Reaching down, I patted her head, then let her lick the spoon after I’d dolloped some peanut butter onto my oats. Maybe if I tried really hard, I could pretend they were something else entirely as I ate the same thing for what felt like the millionth day in a row.
Now I was getting dramatic.
It had been about a month. Maybe forty days. I was starting to lose track. Days blurred when they were filled with the same things. And, to be fair, I was never great at keeping track of passing time even back home. I was always off in my own world, working in my shop, tinkering away the days and nights.
The only reason I had any sort of schedule on the daily was because of Miranda and Samantha who let me know when they needed to eat or stretch their legs or get some loving.
Before them, I would go without sleep for two days in a row, surviving only on coffee and some crackers I had lying around, determined to get something just right, to prove that my wild ideas were possible.
The girls had been a necessary addition when the nature of my work meant that I was coming face-to-face with a lot of shady characters. Sure, I had my own specially designed weapons on me when I had a deal happening, but having the dogs with me—highly trained and very wary of strangers—was an added layer of protection.
Besides, alarm systems could be hacked and disabled. Dogs? Dogs could always be relied on to tell you when someone is getting a little too close to their territory.
Samantha would often inform me if a bumblebee was encroaching on her turf. No matter how many times I informed her that if we as species wanted to continue to exist, that we needed our buzzy friends.
I was just about to sit on the edge of the bed to choke down my oatmeal while I thumbed through one of my father’s old metalworking books when suddenly the girls’ ears perked, their backs tensed, and they flew at the windows.
“Another deer?” I asked, shrugging it off as I braced for their usual ‘I want to get it’ barks.
But then they let out a different sort of bark entirely.
This was their hackles-raised, tense-postured, guttural ‘Who the fuck is that?’ bark.
I twisted so fast that the bowl perched on my knee toppled onto the bed, spilling over the comforter I had no easy way to clean even as my free hand shot out toward my pillow, slipping under, and feeling my fingers curl around the reassuring cool handle of one of my guns.
With that in hand, I shifted up ever so slightly, just high enough to peek out of the window.
And, sure enough, two figures were making their way through the woods that would clear just a couple dozen yards away from the cabin.
There was no retreating, not with people so close.
And, hey, this was open land with no way for people to know they were encroaching on private property if they were just out for a hike or hunting.
Though, on closer inspection, these guys weren’t dressed for hiking or hunting. No reflective vests. No bottles of water hanging from their hands. Hell, not even decent shoes for the wilderness.
No.
The way the hair on the back of my neck was standing on end was telling me this wasn’t just a casual happenstance, that these guys were here for a purpose.
Were here for me.
But, yeah, it was too late to try to run, to make it back to my car, to get the fuck out of here.
This was a stand-your-ground sort of situation.
I drew in a calming breath, grabbed another gun as I stood, then made my way toward the door.
“Come,” I demanded of the girls, slapping my leg as I wrenched open the door.
They didn’t waste any time, flying out the door, off of the porch, and crouching low on the ground, snapping and snarling, but not charging.
There was a command for that.
But I wasn’t going to use that unless it was absolutely necessary.
I wasn’t sure it would be good for their, or my, mental health for them to maul men to death unless there was no other choice.
I don’t know what I was expecting.
Men all in black, guns blazing, ready to drag me away and lock me in a dungeon somewhere.
You could say I had reasons for that knee-jerk expectation these days.
But I can tell you what I didn’t expect.
One of the hottest guys I’d ever seen in my life moving into the clearing, looking at the dogs with a quirked brow, seemingly unbothered by their threats, then glancing over at me.
“So… you’re Murphy.”
CHAPTER THREE
Sway
Detroit had decided against the trip.
And, honestly, seven and a half hours into the ride, I couldn’t blame him for it.
Depending on the road, Coach was riding beside or behind me, the rumble of his bike the only other thing I’d heard for the past twenty minutes.
Sure, Shady Valley was rural. A flat, mostly barren land that backed up to the Death Valley mountains.
But Modoc felt like a different world.
It was more hilly, full of more trees and vegetation, fields full of grazing cows who glanced up as we rumbled past, our bikes breaking the relative peace of their home.
I was starting to regret not taking the SUV like Slash had suggested when we finally found ourselves pulling into the town we were looking for.
A little one-road town with the quaint name of Lookabout, California.
At the edge of town, Coach pulled up beside me, jerking his chin at me as he cut his engine.
“You’re sure this is the place?” he asked even as I started to question it myself.
I mean… it didn’t look like the kind of place some big-name gun designer would choose to call home. A guy who, by all accounts, would be making bank, could be living just about anywhere they wanted. Close to the shore. Or, at the very least, a place with a full-sized grocery store and some take-out options.
Sure, privacy was important. And, yeah, I bet you could shoot off all sorts of guns out here and no one would notice, let alone want to investigate it.
But, still, you were sacrificing a lot of creature comforts in a town that looked like it didn’t even have a pizza place.
“This is as close as they could get us based on the email,” I said, shrugging. “But they might not be in town. I think this is National Forest out here. And there are cabins and houses scattered around.”
Not to mention the campgrounds.
If this wasn’t home, but was rather a hideout spot, that was something we would need to look into as well.
“Guess that’s where we’re staying,” he said, jerking his chin toward a three-story white stone building with several red, green, and white flags hanging from the front.
Judge’s girl, Delaney, had been the one to handle the arrangements for us, jotting down where we’d be staying, and where we should stop to fill up for fuel and food on the way, so we didn’t find ourselves without gas on the side of the road or starving.
And, given the general rundown look of the town, the inn looked like a decent enough place to crash. I’d certainly stayed in worse places before.
“Let’s go check in. Then see if we can find some dinner,” I added, glancing around dubiously.
“Checking in?” the short, smiling older lady at the desk asked. If she had opinions on the bikes, on our leather jackets, on the tattoos snaking down our necks and arms, and in Coach’s case, on his face, she said nothing.
In the off-season, she was probably excited just to have some business.