Page 41 of Beware of Dog

“But the witnesses!Somany people saw that. And you’re flying colors. You—you’re the Sergeant at Arms! That kid’ll tell the cops, and they’ll…they’ll…” He started to hyperventilate.

“Shh. Keep walking. No, don’t look back.”

“Oh, man,” Ned said, shaking so violently Shep had to tighten his grip on his arm. “This is going to beterrible.”

~*~

“I won’t say it’sterrible,” Maverick said over the phone a few hours later. “But it’s not good, man.”

Shep sighed, and tipped his head back. He was on a bench on campus, and looked up through bare cherry tree branches at a washed-out sky patched with smears of cloud. “Damn it, Ned. What a little bitch.”

“Shep.” Mav’s voice was a study in patience, paternal despite a lack of biological children. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

A long pause ensued. Then, in a careful voice that set Shep’s teeth on edge, he asked, “Is this about Cass?”

The fine hair stood up on his arms, the back of his neck. An uneasy prickling that made him feelseenin a way he didn’t like at all. “What? Are you serious? Some shithead’s trying to shake down one of our dealers and you’re asking about the kid you make me babysit?” His voice sounded foreign in his own ears, edged with panic.

Mav had this way of sighing that said he knew one of his guys was lying, or at least avoiding an issue, but he never sounded put-out or impatient about it. Of all the MC presidents Shep had met, Mav seemed the least likely at first glance. His authority was subdued, his manner infuriatingly calm at times. But he had a knack for getting under all their skins, for good and for ill, and Shep thought he’d missed his calling as a priest, because he could tease a confession out of anyone.

“Shep,” he said now, gently chiding, but still fond, always that. “Ned said that you had the boy by the collar, shaking him. And that you didn’t hit him until Cass was mentioned.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I was telling him to stay away from her, which he didn’t.” Too late, he realized how much he’d admitted, and tried to cover with an added, “Raven’ll have my balls for earrings if I let anything happen to her sister, and then I’ll have to deal with all her psycho brothers.”

Another long beat passed. Mav said, “Shep.”

And Shep sighed, defeated, and gave the shortest, tersest, least indulgent version of the whole story he could.

When he got to the confrontation with Pongo, Mav said, clearly surprised, “Pongo didn’t tell me any of this.”

It boosted Pongo fractionally in Shep’s estimation.

When he was done, Mav hummed in thought. “Ned says the Blackmon kid’s only bought from him a few times, but that today was the first time he haggled over the price.” Shep winced, knowing what came next before Mav said, “Today’s also the first time he’s bought from us since he was arrested…and since you roughed him up in his parents’ kitchen.”

Shep covered guilt with attitude. “What was I supposed to do? Nothing? Then it woulda been Cass he raped instead of the roommate.”

“No, it’s good you’re looking out for Cass.” Shep’s own father, hell, his ownmother, had never spoken to him so soothingly…which probably had a lot to do with his adult personality. “But we need to be careful going forward. The Lean Dogs are pretty well-liked in Knoxville, and Atlanta, but this is New York. We’re the criminal element least likely to garner anything like public support, which means this kid, and his family, could point a lot of negative attention our way. And they do have you on camera assaulting the son.”

“Yeah.”

“I wish you hadn’t hit him today.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Lay low for now, and I’ll see what I can do. Given he’s out on bail for rape, Sig probably won’t go to the police with a complaint about today, but I don’t want you crossing his path again.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

In the background, Shep heard the distinctive whir of the coffee maker in Mav’s office. “About Cass.”

His heart lurched. He worked out constantly, sure, but maybe it was time to lay off the bacon cheeseburgers. “What about her?”

“Plenty of guys have kids,” Mav said, delicately. “And I’ve never known you to take a particular interest in any of them.Even,” he said, when Shep started to protest, “when you were tasked with watching over them.”

Shep shrugged though Maverick couldn’t see it; it relieved a little of the mounting tension in his shoulders. “None of those were long-term assignments.”

“Cassandra hasn’t needed a full-time bodyguard for three years,” Mav said, indelicately. “I told you last month I could rotate guys on city shifts if you wanted to come home.”

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