Bad Boy Romance: Nick (Romantic Suspense Alpha Male Romance) (New Adult Rock Star Contemporary Short Stories) (Hard Rock Star Series Book 2) (39 page)

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Charlie kept whipping his face
against the vibrating glass of the shuttle’s window to catch glimpses of the
streets and houses zipping by the van, and it was starting to rub the skin of
his forehead raw, but he couldn’t help it— the town looked so different. Sierra
Leandra was technically in San Diego county, but with its neatly divided
sections, it looked more like a mini version of the county itself: wide open
spaces for the first ten miles, populated with squat scrubs whose thin soils
were graced with sprawling ranch houses and apathetic farm animals who milled
border of the town; then came gas stations and main freeway exits; then strip
malls started to pop up alongside boxy duplexes and apartment buildings
surrounding the three public schools. There were two churches and a community
college, a rec center, two malls, then a small business and entertainment
district that blended nicely together on Friday evenings. On the other side of
the bars and banks were gaudy houses—mini-mansions with huge bay windows and
tall cream doors that opened into the sort of meticulously styled and polished
rooms that begged to be lounged in by people of the same caliber. Charlie knew
the layout of the town like the back of his hand, knew what each building would
look like painted blue or yellow or burned down to black ash and rebuilt in
brick, but he never thought he’d see it this way.

The streets were completely
empty, save for a few lonely adults strolling along the sidewalks or going into
shops. Every window he could see was shuttered, and some were even boarded up.
The rural part of town was even empty of llamas and geese—when he tried to
focus on smelling them with his eyes closed, he couldn’t catch the scent of a
single feather or puff of fur. One gas station looked open for business, but
the lights were off inside, and the others looked like they had been closed for
months. Horror gripped his stomach as they rode through the business section of
town and saw that not only were the main malls closed and vacated, half of
their structures had been pulled or knocked down. There was such a profound
sense of wrongness about everything that even the warm hum of the engine didn’t
do much to mask how quiet it was, and he felt bile start to rise in his throat.
What is this? What’s happened? It looks like a ghost town.

“Flax,” Evan said suddenly,
breaking him out of his trance. Charlie jumped at the sound of his last name
and turned toward the other man, who was holding the now half-full water bottle
the driver had offered each of them.

“What’s up?” Charlie asked. The
next second he noticed that Evan’s posture had changed— it was ever so
slightly, and the human driver almost certainly didn’t notice it, but it was
there. His spine was more rigid, but his eyes were darting around the vehicle
behind the dark lenses of his shades. He lowered his voice when he spoke so
that it wouldn’t register to the driver’s ears.

“We’re being followed,” Evan
said casually. “Black sedan with no plates. Big Native American guy driving who
kinda looks like your wife’s brother, and a squat looking white guy in the
passenger seat. I saw one of them pat a weapon on the ceiling roof to secure
it. They’re not human.” His words came blunt and fast, and Charlie knew his
military training was kicking in.

Charlie flicked his eyes to the
rearview mirror of the van, pouring all of his energy into focusing his gaze on
the two figures behind them. After a moment, he saw that Evan was right; a
brown-skinned man with thick knuckles was piloting the car, and his small
blonde friend was trying far too hard to look relaxed in the seat.

“Damn,” Charlie said under his
breath. “They’re lions.”

“Thought so,” Evan said, and
even though his words were slow and steady, Charlie knew his pulse had just
accelerated. The city had somehow been closed down, their people were being
terrorized, and now two strange lions were on their tail. After another second,
the car dropped back and turned a corner, but both of the lions in the shuttle
knew it was out of caution. Charlie had a horrible feeling in his gut about the
likelihood of them meeting again. He sat back in his seat, willing the van to
materialize at his and Evan’s homes. He could picture Natalie now, and the
vision made his heart ache—her mane of soft, dark curls, caramel brown eyes,
and the disarming smile he saw most nights in his dreams.

“We’re here,” the driver
intoned a few minutes later. Charlie opened his eyes and saw that Evan was
already unbuckling his seatbelt and sliding his door open.

