Page 1 of Cold Foot Sentry (Wreck’s Mountains #6)

Tammy-Ray Lynch couldn’t stop staring at the guy sitting at the end of the bar.

There was something strange about him.

Sure, he was tall, and was disciplined in the gym, clearly.

His beard was that two-day designer scruff, and he was dressed in the exact style she preferred—jeans and boots, and a worn T-shirt that hugged the strong curves of his shoulders and fell looser at the waist. He was hot, for sure, but there was something more about him that drew her attention.

It was the dark yellow hue in his eyes, and the heaviness that seemed to cling to every single molecule of air within a twenty-foot radius of him.

She’d never been so acutely aware of a person in her entire life.

He was studying a newspaper, and while part of her was a little shocked that newspapers still existed, another part of her was extremely curious about what he was circling with the pen in his large hand.

He’d only looked at her once, to order a drink. He’d asked for an iced tea at a bar. Strange. But then again, it was only one in the afternoon. Maybe he was just warming up with the tea.

“Order’s up,” Jimmy said from the kitchen window, startling Tammy out of her one-person-stare-down with Yellow Eyes.

The man, about age thirty-five if she had to guess, glanced up at her for just a moment and then gave his attention back to the newspaper, a frown etched into his dark eyebrows.

He hadn’t said a word except for his order, which was currently steaming away in the kitchen window.

“I’ll be right back with your food,” she said in her most polite bartender voice.

He didn’t say anything or even look up at her again. Okay.

She bustled to the window and grabbed the steak sandwich basket, then dropped it in front of him. “Let me know if you need anything else.”

“Mmm,” he grunted. Was it a grunt of thanks? Or a go-away grunt? She couldn’t tell.

It was dead in the bar she worked in right now, but it would pick up in a few hours when the roughnecks around here started getting off work.

It was different bartending here than Bozeman.

The bar scene here was more cowboy and less city.

She’d moved here a month ago for a couple of reasons.

One, she needed a fresh start. Two, it was closer to the college she attended classes at two days a week.

And three, Harley Monroe of the Cold Foot Crew had convinced her this was the right move.

They’d become friends after she’d met her on a bartending night last year, and while she wasn’t one for spontaneous decisions in general, it felt nice to get the hell out of Bozeman after her breakup.

It was just all right here so far. The town was slow, and so were tips.

“Do you need anything else?” she asked politely to the Giant at the end of the bar top.

He offered her a hard glance, then went back to eating without a word.

Tammy-Ray pursed her lips and kept her ‘learn-some-manners’ comment stifled in her throat.

God, she couldn’t wait to move on from bartending jobs.

Most of the time when a customer was this rude to her, they at least had the excuse of being drunk. This guy was just an asshole on iced tea.

The front door to the 406 Saloon opened, and when she saw who it was striding towards her, she grinned. “Aw, here comes trouble.”

Dylan Hoffman slapped a stack of flyers onto the bar top. “I have a huge favor to ask.”

“No, you can’t have the family discount,” she teased, wiping down the countertop beside the stack of papers.

“I just got a raise,” he said, his eyebrows arched up. “I can get you a beer now. Full price.”

She snorted. “How many girls have you taken from this bar to your home in the last month I have worked here?”

“None.”

She cocked her head and waited.

“Maybe one,” he amended, but didn’t look sheepish about it. The devil was in his remorseless smile.

“I don’t date players, Dylan.”

“Who said anything about a date. I said beers. We’re the only singles now. It makes sense that we become friends.”

“We are friends. Friends only,” she reiterated for the third time in as many weeks. Oh, Dylan didn’t like her like that. He liked teasing her.

“Favor, can I hang one of these on your bulletin board?”

She glanced over her shoulder at the full bulletin board right beside the bar. “If you can find room. I really need to go through there and take down the expired ones. Just been busy, you know?” she said, gesturing to her study materials she’d set up near the register.

“Aren’t you almost through?”

“Kind of.”

“Well, you’re a badass,” he said as he yanked a flyer off the top of the pile and headed for the bulletin board.

“I don’t feel like one.”

“Yeah, well, that’s because of the company you keep. You hang out with monsters, you’re going to feel left out.”

“Is that how you feel?” she asked as she began rinsing a glass. She didn’t feel that way at all.

“Sometimes. I still remember Garret before.”

When she looked up from her dish, the giant at the end of the bar top was looking right at her with those strange yellow-hued, glowing eyes.

They shouldn’t be talking about Garret or anyone from Wreck’s Mountains in front of this stranger.

She stood on her tiptoes and leaned over the bar top to look at the flyer. “House for rent?” she asked. “I thought it was filled.”

