The Cougar's Wish (Desert Guards) (31 page)

The screaming from before that had been directed at Cilla didn’t stop—its tone simply changed. It was no longer halfhearted indignation from the hungry masses. Customers were screaming in terror. As humans were programmed to do, they scattered from the counter toward the corners and beneath the tables, leaving Cilla exposed.

Cilla, wide-eyed and agape, put up her hands.

“Your old man knows damn well what happens when you open your mouth, lady,” the guy with the gun said.

Straightening the bandana covering the lower half of his face, the gunman moved closer to the counter.

Steven pulled Belle closer to him. She must have tensed or made a move toward the gunman, and Steven didn’t want that, apparently.

Belle didn’t know what she could do to help, only knew that she could and had to.

If Steven were affected one way or another by the gunman’s presence, Belle couldn’t discern it. His energy was about what it was before, and his heart rate had hardly changed.

She understood then.
He’s used to this
.

He knew what to do.

She looked up at his face and found his expression neutral and his gaze locked on Cilla, not the guy with the shotgun.

What’s he up to?

“You gonna pay me, old lady,” the guy said. “I don’t care how you gonna get it, but you gonna get my money, and you gonna pay me for all the trouble your old man caused.”

“If you know me so well,” Cilla said, “you know I ain’t got no money. You think I got sacks of hunnert-dollar bills back here on these shelves or just taters and flour?”

He cocked the gun, and another round of screams pealed through the small space. “Don’t care what you got back there, but I tell you this. I’ll be back here next week, and when I come, you gonna have my money. Start with ten thousand, and we’re going to go from there.”

Belle cringed. From what she knew about mom-and-pop restaurants, the place was probably running on barely enough profits to keep the space up to code.

“Go on and do what you gotta do,” Cilla said. “If I had ten
cents
, I wouldn’t give it to you. Your momma would roll in her grave if she knew what kind of fuss you in here making. What you think that bandana is doing? Not a dang thing.
Stupid
.”

“Damn it, Cilla,” Steven whispered.

“Oh, you mouthy just like your old man, huh?” the gunman barked.

Cilla didn’t respond.

Slowly, Steven passed a hand down Belle’s arm and took her cup. He flicked off the lid with his thumb, and handed it and the straw to her discretely.

“Ten thousand dollars.” The gunman stepped closer to the counter, and Steven nudged Belle behind him. “You got me in the hole with my dude, and you gonna pay up.”

Stand down
, the cat in her seemed to be saying.
Let him.

The lady part of Belle didn’t like that. The chances of that guy having silver in his gun were very slim, so if she shifted, he couldn’t hurt her with his bullets. At least, not unless he had impeccable aim. She doubted that many people could tag a pouncing cat between the eyes unless they knew that cat was coming. Belle was good at keeping people from knowing she was coming.

“Come on back, then, and look for your money,” Cilla said. She pulled her gaze briefly away from the barrel of the gun and flitted it toward Steven, who was moving behind the guy. “It ain’t gonna be here, so I don’t know what you think you’re gonna accomplish except making all that dang noise.”

“You’re gonna get it,” the guy said. “One way or another.”

“No, I think you are,” Steven said flatly.

The gunman turned, and Steven tossed ice-cold tea into his face while grabbing the barrel of the gun.

It was pointed toward the drop ceiling as it went off. Plaster rained into the room as Steven forced him to the floor. People in the corners got up and began crowding the scuffle, and Belle was going to, too, but out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man on the other side of the window take off toward a car parked across the street.

Belle didn’t have spidey-sense, but she did have a well-developed sense of intuition and enough life experience to know that when people seemed suspicious, it was because they’d done something to deserve it.

She left Steven to do his job—given the people crowding around him to help, he didn’t need any more from her—and ran out of the restaurant.

Looking over his shoulder likely at the sound at the restaurant door’s chiming bells, the runner spotted her.

He tried to get the door of his idling car open, but Belle yanked him by the arm and pulled him away.

