Page 5 of Beware of Dog (Lean Dogs Legacy #6)

Shep warred with himself about tactics. Should he leave his cut and bike at the apartment so no one at the house would know he was club affiliated? Or should he use the Lean Dog angle as a bludgeon?

Given the Dogs’ standing globally, the sheer heft of their soft and hard power, he decided to roll up flying colors. He did, however, angle his bike so no one in the townhouses could get a glimpse of his license plate.

He didn’t have to look the address up; the route was ingrained in his mind, as was the exact house, with its white stone, and its black trim, and its arched red front door.

He parked, took off his helmet, but left on the gloves and shades.

Marched up the wide front steps and pounded on the door with the side of his fist.

He wondered, idly, why Raven chose to live in a high-rise rather than a place like this, with its clean sidewalks, and its staked trees.

The housefronts boasted bow windows, and little iron fences to cordon off the basement doors, and each stoop bore some sort of seasonal decoration.

This house had a pair of topiaries he thought looked like sex toys, but who was he to judge? Décor wasn’t his strong suit.

Putting the fear of God in shitheads who deserved it was.

He pounded on the door again, and then hit the doorbell three times in quick succession.

Finally, he heard the lock disengage. “Alright, alright, Jesus,” a male voice muttered as the door swung inward.

Shep caught a glimpse of tousled ginger hair and a slack, exhausted face—enough to know this wasn’t the kid from the sidewalk last night—and shoved the door the rest of the way open. Hard.

“Ow! Hey!” The boy who’d answered the door stumbled backward and then went sprawling across the floor, clutching his face. “Who are you? What the fuck! You can’t come in here!”

Shep ignored him. There was a fancy-ass sitting room to his left, and a staircase straight ahead, with no one in sight. He stalked deeper into the house, around the stairs, and arrived at a big, high-ceilinged family room crowded with overstuffed furniture. Here was the aftermath of the party.

Young people were sprawled everywhere in various states of undress.

Some of them sat up, groaning and rubbing at their eyes and heads when he entered, but most of them stayed asleep.

The coffee table was a wreck of spilt popcorn and chips, and a bevvy of cups and empty bottles.

The TV was paused on some sort of brightly-colored video game and the room stank of weed and puke.

“Excuse me. Can I help you?” A boy stepped out of the kitchen, more alert and put-together than the others, a steaming mug emblazoned with some sort of school crest in one hand.

Last night’s beanie had been blue, and this one was tan, pushed halfway off his head and barely hanging on, a fashion statement rather than protection against the cold.

His arms were skinnier than Cass’s, and his clothes hung off his bony frame.

This is what you’re into? he wanted to ask her. Seriously?

“Are you Sig?” Shep demanded.

The beanie kid pointed to himself, brows lifting in a smug way. Little brat. He had a face like someone who’d never been denied a damn thing he wanted. “And you are?”

“I was looking for ‘yes,’ but you’re not denying it, so…” Shep charged forward.

Somehow, little Sig must not have expected Shep to keep coming when he charged toward him. He had his coffee halfway to his mouth when Shep grabbed the front of his shirt and shoved him deeper into the kitchen.

“Ah! What the hell?!”

Coffee fountained in a black spray, and the mug hit the floor and shattered.

“Hey!”

Sig scrabbled at the back of Shep’s hand, trying to claw him loose, so Shep shook him like a rag doll and dragged him across the room so he could spin him around and slam him face down on the counter. His cheek hit the marble with a satisfying smack, and he screamed.

“Shut up,” Shep ordered, and wrenched his hands behind his back to hold them pinned together.

“What—what the—you can’t—”

“Did I or did I not just tell you to shut up?”

Sig stopped struggled and quieted save the too-fast whistle of his panicked breathing.

“See? That’s better,” Shep said, falsely cheerful. “Here’s how it’s gonna go, Siggy. I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to answer them, and only answer them. No backtalk. Got it?”

A beat passed in which Sig’s lashes fluttered, and Shep thought he might faint, but he finally jerked a nod, cheek squeaking on the counter.

“Sig? Hey, man, you can’t do that! What’s going on?” someone asked somewhere behind him.

Without letting go of Sig, Shep pulled the gun from his waistband and twisted just enough to aim the barrel at the speaker. It was the ginger guy from the front door, and his eyes bugged.

“Shit! Oh, shit!”

“Call nine-one-one and I’ll put a round through your head.”

