Upper Hand (Cedar Tree Book 5) (20 page)

I’m an idiot. I’ve been so preoccupied not getting sucked into the Clint vortex that I’m not thinking straight. This is fucking dangerous. So I tell him. “This is dangerous shit.”

Clint drops his forehead to mine and wraps his arms around me tight. “No shit, babe. Seriously dangerous shit.”

I snuggle right into his arms and hold onto him tightly. “I’m sorry,” I mumble into his flannel shirt.

“S’Okay. I figured it wasn’t gonna be a smooth ride.”

Not sure I want to know what he means by that, so I wisely keep my mouth shut. For once.

-

-

“H
ey, little man.”

I reach out to grab Max, who just woke up, from his cot. All sleepy and warm, he cuddles right into my neck, and I feel his little fingers playing through my scruff. Beth is in her bedroom finishing her packing. I’d come into Max’s room to start grabbing some of his stuff when he woke up.

Swaying from side to side with that little body curled up against my chest, I don’t hear Beth coming in until I feel her hand on my shoulder. When I turn to look, I find her smiling sweetly, her eyes a bit shiny.

“You all done?”

She shrugs. “As good as. Just have to grab his stuff together.” Rubbing a quick hand over Max’s tousled hair, she turns to the dresser and starts pulling out his clothes.

“Neil’s gonna be here soon,” I point out. We’d talked a little and I’d suggested bringing all of the baby’s own furniture home too. Surprisingly, Beth didn’t object too much and after putting in a quick call to Neil, to ask him to swing by here first with his pickup, we’d started packing up stuff. 

When Beth’s got the entire contents of the little guy’s dresser stuffed in a duffel bag, including his bedding, she takes him downstairs for a ‘dwink,’ while I take apart the furniture. As I carry the pieces of his bed down the stairs, Neil is at the bottom looking up.

“Sure that’s a good idea in your condition, old man?” The smirk on his face tells me he’s pulling my leg. Still.

“Shut it, boy.”

That turns the smirk into a full-on smile. Little bastard. Okay, maybe not so little, since even though he’s a few inches shorter than my six-foot-five, he’s about equally wide. He seems to have grown every time I see him.

“Do you live at the gym?” I hand over the bed at the bottom of the stairs and Neil throws me a cocky smile.

“Nothing better to do.”

“You could be chasing skirts,” I point out. After all the guy is probably sneaking up on thirty and not half-bad looking, but his smile slides right off his face.

“Gettin’ tired of that. Let me throw this in the truck and we’ll tackle the rest together. Beth says there’s a dresser?”

Not waiting for an answer, he’s gone, leaving me to wonder why a good-looking kid in his prime would be tired of chasing skirt. Something’s off.

Another two trips upstairs for the drawers and finally the dresser—a heavy sucker—and Neil drives off.

“You got everything?” I yell to Beth who is banging around upstairs, slamming drawers and doors. Max is on the floor playing with some Cheerios that probably aren’t sanitary anymore. My mom used to say a little dirt would toughen the stomach. I figure it won’t hurt him.

“Max!” From the squeal behind me, it’s clear Beth doesn’t necessarily share my mother’s southern wisdom. She picks him up and sets him on her hip.

“Let’s get your coat on, buddy.” Two pairs of hands make relatively quick work of getting the two-year-old in his winter jacket and after slipping on our own and locking up, we’re off.

-

-

“M
r. Mason? The doctor will see you now.”

The skinny woman with the fire engine red hair behind the desk at the doctor’s office is beaming ear to ear, like she’s giving me the keys to the city or something. I struggled to look away from the clown-like do on top of her head the entire time we’ve been here, but with minimal success. It’s like watching a fucking accident happen, you just can’t turn away. Grabbing Beth’s hand I pull her with me as we follow down the hall, where we’re ushered into a small room with an examination table and one chair.

“The doctor will be right with you.” Red throws her big smile around again with lots of teeth, reminding me a bit of a predator. The instant the door closes behind her, Beth yanks her hand from mine and sits down on the chair pretending to examine the poster on ‘Early Signs of a Stroke’ in great detail. Is she pissed?

“You pissed?”

Her head whips around and if I wasn’t a big, strong man, I’d shrivel up at the deadly daggers she’s shooting me. “Pissed? No Clint, I’m not pissed. Doesn’t matter to me that you and that matchstick out there are making googly eyes at each other.”

There’s no way to hold back the laugh that bursts free, even though I know it’ll likely get her more riled, so I throw back my head and let it go. But instead of anger when I look at Beth again, I see she’s got tears in her eyes. Damn.

“Weird looking creature, isn’t she? I was thinking clown, but matchstick works.” Surprise spreads over her face and I bend down so our noses touch. “I get your experiences with men may not have been great, but sugar, the only reason I was looking was because I couldn’t tear my eyes away from that hideous hair. Who the fuck does that?”

