Bailey Bradford - Southwestern Shifters 06 - Reverence (4 page)

The drive only took a few hours, and Harley was barely less of a mess when he pulled into the apartment parking lot. Somehow, and he hadn’t bothered to ask for details on it, Nathan had managed to keep his apartment and, according to Nathan, had it restored and the wooden door replaced with a sturdy steel one. Harley hoped that was true, all of it. He hadn’t paid rent on time, but that was something else Nathan said had been handled. It irked Harley in a way, but hell, it wasn’t like his gas station job was going to be there. He’d been gone for a month or so, had just vanished. What little money he had in the bank wasn’t going to last long at all. Holy fuck, what had he done? He was going to be homeless and starving, and his brother Ryder wouldn’t know where to find him—if Ryder was still alive. Harley never knew where Ryder was or how he was doing unless Ryder popped in for a surprise visit. Harley didn’t even have an address or phone number for Ryder, and for all he knew, Ryder was homeless or a criminal. With eleven years between them, they’d never been super close, but they were the only family the other had.

What if Ryder had come looking for him while he’d been gone? Harley shoved the thought aside. Ryder usually came by every few months at the most. Harley didn’t know what he’d do if Ryder vanished for good, but thinking about it right now wasn’t helping him at all. He was stalling, plain and simple, and Harley slapped his cheek hard enough to sting. “Stop it. Be a fucking man and deal with it all.”

All. So much has happened…
Harley shook his head. He couldn’t start down that road. He needed to concentrate on right now, on parking and getting out and going to talk to the manager. God, he hated Mr Rutlidge. The guy was a first-rate creep, always eyeing Harley as if he was a tasty but cheap dessert. Thinking about him pissed Harley off, and that helped him for some reason. He pulled into his old parking slot. His car had been a rattling death trap, but it’d been paid for. Joshua Dobson had taken that, too, and crashed it just to be a dickwad. Just to take it from Harley.

“Stop it.” He shoved that aside and put the vehicle in park. The duffle bag had fallen to the passenger side floor so Harley had to lean over and wriggle to pick it up. That was when it dawned on him he hadn’t buckled his seatbelt, and he was damned lucky to be alive and not to have got ticketed. He had to get his head out of his ass, like
now
. He hefted the bag up and got out. The property manager’s office should be open, he thought. It was early afternoon, and Mr Rutlidge liked his tackily decorated office that no doubt made him feel like a big man instead of a weasel. Harley knew he was being harsh, but Rutlidge had brushed up against him too many times for it to have been anything but groping. The ass was married and sleazy and Harley flat-out didn’t like him.

The office looked the same. Harley didn’t know why he had expected everything to be different just because he was different now, on the inside at least. He hadn’t realised he’d been expecting it, either, but seeing Rutlidge in a shiny silver suit and a scuzzy excuse for a beard slammed him back to reality. Some things would never change, he guessed.

