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“Tomorrow morning?” I asked as we walked back to the inn. “Should give us enough time to track down this Burt fuck, then be able to zero in a location from there. Twenty acres is still a big area to search.”
To that, Coach gave me a pinched brow look.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s winter,” he said, shrugging.
“Yeah…” I agreed, not sure what he was getting at.
“We follow the smoke from the chimney,” he said before making his way inside.
The next morning, that was exactly what we did, trekking through the woods as I cursed my shoes and the fact that my leather jacket wasn’t lined with something warmer, and the fact that the fucking pipes at the inn refused to give me hot water before heading out after breakfast.
“Well, guess we found her,” Coach said even as the sounds of barking met my ears, getting louder and more aggressive with each step we took.
Sure, we had a dog at the club. On and off. It was Judge’s girl, Delaney’s dog. But it was a corgi. All affability and zero watchdog potential.
But these were not corgis.
Oh, no.
These were two big, dark, pissed off German Shepherds.
Their hair was up, their teeth bared, their shoulders hunched as they threatened with the potential to lunge.
If given the order.
Trained, that was for sure. Because it seemed like they were eager to rip our throats out, but they stayed exactly where they were, snarling, snapping, making it clear we weren’t supposed to go a single step closer.
My gaze moved from them and back.
There was the cabin.
I was pretty sure the whole fucking thing could fit in my bedroom at the clubhouse three times over. It was minuscule. And, yeah, painted a sort of hideous mint green shade with some darker trim.
But I barely noticed the place.
Because there was a woman standing on the back porch, some giant-ass gun in her hand, her keen gaze on us.
I don’t know what I was expecting.
I mean, yeah, Dick had called her hot.
But, well, Lookabout was a small-ass town. A ten in a small town could, sometimes, be a three or four in a big city.
Murphy, though, fuck, Murphy was the kind of pretty that could have her on billboards and walking stages.
You couldn’t make out much about her body. It was cold. She was dressed for it in a thick zip-up black hoodie and a pair of gray sweatpants that seemed intentionally baggy. One of the cuffed legs was hitched up a bit, exposing a thick, bright green wool sock.
I let my imagination run away with me for a minute, wondering what was underneath those layers.
But then there was all the exposed pretty to focus on.
She was surprisingly short. With a delicate, round face with low cheekbones, a soft jaw, and cupid’s bow lips. There was a small hoop on one side of her understated nose.
Her hair, a soft blonde color, fell in loose waves to just brush her shoulders.
From so far back, it was impossible to tell what color her eyes were. Dark blue? Nothing bright, that was all I could tell.
What I could say was that her finger was sitting right near the trigger. And I had no fucking idea what kind of damage the Frankenstein’s monster sort of gun she’d made could do.
I kept my tone and body language calm as I called out exactly what I was thinking.
“So… you’re Murphy.”
“So, I’m Murphy,” she confirmed, chin jerking up slightly. “And you have about ten seconds to turn around and get the fuck out of here.”
“Or what?” I asked. “Gun or dogs?”
“I haven’t decided yet. But if you don’t stop,” she said as I took a tentative step forward, “you will find out soon enough.”
“I thought we could maybe have a little chat,” I suggested, arms up.
“Yeah?” she asked, head tipping to the side. “Is that why you’re armed?”
She had us there.
As if operating with the same brain, Coach and I each reached for our guns, took out the magazines, and tossed them, then the guns.
“So, about that chat…”
CHAPTER FOUR
Murphy
I was going to go ahead and believe that I chose to agree to this little ‘chat’ the hot, dirty-blond one suggested because they had ‘bikers’ written all over them, and I currently had an overdue deal with some bikers from Florida hanging over my head, and not because the one in the front with that playboy smile was stupidly hot.
I mean, to be fair, they were both incredibly good-looking. Just in polar opposite ways.
They were both tall and fit and tattooed.
But the one in front was dirty blonde, blue-eyed, slightly bearded, hot in a very ‘I am aware of it’ kind of way.
What can I say?
I’d always been a little… odd. Let’s go with odd. It was the kindest way to put it. But I was an only child to an… odd dad. No mom. I’d been a tomboy my whole life. I had strange interests. I was confident in who I was, but not with things like social interactions. So I’d always gravitated toward guys who were outgoing and sure of themselves, the kind of people who drew attention to themselves, so it never accidentally fell on me.
