Riordan (18 page)

“I might have forgotten to tell you that my family are tigers. I should have, but then I

thought, he’ll not say something so stupid that it will get him killed. Or perhaps make him piss

his pants when they try to kill him.” Storm looked at Riordan, and he went to her. “Riordan,

perhaps you can translate what your dad is saying to this fool. And while you’re at it, could you

also explain to him that I trust my brothers more than I do him right now?”

Riordan sat in the chair and tried not to laugh. His dad was mad, but he was beginning to see

the humor in it as well. Storm was something else. She went back to the board as if having a tiger

trying to rip the throat out of one of her men was something that happened all the time. He

looked at his dad when he said his name.

You should really change her.
He told him he was working on that.
I’m sort of glad today

that you hadn’t. I’m sure that her temper, and a fine one she has, would have had this man dead

and not just…he’s trying to speak to you, I think.

Riordan leaned forward in his chair and looked into the fear-stricken eyes of the lieutenant.

He had to look away twice because the man really was terrified, and Riordan was trying his best

not to laugh at him.

“You do know that you should have a better care with your comments in this house. I mean,

you know that now, right? Blink twice if you do.” His eyes blinked twice in such an exaggerated

way that he laughed. “And now that you’ve been introduced to what we are, I’m thinking that

you’ll take my word for it when I tell you we can protect our own, and that you’re only here

because Tony wants it that way. By the way, he’s a wolf, if you didn’t know already.”

The eyes blinked one time, and he stared at him with more fear than before. Riordan put his

hand on his father’s head and rubbed his fingers through the fur. His dad laughed, but Burkhardt

whimpered.

“I’m going to have my dad get up and shift back. He’ll have to do that in the other room

because of your stupidity. He didn’t have time to take off his clothing, and they’re ripped to

shreds. You should have a look at them when he lets you go. That could very well have been

you.” When his dad told him to behave, Riordan told him he was having fun and that the man

needed to learn his place. “And when he comes back in here, you’ll apologize to my entire

family, and especially him. Do you understand me?”

Burkhardt blinked twice again. That was when Riordan saw the gun at his side. He could

have easily used it on his father, and might have even hurt him. But he hadn’t, and Riordan had a

moment to wonder why until his father lifted his body off the man. His dad’s other paw had dug

deeply into his arm, and he hadn’t been able to move it.

As his dad left the room, Burkhardt sat up. “I’m not usually one that says they were wrong,

but I’m terribly sorry for this.” Riordan nodded but said nothing. “I don’t want to be here. I

mean, I want to help, but my wife is ill with our second child, and I’m stressed about leaving her

alone again.”

“We can have her brought here.” He said that she wasn’t to travel and it was hard on them

right at the moment. “You call her and have her get ready. We’ll send someone to get her and to

help with the arrangements. If you’ll back off a little, maybe we can get this thing finished rather

than having to bury you in the back yard. And I will if you say something like that again.”

“I understand.”

He told him he’d call his wife now and left the room. Riordan watched Darcy and Storm

look over the board. He was her fresh eyes, as Aedan had been this morning. When Darcy stood

up and took one of the many pictures off the wall and handed it to her, Riordan went to see what

he’d found.

“Look at this.” Storm took the photo and studied it. “Not the man, Viper, but the entire

picture. What do you see?”

When she put the picture on the desk, he looked as well. All he could focus on was the man

in the picture and what he was doing. The rest of it was blurred out by the violence of the

situation.

Viper was holding a man’s head in his hands. It wasn’t attached to the body, so other than

the dark stain of blood that was dripping from it there was nothing else that he could see. But

apparently Storm did, and she looked at Aedan.

“See if you can figure out where this was taken. There are two landmarks here that may

help. And I don’t want you to share this with anyone.” Aedan winked at her and walked away,

taking the picture with him. Storm looked at him. “We’re in deeper shit than I could have first

thought. I need to talk to you later when we’re alone, and not before, okay?”

Nodding, he asked her what she’d seen in the photo that no one else had. She only shook her

head, and he held her when she wrapped her arms around him. Riordan knew that she was afraid

now, but she was also determined. And when his dad came back in the room with the rest of his

family, Aedan included, no one mentioned the picture.

“Mom has some stuff she wants us to try. She and that cook of yours, June, have been

playing with different kinds of sandwiches all day.” Liam set down the tray and picked up one of

the several dozen sandwiches. “I’m really liking the beef one, but the ham is really good, too.”

Mom came in, too, and had a notepad with a pen. He was glad she was having so much fun

at this. But it sucked, too, that she couldn’t go back to the bakery until they figured this out. She

understood it, but she didn’t like it. Neither did Storm or her aunts. They were fretting that they’d

need to get something else to help with their income. Riordan had no idea that they had nothing

