Page 148 of Beware of Dog

Yeah. This was business. This was business he was going to want in on.

The coffee was black, shitty, and hot enough to burn his tongue; it did a decent job waking him up on the long walk down the hall. He’d nabbed maybe an hour of sleep slumped over Cass’s bed, and now he was more tired than before, and had a crick in his neck.

“Fox called,” Toly said, quietly. “All they found were some shell casings and footprints.”

Shep nodded and slurped down more coffee. “I figured. You know this was the Tres Diablos, right?”

Toly said, “Yeah, most likely.”

“We shoulda wiped them off the face of the fucking earth a week ago,” he said, bitterly, and a passing nurse did a double-take, brows raised.

Toly cleared his throat pointedly.

When they reached the alcove, Devin turned to them with a close-mouthed, but warm smile. He reached out to grip Shep’s bicep, and Shep didn’t shake him off. It felt nice, actually. Reminded him of Mav’s firm, masculine touch, the sort of comradely squeeze that his own father had never offered.

“How you doing, son?” he asked.

Don’t call me son. That was what Shep had said…God, was it only yesterday? Maybe two days ago. It had to be nearing five in the morning at this point. In the three years that he’d known Cass, he’d developed a slow-simmering hatred of this man.

He was too tired to find any trace of it inside himself now. He shrugged, and drained off the last of his coffee, and said, “You know.”

Devin’s smile quirked, wry. “Yeah,” he said, softly, “I know.” He squeezed Shep’s arm again and let his hand fall away.

Walsh didn’t offer a smile, warm, wry, or otherwise. Somehow, his face had taken on a new layer of sternness.

There was a door behind him, and he reached back to press the handle without looking. Walked backward into a room with a tilt of his head that invited them to follow.

It was a supply closet: metal shelves loaded with folded scrubs, boxes of paper masks, and gloves. A window with a pulled-down shade offered watery light, blue and eerie on theside of Walsh’s face as he folded his arms and faced off from them in the close confines between shelves.

He said, “Maverick went back to the clubhouse. Cops showed up while you were in with Cass, and Mav handled them like a pro—but they’ll come back later, they said.”

“Mav’s friendly with the chief of police up here.”

“That’s what he said. The chief is going to do the walk-around of the clubhouse personally, so that’s why Mav headed back.” Walsh tipped his head. “Fox and the boys are headed back to the city to get confirmation that this was the Tres Diablos.”

“It was,” Shep said, and knew it in his bones. “That guy, the guy at the meeting…” He took a long blink and was in the back room at Hauser’s again, one of those beefy security thugs squaring off from him, glaring. “Mav said—shit, Mav told them to stay away from Cass, and he pointed at me, and he said, ‘That’s her man.’”

Walsh nodded. “It would have been a lot easier to wait until you were back in the city and target her at school. They were pissed at you. They wanted to do it tonight, on home turf, to hurt you.”

Mission fucking accomplished.

“Now.” Devin laid a hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t do anything to provoke him.” It wasn’t a question, exactly.

“When they started talking shit—” Shep began, guilt boiling up in his throat like heartburn. He’d charged forward, aggressive, hand balled up and ready for a swing. He’dstartedit. Blackmon was paying the assholes, yeah, but Shep had shownweaknessin front of them. Helped to hone their plan.

Toly interrupted him. “No. He didn’t provoke them. They walked in that room with chips on their shoulders. They never had any intention of honoring their word.”

Shep had been a Lean Dog for more than a decade, but was pierced straight through, a painful shot under his ribs, by thesudden knowledge that he’d become a part of afamily. One that would offer him support instead of blame.

Devin, his hand still on Shep’s shoulder, said, “You don’t need to do anything but stay right here. That’s your place, and no one will think less of you.”

It wasn’t excitement, but something dark that echoed it that built in his stomach, a hard knot. “But you’re going after them.”

Devin nodded. In the calm voice of a parent, or a patient schoolteacher, he said, “Yes. There’s going to be consequences for what happened tonight.”

“I want in,” Shep said. There was nothing else to say.

Devin nodded. “Good lad.”

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