Texas Tornado (Freebirds Book 5) (8 page)

Jolie was a nobody. She had nobody. She needed nobody.

She’d slipped into my heart that day, and stayed there. Even now, twelve years later, I still cared for her. Although once I’d thought it was romantically, I now feel different about her, in a way that a good friend cares about another good friend.

“Daddy?” Janie asked from beside me.

I let Jolie go, and stepped away from her to crouch down so I was eyelevel with Janie. “Yeah, baby?”

“Where did your friend go? I wanted to show her the Dyna, but I can’t find her anywhere.” Janie asked.

I stood quickly, scanning the parking lot and surrounding area for Shiloh.

Shit!

How long had she been gone? I hadn’t even noticed that she’d left!

“Max!” I yelled and turned to him.

“What?” He grunted, eyes moving from the tire he was trying to get off a Mustang to me.

He wasn’t Jolie’s biggest fan. He’d always felt that she was manipulative. I’d always thought that she was just a sweet girl needing attention. We agreed to disagree.

“Did you see where Shiloh went?” I asked, trying to keep the panic out of my voice.

“Yeah,” He grunted again, one of the lug nuts finally giving way. “Walked down the driveway and North on Second. Why?”

“Fuck,” I growled. “She can’t get in. I have her new key since I had better locks installed.”

I didn’t want to leave Jolie in her upset state, but there was no way I was just leaving Shiloh out in the rain.

“Hey, man. Can you hang out with Jolie here for a few while I run these over?”

I knew his answer would be no. The man really didn’t like being left with Jolie. Never had. Said she changed when I wasn’t around. I’d never witnessed it, even when I’d tried to be sneaky.

“She’s got a perfectly capable brother over there. Not to mention, she looked pretty pissed when she left. I’d be willing to bet she didn’t even go home.” He said as he worked the final lug nut free, making the tire lean to the side awkwardly.

Then the first sound of thunder boomed in the distance, making my decision for me. “Okay, Jolie. I gotta go. I’m sorry.” I said as I grabbed her into another tight hug before releasing her.

“It’s o-okay. I’ll be f-fine.” She said as she turned on her heel and practically ran to the car.

As if I didn’t already feel bad enough, the girl always had a way to make me feel worse than I already did. Especially that night I’d caught her trying to fuck the worst bully in the school.

“Why do you let her do that to you? She treats you like her little lap dog.” Max huffed.

Ignoring him, I grabbed Janie by the hand and walked her to the back of the garage.

“Come on, Janie. Let’s go get the truck and find Shiloh.”

“She can stay with me. As long as the harpy isn’t here, I’m good.” He said as he stood and gestured to Janie. “Come here, kemosabe. Let’s see if we can get this POS working.”

“I don’t like that Harpy either.” Janie whispered.

Although, like all kids, it was louder than her normal voice, so everyone that was eavesdropping in the garage heard what she’d said and chuckled.

Bastards.

***

Shiloh

My door had two shiny new locks on it, as well as a shiny new brass door handle. What the fuck? Did Marjorie change the locks while I was gone?

Sure, I was getting this place for a song, but that didn’t mean she could just go and change the locks without telling me. Or letting me get my things out first. She never struck me as the type to be vindictive, so what reason did she have to change them while I was gone?

I planted my foot, spun on my heels, and just made it the first step down when the skies opened up. A-fucking-gain.

“Shit.” I hissed trying to cover my arm with my body to reduce the chance of it getting sopping wet.

By the time I made it into the diner, the majority of my body was drenched, and I cursed Marjorie for having my locks changed without telling me. Crazy old bat.

Lizzie, a young mother of three, glanced up from the coffee she was pouring at the bar when I scrambled inside. “You look pretty awful.” She mused.

“Thanks. Marjorie around?” I asked.

“She was here early this morning, but I haven’t seen her since.” She said putting the coffee pot on the warmer.

“I was trying to figure out why...” I was explaining when the roundness of Lizzie’s eyes went to the size of saucers. “What?”

Her mouth worked like a fish, and I turned around very slowly to find a huge ass gun aimed right at my face. The barrel of the gun looked massive, and I couldn’t help but wonder what the bullet that came out of the gun would do to my face when it took me out.

Fuck.

