Geek Chic (3 page)

After finishing her shower and returning to the kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee, Nami walked down the hall to Da’von’s room. They’d moved into the three-bedroom apartment two years earlier, thanks to Malyah’s salary. Before, they’d been crowded into tiny one- and two-bedroom apartments, usually government-subsidized housing. Now, they finally had a comfortable apartment in a nice complex north of Carrollwood, not too far off Dale Mabry. Wasn’t a rich neighborhood, but the crime rates were low. She didn’t have to worry about home invasions, or drug dealers hanging out on her front porch, or worrying if her car would even be parked there the next morning.

And anything Nami could do to keep Da’von away from those kinds of elements, she would do it in a heartbeat. Any sacrifice she needed to make. They’d had a couple of rough patches with him in high school, but she and her sisters had put the fear of god into the boy, and into the boys who’d tried to involve him in gang activity. Moving away from those boys and getting him into a different high school for his senior year had also helped.

He’d graduated with good grades. Not enough to get him an academic scholarship, unfortunately, but good enough that, with financial aid loans, and Malyah and Lu’ana’s help, she’d been able to afford to send him to community college. He was in his second semester, studying computer programming. Lu’ana and her husband had given him an inexpensive laptop for Christmas his junior year of high school. It had proven to be something he was not only interested in, but he was darn good at, too.

Nami hated computers. She only had a smartphone so she could log into the employee website portal for work when she needed. She didn’t have time for FaceTweeting or whatever, even though her sisters and brother had tried to get her to sign up for accounts on all the sites like they had. They might have been fine communicating with each other online, but she’d rather talk to them in person.

Then she could hug them.

Or smack them upside the head, if they needed it. Which, fortunately, they didn’t, now that they’d all grown past that rebellious teenaged phase. Texting them was different. It was a quick way to stay in touch with them without needing to spend twenty minutes on the phone for an easy question.

She knocked on his door promptly at 5:00. “Good morning, sunshine,” she called to him.

“Go away, Nami.”

She smiled at the familiar reply. She opened the door and flipped on his light. “Breakfast in twenty.” She walked in and tugged the sheet down from where he’d pulled it over his face. “Rise and shine, sleepyhead.” She planted a kiss on his forehead before turning to leave.

“Hey, Nami?”

His tone of voice stopped her. She turned back to him. “Yeah?”

He slowly sat up, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “I know I haven’t said it lately, but thank you.”

She blinked back the tears suddenly stinging her eyes. “What for?”

“Lu’ana tore into me yesterday when I complained about my homework. Before you got there.” After classes, he took a bus to Lu’ana’s house to babysit their niece and study before Nami picked him up after she got off work. It was a way for Lu’ana to get some stuff done without worrying about a qualified babysitter—much less having to pay for one—and a way for Nami to guarantee Da’von stayed out of trouble. He was a devoted uncle and always took good care of the baby.

Da’von was more like a son to Nami than a brother. Hell, he couldn’t even remember their mother, he’d been so young when she died. Nami had been the only “mother” he’d had growing up.

She walked back to his bed and sat on the edge. “Listen to me, baby boy,” she said. “You can thank me by getting yourself up and ready for school. Every day you try your best and work your hardest, that’s thanks enough for me. Don’t let me down. I trust you to be the best you can be. You keep doing
that
.”

There’d been days in his early teens he’d been so mouthy and ornery, she’d wanted to backhand him until she rattled the teeth right out of his head. Times where he’d made the wrong friends and she’d had to come down, hard and heavy on him
and
them, to run them off and keep him away from bad elements.

And then…

Then there were times like this. Times where he’d managed to quit acting like a dumb-ass boy, and flashes of the stand-up man she knew he would be if he kept trying as hard as he could shined through bright and clear like the rising sun.

Mornings like this that made it all worth it. Every last bit of sacrifice and scrimping and saving and sweat and tears. Even her divorce.

“Thanks, sis.”

She held out her fist and he gave her a sleepy bump back before she hauled herself off his bed. “Twenty minutes, baby boy,” she called over her shoulder as she headed for the door. “I’ll even make us French toast, if you hurry.”

She heard him throw the sheet back. “Sounds like a deal,” he said before she shut the door behind her.

Their breakfast was ready by the time Da’von made it to the kitchen. They’d leave Malyah’s breakfast in the microwave for her to reheat when she got up in a few minutes. Da’von would use the time waiting for Malyah to get ready to study for his classes.

In Nami’s house, sleeping later was a reward for working hard. She wouldn’t begrudge her little sister sleeping in since she more than pulled her weight around the apartment with her contributions to the household budget and doing chores. Malyah had even been able to buy herself a good used car several months earlier, completely paid for.

Nami wouldn’t let Da’von get a job yet. She wanted him focused on his studies.
That
was his job. Since he didn’t have a job, he didn’t need a car. It was a huge savings on auto insurance, too.

It also meant one more way she could keep him isolated from hanging out with the wrong kinds of kids. She and her sisters were in total agreement on that. Nami wasn’t totally oblivious to the fact that he needed to have friends, but she’d be
damned
if she’d let him take the same path their father took.

As Nami drove her ancient Toyota to work, she fought an uneasy feeling that had settled in her gut. Sure, hearing rare thanks from her brother had felt good.
Really
good.

Satisfying.

Still, she couldn’t help but wonder what else might be going on in his mind.

Guess it don’t matter. As long as he stays in school.

* * * *

By the time Nami reached the main depot and picked up her bus, she was already regretting this shift swap. The radio station she listened to on her drive in reported several accidents in the vicinity of where she’d be running her route. Meaning lots of headaches for her, lots of passengers griping about traffic she had no control over, and even more griping about making them late to their destinations.

At least it wasn’t raining.