The kid scrambled, bug-eyed, out of the room, and Shep figured he had maybe thirty seconds to get his message across before he had to book it out of here.

Shep turned back around and pressed the gun barrel to Sig’s temple. The kid stilled with a gasp, his eye huge and rolling toward the Colt pinning him to the counter.

“Question one,” Shep said. “Is this your house?”

Sig hesitated, but gasped again when Shep ground in with the gun. “Okay, okay! It’s my parents’ house.”

“Okay. Who invited Cassandra Green here last night?”

Another hesitation—but not long enough for Shep to do more than twist his wrists to a painful angle. “I did.”

“Huh. You like her? You wanted to get with her?”

“I don’t…I don’t know. She’s…”

“What did you put in her drink?”

Sig’s eyes were going to pop right out of his head if they bugged any harder. “I didn’t. I would never—”

Shep lifted him up and slammed him back down. His head ricocheted off the counter and popped back up into the gun. That was going to bruise. He might even have a bit of a concussion. He made a thick, shocked, swallowing sound in his throat.

Shep leaned in close to speak directly into his ear. “I’m not interested in your rich boy denials. I know she got dosed. This is your house, and your ass was sitting outside with her, trying to get her to drink more shit.”

“I didn’t—”

“Shut. The fuck. Up. This isn’t a discussion.

This is me telling you that I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere.

If you ever speak to Cassandra again, if you even look at her, if you talk to your friends about her, I will end you .

Not beat you up. Not call the cops on you.

Not sue you like your little rich boy friends do.

You will cease to exist , and mine’ll be the last face you ever see on this earth. Do you understand me?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Y-yes, s-sir,” Sig echoed.

“Good boy.” Shep hauled him off the counter, and clapped him across the back of the head with the gun.

“Ow!” he shouted.

Shep stalked out of the house, through the still-open door, and down the front steps without looking back.

~*~

Cass entertained Natalia while Raven headed for her meeting and Toly took a shower. When she went to check on him after a half-hour, she found that he’d fallen asleep face-down across the foot of his and Raven’s bed, only half-dressed.

She threw together a quick pot of soup, Nat bouncing on her hip, and went to wake Toly and tell him dinner was simmering for later before she Ubered back to school.

“Oh.” He looked sleepily startled as he took Natalia back. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. I’m gone.”

“Text your sister.”

She threw an acknowledging salute over her shoulder.

Her Uber was a Camry, and far inferior to the back of Shep’s Harley, but the driver was quiet, and she had a chance to decompress: to shift from club kid to art student.

When she was younger, she’d had no trouble bouncing back and forth between roles, changing personas like quick-change costumes backstage at a musical.

But the older she grew, as did the time it took to process one identity, package it away, and don another.

She still wasn’t quite feeling like the school version of herself when the Uber dropped her in front of her building.

She chalked that up to last night; to the ugly, crawling knowledge that someone at that party had wanted her unconscious.

Vulnerable. Shep had been certain it was Sig, but there had been at least two dozen people in attendance.

As popular as Sig was, if he had a habit of roofying his guests, wouldn’t that be the hot gossip around campus?

She didn’t want to be someone who made snap judgements; in her family those judgements put people in the hospital or the ground more often than not. For now, she would keep quiet about what happened and steer clear of any parties.

Her roommate, Jamie, was in when Cass arrived at her dorm room. The same Jamie she had used as an excuse with Toly, and who she’d now have to get up to speed on her cover story.

Jamie lay propped up on her bed, paging through a magazine, and she bolted upright when Cass entered, eyes big and smile wide. She bubbled with excitement, and let out a high-pitched squeal as Cass pushed the door shut.

“Oh my God, oh my God! How was it? Was it amazing? Did you and Sig get to make out?”

Cass laughed and dumped her bag on the desk chair. “How much coffee have you had today?”

“One cup, I swear.” Jamie pulled her knees up onto the bed and bounced one, two, three times before she swung her legs back over the edge and settled.

Her curly hair continued to bounce a few seconds after the fact.

“Seriously, though, how was the party? Did you get to spend any one-on-one time with him?”

Cass sighed to stall for time, and went to sit on the edge of her own bed. “A little. But I left early. I wasn’t feeling great.”

All of Jamie’s frothy energy froze, along with her smile. “Wait. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Like I said. I didn’t feel great, so I left early.” She pressed a hand to her stomach for effect. “I missed most of the party.”