Her hands were damp from sweat, so he slipped away and swung wildly at her.

He couldn’t fight—at least not well, by her reckoning—but that didn’t mean he couldn’t hurt her. She’d never been more grateful that her brothers had not only insisted she learn how to defend herself in a fight, but also to know how much to fight back. She could be conscientious even if her opponent wasn’t.

They always underestimated her.

She ducked away from the arc of his fist, and he took off, pumping his arms hard and pounding the asphalt in too-new shoes that he probably hadn’t even broken in the soles of.

Having the speed of a wild cat and also the endurance of one, she could have easily overtaken him—tackled him—but sometimes, it suited her better to tire her opponent out. He’d have no choice but to stop, and when he did, he’d not only be easy to suppress, but too tired to dig deep for a second wind.

“Stop following me!” he yelled over his shoulder.

“I wouldn’t follow you if you didn’t need me to.”

“I didn’t do anything!” He leapt over a low cemetery wall, and sighing, Belle followed.

She wasn’t superstitious. She couldn’t be when she knew that most of the stories people told were true. Ghosts did exist, and if she were having one of her frequently unlucky days, one would probably sidle up to her looking to catch a ride.

She couldn’t let that deter her, though.

He put his head down and ran harder toward a mausoleum, and she stumbled, choking on the current emanating from it.

“No!” Her hand slapped against a headstone, and she righted herself, only to stumble again.

“Not
here
.”

He’d disappeared when she faltered—when that familiar energy tripped her up and shocked her.

There was a portal in that graveyard, just like on the ranch, but that one in the graveyard was different. Stable, perhaps. Curious as she was, she couldn’t let it distract her, either. She could ask Claude about it later.

Focus, focus.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she ignored it because whoever it was wasn’t important at the moment. What was important was that running man.

She closed her eyes and got her breathing under control. Pulling deep breaths through her nose, she found the scent of his sweat and followed it. Around the mausoleum, through a flower garden, and past some memorial statues. He’d hidden behind a large stone angel and, spotting her, took off running again.

She let him run—let him leap over the fence at the back of the property and let him cut through the yards neighboring it.

He ran slower along railroad tracks, exposed, but likely not thinking he had a choice.

She ran up beside him, keeping pace easily.

“What the
hell
?” He stopped and threw up his hands.

Damn it, he’s just a kid.

She stopped, too, and laced her fingers behind her head, opening her chest so she could take deep breaths. “I don’t have a weapon on me, but I don’t need one.”

He started to run, and she grabbed him by the back of his polo shirt and yanked him back. He was probably around sixteen or seventeen. Not a man, even if he did the foolish, bold things men did.

“Calm down,” she crooned, pushing a little of the patented Belle Foye magic juice at him.

His body was still, but his eyes were wild. His gaze flitted all around as if looking for rescue. Maybe he needed it, but certainly not from her.

With one hand still gripping his shirt, she dug her phone out of her pocket and read the screen. The buzz had indicated a message from Steven.

She kept pushing that magic out, enough to make the kid plop onto the railroad track and cross his legs. He sat because he didn’t want to run anymore, and she’d only given him permission to do what he wanted to do.

One-handed, she returned,

She sent him a location tag and hoped his phone knew how to make sense of it.

Obviously, it did. He texted:

Growling, she swatted at some sort of tagalong entity that must have caught wind of her back at the cemetery and jabbed an index finger in its general direction. She couldn’t see whatever it was, but she knew it was there. She could feel its presence on her skin as if it were sunshine. “Not right now, ghostie. I’m working.”

It must have gone away, or at least backed up, because the prickling stopped.

She slipped the phone into her back pocket and knelt in front of the kid. Lacing her fingers together atop her knees, she looked at him.

He didn’t look back. He fiddled with his bright white shoelaces and plucked at some gravel.