Rutlidge’s eyes narrowed and he leered as Harley knocked on the open door frame. “Well, well, look who’s back. Did your sugar daddy get tired of you already?”
Harley frowned. “What the fuck are you talking about?” Jesus, what had the shifters told Rutlidge?
“Oh, please,” Rutlidge said smugly as he ran a hand over the lapel of his jacket. “You go away for weeks without telling anyone. While you’re gone, someone manages to actually
buy
your apartment and the one beside it from the company I work for, then redoes the whole place. As soon as it’s ready, here you come, looking like you’ve been rode rough for weeks,” and there was that disgusting leer again, “and you have a nice, new place all decked out and all bills paid. The title is even in your name, and I’d really like to know who you blew to get the company I work for to sell those units—”
“Fuck you.” Harley had to process everything, but one thing he caught on to, he didn’t have to put up with Rutlidge. “I’m not anyone’s whore, not anyone’s boy toy, so just—fuck you.” His snarky comebacks needed work, Harley thought as he turned and strode out, shoulders stiff and head high. It wasn’t until he stepped into the sunlight again that he remembered he didn’t have keys to his place—or the title, or anything. Only Rutlidge’s word about it being his.
Harley pulled the duffle down and squatted as he unzipped it. He plopped the bag on the ground and separated the fabric, then blinked and scrubbed at one eye as he looked inside. “What the fuck?” he squeaked, then bit his lip to keep from babbling. He saw keys, a hand-written note, some other papers, a cell phone—and money. Stacks of money. The top one had what looked to be a note tucked beneath the wrapper. Harley grabbed the keys out and tried not to sway under the anger that pressed down on him. He zipped the bag and as soon as he was upright, took off running.
Harley skipped the elevator, taking the stairs instead. His mind spun as he thought of the bag’s contents. All that money, was that the same as him being a whore after all? Harley stopped in the stairwell and opened the bag enough to take the note out. Was he being paid off, or what? Would he keep the money? God, if he wasn’t so fucking poor he’d shred it all, or give it to the homeless shelter and tell the shifters to fuck the hell off.
The note was short, the writing neat and easy to decipher, not like Harley’s own illegible scrawl. Harley read it, then read it again, fighting the urge to cry. His emotions were all over the place, his head totally fucked up. Maybe he was going crazy.
The money, the apartment, all of it was a gift, including the damn truck. Titles were in the bag, and even the utilities had been paid several months in advance. All of them, gifts from Nathan—and Marcus, Nathan had written, but Harley doubted that surly bastard would have given him anything but a glare. If nothing else, he was to consider it compensation, like he’d sued the shifters for the hardships he’d suffered.
“Oh fucking hell.” Harley didn’t know what to think about that. He couldn’t figure the shifters out. Why hadn’t they just killed him? Why let him go? What the hell were they? Bad? Good? Evil? Freaks?
People, like him?
“No. Not that.” Harley stuffed the note in his back pocket then resumed his trek up the stairs. He thought he’d be relieved when he saw his door, but the terror almost brought him to his knees. Harley sank down against the wall opposite from his place and stared blankly, seeing nothing. He was afraid, more afraid than he’d ever been, just about. Memories of the night he was taken from his apartment were trying to invade his head, and he didn’t want to go there, ever again. He wanted to forget the time he was Joshua Dobson’s prisoner, forget the taunts and fists and things that had been done to him.
There were blank spaces, he knew that, and he was fine with it. Harley was pretty sure he didn’t want to know what he was blocking. Nothing good could come from it. The past was the past, and he hadn’t had to struggle with his memories quite so much while he’d been holed up in the shifter den, maybe because he’d been too busy worrying about whether or not they’d kill him.
It wasn’t because he’d felt safe, safe enough, even, to strike out. The sheer idiocy of that thought made Harley laugh out loud, a high-pitched nervous giggle that scared him all over again. Jesus fucking Christ, he
was
losing his mind.
“Well, why not? Fuckers took everything else I had, might as well give them that, too.” The titles in the bag were just papers. The important things—his pride, his security, his belief in reality and ignorance of the supernatural, those things were fucking gone. Now he had, what? Just what they gave him, what they let him have, his life included.
All the convoluted thinking was making Harley’s head hurt. Even though he tried to tell himself it was true, that he hadn’t felt some measure of safety around at least Nathan, and even though he hated to admit it, Marcus, a little, the untruthfulness of that rang in his ears like an air horn.
Then there was that bizarre feeling in his gut. Maybe it was guilt. Harley suspected it was, but he couldn’t fathom why he felt it. He knew it was centred around that lone, damaged man he’d seen for all of a few minutes when he’d sneaked out of his rooms. But that made no sense. He shouldn’t feel guilty—hell, he didn’t even know that guy’s name.
“Fuck it, fuck it all!” Harley shoved aside everything battling around in his brain and stood up. He walked over to his door, sweat breaking out all over his body with each step he took. Like monsters from the worst nightmares, dark images pulled at his mind. Harley refused to examine them, or the fear swamping him, making it hard to drag air into his lungs. He stopped inches from the steel door and shoved the key in the first lock. There was a series of three, he noted dimly after the first tumbler was turned. It took a second to realise the keys were labelled, ‘top’, ‘mid’ and ‘bot’, the last Harley figured was for bottom. By whatever stroke of luck, he’d got the first one right.
