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“Now he’s going to be disappointed if there’s no fire truck tomorrow,” she said. “Are there even Lego fire trucks?”
“I’m sure there are,” I said. Now I had two missions for the day: one, find out who was alive and dead from her pack and two, procure a Lego fire truck. One mission sounded a lot less potentially lethal than the other. Speaking of which… “Amelia, can I ask you some questions about your old pack?”
She chewed her lower lip and looked up at me with wide eyes. She had the most innocent look of anyone I’d ever met, and it gave me the strongest desire to wrap her in my arms and shield her from all the misery of our world.
“Why?” she asked.
“I’m doing some recon on your pack to see if there’s any evidence that Nathan is alive or dead.” I said. Then, in a quieter voice, because one of my siblings was always eavesdropping and Stone would not have approved, “and I’m going to try to find out if Aiden and Lawson are alive.”
Her face softened, her eyes brightening with hope. Something swelled in my chest. I would do anything to make her look at me that way.
“Be careful,” she warned me. “The Longroad pack doesn’t take very kindly to people asking questions.”
“I’m always careful,” I assured her, and she smiled as if she knew very well that was absolutely not true.
“As long as you’re going to be careful… I do have a friend that works in town, she might be a good person to talk to you. Liza. She hated Nathan, and she wasn’t always really thrilled with the pack as a whole. She works at the diner where I used to work.”
I whistled. “She’s still working there? I assume that you haven’t worked in quite a while.”
Her mouth twisted ruefully. “Yeah, that’s true. She actually replaced me… inherited my old best friend. Nathan wasn’t interested in having a working wife. I wonder what it would have been like if…” she trailed off. “I think I would have wanted to be home with Dylan anyway.”
“Of course,” I said. Everyone in the pack did some kind of work to keep the pack running, but for the woman who wanted to stay home, we counted raising their cubs as work for the pack. I was sure if Amelia wanted, we could also find work for her to do that didn’t take away from her time with her son.
She broke me out of my planning—which was not really my usual MO, I generally preferred not to plan ahead more than five minutes—by saying, “It’s in neutral territory, off pack lands. It’s a pretty common meeting place for Longroad pack to negotiate with other packs. So there’s a possibility you could run into Longroad there.”
“No problem.” I didn’t think very highly of the Longroad pack; how many had known that Nathan was hurting her and had done nothing? “Anyone I should look out for in particular?”
She hesitated. “Normally, I’d have a list to give you. People like Cliff. But I don’t know who’s alive or dead.”
“Cliff?” I asked. It was interesting she called out that one name.
“He doesn’t matter anymore. He’s dead.”
I nodded sagely. “I see. He’s the one you murdered.”
Her eyes went wide, and she looked around to see if we’d been overheard. “Why would you say it like that?”
“Because you drove a knife into his gut which is usually kind of a murdery thing? You were protecting your sister, I respect that. You don’t have to be all,“No, totally non murdery, my hand just slipped with the knife in it.””
She sighed, looking exasperated with me, and I couldn’t resist the grin that spread across my face. “Look, Amelia, I’m not judging. Sometimes you have to commit a little murder. Get a little stabby.”
“Can you please stop saying murder?” she asked.
“If you think of anyone else that might be helpful for Teresa and I to talk to you, can you have Karissa text it to me?” I’d almost suggested that she text me herself, but of course she didn’t have a phone. And Stone wouldn’t want her to have one. Right now, she had zero dollars and zero escape plan, and that was how he liked it.
“I will,” she said. “and I appreciate you trying to find out what’s going on with my brother and Lawson.”
I was really curious who Lawson had been to her, but for now I put it aside. “Of course. Anything to make you smile.”
I chucked her under the chin, and she smiled up at me. It was a standard line of mine, something I’d said dozens of times. And while I did like to make girls happy—for a while—there was never any real feeling behind it.
Until I said it to her.
She started to say something to me, her face pink, and then paused, biting her lower lip. I had a feeling I knew who was behind me even before I turned around. If it wasn’t Stone, it had to be his right hand pain-in-the-ass, Teresa…
“So you’ve got yourself a side mission, Shaw,” Teresa said coolly. “I’m sure Stone would just love that.”
I turned enough for her to see me smile. “If you recall, Teresa, I didn’t actually want to bring you.”