His face was barely stubbled with hair, and his cheeks still bore some of the round vestiges of childhood. He was a baby, not some thug. With those watery brown eyes threatening to spill tears and the marching band emblem printed on his windbreaker, he didn’t even have the makings of one.

He reminded her of another teenager she knew—one who was very good at doing what he was told, but made the mistake of taking his instructions from the wrong people.

“What are you doing?” she asked softly.

Now he did look up, though briefly. His gaze fell almost immediately to his shoes again.

In her periphery, she caught Steven jogging up the rails. Alone, fortunately, at least for the moment.

She gave her head a shake and hoped he’d know to use some restraint and keep his gun holstered.

She looked back to the boy and gave his shoulder a nudge. “Does your mother know you’re out here raising hell?”

“Grandmother. And no.”

Winded, Steven approached, and Belle went to him.

She walked him back a few paces and gripped his wrists. “He’s—”

“There’s something following me,” he said in a rushed whisper. Looking back over his shoulder at nothing, Belle had a hunch at what the
something
was.

She drew in a bolstering breath and gave a slow nod. “I think there’s a portal in that cemetery. There are definitely things milling around it.”

“Shit. Are you kidding me?”

She gripped his wrists tighter and pushed some of that same calming energy at him as she had to the boy. “It’s okay to fall apart, but do it later.”

His eyes narrowed to angry slits, but before he could spit out whatever venom he planned to shape on his tongue, she pulled him toward the kid.

“Hey,” she said to the boy, whom the embroidery on his jacket said was named Jameel. “I want to tell you something. This guy, he’s a cop.”

Jameel started to scramble to his feet, but Belle pressed a hand to his shoulder.

“Let me talk, okay? Maybe this cop never saw you. Maybe no one did.”

Jameel’s gaze flitted to Steven and then back to Belle.

“Why are you out here? Shouldn’t you be in school today?”

He nodded slowly and brushed some grass clippings off the legs of his jeans. “I can leave campus for lunch. He said he needed a ride, and I didn’t know what he had in that bag. I swear I didn’t.”

Belle believed him. “So you need to get back to school, or you’re going to get marked truant, right?”

Crouching in front of him, Steven let out a breath and took one more glance over his shoulder. The
thing
was back, but keeping its distance. It wasn’t much more than a filmy shimmer, and even that was a lot for a spirit. According to Claude, being seen took a great deal of will for a spirit. It had to be one that insisted on being noticed. The best Belle could tell, it was just curious. Spirits probably got bored hanging out at the same old haunts all day. Claude had once told her that spirits tended to stick close to a single place because they were between one realm and the next. Their perception of geography was often skewed.

To the boy, Steven asked, “Did you know what he was going to do?”

Jameel shook his head. “I ... drive him places all the time during lunch. He can’t drive anymore. Doesn’t have a license. I’m not supposed to. My grandmother told me not to get mixed up with him anymore, but I felt bad.”

“He’s your brother,” Belle said. She didn’t need to ask. It seemed the natural conclusion.

He nodded. “He can’t help it. He just ... went down the wrong path. Started dealing and owes folks money. Can’t turn him around now.”

“That’s up to him,” Steven said. “Some people have more choices than others. Life is just
harder
for some people compared to others, but that shouldn’t stop him from trying to make the right choices. It’s never too late for that.”

“Jail would probably be the best thing for him,” Jameel said solemnly. “If he isn’t near his buddies. They put him up to most of that crap, I swear.”

“Oh, he’s definitely going to do some time,” Steven said, “but if he’s willing to talk, the prosecutor might be, too.”

“You’re not gonna tell on me, are you?”

Belle squeezed Steven’s shoulder and pled with him with her eyes. Jameel wasn’t a threat to anyone, and even stepping one foot inside the police department would probably devastate his future.

Steven may have been a sworn officer of the law, but Belle also knew he had common sense.

He stood, straightened his holster, and reached into his pocket. From it, he pulled his business card case. He plucked out one card, and with the pen he dug from his shirt pocket, he scribbled his cell phone number on the reverse.