but their pension to get by on every month until this morning, and he felt badly for them.

~~~

Storm was trying her best to listen to the woman who was telling her just what she needed to

do with the kitchen. Like she gave a shit. If the refrigerator worked in her old place, that was all

she really cared about. But apparently she was missing out on a lot of rebates by not turning in

her old things and getting new. When Bri cleared her throat, the design coordinator shut up.

“Maybe if you were to have this conversation with Mrs. Price, as Stormy has suggested

several times now.” The woman said something about involving her home owners in the

selection of the household items. “I’m sure that works well for people who are going to actually

use the appliances, but I don’t think that Stormy ever will.”

“Then she’s the one that will be missing out. I don’t think I can work under this kind of

pressure. All my clients like when I take them step by step through what I’m doing. It saves me

time in the long run.” For the life of her, Storm had no idea what the woman’s name was, but she

looked right at her. “Perhaps if you were to get rid of everyone but you and me, we could work

this through better.”

Storm had had enough. This was the second time that this woman had suggested that she

work with her alone, and Storm had things to do. Pulling out her gun from the holster at the back

of her pants, she checked to make sure that the clip was full and that there was one in the

chamber. Catching the shell as it ejected from the gun, she slipped it in her pocket but held onto

the gun.

“Okay, this is what you’re going to do, or I’ll find someone that will. Talk to June. And if

she has some questions, which I highly doubt since she knows her job, then she can come and

find me. She won’t go on about how the pantry is as old as the house and that the dishwasher is

out of date. I know that. It’s why I’m having it updated.” Storm glanced at Bri and could see that

she wasn’t upset with the turn of events, but having a hard time not laughing, so Storm

continued. “The refrigerator is a relic…yeah, I get that, too. Again, that’s why we called

someone. You work with her or not at all.”

“I cannot work this way.” Storm nodded and moved to the kitchen door to open it for her.

“You will regret not having Cynthia do your remodeling. I do the homes for all the wealthy. My

name means something.”

“Not to me.” Storm pointed to the door with her gun. “This way, if you please. I’ve got a

shit load of work to do, and you’ve already eaten up about three hours that I can’t get back.”

As soon as she was out the door, she seemed to have second thoughts about what she’d just

done. “Perhaps we can—”

Storm slammed the door closed in her face. “Who is Cynthia? And why the hell didn’t we

call her in the first place?”

June patted her on the shoulder as she moved by her. “My lady, that was Cynthia. I’ve never

known anyone to refer to themselves in the first person before. Kind of annoying if you ask me.

But now I guess we have to wait on someone else to come out and see what we need to do.”

“What is it you were planning to do, June? I mean, were you wanting to enlarge the pantry?

Or even to put in a wider refrigerator? I know who can do that for you. If it’s simple stuff like

that.” June handed her a list, and Storm looked it over. “Okay, this is easy. This I can handle.”

Picking up the phone, she called the local veterans’ office. When she hung up, she had the

work covered. As she was making the second call, her aunts came into the room. Bri set about

making them a cup of tea each as she told them what was going on. When she hung up, Storm

looked at June.

“Nine vets will be here this afternoon to figure out what needs to be done and what stuff will

have to be replaced. I want you to send two to your house if you don’t mind, and two over to the

butler’s cottage.” June told her that she could do that. “And I’ve set up an account at the

hardware store. You have the final say on anything over five hundred dollars. I really don’t want

to have to mess with this.”

“Very good.” June smiled at her. “That’s a wonderful idea to get the veterans to work for

you. I think they will enjoy this more than what they’ve been doing at the shelter. Some of them

have said they are more suited to hanging wash than to cooking in the kitchen.”

Storm moved to the living room with her aunts and Bri and sat on the long couch nearest the

fireplace. This room, like their bedroom, was taking on a new look. Most of the furniture in this

room had already been replaced with the things from Riordan’s apartment, and one of the rooms

upstairs now held his bedroom set. For now they were using her room, but a new bed and

furniture for the master suite had been ordered and were due to arrive in two days.

“I’d like to talk to you, Storm. We would like to talk to you.” Storm told her Aunt Sally

she’d wanted to talk to her, too. “The house in town, our house…well, it’s in need of some

things, too. A new roof. The bedroom where I’ve been sleeping has more pans on the floor than

in our kitchen.”

“And the bathroom needs a new commode. The plumber said that he couldn’t work on it

unless we replaced it with a newer model. He said that kind we have in there is from the twenties

and no longer is up to code.” Aunt Lynn smiled at her as she continued. “He should have seen

the one in the basement. It’s the kind that has the pull cord on it, and the tank is attached to the

wall.”

Bri laughed. “When we had the bathrooms remodeled some years ago, the man told us

several times that we should see if the museum would take them from us. I thought that they

were doing some remodeling of their own. But he assured me that our things were old enough to

be on display. He was quite disturbed that we’d not done anything about it before now.”

“I was going to wait on Riordan to be here when I talked to you about this, but he was called

away for something and had to go into town for his company. We’ve talked it over and we want

you to come and live here. You should have been staying here while I was gone.” Aunt Lynn

was shaking her head, and Aunt Sally nodded vigorously. “The house in town will be yours.

We’ll take care of the plumbing things and give the old girl a once over. You can rent it out after

that, or sell it. It would be completely up to you. I’ve also talked to my bank, and you each now

have an account, as well as enough money to take care of anything you need.”

“Oh no, love, we can’t do that. Your parents left that for you.” Aunt Lynn looked at Sally

and huffed. “You cannot think to sponge off her. We’ve gotten by this long without doing so,

and we will not do it now that she’s home with us.”

“That house is costing us more than it’s worth and you know it. Why, just last winter, we

paid more in monthly heat bills than we did for our house insurance. And you know as well as I

do that we had to sit around with blankets piled up to our collective bosom to keep from

becoming frozen corpses. I’d very much like to stay with my grandniece for the rest of my days,

rather than to have her come to that monstrosity and find us dead and gone because the tub fell