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Damn it! I could have—
Mallory growled at me again then jumped down into the secret room beneath the trapdoor.
“Now,” he said, as gruff as ever. “Who’s not afraid to handle grenades?”
Backpedaling from the milk crate Mallory was sliding onto the floor, I ran straight into a hard wall of flesh. Despite there being two giants in the room with both of them somewhere behind me, I knew immediately that it was Doone’s chest my back pressed against. Spikes of energy shot through me, sizzling along my breasts to bring the nipples to instant peaks.
“And ya’ll need to get that crap under control before we reach Illinois,” Mallory barked then bounced a highly annoyed finger between me and Doone. “Because I sure as hell need your inside knowledge and this giant asshole's muscle. So there’s no leaving one or the other of you behind.”
Breaking the tension, Taron cleared his throat and asked, "Which giant asshole are you talking about?"
With a growl, Mallory shook his head then flapped his hand before gesturing at a rickety ladder hooked to the cellar's wall. "Get your butt down here, Short Stop."
Short Stop? Seriously? He wasn't much taller than me, maybe five-nine, a decent height for a man, but—
Wait…was that a nickname?
Had my father just given me a nickname?
"Clock's ticking," he rumbled as my brain got stuck on the implications. Like, did it mean he was feeling a paternal attachment?
With no more time to contemplate the issue, I took a little leap and landed next to him, my touchdown more graceful than Mallory's given my cat DNA.
He shoved an M16 into my hand.
"Pass that up to Lover Boy."
Ah, crap. I could live with Short Stop, but I wasn't sure how Doone would take getting branded like that by Mallory.
The answer to the question I hadn't voiced was immediate. The instant my gaze locked on Doone's as I handed over the assault rifle, he winked at me.
"See, that's the shit that's got to stop!" the old man bellowed without having looked at us. He didn’t need to look, though. My body spiked at the wink.
“Boy,” Mallory bellowed. “I will gladly connect battery cables to your balls. As an alpha, it's your responsibility."
My cheeks had to be beet red as my father passed me a cartridge box filled with two-hundred 7.62mm NATO rounds destined for the weapon I had just handed up. I passed the bullets off to Taron and spun around, ready to tell the old man that he might not want to bandy about nicknames likeLover Boyif he didn't want us physically reacting.
"Grenades," he said, freezing my tongue as he gave me a box of 40mm cartridges designed to be fired and not tossed. Technically, the rounds had to spin so many times before an internal arming mechanism was activated, but the weight of so many of them in my hands made me want to puke.
Taron let out a low whistle. "You got a rail mount for those?"
“After that shit with the Champaign wolves, I’ve got everything," Mallory answered, handing Taron another rifle with an attached M203 40mm rail mounted receiver. "Unless it's a cop asking the question."
Turning to me, the old man pointed at a knapsack shoved behind a box of what looked like sealed jars of blueberries.
"Grab that,” he said on his way up the ladder.
I turned dutifully, smiling as Taron suggested some of the blueberry jars come up, too, and Mallory mumbled something liketypical bear.My amusement ended at the scrape of the ladder being pulled off its hooks and lifted out of the cellar. Failing to exhibit his usual helpfulness, Doone watched my father and the big bear leaving, his head tilted and his face full of confusion.
"Wait," he said, a pulse of his alpha energy leaving him but not directed at me.
"Nope," Mallory said, letting Taron exit first. "Figure it out, then bring the bear his damn berries.”
With that, I was left standing in a frickin' root cellar with Doone looking down at me, a billion gears visibly turning in his head.
CHAPTER18
DOONE