Dylan made a click sound behind his teeth and stabbed a thumbtack into the flyer on the cork board. “They backed out three days before move-in. Garret gets to keep the deposit, but it’s bad timing. He and Raynah took Breah on a little vacation, so he has me scrambling to cover his shit and mine.”

“Dylan,” she said softly.

He turned and then frowned at the warning he read on her face. “What?” he asked.

She tilted her face toward the stranger at the bar.

Dylan slid a look at him and held. The stranger was looking back at him, unblinking.

Dylan nodded, then looked around the empty bar, and lifted the hem of his shirt to expose the handle of his gun.

Oh, she knew he carried the handgun. He always did.

Dylan replaced the shirt to hide the weapon again, and sat down on the bar stool one away from the stranger. “This territory is pretty full.”

The stranger canted his head the other direction and looked Dylan up and down, chewing slowly. “I’m just here eating lunch.”

“With your glowing fuckin’ shifter eyes. Why are you here in this town eating lunch?”

The man swallowed and wiped his hands on a napkin. “You know a little about a lot, don’t you?” the stranger said.

Dylan didn’t answer, he was just glaring into that shifter’s soul.

“Where’s the house for rent?” the stranger asked.

Next door to the house Tammy Ray was renting, and hell no to an unfamiliar shifter as a neighbor.

Dylan glanced at her, and she shook her head slightly.

“In a neighborhood you can’t afford.”

“How do you know what I can afford?”

“Because if you cause trouble around here, you’ll pay with your life.”

“Is that a threat?” the man asked.

Dylan shook his head. “Not from me. What could I do, right? I’m human. You have me sized up.”

The tension between them was heavy and had Tammy Ray’s heart pounding in her chest. Her cell phone was under the bar top, just a couple yards away. Was she going to have to call the police?

“I think you’re probably scrappy,” the stranger said. “You showed me the nine, but kept the knives hidden.”

“Knives, plural?” Dylan asked.

“I can smell the metal in your boot. The outline is obvious in your left pocket. You’ve got two. The one in your pocket has a clip, but you don’t keep it where someone would see it there.” The stranger smiled. “I would do the same thing if that was my weapon.”

“Mmm. What’s your weapon?”

“Teeth. Claws. Fire.”

Chills rippled up Tammy’s arms. They needed back-up. She made her way to her purse under the counter and yanked her phone out. “I think you should leave,” she said, and damn her voice as it shook.

“Calling Wreck?”

“He will fucking kill you if you hurt us.”

The man frowned, and his yellow eyes stayed glued to her as he asked, “Why do you assume I want to hurt you?”

“We don’t know you,” she said.

He nodded, thoughtful. “If you call anyone, can you call Jess?”

Tammy Ray froze, her finger hovering over Harley’s number. “You know Jess?”

“And Kade. I grew up with Kade. I was nearly Promised to Jess.”

“If you’re here to start some shit with Kade, it’s not going to work,” Dylan gritted out. “They’re happy.”

“I know. I can feel it.” The frown deepened on his face as he looked at the newspaper he’d been scribbling on. He pushed back from the bar top and stood, pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, and threw down a hundred-dollar bill to pay his check.

Tammy Ray reached for the cash register to make change, but he held his hand out. “Keep it.”

“That’s an eighty-dollar tip,” she said. “It’s way too much.”

He ignored her and took his pen and wrote a phone number on the top flyer in Dylan’s stack, then left the pen there as he headed for the door.

“Why are you here?” Dylan called out.

The man turned and God, he was equal parts sexy and terrifying, with those eyes glowing under the low bill of his baseball cap.

“Because I don’t have a choice. I never did.

” He lifted his chin higher. “Talk to Jess. Tell her Tawk is out of Sister’s Edge for good and looking for a place to eat. She’ll understand what that means.”

“I don’t care if you have fire. Wreck really can kill you,” Dylan told him.

“Jess can put my animal to sleep. She’s done it before.” He gestured to where the handgun was hidden under Dylan’s shirt. “Your weapon works better than mine here.” The man’s glowing eyes drifted to Tammy Ray and held for a few seconds before he nodded. And then he left without another word.

He was intriguing, for certain.

“What just happened?” she asked Dylan softly.

Dylan was staring at the newspaper the man had been writing on, and he held it up to show her the classifieds. She walked closer so she could see what he’d been circling. It was rental properties and apartments that were local to Darby.

Dylan sighed and swung his troubled gaze to the door where the yellow-eyed stranger had disappeared. “I think Sister’s Edge is haunting us.”