Page 7 of Weston (Sheppard’s Shadow #4)

Weston had been studying the blueprints for the new school for the last twenty minutes and still had no idea what he was looking at. Not to mention how many pages there were for him to get equally confused about.

He got that they overlapped for a reason, but for the life of him, he didn’t know why there were places on the prints that weren’t on the other page. There were whole sections that seemed to be added that had nothing to do with—

“They’re upside down, and you start with the last page.” He looked up at Sandy when she spoke. “I have a hard time with them as well, but not like someone who’s never read them before. Why are you looking at them anyway?”

“I was told I have to approve them.” She shook her head and moved them away from him before getting to the first page and putting it in front of him. “This looks great. Is this what I’m hoping to end up with?”

“It is. I’d let someone who knows what they’re doing look them over. It’s not like you’d know enough to change things, no offense.” He told her that there were none taken. “I came here to ask you something. It’s about Danny.”

“He’s still in jail.” She nodded and then started pacing the room. “I don’t believe that he’ll make bond, nor do I think they’ll be letting him out for good behavior. He seems to be causing a bit of trouble there, anyway. Also, I think—”

“The house we shared in Tennessee, I’m having it cleaned out. There were several insurance policies there with my name on them. Even a couple with my sister’s name on them. I’m…he was going to kill me off too.” He waited for her to say more. Sandy knew that she was an immortal, just like the rest of her family. “I was good to him, Weston. Better than I should have been, too. Why would he kill me off?”

“Money. Greed. You know as well as I do that was his motive for killing off Belinda’s family. A better question you should be asking yourself is, why did he start with her? I’d want to know why he’d started with the children.” She said she’d never thought of that. “To me, it takes a stone-cold killer to kill off children. He seemed to have had no qualms at all about it.”

The day before yesterday, they’d had the bodies of Benson and the two children exhumed to see if they were dead before or after the fire started. It had always been assumed that they died in their sleep, overcome with smoke. But now that they knew that Danny had killed them off for the insurance, they were going to dig deeper. To see, he supposed, if he’d killed them all before setting the house on fire.

“I don’t understand why it makes a difference. It was all premeditated, right?” Again, he told her that he didn’t know, but Jameson would. “To be honest with you, I’m afraid to know what he did. If he killed those two kids with something more than the fire. But then they wouldn’t have suffered as much, either. That’s what I’m thinking. I know that Belinda has suffered greatly thinking that they would have woken up during the fire and knew that they were going to die. I don’t know that I could—what if we’d had children? I know that it’s not possible, but—”

“Don’t. Just don’t do that to yourself. You couldn’t have children so there is no point in you thinking about it.” She told him that was all she could think about. Would he have killed his own children? “And if I tell you that I think that he would have? That I believe because he had no trouble killing your niece and nephew, he’d have no trouble killing his own? Is that going to make things any less terrible for you?”

“No.” She finally sat down, and he could see the tears streaming down her face. Her voice rose as she began to scream at him, but it was what she said that had his heart breaking for her. “I brought him into my family, and they had to pay the ultimate price. He killed my brother and his kids because of me.”

Getting up, he went to her and jerked her from the chair. After slapping her, he held her as she broke down. Sliding her back into the chair, he knelt on the floor in front of her while she continued to cry. He didn’t want her to think about the things that she did, but he didn’t know what else to do with her.

“He would have killed someone else’s family, perhaps someone else’s entire family. But he didn’t. He wasn’t able to get to anyone else because of you and your family. You’re smart for not allowing him to take over your life, Sandy. You didn’t let love color your perception of him. You knew on some level that he had to be watched, and you saved your family. Not alone, but you were there for them when they needed you.” She nodded, but he needed for her to say it. “Tell me you understand. Tell me that you know that if not for you and your family, he would have gotten away with not just killing your family but who knows how many others. Tell me that you understand.”

“I understand.” She held onto him, her grief getting the better of her. “Benson was such a good man and a great father, and Danny killed him because of money.”

