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I stood up and moved to the man that was staring at us.
“We weren’t going through your things,” I told him honestly. “We were looking at the people farther down the alleyway.”
The man wearing a stained white apron didn’t believe me.
He moved close and poked me in the chest, his bony finger digging in uncomfortably before he said, “I know who you are. You’re that bitch that’s dating that rich man that owns half the town. Ain’t no way you weren’t doing something bad. I been tellin’ him for months I don’t want to sell. Now you’re in my place, goin’ through my trash.”
What were the freakin’ odds?
“I swear, I wasn’t,” I promised. “Go look. I was lookin’ at the sheriff.”
“The sheriff?” His eyes widened as he hoofed it around the dumpster, then looked around for someone that wasn’t there.
Son of a bitch.
He narrowed his eyes at me.
I saw the moment he decided to think the worst of me.
His eyes narrowed farther, his hands clenched, and then he was charging.
“Oh, fuck.” I winced.
I was not a fighter.
I wasn’t even a little bit of a fighter.
I’d never been in a fight in my life. I didn’t have a gun to protect myself. Hell, I didn’t even know how to work a gun.
I braced, ready for things to go south, and closed my eyes as I watched the man’s fist start swinging at my face.
It never came.
A sharp, quick snap, followed by a scuffle, and then a thump, had me opening my eyes to see Kobe, once again, standing there.
He looked at me as if I was crazy. “What are you doing? Standing still only makes it easier for him to hit you!”
He had a point.
“I don’t know how to fight,” I admitted glumly.
He grunted something about Wake being ‘a complete dumbass for not showing you how to protect yourself’ then kicked some dirt into the guy’s face that he’d just taken down.
The guy on the ground didn’t even flinch when the dirt went up his nostrils.
“A,” I said carefully. “We need to leave. I need to go find Lolo and Dayden. B, the sheriff was just right here. There’s no way I can be near this—” I pointed to the man on the ground. “Or he’ll have the perfect reason to hurt me in some way. C, thank you for helping me.”
Kobe jerked his chin toward the alley where Lolo and Dayden were waiting. “They didn’t go far.”
Motherfucker.
I marched toward them saying, “The next time I tell you to leave, you leave.”
Dayden held his hands up. “I’m not touching her when she doesn’t want to be touched. And she didn’t want to leave you.”
That was commendable of him.
But motherfucker. She needed to leave.
Like, right now.
“Both of you go,” I said. “Now.”
Lolo didn’t waste time this time in listening to me.
She hustled out of the alleyway, headed toward what I hoped was Dayd’s truck, and didn’t say another word.
Meanwhile, I heard the man behind us groan.
“What the fuck kind of building is this that Wake would want to buy it?” I grumbled to myself as I marched out of the alley and into the sunshine.
“Westfield,” Kobe said, causing me to whirl, to see him speaking into his phone. “Know you’re just gettin’ back in town. You might want to get here and pick your girl up. She’s shakin’ like a leaf, and pretty sure the sheriff will now do what he needs to do to make sure she doesn’t talk.”
There was a moment of silence as Wake processed Kobe’s words, and then, “Where are you?”
Kobe gave him specific directions that included ‘due east’ and a longitudinal coordinate of some sort. And then hung up.
I gave it five minutes, max, before he was here.
“That building back there is storefront, beachfront,” Kobe answered my earlier question. “He wants it because it’s a good location, and a specific someone in his life has really liked being at the beach lately.”
Well, shit.
That made my heart hurt.
Had Wake done that for me?
Something inside my throat started to clog up at the idea of Wake pressuring someone to sell—especially when it was a bad someone. He’d done that. For me.
For his new wife that he’d married just to make sure that she had a fallback plan in case someone figured out what she’d done.
For me.
He’d done it all for me.
God, I loved him!
I fucking loved him!
When had that happened?
“Oh,” I said softly, unsure what to say.
“Oh,” Kobe said. “Wake’s on his way.”
I tilted my head. “What?”
“Wake. He’s on his way,” Kobe said.
I blinked. “How do you…”
Then I heard the roar of a motorcycle.
Of multiple motorcycles.
But only one held my attention as it all but skidded to a halt at the mouth of the alley we were still standing in.
If looking like a badass, avenging fallen angel was possible for a human being, Wake Westfield looked like one at that moment in time.
