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“I still don’t know where the asshole lives,” he said with an irritated snort.
As he was shutting the front door, another car, this one a black late model SUV, started down the block, passing slowly in front of his house. Out of habit, André stood to the side and watched it from his front window. He hadn’t survived almost two decades as a marshal by being careless.
The dark night and lack of streetlights made it impossible to see the driver or if there were any passengers. But he didn’t recognize the vehicle and wasn’t shocked to note that the license plate was partially obscured.
Were they looking for André or Dante? Or was his overactive imagination making monsters out of thin air? He twitched the curtain closed and made sure both his front and back doors were secured as he got ready for bed.
After the day he’d had, André should have been asleep in minutes. Instead, he lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking about Dante Castone and his niece, and wondering what the hell was going on in Cooper Springs.
EIGHT
Dante
The Christmas holiday hurt.
Dante had expected it to be painful. But maybe not sticking a needle in his eye painful.
It was Dani’s first major holiday without Simone, and his as well. As the older sibling, Simone had always been there for Dante. Everything fucking sucked and Dante’s skill set didn’t exactly include helping teenagers with their grief. He was an action rather than words kind of person, and he had the scars to prove it.
As luck would have it, Dani’s friend Romy invited them over for a midafternoon meal, thus saving them from sitting around the crappy house staring at each other for too long. They hadn’t even gotten a tree because Dani insisted she didn’t want one and Dante hadn’t had it in him to force the issue. Maybe next year.
Had Dante known the meal would be held at Vincent Barone’s boyfriend’s house and attended by no less than six other adults and three dogs, he might have tried to come up with a reason why they couldn’t attend.
On the other hand, seeing Dani light up around her friend and those damn dogs was a gift Dante would never turn down. This was the only explanation for why he and Dani were headed to the shelter on New Year’s Eve eve to take a look at the available dogs.
“We’re just looking,” he said for the hundredth time. “We not coming home with a dog today.”
“Romy said the shelter makes you wait anyway, so they can do background checks.”
Dante quickly glanced at nis niece. Her fingers were restlessly tapping her thigh as she looked out through the windshield.
“Correct,” Dante said, directing his attention back to the roadway.
“It’s to keep creeps from adopting animals.”
“That is true. I’m all for background checks.” If and when Dani ever started dating, Dante would be doing a deep dive on anyone she brought home. Was that an invasion of her privacy? Undoubtedly. Would he likely do it anyway? Damn straight he would.
“Thank you for taking me, Zio.”
“Quit piling on the Zio crap,” he teased.
Was adopting a dog the wrong thing to do? Most likely, he would end up taking care of it. That was what happened. Kids got excited and when the glow wore off, the parent—or guardian, in his case—was left with the begged-for pet. Dante recalled being eight and thinking he wanted a hamster. Thankfully, no one had paid any attention to him. Being the youngest in a large, extended family had been a blessing and a curse. The pet rock had been his next choice and a good one until Lu had gotten his hands on it.
They turned into the gravel drive that led to the shelter. The building it was housed in dated from the 1980s and looked depressing as fuck. From where they were in the parking lot, they could hear dogs barking and at least one baying.
Please, he thought,not a hound.
“Poor things, they sound so sad,” Dani said. “They just want their own homes.”
Dante rolled his eyes in a decidedly almost-sixteen-year-old-girl fashion.
“You’ve made your point. Let’s go.”
A couple of days after their trip to the pound, Dante was keeping an eye out the front window while Dani threw a bright orange, very bougie—and very bouncy—dog toy for Luna. The sound of Dani’s cajoling laughter and Luna’s excited, demanding barks did something squishy to Dante’s heart. Or maybe it was just heartburn.
“I’ll keep her safe, Simone,” he promised his dead sister for the thousandth time since August.
The dog, Luna, was a Shepard mix of some kind—active, agile, and smart. She and Dani had bonded in minutes. She’d need a bigger yard eventually, but Dante couldn’t think about that until after the trial.