Once he undid the other two, Harley had to wipe his brow with his forearm. He wasn’t hot, yet he was soaking with sweat, his nerves pinging like crazy. He turned the doorknob and after a moment, gaped like a total fool, swaying slightly. He hadn’t been certain he could do it, could come back and step into the apartment, when his last memories of it were— unthinkable.
But someone had possibly thought of that, because the whole of what he saw looked nothing like his former apartment. It was larger, too, which he should have expected as Rutlidge did mention two units being purchased. Harley stepped inside and shut the door. He only set one lock, because what if someone else was in there? He might stand a chance of escaping if he didn’t have to fight three locks.
Harley’s eyes had to be bugging, they were aching he was staring so hard, but the place was… “Wow. Just, I don’t—” Talking to himself might mean he was off his rocker to some people, but while he might wonder about his sanity, the solo conversation had nothing to do with that worry. Harley had been doing it since he’d learned to talk. He’d been lonely for a long time, and the sound of his own voice had helped alleviate that somewhat.
“The wall is gone.” Harley checked the living room and kitchen as well as he could before moving away from the door. Only once he was reasonably sure no one or thing was lurking and waiting for him to move so they could off him did Harley edge farther into the living room.
The little one-bedroom was now a sprawling—to him at least—apartment, or home, maybe, since he actually owned it. Unless the papers were fake, but he would worry over that later. Besides, why would Rutlidge have said anything about Harley owning the place— or had he?
Harley shrugged, his attention caught by a gorgeous cream rug splattered with shades of blue and brown. He didn’t know jack about decorating. Most of his stuff had come from garage sales or trash piles, but he was positive that rug had cost a pretty penny. He snorted. “Right, like there were any pennies involved in the price. Had to be hundreds of bucks. Guess I’m being bought off after all.” It irked him, but he couldn’t turn around and stop looking. The floors had been redone, the cracked crappy tiles pulled up and something that looked a lot like real wood installed instead. The warm golden glow of it made the place lighter, or maybe that was the golden tones the walls had been painted. The couch was covered in a Southwestern-patterned material, that mix of blues and browns and cream combined with yellow-gold and peachy-orange. Maybe he should have paid attention in art class—he might have learned the colours’ real names then.
“Whatever, it’s pretty, even if I have always steered clear of the whole Southwestern design stuff.” It just seemed clichéd, living in Sedona and all, what with it all around him, but Harley wondered if he hadn’t just been being stubborn, because he kind of liked the way his apartment looked, with Native American pottery on tables and in nooks and crannies— he’d never
had
nooks and crannies before!
The kitchen table was the perfect size for him, and made of the same coloured wood as the floor. He thought the table was real wood, though. The chairs, too. How had he got in the kitchen? Harley spun around, astounded that he’d wandered in without even being aware of it. But the warm colours, the soothing tones and the sheer prettiness of the place just drew him.
Until he looked towards the bedroom. He’d been in there, with Joshua Dobson, thinking he’d brought home a guy to keep him company for the night. Dobson had seemed, well, weird, but Harley had been so lonely—
“Stop,” he squeaked out, pressing a hand to the base of his throat. Dobson had waited until Harley had begun to undress, then he’d smiled this twisted smile and just gripped Harley right there—“No, no, no!” Harley backed up until he hit the table. He couldn’t look away from the bedroom.
The door was open, and it didn’t look the same at all, but it was still
the bedroom
. Maybe it wasn’t where his nightmare started, because that had truly been when he’d picked Dobson up—or been picked up, whatever. He’d thought he was going to die a vicious death that night, and his relief that he didn’t was short-lived, at least while he’d been held captive.
“Don’t think about it. Fuck it. Don’t think about it!” Harley tore his gaze away and he looked around the kitchen. He set the duffle on the table then opened it and took out the envelope that said ‘Titles’. Holding it in his hand, he walked around the kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets, finding everything stocked with items, food and kitchenware, he’d never had and never would have been able to afford. Were the shifters trying to buy him off? Or were they, as Nathan said in the note, truly sorry he’d been hurt? Did it matter?
“Yes.” Though he couldn’t say why. Harley finally looked in the fridge then the freezer and was trying to figure out what the hell he’d do with so much food when his mind just blanked, like the electricity cutting off right before a storm hit.
Then he crumpled on the floor and sobbed as he clutched at his head, the nightmarish memories slithering out to torment him on that pretty gold floor.

It was agonising, but Val Whitley was a determined man. He’d almost died during the attack on Marcus Criswell’s former residence. Val had been hit by a damn SUV driven by Joshua Dobson, and had lingered in a coma, something previously unheard of for a shifter.