“You remember that. You had nothing to do with—how was you to know that he was going to be that sort of person? You couldn’t have known. None of you could have.” She nodded. “Do you realize how lucky you are? How you keeping tabs on him has saved your entire family. Even when you got here, you never lost sight of him. Coming to one of us when he was out of control. There is no telling what things he might well have done had he been allowed to roam free and not have anyone watching over him.”

“He’s a monster.” Weston nodded, getting up from the floor and sitting in the chair next to her. “You hit me. I’ll never forget that, either. You brought me back to my good place by hitting me, and I will forever be thankful for you, Weston. I was…bad thoughts were entering my mind, and I was ready to…I was going to end my life if not for you.”

“He’s not worth it.” She nodded. “And do me a favor. Don’t tell your family that I hit you. I think they’d knock me around a bit too.”

“I won’t. I love you, Weston. You’re about the best brother-in-law a girl could have. When she stood up, so did he. After getting another hug from her, he settled behind his desk and asked her if she was all right. “I am. Not entirely. But I know that I will be. I’m headed to the jail. Danny wants to talk to me. Jameson said he’d go with me, and I had declined, but I think I’ll call him to take me. I don’t want to say the wrong thing. But I do want him to tell me something that can be used against him. Hopefully, there will be a lot of something that can be used against him.”

After she left him, he didn’t bother picking up the blueprints again. Sandy had been right. He wasn’t the person that needed to approve them. Reaching out to Archie, who had dropped off the prints, he told him what Sandy had said about them.

“I couldn’t make heads nor tails out of them either. It wasn’t until Carrie suggested that I get someone else to look them over that I thought of you. Why they handed them over to me in the first place is something that I should have asked about. By the way, what are your plans tonight? I have some leap things I have to go over, and I’d like to have your opinion on them.” He told him that he had plans with his mate. “Good for you guys. Carrie and I had plans, but this came up. I think I might have bitten off more than I can chew here. It’s taking a lot of work to be a leap leader and have a successful business.”

They talked for a bit more, and he was able to talk his brother into dropping the leap business for now and to go have fun with his mate. The business, he told him, would be there in the morning, but his mate might not be in the mood later. While he wasn’t going to take having Danny in the family the way that Sandy did, just knowing that something could come up between mates made him want to spend all the time he could with her. Even being immortal, other things could be coming up that would stall them from being together.

At five o’clock, he was putting the things away that he’d been working on. The blueprints were still on the side of his desk. He’d not bothered with them anymore. He did reach out today to find someone who could look them over. The only person that others told him to ask was his own mate. She’d know right away if the prints were wrong or not.

Sunny, Nash’s mate, joined him on his walk home. She told him that she had some news for him and decided that this was the best way to give it to him. Face to face. He wasn’t sure if he liked that idea or not.

“There was no smoke in their lungs.” He didn’t need to ask who she was talking about when she told him that. “They were poisoned and didn’t feel a thing with the fire raging around them. I thought perhaps you could tell Rogen, and she’d know the best way to tell her family. It’s going to be hard on them either way, but I think Belinda might feel a bit better about them not burning up in a fire. At least I know that I would.”

He told her what Sandy had been dealing with. “She had it in her head that it was all her fault that her brother was murdered. I tried to convince her that it could have happened to any family.” Sunny said she didn’t know if she’d feel any different about him being in the family. “I hope that I helped her at least a little. She was beating herself up over this, and it hurt me.”

“She is going to see Danny today, I heard.” Weston told her that was where she’d been headed when she left his office. Then he told her that Jameson was going with her. “Good. You know, I can’t wait for him to find his mate. The man deserves something special for all the crap he’s been through since passing the board. I love the fact that he’s going to be helping with the leap, too. He’ll be good at that.”

“He told me when I talked to him the other day that he was enjoying himself. I didn’t tell him that it was because he was new at it. I want him to think he’s having fun for as long as he can.” Sunny asked him if he was only going to work for the family and for the leap. “I believe so. He’s been going over the rules and regulations for the leap for most of his life. He’ll know more about them than anyone would by now. Even Archie.”

