Page 30 of The Wild Charge

Tenny sat forward, too, a boyish eagerness tinted with worry infecting his voice, twisting his features. “But if the cops won’t help, then who–” His words choked off with a high sound of dismay as Fox gripped his shoulder and eased him back against the sofa.

“I know, I know, Rob,” Fox soothed. The two of them traded a look so fraught, so perfectly executed, sofakethat Reese knew the sudden urge to laugh.

Huh. He’d never wanted to do that on an op before.

Fox turned back to Mrs. Eckridge. “My wife,” he said, hesitantly. He frowned, made a considering face, and then sighed. “She’s been direct messaging some of the other people in the chat. Do you – have you heard of…” His voice dropped to a near-whisper. “Some people are saying that there’s this…this outlaw group working behind the scenes. That they’re hunting for the missing girls.”

Mrs. Eckridge’s brows flew up…before she tugged hard on her necklace and chewed her lip. Considering. Knowing. “You mean…the Lean Dogs?”

Fox looked innocent and eager. “Yeah. Them.”

Eight

Tenny didn’t think he was ever going to understand why people were so damned easy. Didn’t they know what was out there? Did they have even a shred of caution? The job he’d been trained for was made all the more possible, at every turn, by the way people just caved when they shouldn’t have. The right sort of smile, a sympathetic glance, and they dropped all their walls; they invited the wolf inside the sheep pen, only to reel, later, at the sight of blood.

He supposed he should be thankful, if it made his life less difficult.

Mrs. Eckridge hesitated only a moment when Walsh pressed her about the Lean Dogs, and then she was talking in a breathless rush, as if she couldn’t get the words out fast enough, telling them all about the others in her chat room who had claimed the Dogs could help find her missing daughter. “I know they probably do some bad things, and they break the law, but they aren’t playing games like the police are. Theycare.”

Woefully easy.

Tenny was having trouble aligning his brain with the idea that her easiness was a good thing in this case – for them and for her – rather than looking at her as a mark. Old habits and all that.

She admitted to having been in contact with “one of the wives,” – that was Michelle – and said she didn’t care about propriety at this point: she wanted her daughter back, whatever the means necessary.

Fox steered her deeper into the idea, claiming to have a cousin in with the club – all his brothers, actually, but – and by the time they left, phone numbers exchanged and poor Mrs. Eckridge looking something like hopeful, they were armed with information that Tenny privately thought was a waste of time.

“This is a waste of time,” he said, thirty minutes later – some things should stay private, but some needed expressing – as they stood beneath the glaring lights of a department store.

“I guess we’ll find out,” Fox said, agreeably, as he flicked through hanging pairs of jeans. “Here, try these.”

Tenny sent the offending pants a flat look. “I’ll try them if I want to look like an absolute tit.”

Fox quirked his brows and kept looking.

“I should be picking out your clothes, old man.”

Fox hummed, and pulled a pair of black skinny jeans off the rack, knees and thighs all but shredded, white paint flecks dotting the calves. “Reese?”

Tenny surveyed them critically, imagined Reese in them – the shape of his thighs on display and plenty of skin showing – then grunted an assent.

Fox’s smile was small and smug.

“Asshole,” Tenny said, and moved down the rack.

Mrs. Eckridge had sworn up and down that her daughter Kaylie was “a good girl,” to which Tenny wanted to roll his eyes. Everyone thought the best of their children; assumed that if they’d gone missing, it was villains instead of their dumb kid’s own poor decisions to blame.

Like he’d said: easy.

Finally, she’d admitted that Kaylie and her friends had been spending Fridays, and sometimes Saturday nights at what she called a “dance club.” A quick Google search proved that Nine was brand new, only open for the past two months, and that, going by its social media pages, drew a large college crowd. The cover charge was cheap, IDs weren’t checked all that carefully, and the place offered a chance for local bands to perform on busy nights and gain some visibility. The blurry shots posted on Facebook revealed a dim interior, bright neon signage, and lots of sweaty, casually-dressed college kids in various stages of intoxication.

“Pretty standard,” Fox had said. “We’ll check it out.”

If Kaylie had been snatched, rather than skipped down, there was a good chance the brand-new nightclub that didn’t care about legal drinking age was involved.

So said Fox. Tenny thought this whole expedition was still a waste of time.

At least he’d get to dress up his…his…whatever he wasfor a few hours.

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