Page 38 of Reckless
This guy had thirty-one flavors of really pissed off written all over him.
“He looks like trouble. Do you want me to go get Miss Zoe?” Hector asked, and Alex’s head jacked around on a fresh push of adrenaline.
“No.” He forced an inhale past his vocal cords, long and deep. Channeling every last ounce of his waning nonchalance into the move, Alex took his cell phone from the back pocket of his jeans and slid it nice and easy over the food service counter. “I want you to take this and be ready to call nine-one-one. Don’t get Zoe or Tina. Do you understand?”
Hector had barely closed his fingers over the phone before Alex rounded the food service counter to the back of the dining room. He’d memorized the layout after his third hour at Hope House, complete with all possible entry and exit points, only some of which were doors. Blocking out the extraneous variables like averted glances, hushed murmurs, and clattering silverware, Alex shrank his focus down to one, single pinpoint, assessing, collecting, calculating.
Six feet tall. Linebacker frame. Worn flannel shirt and even more worn out work boots.
A face full of rage and dark, flat eyes that promised nothing short of murder.
Zero percent chance this wasn’t Damien, doing exactly what Rochelle had feared.
“Rochelle!” The man’s shout echoed through the room like cannon fire, kicking Alex’s breath through his lungs. “This is the only damn shelter on this side of the city and I know you ain’t got the cash to get far. Where the fuck are you?”
Damien stomped up the aisle bisecting the two sides of the dining room, slanting nasty, narrow-eyed glares at all the residents who had been effectively shocked into their seats, and Alex was moving across the floorboards before his brain got the oh-hell-no message all the way to his feet. Damn it, there had to be fifty people in here, all of them in close enough proximity that this scenario could go pear-shaped in less than a second. As twitchy as he was to act first and ask questions later, his most viable option was to chill this shit-bag out. At least until he could boot his ass back outside the shelter.
“Can I help you?” Alex asked, scraping up the words as he laced his arms over his chest.
Damien turned to flatten Alex with a beady-eyed stare, and hell. He looked rabid-dog mean, and just as remorseless. “Who the fuck are you?”
Alex’s jaw cranked as tight as his fists, and he scratched together every last fragment of his willpower. “I’m serving breakfast. And you need to watch your mouth.”
“What Ineedis to find my kid.” Damien raked him with a gaze, slithering a step closer, then another. “You in charge of this shit hole? Because I ain’t leaving without my boy, and I know he’s gotta be hiding in here someplace with his little bitch of a momma.”
Pure anger climbed the back of Alex’s throat, turning his response barbed-wire sharp. “Oh, you’re leaving, and you’re leaving right now. There are a lot of different ways this can go down. Only one of them has a happy ending for you. Now get out before I haul you out.”
“I told you.” Damien stabbed his boots into the floorboards, growling along with a stare made of pure malice. “I want my boy. And if you’re in charge, I’ll go through you to get him.”
Alex’s decision took less than a second. He lurched forward, every last intention of dragging this miscreant out of Hope House burning fast and hot in his blood. But a very familiar, very furious voice stopped him clean in his tracks.
“If you want the person in charge, then you’re looking for me. But I can promise you, you’re still not going to get what you came here for.”
* * *
Zoe’s heartbeatslammed behind her breastbone, the white noise whoosh of blood pumping so hard against her eardrums that she was almost dizzy. Okay, so mouthing off to Damien might’ve been a little impulsive, but she’d had to dosomethingto keep Alex away from the guy. She’d called nine-one-one the second she’d passed through the side door from the shelter and heard Damien slam his way through the dining room.
Please, God. Let me be able to talk this monster down until the cops get here.
“You run this fucking place?” Damien turned on his heel to fasten her with an unrelenting stare at the same time Alex froze over the floorboards to look at her in disbelief, but she blocked out one in favor of the other.
“I do. And you need to leave.” She pulled in a shaky breath, sticking it with all her resolve. “Now.”
Damien’s smile was all teeth, the tread on his boots calling out a hard thump as he took a step toward her, then another. “That’s not how this works, little girl. You got something that belongs to me, and Iwillget it.”
Zoe jammed her hands over her hips, mostly to stop them from trembling. The fresh memory of Kenny, curled up against the side of his mother’s body not encumbered by the sling holding her dislocated shoulder, flashed through her mind, strengthening her words to steel. “Unless you’ve got a court order I’m not aware of, no. You won’t.”
For just a breath, everything in the dining room stood stop-motion still, the hum of the overhead fluorescents the only thing cutting through the palpable tension in the room.
And then everyone moved at once.
Damien sprang toward her, creating a shock wave of startled shouts and scraping chairs in his wake. Zoe’s lungs constricted in spite of her burning need to inhale, her pulse tearing through her veins on a flood of high-octane adrenaline. From the corner of her eye, she caught flickers of motion in the center of the dining room, scraps of speed and undeniable intention. But by the time she registered the blond hair, the blue eyes turned dark with fear and ferocity, Damien’s fingers had wrapped around her upper arms, digging in hard.
“Give me my boy.” The stale-whiskey stink of his exhale hit Zoe full force with the bite of every word, and oh God, oh God oh God oh God, she couldn’t get out of his grasp.
“No.” Her voice betrayed her with a wobble, and Damien’s hands cranked down harder over her thinly covered arms, sending twin spears of pain all the way to her fingertips.
“Bitch, you are going to regret this.”