“I know that Archie depends on him a great deal. I do as well for a couple of things that I have going on. He’s a good person to have around.” Weston agreed. “I have to get home. I have some things going on there that will need my attention that my mom has me looking into. A faerie’s life is never dull, I have to admit.”

When she left him, he entered his home. It was quiet now. The faeries that lived in his home were off in the gardens with Rogen. As soon as he changed his clothing and joined her in the yard, she asked him what had happened. Telling her what he’d heard from Sunny had her crying too.

“Those poor kids. They were the best, you know?” He said that he wished that he’d met them all. “Benson would have loved you. Hell, he loved everyone. Not so much Danny, but he tolerated him a good deal more than the rest of us did. That’s why what happened bothers me so much. Why did he target my brother?”

“This is what I think, and I’m more than likely wrong, but your brother would have been distracted with the kids. I know that Belinda has mentioned to me how much they were into things such as sports and activities. And he was a stay-at-home dad, too. I’m betting that keeping up with those things and Danny being family meant that he wasn’t nearly as up on watching him as you guys did.” She told him that he could be right. “Did he have a lot of trust with the other man? I mean, would he have been in his home without supervision?”

“If you mean did we have access to each other’s homes, then you’d be right in that. I know that I still have a key to Benson’s home even though it’s no longer there. And it’s doubtful to me that Danny ever knocked when he was over. Just go into the house like we did one another.” Weston said that he couldn’t remember the last time he was at one of his brothers’ homes when they weren’t there. “Not for us. If we wanted to talk to one of the others, we’d just go into their homes and wait for them. Even going so far as to wash up a few dishes or throw a load of clothes in the washer. We were, at least back then, one big happy family. Or so I thought.”

They talked a bit more while she pulled weeds from the garden. There weren’t all that many; the faeries had done most of the work, but she’d been outside, and the little people decided to allow her to do some of the work as well. But they would never be that far away if she changed her mind about helping.

By dinner time, she’d called her family to come to the house. They had to know what the meeting was about, yet they all showed up. Sandy looked better than she had when he’d seen her this afternoon, and he was happy about that. He had a feeling, however, that things were about to go from bad to worst. He hated this news for his new family and was going to be there for them all if they needed him to be.

~*~

Danny thought about what Sandy had told him. She’d been snipping at him all the time she’d been visiting him, and he didn’t like it. Nor did he care for the fact that she brought herself an attorney. He didn’t have one yet, and she was having one like she was the one in trouble.

“There are a few things that I’m going to make you aware of. The first one is that I’m not paying for you an attorney.” He’d not even asked her to do that, and she had cut him off before he could say a word. “I’m not going to be paying for a damned thing for you. No matter what you have to say. Also, I’m happy to announce that I’ve been granted a divorce from you. The judge fast-tracked it for me because of what you’ve done to my family.”

“They were my family, too, you know. And just so you know, I won’t acknowledge you divorcing me unless you have to pay me support. If you had given me children like I wanted, then you’d be paying me more.” She said she wasn’t doing that either. “Why the hell not? You make enough money to support us both, and I have needs.”

“What kind of needs do you have in a jail cell? You don’t have a television that I can see, so there are no gaming systems. There isn’t a fridge, so no beer of any kind. So, there is nothing that I can think of. Besides, as I said, I’m not giving you shit. You murdered my brother and his kids.” He waved her off. “What’s that supposed to mean? Did you or did you not kill them for insurance money?”

That was old news. She should have been more forthcoming with some money, and he might not have had to resort to killing them, and he told her that. Although he had to admit that he had enjoyed it. Knowing something that she didn’t had been a thrill to him. Then, when the insurance policy had come through, it got him to thinking about killing off the rest of them. It sure was a big payday for him.

He’d only admit this to himself, but he had hated killing the kids. Besides, they were all right, he supposed. But they were kids. However, in order to make it look like the house just caught on fire, he had to do it. Something that he knew very little about.

