Page 41 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

I’m forty-six and nobody’s ever loved me , Shep had said on her birthday, kneeling before her, the skin covering his heart freshly inked with her name.

But he’d wanted someone to, she’d understood.

She thought that was the reason he was a cuddly sleeper.

She’d resolved not to ruin it by bringing it up, which meant she woke most mornings with six feet of man wrapped around or half-draped over her.

The only difference this morning was that someone was rapping sharply at the bedroom door, and when she opened her eyes, it was to her candy-colored, juvenile room in Raven’s flat.

She lay on her side facing the door, Shep behind her, one heavy arm snug around her waist. He shifted when the knocking started, pressed his face to the back of her neck, and grumbled a wordless protest.

Cass blinked the sleep from her eyes as the door opened.

“Rise and shine,” Raven sang, leaning in the threshold wearing a robe, her hair piled on her head in a towel. “Lots to do today. Chop chop.”

She left the door ajar when she walked away.

“Ugh.” Cass sat up and brushed her hair back, rubbed at her eyes. Her head throbbed faintly, exhaustion dragged at her limbs, and she recalled why she preferred wine to liquor.

Shep kept his eyes shut, his arm stubbornly around her waist.

She scratched through his pillow-mussed hair. “She’ll be back, you know.”

He grunted and smashed his face into her hip. “‘Time is it?”

She checked the bedside clock. “Seven.”

He made an inelegant sound of disgust.

“Come on.” She tightened her hand in his hair and tugged. “She really will come back, and I don’t think you want her ripping the covers off.” Cass had wriggled back into her pajamas last night, but Shep had collapsed naked.

He cracked one eye to peer mutinously up at her, and she saw that he was more awake than he was pretending to be. “You’re bluffing.”

“Cass! Shepherd!” Raven called from down the hallway, followed by a loud wail from Nat.

Shep sat up, shaking his head. Looked down at his lap. “I can’t believe I fucked on My Little Pony sheets.”

“They’re not My Little Pony. They’re just flowers, Jesus.” She backhanded him in the chest and swung her legs over the side. “If you stop complaining and start moving, we can conserve water in the shower.”

He seemed wide awake after that.

Thirty minutes later, Cass stood in the middle of Raven’s massive walk-in closet, wrapped in her own robe, damp hair clinging to the back of her neck. “I still have clothes here, you know,” she tried to protest.

Raven snorted, dismissive, and ticked through hangers, click, click, click. “You have leggings, and sweatshirts, and kid clothes.”

“They’re normal clothes. Clothes for people who haven’t ever been on billboards.”

Raven waved over her shoulder and sorted through more hangers. “We aren’t trying to appear normal today. We have to look confident and powerful in front of Jamie’s mother, right? She called you a ‘biker slut.’ We can’t have that.”

Cass folded her arms. “Maybe I am a biker slut.”

“We’re all a slut for the right biker, darling, but that doesn’t mean other people get to say it. Here, try this.” She proffered a bundle of black cashmere.

It proved to be a high-necked dress that was shapeless in a fashionable way, but which Cass thought did her no favors. Raven added a belt, black stockings, and a dangerous pair of boots, and insisted she looked “fab.”

The guys were in the kitchen when they entered the main part of the flat, drinking coffee, dressed as casually as ever. Shep wore the same clothes he’d had on yesterday, hair clean and freshly gelled, and did a double-take when he saw what she was wearing. A bad double-take.

Cass turned around. “No, I’m changing.”

Raven barred her with arms outstretched.

She of course looked flawless in dark blue, hair up in a tight, high ponytail set off by diamond earrings the size of quail eggs.

“No, no, you look very elegant.” She took her by the shoulders, turned her around, and said, “Shepherd, doesn’t she look elegant? ” Tone pointed.

“You look…” he stared, face twitching as he tried to control it.

“Don’t answer, you’re a waste of time,” Raven said. “Go, go.” She nudged Cass forward. “Come along, Shep, we’ll be late.”

Toly was staying behind with the baby, and he sent them a two-fingered salute over his coffee mug as they swept out the door.

Out on the street, the Rover idled on the curb, ready and waiting; the driver got out to open the rear door as they approached. Pongo and Topino were waiting as well, astride their bikes, and a few moments later, Shep joined them, having split away from them once they disembarked from the elevator.

“This is going to terrify them,” Cass said, once they were buckled in and moving, the bikes following.

Raven nodded. “Good. First the terror, then the reasoning.”