Did I doze off? he wondered as
he climbed out of the van. He slipped a twenty dollar bill into the driver’s
chubby palm and noted that he was twitchy and covered in sweat despite the air
conditioning. He pulled off before Charlie could ask him if anything was
alright, and he nearly called for him to come back. If the human could tell
something was amiss, maybe he should just grab Natalie and pay him to keep
driving until they hit the other side of the country.

Instead, Charlie nodded to Evan
at the foot of his own driveway and turned to the Reynolds’ home, finally
glancing at the burned-out husk his pridemate and neighbor’s garage had become.
“Ariel really didn’t say anything about it?”

Evan shook his head, his dark
eyes unreadable behind his lenses. “Not a thing. Mentioned having to move the
car. And she never mentioned our niece getting…hurt.” Evan’s clipped tone hid
the grief in that single word, and Charlie felt a wrench of pain deep inside
his stomach.

“I’m sorry,” he said softy,
holding one upturned palm toward his best friend’s jaw. For a moment, he was
afraid the lion would turn away from the gesture, but then Evan stepped forward
and bumped his cheek against Charlie’s palm, accepting the comfort he sorely
needed.

“Thanks,” he said, his voice
filled with pain. “I should get inside. I have a feeling I’ll see you soon?”

Charlie nodded, gazing toward
the living room window of his house. “Yeah. We’ll all be seeing each other
soon, I think. “

Evan flashed him a wide smile
before he turned toward his house, and it was vicious, dark, and wrapped in a
layer of red-hot shifter energy that Charlie would have flinched away from if
he hadn’t been positive it wasn’t for him.  A shiver rolled down his spine as
he watched Evan’s slim, muscle-heavy form slink toward his front door; his best
friend reminded him pretty often that he should be thankful he was one of the
good guys.

Charlie’s heart was slamming
against his ribcage as he walked swiftly up his driveway, noticing that the
curtains had been pulled shut the whole time and hadn’t moved when the shuttle
pulled up. The truck wasn’t outside at all, and Charlie worried briefly that
Natalie wasn’t home—then the anxiety bled away, and he realized he was feeling
relief at the possibility that Nat was already far away from the potentially
dangerous storm brewing for them on the horizon. He hesitated as he slipped his
key into the door, tension knotting his heavy bicep before turning the handle
and pushing the thick oak door inward and stepping inside, closing it almost as
quickly as he’d opened it.

“Nat?”

His voice echoed uncomfortably
in the house, and the terse syllable hit his ears with the force of a gunshot.
Something wasn’t right; as his eyes adjusted to the artificial darkness the
blackout curtains provided, he realized that all the furniture in their wide
living room was covered in a thick layer of dust. There were clear footprints
crossing the dust on the wood floor, and some of the dirt seemed like it had
been pushed around recently, but no weight had been put on the sofa, recliner,
or coffee table for weeks. He called her name again and dropped his duffle bag
as he crossed through the living room, shouldering through the swinging doors
leading into the kitchen so fast he’d already zipped through the dining room by
the time they swung closed again. The linoleum near the stove showed signs of
foot traffic, and there was still a worn mat near the fridge, but otherwise,
everything was bare and untouched. The chairs in the dining room were shoved
under the table, and there was nothing in the cupboards. He spoke again,
projecting his voice through the house without caring if any of the neighbors
heard his panicked screech.

“Natalie!”

A solid thunk sounded below his
feet, and Charlie froze, his breath coming hard and fast on the heels of a wave
of anxiety. It sounded like someone slamming wood onto the earth beneath the
floorboards. How?

“Nat?” He shouted again,
feeling confusion start to mingle with the terror in his chest. Then the thunk
came again, and this time, he saw a floorboard in the dining room fly a foot
into the air near table before crashing back into place.

What the fuck?

Charlie dropped to his hands
and knees and scrambled over to the section of floor, pressing his nose to the
heavy piece of wood that he could now see was far cleaner than the rest of the
space. He could smell chilly, stale air wafting up through the crack, and if he
concentrated, he could hear the rattle of what had to be their old air
conditioner pumping out a cool breeze. Charlie inhaled, filling his powerful
lungs with as many particles as he could drag through his nose— and thought he
caught a whiff of sharp, sweet smoke mixed in with the damp earth.

