Darke Heat (27 page)

“So what do you think of that?” he asked.

“I’m not sure what kind of answer you’re looking for, Bryce. It seems to me that it will make things difficult or at best, awkward.”

“Oh, how so?”

“Because our history is a little rough. It will be hard to explain to anyone I date what our non-relationship is, since we are bound to run into each other. It is a small county.”

“Now, I’m thinking you and I will continue on just the way we’ve been. I don’t see any reason to change things.”

“No, Bryce. I didn’t think you would, but I want something different and you aren’t it.” She was not going to be his plaything until the next newest one came along. She’d been left behind when better options opened up. Not this time. She could tell by the hard look in his eyes that he didn’t like being the one getting used. Even though it was as he said, mutually beneficial. She was going to put the experience behind her and take the learning. She didn’t want to hurt him or score any marks. She just didn’t want to leave anything unsaid. She was not available.

“Well, I guess you’ve told me what you really think of me then,” he replied.

Jamie walked home to his place, and could see that his brother Ramon was home. His big Harley chopper was in the driveway. He hated when his older brother came home. He wished the jerk could have stayed in prison. If he had, then Jamie wouldn’t be caught up in this mess with the drug dealers and the guy who made explosives. He kept waiting for someone to come and arrest him for his part in the drug trade.

While Paige had been in Fort Bragg, he’d been recruited to help take down Agent Prescott. They knew he had a place in the area, and they had threatened to kill Jamie’s mom if he didn’t cooperate. His brother was the one who had set things up. He’d been a part of the Dragons’ gang before they moved here from Chicago, and now he’d brought the gangs here to Darke. He didn’t know how it had gotten so deep. Now he needed to protect his mother from his brother. He knew he was endangering Paige as well, but she had the dogs and Agent Prescott and those scary brothers of hers. He could hear his mother sobbing as he came up the steps.

“Momma?” he said as he opened the door. There, sitting in the living room, was his older brother in a chair next to their mother. She looked okay, just upset.

“Ramon, what have you done to her?” he rushed at his brother who pulled out a gun.

“Nothing yet, little man, but I need you to do me a favor.”

“I did you a favor, and Agent Prescott and Paige almost died.”

“Well, this will be the last one, bro. I need you to get into the Conner’s place and find a little book. With that book, I can write my own ticket. I’ll get out of here and never come back. So it would be in the best interests of the family for you to go get the book and bring it back here.”

“What’s in the book?”

“A schedule of events. It lists some important dates and people to contact. The man was paying big money for it. I want to find it before anyone else does, collect the finder’s fee, and move to California.”

“I’m not helping you. You almost got Paige killed,” Jamie accused.

“Better her than Ma, little bro. Now quit giving me grief and let me tell you what I need you to do.”

Ramon continued to give the details of how they were going to get the book, and then Ramon would call in the explosives expert to make sure there was nothing left of the dog trainer’s place and her animals. They’d almost caught him the last time when he’d dropped the body in the field.

Jamie was terrified his brother would kill his mom if he didn’t do what he was told. He’d been walking a razor’s edge since his brother was released. He’d met up with a war vet in prison who was an explosives expert, and the two of them went back to Ramon’s old gang. He needed to warn Paige, but how? Ramon would kill Mama. He was sick like his father. He needed to get Ramon away from Mama. “It will be suspicious if I just show up at her place in the night,” he said, trying to stall him and buy some time.

“Hmm, now what you doing trying to think, Jamie?” Ramon sneered, slapping Jamie upside the head hard enough to make him stumble. Jamie heard his mom crying harder. She was scared and Jamie could see she was going into a kind of panic attack. He had to get Ramon out of there.

“Look, Ramon. I’ll need time to look, and if Paige finds me and starts questioning me, her brothers and the agent might want to know why I’m there. What do I tell them?”

“Hmm, all right. I’ll get Bobby to set up one of his big bangs to cause a distraction, and you can tell the dog lady you saw the fire,” he said.

Ramon went to talk with the man he called Bobby. “Yo, Bobby, we need a little distraction over at the dog house. Nothing too big, but enough to explain why my bro would be coming over late at night. Once we get the goods, you can go big and burn it down.”

Bobby just nodded his head in agreement

“They got a new security system, so go in stealth mode. Okay?”

Bobby nodded in agreement again and left. Jamie looked over at his mom. She was shaking and mumbling. Having Ramon home was making her relive what his father was like, and Jamie wondered if she was going into shock.

Ramon’s cell went off. He looked at the screen and turned it off.

“Bobby’s ready little bro, so let’s get a move on.” Ramon shoved him out the door.

Paige ordered pizza for everyone and then left to avoid being with Bryce. She needed to get her head together as to what she was going to do now that Bryce was staying. She had a possible assignment in California, training drug sniffing dog teams. Just coming home from a training seminar, she really wanted to work on her house.

But what kind of home was it going to be now? Everything she’d worked for was to build a life, home, and family. Was there going to be another time when someone would take the place of Bryce in her heart? She just didn’t know anymore. It would be hard, but then so had everything that was worth having.

Paige walked to the front room to look in on Sheba and the puppies, preferring to have them in the house at night. They were nuzzling under Sheba and they were adorable. Bryce was there as well.

“You have to admit they are cute,” he said.

“Yes, I’ll give you that. They are cute. But you still had no right to take her. I understand why you felt you had to, but you didn’t have the full scope of my plans for Sheba.”

“Are you still mad at me for taking her?”