My eyes traveled from the gun’s excessively large barrel to the masked man that was holding it. His stance was twitchy and unsure, but the gun never wavered. “Bring her out here!” He roared.

“W-who?” I asked. The hitch in my breath made it apparent that he was scaring the absolute shit out of me.

“Marjorie!” He roared.

I flinched at the vehemence in his voice. God, but I just couldn’t freakin win. My life was one huge clusterfuck to the tenth degree. Here I was, twenty-six, going on twenty-seven, and I was about to die. Alone. Unloved.

Hooray.

Fuck it. If I was going to be shot, I damn sure won’t be going out without trying to fight.

***

James

“Okay, where the fuck are you?” I growled as I came back down the stairs of Shiloh’s apartment.

I rounded the corner to the diner and my heart nearly stopped.

Shiloh had her hands hanging down limply at her sides standing next to the bar. A young woman, twenty two at most, was behind the bar, mouth slack jawed and her hands up by her ears, and a man in his late sixties who resembled a grizzly bear with his wild brown hair and large round body stood in front of them both with a .357 revolver pointed straight at Shiloh’s face.

My basic survival instincts, the ones that were honed to a razor sharp point in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan, the ones that kept me and most of my brothers alive during the most brutal of times, took over. My vision sharpened, my hearing fine-tuned, my adrenaline coursed thickly through my veins. The rapid beat of my heart thumped an erratic tattoo against the wall of my chest.

When my eyes stayed locked on the man with the gun, even when Shiloh’s scream ripped down my spine and settled deep in my gut. My hand tightened minutely on the gun that I had in my hand, even though I had no knowledge of pulling it. Nor did I have knowledge of aiming it.

However, I found myself with one eye closed, staring down the length of the barrel. Tritium sights framing the large man’s center mass, ready to pull the trigger. With one breath, I found my calm. The next, I pulled the trigger.

***

“Mr. Allen, can you please repeat what happened again one more time?” Detective Pierson Howell asked with condescension dripping like acid from his every word.

“Are you arresting me?” I finally asked.

“No. I’m just trying to procure what happened here. Some things don’t line up.” He ground out.

“I’ve already explained the encounter in its entirety. I’ve explained what I saw happen. I explained that I couldn’t afford to wait, that I felt like the situation would deteriorate very fast. Therefore, if I’m not under arrest, then I’ll be leaving. I have a young daughter at home, as well as an inconsolable woman to take care of. If you’ll excuse me,
Detective
.” I snapped and turned.

Detective Pierson didn’t like the way I said detective, and I saw his hackles rise as soon as I said it. “Oh, yes. I’ve heard about the allegations that are being filed against you. Tell me, is it true? Do you rape your daughter?” He droned from directly behind me.

I froze. My hands clenched, and my body tensed in anticipation.

My eyes rose and my mouth opened, but Shiloh, who was standing to my right, erupted. I say erupted, because there were no other words for what happened next. She simply exploded.

“You have got to be kidding me!” She screeched.

The men and women loitering, as well as the crime scene techs, male and female officers, and brothers, froze and watched the explosion unfold.

“This man,” Shiloh gestured to me with her pointer finger. “This man saved my mother fucking life! That man was about to blow my head off. He had a fucking .357 pointed at my face. Do you know what a .357 does to a watermelon? It fucking explodes. Every fucking inch. There is no way you would ever be able to fit those pieces together again.”

She got closer as her temper raged. The next thing I knew, she was in Pierson’s face, finger millimeters from his chest. She knew better than to touch him, but that didn’t stop her from rising on the tips of her toes and getting in his face.

“And the nerve. The guts it takes to imply that this man,” Another finger pointed in my direction. “to say that this man
rapes
his child.”

“You don’t know their relationship. You don’t see how he dotes on her. Gives her everything she needs and wants. Adores her. He would never, ever, do anything so vile as to rape his daughter. To even imply that is so beyond the element of reason that it’s practically hilarious. That man would castrate anyone that even thought about harming his daughter. He’d chop off their balls, open a gash in their belly, and make them bleed. You are a pathetic use for human flesh, and I will see your superior officer about this. You will be taken off this case so fast your fucking head will spin.”

Snickers were the only thing that could be heard through the crowd.