“Natalie,” Charlie murmured,
and the board flew up again—but this time, he caught it with both hands and
finally saw that it was a trapdoor with hinges buried in the wood. He propped
it open and peered down as a dark brown ladder rose a few inches above the
five-by-five foot opening, trying to see down into the room that had to be twenty
feet underground. His eyes adjusted quickly, and he finally saw her—bags under
her warm brown eyes, lips cracked, arms skinnier than they should have been,
but beaming that soul-cracking smile that was all for him. She stepped back as
he launched himself down the ladder, swinging the door shut above them and
plunging them into darkness as a consequence.

“Sorry!” Charlie yelped, and he
felt his hands brush across his wife’s knuckles as she scrambled to turn on a
lamp. His heart caught in his throat, and the startled look on Natalie’s face
when the lamp flared to life told him he was already tearing up. One of her
hands went to her round belly as she stepped forward and extended the other,
and Charlie placed his large, callused hand on top of hers as he pressed his
jaw against the warmth of her smaller palm. She smiled at him as he turned his
face inward to kiss her hand, and it lit up her tired features. Natalie was a
foot shorter than Charlie, so she had to crane her neck and stretch to reach
his face, but when she kissed him, he felt every shred of anxiety and darkness
melt away from his body at once. He slipped both of his hands to her hips as
she rubbed the nape of his neck, and a crackle of warm electricity surrounded
their bodies as the energy of their beasts mingled together. When he pulled
back, her tawny cheeks were flushed pink, and she was breathing hard; he pulled
one of her soft brown curls with his fingers as he looked around.

“So,” he said, feigning an air
of detachment. “Do you come here often?”

The laughter that poured from
Natalie’s lips went a long way to loosen the death grip that fear had around
his throat, and he finally got a good look at the room they were standing in.
It was much larger than he first realized, with several moth-eaten partitions
blocking parts of the room from view. It was eight feet long at least, and
about half as wide—most of the front of their house must be above them. Though
the floor was purely made of earth, there were wide plastic circles covering
much of its surface, and the walls had been lined with a slick, shiny material.

“Steel,” Natalie explained.
“We’re soundproof, fireproof and stormproof, and we could seal up that door as
soon as we need to, easily, with the material left over.”

“Nat…how did you make this?”
Charlie asked, his voice soft with wonder. He kept Natalie’s small hand in his
as he walked over to the partitions to see a full-sized mattress and a small,
hand-built end table holding an electric lamp and a jar of water. Further
beyond, the other partition revealed a cement floor with a drain in its center
and a wide shower head jutting from the wall, about six feet above it. A simple
knob controlled the water, and a plain porcelain toilet was located
uncomfortably close to a jet black sink made from a single chunk of onyx.

“Ariel made that,” Natalie said
nervously, answering Charlie’s unspoken question. “And you can probably see the
kitchen sink is made of the same material.” She put a hand on her lower back as
she gestured to the end of the room, where a small electric stove stood
opposite another square-ish black sink, though this one was larger than its
partner. Each part of the room had at least one lamp, and there was a set of
cabinets at either side. The end with the trap door also had a huge green chest
against one wall that he knew normally sat in their garage and held emergency
supplies; he walked over to it and lifted the heavy lid, confirming that it was
filled with gauze, emergency blankets, medicine, and smaller bundles of first
aid materials. Charlie was impressed that Natalie got it down here alone. Then
something she’d said earlier stirred in his mind, and he turned to his wife,
whose heart-shaped face was pinched with apprehension and a hint of impatience.

“You said Ariel made these sinks?”
Charlie asked, and his voice was as dumbfounded as he felt. When did this
happen? How could she hide this from me? What the fuck is going on?

Natalie nodded, and her brown
eyes were guarded. “For her side, too,” she said slowly, and Charlie could tell
she wasn’t happy with his decidedly mixed reaction.

“Her side?” he repeated numbly.
“So…Ariel has a secret fallout bunker dug out underneath her house, as well?
Just something you lionesses cooked up?” Charlie couldn’t keep the anger and
condescension out of his tone, and his wife took note.