“No, I’m over it. The pups are sweet and I’ll be able to train them. My brothers are already asking for the ones they want,” she replied. It felt like there was a giant white elephant in the room they were trying to ignore. Or maybe it was just her. Knowing they’d had no strings attached, sex just made it awkward. She wasn’t sophisticated enough to pull off the nonchalance of a worldly woman. At heart, she was a country girl with simple dreams.

“Paige, about that night, I wasn’t sure how to handle all the revelations...” he began.

She stuck her hand in the air to silence him. There was nothing for him to say. There was no going back and she didn’t want him to retell the living of it. She’d relived it every night since and would more than likely be reliving it well into the future. Love sucks, especially when it’s one-sided, and friendship was not an option. She looked into his beloved face, and knew she’d have to leave. She would only hurt more if she stayed.

“Bryce, can the confessions. What we had was a one-night stand. I will not be your friend with benefits, and I’m not into dragging out the good byes. I recognize I gave off mixed signals. My mistake, due to a lack of experience or sophistication or whatever, but I don’t play these adult games and I don’t want to. You can go with a clean conscience, no harm, no foul.” She said the words while something inside definitely felt like it was bleeding.

“Paige, I think....”

“Bryce, I’m leaving as soon as I get packed.”

“You need to stay here for now where we can protect you. In fact, stay close to the house. We still haven’t caught the guys who blew up my house. Since neither you nor I got a look at them, they could still be in the area.”

“Sure, Bryce.”

The arrival of the pizza saved her from further discussion on the topic of that night. She paid for it and carried it into the kitchen.

“Colt, Dane, the pizza is here,” she called to her brothers. They ran in from the back porch, grabbed slices, and left just as fast. She and Bryce were left to themselves.

The pizza was eaten in a solemn mood. The men went to watch a baseball game and Paige went to answer emails. She was reading about the latest in training gear when the power went out.

“Paige!” Bryce yelled.

“Right here,” she answered.

“Get down and move in here.” Dane whispered loud enough for her to hear, but not be overheard by someone outside.

She slithered to the floor and moved into the family room. A hand reached out of the darkness to grab her.

“It’s me, stay close. This is an intended black out,” Bryce said.

“Has anyone called it in?” she asked.

“Colt is on it,” Dane replied.

“The dogs are quiet. Could one of the city transformers have blown?”

“Nope, it’s just your property,” Dane answered.

“I got a call through to Emma and she says they all have power and nothing has come up on the police scanner she has,” Dane said.

“So what do we do now? And what about my dogs?” Paige asked.

“Paige, remember my house? The bomber is still at large. We need to get out of here in case this place has been wired to go.”

“Dane, Colt, let’s all go out through the window in the study,” Bryce suggested.

The explosion happened as Bryce opened the window. The side of the kennel was going up in flames.

“My dogs!” Paige cried.

“Dane, get the pups. Colt, grab the kitchen fire extinguisher and take Sheba with you to get to the kennel in case there are any booby traps.”

“Bryce, is there any building you can go to that people aren’t trying to blow up?” Colt asked.

She could hear him organizing everything. This was Bryce in his element. He knew how to handle situations involving live explosives. Paige could taste the fear in her mouth and the tingle of nerve endings in her fingers signaling how scared she was. Her home was under attack. She felt such fear and frustration. What if something happened to one of them or her dogs?

She needed to hold it together and they would sort this all out. How many people could possibly want to kill her? Right? She was a law abiding, tax-paying citizen. She had rights, and they were infringing on her rights as a citizen of the United States.

From her position in the study, she could see a figure moving through the night that wasn’t her brothers, and as she slipped through the window she moved toward it. The silhouette was familiar. She had Bryce on her left, and the flames from the kennel in front of her. She could hear the dogs barking. None of them were barks of pain. There was the figure again. It was Jamie. What was he doing here? Did he see the explosion and come to check it out?

She inched to the edge of the building and watched as Jamie headed toward her. Bryce was heading over to help her brothers put out the fire. The dogs weren’t in their stance for explosives, so there must not be any more devices in the yard.

“Jamie, did you see the explosion from over at your house?”

“No, I saw it from your yard. Paige, my…” He didn’t get any further because a man shoved him out of the way and grabbed her. With one hand covering her mouth, he dragged her back into the house.

“Come now, Jamie!” the man demanded. Jamie followed them in.

Once they were in the entryway, the man pulled out a flashlight. “Don’t do anything stupid or heroic, and no one gets hurt. Tell me where the box of Farmer’s Almanac is. Old man Slater kept them in the tool shed, but they’re not there now,” he whispered into her ear.

Paige thought frantically of where a box of old stuff from Mr. Slater might be. She wasn’t sure she even knew. “I don’t know. They could be in the basement or the attic.”

“Then let’s go, shall we? My diversion won’t last long, so let’s get a move on.”

They went down the stairs to the basement, which was little more than a converted root cellar. The ceiling was low and the walls were made of cinder blocks. There were several boxes stored up against the wall in the corner, so she walked toward them.

“Jamie, you open the boxes while I hold her.” With the flashlight pointed at him and the boxes, Paige could see the fear on the boy’s face. He was obviously not doing this because he wanted to. She tried to be encouraging, but it was hard when the man held a gun to her head. Jamie was on the second box when he found the almanacs.

“Okay, bring them to me.” There were a few rubber-banded together with markings on them. The man holding her grabbed them with the hand he was using to hold her, and stuffed them into the back of his jeans, then pulled out plastic ties from his pants pocket. The sound of the front door opening drew their attention.

“Not a sound or someone is going to die,” the man whispered.