She gasped, but before she could say anything, the waitress showed up to take their order.
He ordered a ribeye, baked potato, French fries and fried okra. Then he gave Sara a wide smile. “And what are you gonna have,
angel?
”
She clenched her jaw and glared at him.
The last thing they needed to do was call attention to themselves with a big fight, so he turned his smile on the waitress. “My girlfriend’s had a bad day. Why don’t you bring her a mushroom burger with onion rings. And we’ll take a pitcher of beer.” She nodded and left.
Once they were alone again, he sighed and shook his head, emotionally whipped. “Burgers and beer two nights in a row, huh?” he said a little sadly.
She’d liked him last night—a lot. He’d planned to tell her everything tonight, and if all had gone to plan, she might’ve heard him out and accepted his story.
Now she looked like she wanted to reach across the table and punch him. She narrowed her eyes and asked in a low, tight voice, “What makes you think those werewolves could get me in Marshall?”
“Because right now, if he's still alive, your uncle’s talking as fast as he can. He set you up. Now that you've gotten away, and they’ve lost two of their guys, they're not gonna be happy with ol’ Wayne. He can't do anything about the wolves I busted, but he'll be telling them everywhere to look for you. Did he know you were moving to Marshall?”
Her eyes widened and, after a second, she nodded.
“Right. So when they can't find you in Luxor, he'll send them there. That's why I made you leave your car, so they won’t have anything to track you by. That's why you're not going to use your credit cards. I don't want Wayne, those wolves or even the Feds to know where you are until I've gotten you to my Alpha.”
He was speaking as quietly as he could in such a crowded place, though with all the people talking around them and TVs blasting different football games, it wasn’t likely they’d be overheard.
The waitress dropped off the pitcher and mugs. When they were alone again, Sara planted her elbows on the table and leaned forward to whisper furiously, “So the whole reason you came to Luxor was to spy on me?”
Why was she being so irrational? Where had his tough, levelheaded Sara gone? Did she not realize what she’d so narrowly escaped—and why? He leaned forward to meet her in the middle of the table ’til their elbows were nearly touching, his face inches from hers. Anyone watching them might think they were about to kiss. “No, Little Miss All About Me, I didn’t know you existed when I went to Luxor. I was spying on Wayne and your grandmother. It’s Wayne’s fault you can’t go to Marshall now, not mine. He’s the one who’s fucked up your life. All I did was save it.”
“Asshole.”
“You didn’t think so last night.”
“I didn’t know who you—”
“I’m the same guy, Sara. You have to understand that. I’m the
exact same guy
. Marine from Fredericksburg, living in Houston, mom and dad and sister, all of it. I went to Luxor hoping to find Kuba’s gang through your family’s network. When I realized the old lady’s granddaughter worked at Café Caddo, I decided to investigate you. And then I asked you out. And then—”
“So all that crap about how smart I am, how I’ll kick ass in Marshall, I’m so hot, all that was—”
“All that was true. Shit!” She flinched, but he didn’t care. “Look, this is how it is. You
happen
to be beautiful. You
happen
to be smart as a whip and hotter than hell. You
happen
to be capable of doing anything you set your mind to.” He stabbed the table with his index figure as he ticked off each attribute. “I didn’t have to lie to you. I
would’ve
lied to you if I had to, because I went to Luxor with a very important job, and I was going to get that job done, you understand? If I’d found out you worked for your family, I would’ve said whatever I needed to get usable intel on Wayne Hedges’s partners. Sara, you do
not
realize how bad these guys are, but a lot of women like you are dead because no one’s—”
“Women like me?” she asked in a small, hollow voice.
The change was instantaneous. One second ago she’d been hissing and spitting and ready to scratch his eyes out. Now her hands, a millimeter away from his, were trembling. He could hear her heart hammering. The scent of her fear—no, panic—was washing over him.
“Yes, angel. Women like you—women with fae blood. The more the better.” She blanched, turning even paler than her normal alabaster. “And you have a lot of it, don’t you?”
