Page 31 of Rune’s Solace

Devil gave me one job. Watch Amy. Watch what moved around her. Cars coming in, cars going out, faces that showed twice, somebody hanging around where they had no reason to be. Instead I’d spent half the damn day keeping count of how many times that kid touched her.

Eating his fucking muffin.

Somebody could’ve walked right up to her Honda, dropped down beside it, punched that radiator and walked away while I sat across the street jealous as some lovesick prospect.

Never would’ve seen him.

That one went in deep.

I don’t scare easy, and panic hasn’t ever done a useful thing for me, but standing there looking at that hole I felt something cold work its way down my back, because this wasn’t a man in front of me I could put hands on or a wound I could stitch. This was something I hadn’t seen coming.

It didn’t fit.

That was the problem.

Drago wanted Zeynep. Every piece of word we’d gotten said Zeynep. She didn’t leave the compound without Mystic damn near attached to her, sure as hell wasn’t parking a Honda on a college campus across the river.

Amy was.

And Amy didn’t mean shit to Drago. Girl wasn’t club business. Wasn’t tied to the Fire Dragons, wasn’t part of whatever blood Drago still wanted spilled. Far as that bastard knew, Amy Dawson didn’t exist.

So why the fuck was there a hole in her radiator?

Either it was a rock, and Gearhead, who knows more about cars than any man I’ve met, couldn’t make himself say it was a rock, or somebody wanted Amy Dawson stopped on a dark road, and I couldn’t for the life of me build a story where that made sense.

And a thing you can’t make sense of is worse than a thing you can. A named enemy you can wall out. This was a hole in a radiator and a mechanic who wouldn’t swear to it and a bad feeling crawling up the back of my neck, pointed at the one person on this property nobody was supposed to have any reason to touch.

“You tell anybody else?” I said. My voice came out level. I don’t know how.

“Just you.” Gearhead watched me. “Figured you’d know what to do with it. Figured wrong, from your face.”

“No.” I made myself ease up, made my shoulders come down, because scaring Gearhead got me nothing and I needed to think. “No, you figured right. Keep it between us for now. I take it to Devil like this, a maybe and a bad feeling, with everything he’s already carrying on Zeynep. He can’t do anything with it but tell me to keep a closer eye on her, and I’m already watching her closer than my own damn pulse.” That last part came out truer than I meant it to. Gearhead had the decency to pretend he didn’t hear it. “Get her a new radiator. Good one. And Gearhead, keep the old one. Don’t pitch it. Put it somewhere.”

“Already planned to.” He nodded, slow, a man who’d caught the same chill I had and hated it. “You watch her, brother.”

“I’m going to.”

I walked out of Gearhead’s shop into a compound armed for the wrong damn war. Men on the walls. Guns on the gates. Every eye pointed toward a threat with Zeynep’s name on it.

Somebody might be after her. And I was the only one who even suspected it, I couldn’t prove it, I couldn’t explain it, and the last time I had her safe in my arms I’d handed her a helmet, driven her home and thought the worst thing in my world was how much I wanted her.

I’d been watching the wrong damn thing.

I wasn’t going to make that mistake twice.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

GETTING BRENDA OFF the compound took two escorts, Devil’s permission, and enough arguing that by the end of it I wasn’t sure lunch was worth it anymore.

Brenda had been up and around for days, back in real clothes, back to bossing everybody and telling Josie he salted things wrong, which was how we knew she was mostly herself again. But being out of bed wasn’t the same as being out, and Fiona finally decided Brenda needed sunshine, some different scenery, and at least two hours where nobody asked her where the extra paper towels were. She announced the three of us were going to lunch. Devil looked like she’d suggested Vegas.

He relented putting Horse and Rune on bodyguard duty.

So we made a little parade of it, three women in Fiona’s car and two motorcycles behind us, close enough that I could find Rune in the mirror anytime I wanted to.

I didn’t want to. I checked anyway. More than once. Whatever. He was supposed to be there.

We did the good part first. Lunch outside, Brenda ordering enough food for six people because apparently almost dying of heartbreak had done nothing to her belief that everybody was starving, Fiona sitting across from me making dry little comments that kept setting Brenda off, and at one point the three of us laughed hard enough Brenda had to wipe under her eyes and call us both awful. For almost an hour I forgot about the bikes parked where they could see us. Forgot about Drago and lockdowns and men watching from across streets.