Page 18 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

The Valium flattened Jamie. She resisted all attempts to wake her for soup, and then groaned and batted Cass away the next morning until she took a wooden spoon to a pot. Then she shouted with alarm and jackknifed upright so fast she whacked her head on the bunk above.

Now, she stood listless and disheveled by the door, chewing a granola bar while Cass laced up her boots.

Shep stood over her, arms folded, which stretched the short sleeves of his faded blue t-shirt until she thought the fabric might rip. He smelled like soap, hair still damp from the shower, shirt clinging to the center of his chest where he hadn’t toweled off sufficiently.

It was a sexy portrait ruined by the entirely parental third degree he was giving her.

“And what are you not going to do today?”

“God.”

“What are you not going to do today?” he repeated.

She rolled her eyes as she stood. Put every ounce of petulance into her voice when she said, “Not go anywhere near Sig or any of his friends.”

He nodded. “And what are you going to do if any of them approach you?”

She smiled. “Pull a knife on them.”

Jamie gasped.

Shep stared at her.

“ Fine . I’ll walk away and call you.”

He nodded again. “Good girl.”

She made a face because that phrase spawned two very different internal responses, and she wasn’t sure which was more embarrassing.

“Okay, fine, we’re gone.” She turned and gestured to Jamie, who let them out into the hall. When she went to pull the door shut, it stopped short. When she turned back, Shep was following them, shrugging into a jacket, cut ready in one hand. “Where are you going?”

“I’ve got official shit to do.” He shooed her out of the way, shut the door, and pocketed his keys.

Then the cut went on, and though she missed the t-shirt view, there was something right about seeing him flying the colors.

Every Dog looked twice as tall and four times as mean in their cuts; that was just science.

But she’d been around far too many cuts to get distracted now.

“You’re not following us to school, are you?”

“Do you think I just sit around here waiting for you to need me for something? This club is a business, you know. I’m not following you anywhere.”

~*~

He followed them to school. Loitered out of sight on the sidewalk until they were in an Uber, and then got on his bike and tailed them to campus. He thought he’d been sneaky, but Cass shot him the middle finger as he rode past, which he of course had to return.

But then he really did have business.

Maverick had called while the girls were getting ready earlier to say that one of their dealers, Ned, was having a problem with a high roller, and needed backup.

Mav encouraged him to bring Pongo along, but Shep didn’t need freckled backup.

In fact, after a night spent tossing and turning in a tear-stained shirt, he was looking forward to the chance to rough somebody up.

Especially if it was a rich prick who’d lost sight of the underworld power structure.

Ned worked in the Park, two benches down from a playground, so the constant foot traffic of parents, nannies, kids, and ice cream and hot dog vendors masked the comings and goings of buyers.

It was a pretty spot, laced with tree limb shadows, with a view across a field dotted with bobbing white snowdrops this time of year.

Shep shoved his hands in his cut pockets and approached at a casual walk, hugging the edge of the sidewalk to avoid a screaming tangle of kids headed for the swings at a gallop.

He spotted Ned straight off, his grungy Steelers stocking cap and Army jacket with paint stains on the cuffs. He was seated on his usual bench, head tipped back as he surveyed the knot of men who stood around him, hands held out in clear supplication.

A few more paces, and he saw that the men were young men. Early twenties, probably. Punks.

And one punk in particular was familiar.

That little bastard Sig.

Shep crossed to the opposite edge of the sidewalk so he could approach Sig from behind. As he drew nearer, he could hear Ned appealing to reason.

“…a superior product. A safe product. Wouldn’t you rather pay more, and have peace of mind that you won’t OD after one hit?”

When he responded, Sig’s voice was the sort that every retail manager dreaded. “I’d rather pay market value, you stupid shit, which you aren’t charging me. Do you think you can take advantage of me? Do you think my family’s money means I won’t care about being ripped ooooaaaaaah!”

His bitchy tirade morphed into a shout of alarm when Shep gripped his shoulder and spun him around. His weaselly little face went milk-pale when he saw who had hold of him, and Shep grinned when he started to sputter.

“Hey, Siggy. Remember me?”

“You—you—” He scowled, but it was an act; the fear shone plainly through. “Let go of me.”

Shep leaned in closer; he could feel how nasty his grin was. “Or what?”

The little friends, equally drippy and thin and contemptable, crowded in. “Back off,” one of them said.

