I looked up, my heart dropped down to my stomach and I got the sudden urge to vomit. Why hadn’t I thought to screen my visits through Rose or Violet? We all had walkie talkies attached to our hip and communicated with one another all day. But I’d been so wrapped up and overwhelmed with everything going on at the farm that I didn’t think to have visitors check in with them first. But, seeing as their was a small mountain of snow covering the south shore, I didn’t think there would be any visitors in the first place.
I was oh so wrong to think that.
Greg Conlon stood in my doorway looking tall, greasy, unshaven, and menacing. He looked like gravity was pulling him down and exhaustion weighed heavy on his shoulders, but there was something more than that. An acrid odor that radiated off of him and wafted across the room towards me. Booze. Strong, nostril burning booze that made it clear Conlon had gone on a serious bender. His skin looked sallow and the bags under his eyes were worse than Logan’s on a bad day.
Logan.
My eyes darted to my backpack on the floor. My phone was in the front pocket of the worn brown leather and I briefly wondered if I’d be able to get to it in time. Conlon surely wouldn’t try to go after me in the middle of my workplace. We were surrounded by staff members and it would only take a small scream or rough scrape of furniture for people to come running.
“Can I help you?” I asked as I leaned back in my chair, false bravado radiating from me.
He smiled a nasty, thin grin and leaned a shoulder against the doorframe. I hated how tall he was. I felt dwarfed, intimidated. Small. It was an uncomfortable feeling that left me on edge.
“You know who I am,” he said it as a statement rather than a question.
My heart beat just an iota faster and a thin sheen of sweat coated my palms. “Yes.”
“Where’s my dog?”
“I haven’t seen your dog, but if I had, I have a distinct feeling that I wouldn’t tell you where he was.”
Conlon stepped into the room and Sadie, who had been sleeping peacefully on a wool blanket in the corner, rose up on all fours and moved closer to the chair I was in. She knew, my girl felt it that something wasn’t right. The rigidity of her body let him know that it wasn’t a safe idea to mess with her master, and he cocked his head to the side.
I wished Logan was there with me and the thought caught me off guard. I never wished for any man to be with me, ever. But I knew that, had he been with me, Conlon wouldn’t have stepped foot in the room because Logan wouldn’t have let him. He would have been there, between us and keeping me safe. Maybe they would have gone outside and handled it the only way men knew how, or maybe he would have done something as simple as call the police. Logan would have known what to do.
But I had no fucking clue.
Conlon’s mouth turned down at the corners and he nodded a few times before licking his dry lips. “You Logan’s new girl?”
My spine straightened and my temper flared. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t anyone’s girl. It was true, I wasn’t. But I hesitated and I didn’t know why. In all my life, I’d never been anyone’s “girl”. Serious relationships were something I was completely inexperienced with and when I hooked up with someone it was a one time thing. I never stuck around long enough to be referred to as someone’s girl, so I didn’t know why I was hesitating answering the question.
I could have lied to myself and said that it was none of Conlon’s business which, technically, that was true. But I was mature enough to know that there was another reason.
A part of me, maybe just a microscopic part, wanted to be Logan’s girl.
“Ah, you are.
” He smiled when I didn’t give him an answer. “He’s a bit over protective, huh?”
I cocked my head to the side and then cleared my throat, trying to play it cool when in reality my skin was burning and my heart was beating like a racehorse. “You have sixty seconds to tell me what you want and then I call for backup and have you thrown out of here.”
His eyebrows shot up and a satisfactory, if not downright snarky, grin appeared on my face. I did a mental fist pump that I’d caught him off guard. It was clearly obvious that he wasn’t expecting such a sassy, if not bitchy, response from a petite redhead. But over the years I’d learned to use my size to my advantage. People perceived me a certain way and surprising them was always fun.
Especially if I was surprising a greasy, abusive criminal who had no idea who he was messing with.
“Tell Logan I want my dog back. And I want to know where Nicole is.”
“One,” I held up my index finger. “This isn’t a messenger service, so I’m not sure what you were expecting when you showed up to a farm. Two,” I held up my middle finger. “I can say with absolute certainty that you will never get your hands on that dog again. I saw what you did to him because I’m the one who patched him up and Logan’s the one who nursed him back to health. And three, if you don’t get out of here right now, I’m going to have my dog use your balls as a chew toy for the remainder of the day.”
I wanted to intimidate him, piss him off a little. But more than that I wanted to scare him off to keep Logan and Mac safe. From what I learned about Conlon, he was a dangerous criminal and I had no idea what lengths he would go to in order to get to Nicole and Mac.
It was clear that my plan didn’t work when he stepped into my office a little farther, ignoring Sadie when she bared her teeth and gave a vicious growl.
“Where. The fuck. Is Nicole.”