She swallowed hard. “I— I don’t know. I mean, yeah, but it came from my father and I don’t know who he was. My mother always said she’d tell me when I got older. But she died when I was eight, so…”
His anger and annoyance had melted away when he saw how frightened she was. How could she do that? How could she annoy the fuck out of him one second and pierce his heart the next? When he covered both her hands with his, she didn’t pull away.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of now. The wolves don’t know who I am, won’t be able—”
“I’m not scared of them. That’s not what’s freaking me out.”
“Then what is it?”
“I’ve never told anyone I was fae. I mean—” She paused, hiccupping on a laugh. “I mean, my whole life, that’s been the…the number one rule, you know? Don’t let anyone know I’m fae. Don’t let anyone see how I can remember everything in my life the way I do my orders at the diner. Don’t let anyone see how strong I am. That’s how Wayne made me work for him—by threatening to tell everyone.”
“Yeah, but, would everyone in Luxor really have shunned you, though? You lived there your whole life. They knew you. If they found out you were fae, maybe it would’ve made them stop and think— What? What is it?”
She had this weird, shocked look on her face. “Are you really that clueless? After Susan, and everything we talked about? I can’t believe you lasted two months in that place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bryan, a werewolf was murdered in Harrison County not twenty years ago. Stalked and shot in cold blood. He was from Dallas, and his family raised enough hell that the FBI came in because the sheriff wouldn’t do anything. No one in the county would cooperate. They weren’t ever able to bring charges—even though everyone knew who it was. That’s what Susan meant about the FBI covering up the killings in Wake Village—everyone thinks there’s some big government plot to sneak shapeshifters and fae into the county.”
He snorted in disbelief.
“Yeah, I know. Most people don’t know Luxor exists and if they do, they don’t care. But everyone in town thinks the big bad werewolves are itching to come in and take over. Fae too. You know Wendy, my cousin who works at the Café?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Her mother has Alzheimer’s. She’s only in her mid-forties but it’s already real bad. Sometimes Lydia starts going on about how she’s fae, and Wendy’s fae, and everyone in our damn family’s fae. I don’t know where she gets it—maybe she knew about my dad. But that’s why Wendy takes care of her at home and doesn’t use a sitter too often. If people heard her talking about being fae, they’d run her out of town. They might even kill her. Seriously. It doesn’t matter that she’s been there her whole life.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“No. They really, truly believe non-humans are evil and it’s okay to kill them. I think if Wendy found out about me, she’d handle it. But I don’t know about other people. If being shunned was the worst thing that could’ve happened to me, I would’ve told my family to go to hell a long time ago.”
“Jesus, angel. Why the hell didn’t you just leave town?”
She sat back in her chair, hunched into herself with her arms crossed tightly as she concentrated very hard on some invisible point in the middle of the table. “I wanted to. I almost did it when I was nineteen, but I made the mistake of telling Grandma about it. She mentioned it to Wayne and he convinced her that if I left town, I’d blab about the business and then they’d have the Rangers and the FBI breathing down their necks. He also said he didn’t want to have to find another courier. I promised on a stack of Bibles that I’d never say a word, but she said it was for my own good anyway, because I’d lived a sheltered life in Luxor and if I moved to a real city, I’d fall into a sinful lifestyle.”
“A sinful lifestyle? She ran a meth operation and she was worried about you living a sinful lifestyle?”
That earned him a small smile. “Yeah. Grandma was a three times a week church lady. She said if I went to Marshall, she’d send Wayne after me. It took years to get her to change her mind.”
“Sara, why do you act like Marshall’s the only town in Texas? You could lose yourself in Houston, or Dallas, or Austin, or—shit, there’s other
states
. Wayne Hedges couldn’t track you that far.”
“I know,” she replied in a small voice. “But Marshall’s the only big town I ever went to. I’ve always been too scared to go anywhere else. Whenever I thought about it, it just— I’d get so scared I’d want to throw up. I’d look at these places on the Internet, and, and— The traffic, and the crime, and everything…” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “So you see, you’re wrong. I can’t do anything I set my mind to. Or maybe it’s that I can’t set my mind to doing something that scares the shit out of me.”
“Hey. Open your eyes and look at me. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. You’re plenty tough, angel.”
Their food arrived. They were silent for the next few minutes as they started to eat. Then she put her burger down and took another gulp of beer.
“How’d you know I was fae?”