You’d think with as much rain as we get that people would know how to drive in the damn stuff.

In the first hour of her shift, she’d had seven near-collisions with drivers who’d refused to obey the law to yield and let busses merge back into traffic, three people trying to board with invalid passes, and another two who insisted other bus drivers made change for them
allll
the time.

Somehow, she managed to keep her cool and not blow up at anyone. The busses were equipped with monitoring cameras, both for her safety and that of the passengers.

It wouldn’t do for her to lose her job because they caught her yelling at passengers on video.

I can do this. I can make it through the day.

She just hoped it wouldn’t get any weirder.

Chapter Three

“
I can’t believe we’re now glorified skip tracers,” Beck grumbled as they stood in the stifling Florida summer afternoon heat and waited for the bus at a stop on north Nebraska Avenue. “Next thing you know, we’ll be hunting down delinquent library books.”

“Shut it,” Dewi snarled. “I’m not any happier about this than you are, but you know how it works. She’s part of the pack, he’s part of the pack, that makes it a pack problem.”

“I tell you what,” Beck said. “We catch that boy, he’s getting neutered. This is bullshit. This is, what, kid number six?”

“Seven. By six different women. That’s what pissed her off the most, that he had five other kids with five other women and didn’t tell her.”

“Yeah. He’s a numb-nuts. That wolf gets neutered.”

“Do you hear me arguing?”

“Just wanted to make sure we were singing the same tune, that’s all.”

“There will be a wolf singing soprano when I get done with him.”

“Guys,” Ken said over the two-way radio he was listening in on. “Can we please cut the castration talk? You’re making mine shrivel up.”

Beck let out a snort. “He said cut.”

Dewi held up a fist and got a bump from Beck.

Ken was riding shotgun in Badger’s truck, with Badger driving. They sat parked outside a convenience store across the street from the bus stop where Beck and Dewi stood waiting.

Their target was one James Palver. He loved making babies, but wasn’t so great at supporting them. His mistake was screwing over the baby momma of numbers one and seven, Linda Small. When girlfriend number six contacted Linda out of the blue, Linda was, needless to say, not happy.

Linda was even less happy to find out that Six had tracked down Two through Five via a vital statistics search.

Now, James’ reproductive days were about to be deep-sixed.

Along with any money he might have. Although, considering the asshole was reduced to taking a county bus to work and back, Dewi suspected there would be no blood forthcoming from that turnip anytime soon.

Well, there would be blood, and plenty of it, but there wouldn’t be any money. Not unless the worthless sack of shit hit the lotto or something, because he could barely keep a job.

Linda had petitioned Dewi, as head of the pack council for the expanded pack, to force James to face the music with her and to support his children. Well,
her
children. Linda didn’t care about the other five kids. And since the other mothers were humans who had no clue James had a little bit of wolf shifter in him, they weren’t Dewi’s problem. Diluted progeny with no hope of shifting weren’t Dewi’s problem, either.

As far as Dewi was concerned, Linda wasn’t the brightest bitch in the pack, especially for picking James to be the baby daddy of not one, but two of her pups. But there was no accounting for love, she supposed.

They were stuck having to track James down via the bus. They didn’t know where he was currently shacked up. Dewi didn’t want to call his parents and ask them for help because she suspected they might lie for him. And since they were living in Arizona, traveling to speak with them in person so she could Prime mojo the truth out of them would only piss her off and complicate her life.

Thus she wanted to try this first, the easy way that wouldn’t involve travel.

Right now, James was working as part of a temp construction crew that got dropped off at the same spot every day. If they were waiting for him at the drop-off point, he’d likely spot them and bolt, have the driver take him somewhere else before they’d even see him. They also wanted to decrease the number of witnesses to them grabbing him. And if James spotted them first, knew they were looking for him, it’d make it that much harder to find him the next time.

After batting around several ideas, the simplest solution was for Beck and Dewi to catch the county bus north of where James usually got on, ride it, and wait for him to board.

The bus appeared in traffic a couple of blocks to their north. Two other people sitting on the bench under the shelter stood at its approach.

“There’s our ride,” Beck muttered. “Oooh, baby. We’re stylin’.”

“Shut up,” Dewi mumbled as they walked over to queue up behind the other two passengers. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can go home.”

* * * *

Nami had herself about enough of this day. Now she remembered why no one else was dumb enough to say yes to switching shifts with Danice. Some of the routes were pretty good to have, decent people, relatively safe neighborhoods, that kind of stuff.

Then…there was this route.

To be fair, it wasn’t the worst route a driver could pull out of the hat, but it made Nami grateful for the regular route she had from Citrus Park to downtown and back. She’d smelled more than her fair share of unwashed homeless people, and had been hit on by more drunks, in the past several hours than she had in the past several months.

This is bullshit.

Danice hadn’t been a driver for the county as long as Nami, so it was harder for her to get the better routes. Sure, Danice could have called off and taken an unpaid leave day, but she had young children and already had a few points against her personnel record for that. The young mother didn’t need any more strikes.

I’m too nice for my own good.

When she slid the bus up to the stop where four people waited—fortunately, none of them looking unwashed or drunk—she opened the door. The first two people looked ordinary. The woman who got on behind them…

There was something about her that set Nami’s little inner watchdog on edge. She seemed okay on the surface, ready with exact change.

The guy with her…

Wow.

He was built, a walking wall of muscle. And not bad looking, either, for a white guy. Blond hair and gorgeous blue eyes, had to be at least six four if he was an inch. After dropping his money in, he stopped and turned to look at her, his gaze drilling into hers, those intense blue eyes holding her hostage.

Her mouth suddenly went dry.

He stood there so long, Nami realized they were blocking traffic. “Sir,” she said after clearing her throat twice so she could finally speak. “You need to take your seat.”