Sandy should have given him kids. The more, the better. It would have been fun for him to have one of those food cards so that he could get something from the grocery store anytime he wanted and not have to beg Sandy for money all the time. She also kept harping on him to get a job. Like he was going to do that. He had shit to do, and working a job was going to interfere with that time. His ambition was to be a gamer with lots of followers online.

However, it was the things that she said to him today that pissed him off. Not just the divorce, which was hard enough for him to swallow, but that she hoped he went to prison for the rest of his natural life. And that she’d not think about him once while he was gone. He didn’t believe that for a minute. He’d killed off her brother. Surely, she would think of him from time to time. Stupid woman.

Sandy was far from stupid, he knew. She and that damned sister of hers had gotten into construction and had made a big deal of it. They didn’t share their good fortune with him, but they’d been about to do so in a different way. Insurance policies.

He’d been able to keep up with the payments, too, when she’d leave her purse just lying around. There were a lot of them that he’d taken out, too. Not just on her family but also on some of the old people around the neighborhood as well. Anyone that was older than dirt was someone that he’d make a bit of money off of.

Then there was that damned attorney. He just knew that the man was a sissy boy, as his daddy used to call queers. There was no way that a man looking that good and wearing suits like he did wasn’t a sissy boy. Of course, he thought all men better looking than him was a sissy boy. Not that he thought there were very many good-looking men out there who were better-looking than he was. But this guy was way too nice-looking not to be.

Danny knew that he had shortcomings. A lot of them. He was only in his late twenties, and he thought and—wait, he was thirty-three…when the hell did that happen? Anyways, he told himself that if anyone asked, he was only going to be in his late twenties. But he was bald as a ball. Christ, it was like he woke up one day, and all his hair was gone. He didn’t even have any side hair, either. Just nothing up top of his head to even comb over.

He’d like to think that he made up for it in his dick. But he didn’t even do that. One night when Sandy had been mad at him, she’d told him that he had a pencil dick. It had taken him a week of wondering what she’d meant by that to figure out an answer as to what she was calling him. When he did, he hit her for the first time.

After that, he’d hit her anytime she pissed him off. Which was, by his estimations, a great deal. She was forever putting him down, telling him that he was a lazy fuck and that he needed to get out and find himself a job. Also, she told him about them having kids.

“I’m man enough.” He still believed that if she’d not cut him off, they’d have a lot of kids running around. Not that he wanted to be responsible for them, but her telling him that he wasn’t man enough to impregnate her had made him meaner than a one-dollar bill. Thinking on that, he couldn’t remember if he was saying it right or not. But he was mean to her. Then Rogen stepped in.

Christ, he wished all the time he’d started with her dying off. But she was just too clever for him. He couldn’t get into her house, where her stuff was hidden away, like her social security number or stuff like that. He didn’t even know her birthday. She had kept herself alive by being a mean bitch. Now, here they were in this town and it was like everyone was against him.

He couldn’t take a shit without anyone telling on him. He couldn’t even sneak in a little drinking while in this little town. Not to mention, there wasn’t a bar he could hang out in. The place had four pizza shops and nobody to bring him one when he was in jail either. What kind of podunk town had four pizza shops and not nary a person to deliver things to him?

That got him to thinking about a business that he could run. If he was out, he’d be lining up people with cars to deliver things to others around town. Not just pizza, though, that’s all he’d be using them for, but other things, like groceries and the like.

He could see it now. It’d be called Danny’s Drivers, or DD for short. He’d have him a fleet of them, too, just driving around this little town, making people’s lives a good deal better because they could get the things that they wanted without having to pay for it. He didn’t know how he’d make it work. Just knowing that he had to have cars was hard enough for him to think through, but he could make it work somehow.

Danny knew that he’d never get things that he thought up to work. He was just too lazy. It didn’t bother him that he was. In fact, he felt like it was something that a great many people aspired to. Being lazy was a form of working; it was difficult not to do anything all the time and have people do things for you, like his wife. She’d work all day, and if he asked her real nice like, she’d bring him a beer to drink before dinner. Sandy was a sap.