He shrugged again. “I just knew. You hide it well, but I could tell how easy it was for you to carry real heavy table trays, even though you’re so delicate.” Pure fae were on the weak side, but humans with a lot of fae ancestry were preternaturally strong. “I noticed your memory right away. And you just look it—red hair, green eyes, pale, perfect complexion. And your ears.”
“My ears are
not
pointed. They’re tapered.”
He grinned. “They’re beautiful. You’re beautiful. If you lived in any normal city, everyone would know. It’s kind of funny.”
“What is?”
“That someone with as much fae blood as you’ve got could hide in plain sight in an Apocalyptic town. They hate shifters and fae so much, but when one grows up right there in front of them, they have no idea.”
She didn’t smile, nodding kind of absently. “Do shifters have some kind of ability to sense fae?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He paused to finish his dinner—he was still starving—and she didn’t hurry him. He could tell she was thinking about everything he’d told her, processing it. He was beginning to understand how her mind worked, and it kind of fascinated him. He’d never known a woman with so much fae ancestry to think first and react later.
When he’d eaten the last bite, he drained the pitcher of beer, signaled the waitress for another round, and leaned back in his chair. “See, a lot of werewolves are hot for fae females—it’s like some primitive, leftover urge. Fae and werewolves never got along. The fae always looked down on wolves, and wolves always thought fae women were exotic and sexy. Maybe it’s a forbidden fruit thing.”
“Wolves and fae can’t have kids together, right?”
She really had studied his species. And her own. He nodded. “Right. Well, it depends. Lots of humans have traces of fae blood, and that doesn’t seem to be a problem. It’s just women with a lot of fae ancestry who can’t get pregnant by wolves.” And there was no reason at all why that should bother him, was there?
Most of the tension between them seemed to have burned off. Sara was noticeably more relaxed, and she didn’t look like she wanted to kill him anymore. Whether it was exhaustion or the beer, he didn’t care. But he was grateful when the waitress showed up with another pitcher, and he hastily refilled Sara’s glass.
She rested her elbows on the table. “Thanks. So are these guys— What’d you call them? Someone’s gang?”
He filled his own mug before answering. “Dominic Kuba,” Bryan answered. “He’s a Czech wolf, the guy in charge of the gang. Or at least one of the guys in charge. All the wolves in the gang are from Eastern Europe.”
“Okay. So what’s their deal?”
“Well, they’ve set up a branch office over here and started doing a little import/export business—gambling, drugs, weapons.” He stopped, cleared his throat. “And women.”
“Women?”
“Um, yeah. See, there’s hardly any people with fae blood left in Europe anymore, so the women are even more exotic to wolves over there than they are to us. Plus, if they’re very fae, they can’t get pregnant by wolves, right? Makes them less trouble. So these guys kidnap fae women and ship them to Europe for brothels, and sex clubs, and…stuff.”
“And stuff? What kind of
stuff
is there besides brothels and sex clubs?”
He shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, they cater to anything wolves want to do. They get some sick bastards, according to Interpol.”
“Sick as in…?”
“As in shifting while they’re doing it. That kind of stuff.”
She clapped a hand over her mouth and stared at him with wide eyes. He winced in sympathy and hoped she wouldn’t freak out.
Of course she wouldn’t. She took a long, long, looong gulp of her beer, burped daintily (he didn’t crack a smile), and said, “Okay. I can see why you’d want to help catch these guys.”
“Yeah. They almost snatched a friend of mine’s mate back in Houston. She’s not fae, but…yeah. And Nick—my Alpha—took it personally when they showed up in his territory. He figured the Feds could use some help.”
“So if you hadn’t shown up, I’d have been turned into a squeaky toy by this weekend. Which I guess means I shouldn’t hold a grudge about the undercover thing.”
He shrugged.
It was nearly midnight. Her eyes were heavy and her speech had started to slur around the edges. He knew he needed to get her back to the motel, let her get some rest, but he didn’t want to quit talking quite yet.
That was something else she did to him. He didn’t normally enjoy talking a long time with females, fae or not.
She was staring off into the distance, and he was wondering if she was about to fall over, when she said suddenly, “I hope they kill Wayne.”