And then, another: “I’m calling the goddamn cops!”

“I’m shaking,” Shep said, and gave Sig a good shake just because he could.

Sig burst into a flurry of movement, slapping at his hand, backpedaling fast, kicking at his knees. He broke free, and staggered away, breathing in harsh gasps, face flushing red.

“Sig,” Shep said, conversationally, shoving his hands in his back pockets. “You and I have got to stop meeting like this. Every time I turn around, you pop up like a fucking weed. How are you ROR, anyway? You make bail?”

Sig’s face went from red to mottled purple. A vein popped in his neck when he ground his skinny jaw back and forth. “That’s none of your fucking business.”

The friends had fanned out. One had a phone pressed to his ear, but Shep figured he had a few minutes.

“Actually, it is my business. In two ways.” He offered two fingers for emphasis.

“For starters, you’re buying from my club.

You’re trying to lowball my employee over here.

” He gestured to Ned, and then he let his smile get really mean.

“But most of all: I thought I told you not to go near Cassandra Green again.”

Annoyance flashed in his gaze, quickly banished when Shep leaned in closer, and snagged him by the front of his faux-distressed jacket.

“And yet there you were yesterday, waiting outside her classroom like a fuckhead.”

“I wasn’t waiting for her.”

“No? Her friend, then? The one you raped?”

That accusation was a bridge too far for the little shit, apparently. He bowed up, as his friends made harsh, disagreeing sounds, and said, “I’ve never raped anyone in my life. I don’t have to. And I sure as hell won’t be accused of abusing women by a fucking Lean Dog .”

Shep had never had the title spat at him with quite such vitriol. It was a good thing he didn’t care.

“This Lean Dog,” he said, “is cutting you off from our supply. You don’t get to abuse my seller and still get product. Go take your chances with the cartel shit. Maybe you won’t OD the first time you snort a line.”

“Fuck you,” Sig said, bold as you please, defiant in the way of every rich boy who’d never experienced a single hardship in his entire spoiled life.

Shep hit him. Cocked his fist back and decked him right in the nose. It was an automatic, kneejerk reaction, but when Sig screamed and went down to his knees, he didn’t feel any regret or guilt. Felt only a very personal satisfaction.

The friends started jawing at him, but none of them were brave enough to get close.

Blood dripped through the fingers Sig held cupped over his nose, and he shouted something strangled and clotted that Shep couldn’t make out, and didn’t want to.

“Lose our number,” Shep ordered, stepped around him, and grabbed a shaking Ned by the elbow.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Ned chanted as Shep marched him down the sidewalk. “Oh shit, Shep! This is bad! This is really bad!”

“It’s fine. Keep walking.”

“But the witnesses! So many people saw that. And you’re flying colors. You—you’re the Sergeant at Arms! That kid’ll tell the cops, and they’ll…they’ll…” He started to hyperventilate.

“Shh. Keep walking. No, don’t look back.”

“Oh, man,” Ned said, shaking so violently Shep had to tighten his grip on his arm. “This is going to be terrible .”

~*~

“I won’t say it’s terrible ,” Maverick said over the phone a few hours later. “But it’s not good, man.”

Shep sighed, and tipped his head back. He was on a bench on campus, and looked up through bare cherry tree branches at a washed-out sky patched with smears of cloud. “Damn it, Ned. What a little bitch.”

“Shep.” Mav’s voice was a study in patience, paternal despite a lack of biological children. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

A long pause ensued. Then, in a careful voice that set Shep’s teeth on edge, he asked, “Is this about Cass?”

The fine hair stood up on his arms, the back of his neck.

An uneasy prickling that made him feel seen in a way he didn’t like at all.

“What? Are you serious? Some shithead’s trying to shake down one of our dealers and you’re asking about the kid you make me babysit?

” His voice sounded foreign in his own ears, edged with panic.

Mav had this way of sighing that said he knew one of his guys was lying, or at least avoiding an issue, but he never sounded put-out or impatient about it.

Of all the MC presidents Shep had met, Mav seemed the least likely at first glance.

His authority was subdued, his manner infuriatingly calm at times.

But he had a knack for getting under all their skins, for good and for ill, and Shep thought he’d missed his calling as a priest, because he could tease a confession out of anyone.