It only just occurred to him that she was indeed a sap. He’d knock her around a bit, get what he wanted, and she’d go off crying to her family. Not that he liked that, but she’d not do a damned thing about it, and that would make him very happy when she’d come around whining again, and he’d backhand her.

She didn’t know that he was slightly afraid of her. She was stronger than him and worked out a bit while on the job. Sandy was also a big fucking cat that could rip his throat out without a second thought. Being as smart as he knew her to be, he thought that he was lucky that she’d never unsheathed her claws around him, killing him with just a swipe of them.

Danny had tried once to sell her off to some circus. It turned out that the circus keeper, whatever they called the men who had them, was a shifter himself. And he had threatened to tell on him should he try that stunt again. It was difficult to make any money off of anyone anymore, he thought. Christ, it was like they were all on the same phone service the way they just knew one another’s business.

The more he bitched to himself about his wife, the more he wished that he’d killed her off when he’d had the chance. At the beginning of their getting together, it had been a thrill to him, knowing that she had money and worked during the day all day long. It left him to pursue his own fun. However, she was never forthcoming with any cash for him. Not even enough for him to go to the bar and hang out with his fellow lazy men. And there were a lot of them.

“Danny, your attorney is here. Do you want to meet with him?” He asked the man if he had on a fancy suit or a cheap one. “How the hell do I know something like that? You want to meet with him or not? I have better things to do than to figure crap out for you.”

“I’ll see him.” After going to the back of his cell so the door was unlocked, he was free to get out and see the attorney. He didn’t know if Sandy had gotten one for him because she felt sorry for him or not, but he wanted to make sure that his outshined hers. It was the least she could do because he was in jail because of her.

Once he was locked to the table and ready for the attorney, he looked around, wondering if all those cop shows he watched were right in that the mirrors were two-way suckers so they could watch him. He didn’t know how he was going to do it, but he was going to test that out. Flipping off the person on the other side, if there was one, he waited to see if they’d come after him or not. Nothing happened, but some old broad came into the room and said she was his court-appointed attorney.

“You’re a girl.” She told him that she was a woman, actually. “There’s been a mistake. I don’t want a woman attorney. No offense or anything, but women are just too stupid to be good at attorney works.”

“Well, aren’t you just a peach? And I wouldn’t want you as a client either, though here we are stuck with each other. I’ve been appointed by the judge, and that’s the only person that can break us up. I have a feeling that we’re going to be great friends by the end of this.” He could hear something off in her voice that said she really didn’t believe that, but she was sitting down now, and he didn’t like it. “My name is Suzy Lancaster, and I have some paperwork that you need to sign off on.”

By the time he was signing off on the third thing, he’d lost interest in it. She had him signing stuff about her being his attorney, which he didn’t like, but like she explained to him, was all there was. But he did perk up when she mentioned insurance.

“You said my wife is suing me on account of me having a life insurance policy on her? That ain’t right. I need that in the event something untoward happens to her.” He’d heard Lancaster—there was no way he was going to call her Suzy—say untoward a couple of times now and decided he liked it. He was going to use it all the time if he could. “A husband has a right to have insurance on his wife so that when she keels over, he’s got himself something to live on.”

“She said you’d say that, but she’s not going to be making the payments on it anymore. That would make it so that you would have to.” Lancaster huffed. “Unless you have some kind of millions lying about to pay these policies off, then they’ll be null and void anyway.”

By the time he was back in his cell, he’d felt beat up. Not that she ever touched him, but with all the things that she’d been saying to him, his mind felt like it had been wrung out to dry in a storm, and it wasn’t feeling too good. All she’d had to have done was just tell him what he was signing instead of her explaining everything to him like he was a simpleton. After a few documents, he just tuned her out. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t care so long as he was going to get out of jail soon enough so that he could find Sandy and make her pay for him missing out on opportunities like he was. Damned woman, he was going to have to knock her around a bit too.