Shiloh stepped back from Pierson, but as she did, her foot hit an uneven spot in the ground, and she pitched forward into the detective. He took that opening as an attack on his person, and moved.

Shiloh went down hard onto the pavement. Her face smashed into the wet grass that lined the side of the parking lot. Her face narrowly missed hitting the curb by mere millimeters. The pink cast that encased her arm didn’t. It smashed into the unforgiving concrete with a thud, and she cried out in agony.

“Get off her!” I snarled.

I knew better than to touch him, but it took everything I possessed to stop me.

“You are under arrest, anything you say or do...” Pierson snarled, pushing Shiloh into the grass even harder, yanking her hands behind her back so hard and tight that her back bowed with the effort to keep her shoulders from pulling out of the socket.

I was mere milliseconds from going for Pierson’s beady little eyes when a black wall of muscle plowed into Pierson, having him face first in the asphalt of the diner’s parking lot in the next heartbeat.

Ignoring Sam’s attempt to rein in his temper and not beat the ever-loving shit out of Pierson for daring to lay his hands on his baby sister, I went to Shiloh and helped her sit up. Her hand went to her casted one and she cradled it close to her chest, but her face was set in grim determination.

“You okay, Shiloh?” I said, dropping to my knees and pulling her into the wall of my chest.

“Pissed, but okay.” She said.

“Get off me!” Pierson screeched.

My eyes followed the screeching sounds, and I very nearly laughed. Sam had Pierson detained with a knee in the small of Pierson’s back, and one hand keeping his hands behind his back, much the same way he’d done to Shiloh.

“Oh, does this not feel good, you prick? Do you not like it when you get treated the same way you just treated an innocent woman? I don’t give a goddamn if you’re the fucking queen of England. You will never touch my fucking sister again, do you hear me?” He shouted in Pierson’s ear.

Pierson cowered away from him, his head turning, pleading practically for help from his fellow officers. None of it came.

“Do you see what is being done to me, you imbecile?” He sneered at the closest officer.

The man, one I’d seen from time to time around town, was a good man. He had a wife and new kid at home, and loved to show off pictures of his little boy. That same man who loved his kid so much turned his back on a fellow officer and walked further away from the scene.

Pierson tried it three more times with three other officers, all ranging from rookies to the most seasoned officers, all walked away and left him on his own.

“Now, I’m gonna let you go, but I better not find you even thinking about my sister again. James is off limits, too. You have an airtight story from him and eight other witnesses. Stop being a little prick and do your job.” He hissed as he shoved off him and stood.

We’d had our first run-in with Detective Pierson last year when Winter shot an intruder in her bedroom. Ever since then, we’d had the displeasure to be on his ‘list.’ He made it a habit to make sure we were on the up and up. Every once in a while he’d drop by on the pretense of having a ‘talk’ while subtly taking stock of everything that we said or did for the half hour he managed to weasel out of us.

“She attacked me!” He whined nasally.

Luke, a good friend and police officer, chose that moment to finally make his presence known. “Peterson, you’re fucking nuts if you thought she was attacking you. She’s about half your size and you easily have a hundred pounds on her. Knock it the fuck off before they try to charge you with something you can’t weasel or bribe your way out of.”

Shiloh started to rise. I helped her stand, and wrapped my arm around her waist for support. Luke turned and studied Shiloh before sighing and turning to Sam.

“Since this is a crime scene, she’s going to need to find a place to stay. I can’t let her up to her apartment until tomorrow evening at the earliest.” Luke sighed as he turned and surveyed the area.

“She’s right here. You don’t have to talk to her brother. It’s not the seventeenth century, douchebag.” Shiloh scolded.

I smiled despite my horrible mood, and then outright laughed when I saw the surprise overtake Luke’s face. “Ahh, Luke. You should know better.”

“She’s going to come home with me.” Sam growled.

“Like fuck.” Shiloh laughed.

Sam’s scowl turned ferocious as he pinned Shiloh with it. “What?”

“Just because you decided to be a brother for once in your miserable existence doesn’t mean I’m going to fall head over heels in love with the idea that you actually want something to do with me now. It’s going to take a lot more than that. Plus, I might annoy you in the middle of the night. I think I’ll take my chances with the hookers over there.” She pointed at the fleabag motel across the street.