~*~

The Simpson family lived in a small but tidy brick two-story on a street of dozens more just like it, narrow, with shared driveways, and canvas awnings over the front windows.

Mr. Simpson’s tile van was in the driveway when they arrived just before nine, the man himself holding onto the door handle and goggling at the Rover and the bikes as they pulled up.

Raven alighted from the back seat with a cool smile, pulling off one of her leather gloves and offering it forward. “Mr. Simpson? My name’s Raven Blake. I was hoping I might be able to speak with you and your wife this morning.”

Melissa and Rob arrived in their unmarked cruiser, and it was with Melissa and Raven that Cass now sat stiffly on a dining room chair with Jamie and her parents while the guys, plus Rob, searched the street.

The dining room seemed frozen in time circa 1990, from the bright brass chandelier, to the pink carpet, to the dark wood table, chairs, and matching china cabinet along the far wall. Everything was spotless and dust-free. The air smelled strongly of lemon Pledge.

Jamie, her mother, and her father sat in a row, wearing identical gobsmacked looks.

Mrs. Simpson had recognized Raven straight off.

She’d been drying a plate when she came to the threshold between kitchen and living room, asking her husband what all the fuss was about.

She’d seen Raven, dropped the plate, which shattered, and exclaimed, “Oh my fucking God, you’re Raven Blake! ”

Raven had said her celebrity would stand them in good stead here, but Cass had no idea if that was true, so wide and blank were the Simpsons’ stares.

“I know,” Raven said, in her softest, smoothest, most conciliatory voice, the one she used on spooked and traumatized models, “that this has been a very difficult and frightening time for your family. Someone like Sigmund Blackmon is used to getting his way, and his parents have the money and the lax scruples to launch an intimidation campaign for him. I understand he’s hired people to watch and threaten you all. ”

Cass tried to catch Jamie’s eye, but she stared down at the table, where her hands were tugged deep into the sleeves of her hoodie.

Mrs. Simpson lifted her chin and took a deep breath. “No, nothing like that. Jamie’s got a big imagination, it’s why she’s at art school. She let it get the best of her and she made a mistake.”

“ Jamie ,” Cass said, leaning forward. “Come on.”

“Respectfully, Mrs. Simpson,” Melissa said. “We both know that isn’t true.” When Mrs. Simpson drew herself up tall, cheeks puffed with outrage, Melissa said, “I took Jamie to the hospital myself, and the SANE confirmed that she had tearing and bruising consistent with sexual assault.”

Mrs. Simpson’s mouth worked soundlessly a moment.

Her husband laid a hand on her shoulder and said, wearily, “That won’t matter. That boy’ll say she wanted it rough.”

“Mark!”

“It’s true,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s how it goes with boys like this. They have money, they have power. He’s probably got the cops on the take.” He shot a distrustful glance at Melissa, who pressed her lips to a flat, uncompromising line.

“ I’m not on the take, and neither is my partner. All we care about is getting justice for your daughter.”

“And keeping her, and all of you, safe,” Raven put in. “That’s why we’re here: we don’t want fear to be the thing that keeps Jamie from exacting her pound of flex from Sig Blackmon.”

The Simpson’s shared a glance.

“Police protection?” the husband asked.

Raven smiled. “Not exactly.”

~*~

“You clock that van when we first pulled up?” Topino asked.

“Yeah.” Shep folded his arms and leaned against the back window of the Rover, surveying the street through his Ray-Bans. “Guy behind the wheel was flashing a lot of ink.”

“I got the license.” Topino tapped his phone where it rested in an interior cut pocket. “Prince’s tech guy’s gonna run it.”

“Probably stolen.”

“Yeah, but at least we’ll know where to start kicking rocks.”

It was a quiet street. Modest family homes where multiple generations coexisted, more cars than driveways, with lots parked on the street.

Shep counted plenty of construction, roofing, painting, and AC vans, some pickup trucks, and sedans.

Some lawns and some house facades were in better shape than others, but it was by and large a neat neighborhood: no trash, no graffiti, no sketchy-looking guys loitering on street corners.

It meant the Dogs stuck out as an anomaly.

Shep had already seen more than one curtain twitch.

When he turned his head, a set of blinds snapped together and rattled where someone had hastily backed away from a window.

“Video doorbells on that house, and that house, and that one,” Topino remarked.

“Everybody’s got those these days.”

“Not that house. And not that one.”

“’Kay. So?”

“The cops can cavass. Might pull something off the cameras.”

Shep glanced again toward the house the girls had gone inside, itching to cross the street and join them.