“Shep,” he said now, gently chiding, but still fond, always that. “Ned said that you had the boy by the collar, shaking him. And that you didn’t hit him until Cass was mentioned.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I was telling him to stay away from her, which he didn’t.” Too late, he realized how much he’d admitted, and tried to cover with an added, “Raven’ll have my balls for earrings if I let anything happen to her sister, and then I’ll have to deal with all her psycho brothers.”

Another long beat passed. Mav said, “Shep.”

And Shep sighed, defeated, and gave the shortest, tersest, least indulgent version of the whole story he could.

When he got to the confrontation with Pongo, Mav said, clearly surprised, “Pongo didn’t tell me any of this.”

It boosted Pongo fractionally in Shep’s estimation.

When he was done, Mav hummed in thought.

“Ned says the Blackmon kid’s only bought from him a few times, but that today was the first time he haggled over the price.

” Shep winced, knowing what came next before Mav said, “Today’s also the first time he’s bought from us since he was arrested…

and since you roughed him up in his parents’ kitchen. ”

Shep covered guilt with attitude. “What was I supposed to do? Nothing? Then it woulda been Cass he raped instead of the roommate.”

“No, it’s good you’re looking out for Cass.

” Shep’s own father, hell, his own mother , had never spoken to him so soothingly…

which probably had a lot to do with his adult personality.

“But we need to be careful going forward. The Lean Dogs are pretty well-liked in Knoxville, and Atlanta, but this is New York. We’re the criminal element least likely to garner anything like public support, which means this kid, and his family, could point a lot of negative attention our way.

And they do have you on camera assaulting the son. ”

“Yeah.”

“I wish you hadn’t hit him today.”

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“Lay low for now, and I’ll see what I can do. Given he’s out on bail for rape, Sig probably won’t go to the police with a complaint about today, but I don’t want you crossing his path again.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

In the background, Shep heard the distinctive whir of the coffee maker in Mav’s office. “About Cass.”

His heart lurched. He worked out constantly, sure, but maybe it was time to lay off the bacon cheeseburgers. “What about her?”

“Plenty of guys have kids,” Mav said, delicately. “And I’ve never known you to take a particular interest in any of them. Even ,” he said, when Shep started to protest, “when you were tasked with watching over them.”

Shep shrugged though Maverick couldn’t see it; it relieved a little of the mounting tension in his shoulders. “None of those were long-term assignments.”

“Cassandra hasn’t needed a full-time bodyguard for three years,” Mav said, indelicately. “I told you last month I could rotate guys on city shifts if you wanted to come home.”

“I was born in Jersey,” Shep reasoned, and started to sweat.

“Shep, where are you right now? I can tell you’re outside.”

It would be easy to lie. It wasn’t like Mav had GPS trackers on their phones; he’d never know the truth from a fib. But that was part of his mysterious sway: lying to Maverick felt shitty.

“On a bench,” he said, and sweat trickled down the back of his neck, despite the wind chill.

“A bench where?”

Shep made a face. “The NYU campus.”

He waited for a sigh that didn’t come. Instead, Mav’s voice took on a slight vibration. He sounded nervous . “Does Raven know? Does Toly know?”

“That I’m on campus?”

“That you’re in love with Cass.”

Shep was so shocked that Mav had said it out loud, that he’d put it in those terms, that he burst out laughing. “Jeeeesus Christ, Mav! Are you serious? What part of me makes you think I can be ‘in love’ with anybody?”

Mav didn’t laugh. “I’m not the guy who’s gonna lecture you about your love life, but I think you should be careful.”

“I repeat: Jesus Christ .” Inwardly, Shep felt feverish.

“I also think that if you want to be with her, you should make sure you’re serious about her first. And you should call Mercy Lécuyer and ask him what it’s like to piss off a girl’s family in this particular way.”

“Nothing’s happened,” Shep said.

“But that doesn’t mean it won’t.”

Shep’s protest formed and died before he could give it voice. He thought about last night, and the way Cass fit against his side; her small fist clenched in his shirt.

He wasn’t going to make the first move. He wasn’t going to be that creep. But he’d never been any good at refusing her. If she decided she wanted him—and that seemed likelier and likelier as time went by—he wasn’t going to tell her no.

“Shep.”

“I hear you.”

Mav made a satisfied noise, and then said, “And about Sig Blackmon—”

“I won’t go near him.”

“You better not.”

What he didn’t say, and which Mav doubtless knew, though: if Sig came near Cass, all bets were off.