Her little smirk tells me the crisis has been averted. It better be, after I’d virtually begged her to come to my bed last night, only to be told she’d feel better sleeping with Max. Didn’t sleep much, I can tell you that. For some reason the brakes she put on are still in effect, driving me up the wall, but I’d give her that one night. Tonight is another story.

A short knock on the door and then the doctor steps in the small room, clearly not made to hold more than two adult bodies.

“I’m just gonna wait outside, maybe give Katie a call to see how Max is,” Beth announces. Before I can get a word in, she slips out. By the time the doc is done with me, I have an appointment for a follow-up MRI, instructions to continue building up strength with PT, but I don’t mind because he also gives me the go ahead to drive and slowly start working again. Half days at first he insists, but I’ll take it.

Walking into the waiting room, I see Beth’s missing and turn to the freaky woman behind the desk, who seems to have turned up the smile a notch.
Brrrr
.

“The woman I came in with, did she leave?”

Now I get the fluttering eyelashes and an eager nodding of her head. I swear it looks like she’s trying to dislodge something stuck in her eye. I barely manage a ‘thanks’ before I escape outside, after having to wait for her to give me a date for the MRI appointment.

I don’t see her at first when my eyes scan in the direction of her rust bucket of a car. When I walk around the van parked beside it, I spot her, sitting on the pavement with her back propped up against the rear wheel, her hands covering her face. What the fuck?

“Beth?”

When she pulls away her hands and shows me her face, a hot fury gets my blood boiling. The bottom half of her face is covered in blood.

“C
ould you tell Mr. Mason I’ll be waiting in the car when he comes out?”

I’ve spent the last ten minutes being glared at by the red-haired bimbo behind the desk, and I’ve had enough. I don’t even wait for her response when I make my way outside, where cold fresh air instantly clears the claustrophobic feeling I got in that office. I pull out my phone as I’m walking to the car, following through on my plan to check on Max. Before I have a chance to hit the call button, I’m being yanked by my hair in between a van and my car. My phone goes flying as my hands automatically reach behind me to grab at whoever’s pulling my hair. An arm slips around my neck and I am pulled against a hard body. Panicking I struggle furiously, trying to kick with my legs and scratching at the exposed wrist on the arm that is cutting off my air supply. I try screaming but nothing comes out.

“Keep your fucking mouth shut, bitch,” a raspy voice whispers in my ear, engulfing me in a cloud of garlic and poor oral health. My mouth snaps shut instinctively. I’m suddenly twisted around and pushed back into my car, the offensive arm now pressing against my throat from the front. The owner of the arm is the driver of the car that cut me off yesterday in Cedar Tree. Cold fear settles in the pit of my stomach as I realize that since we’re now in Durango, he was dead serious when he indicated he was ‘watching me.’

“Where’s your son?” he hisses, blasting me with another wave of his disgusting breath and I cringe involuntarily. “Where is that bastard?”

“I don’t know,” I manage to croak out, my hands clutched in his shirt to try and ward him off. When he sticks his face even closer to mine, I’ve had enough. In a defensive move, I pull my knee up as hard as I can but the bastard side steps so it glances off his thigh innocently. Now I’ve got him pissed off good. Removing his arm from my throat, he now grabs my jacket collar and slams me hard into the back door of my car, knocking the air from my lungs.

“Where? You bitch.”

Still gasping for air, I just shake my head ‘no,’ something that obviously doesn’t make him happy. Again he pulls me from the car by my collar and slams me back.

“I’m thinking I’ll like spending some time getting the information from you.” He starts pulling me away from the car. I really don’t want to get slammed again, so I try to twist free by ducking down and under his arm. The sudden move has his hands slip off my collar, but before I can even run two steps, I feel him grabbing my arm and swinging me around, while his other hand comes flying through the air, straight at my face. I try to avoid it, unsuccessfully. I hear the crunch of my nose before the pain of the impact hits me. Holding me up with one hand, the other comes swinging again, but the sound of an approaching car stops him. He looks at the car innocently passing by furtively, before getting back in my face.

“Find your punk-assed son. You tell him, he needs to pay his debts or you and that brat of his will pay the price.”

This time when the fist comes, I don’t see it until it’s too late, my eyes streaming tears. The impact I feel, but then everything goes black.

Next thing I know, I’m sitting with my back against the back tire, feel a warm trickle down my chin, and taste blood in my mouth. I hear footsteps. I try to make myself small and cover my face with my hands to try and fend off another attack when I hear Clint’s voice.

“Beth?”

-

“Y
our nose is broken but not displaced. You’re lucky. The swelling will go down with a few days, but you’ll probably have twin shiners. Hits on the nose tend to give you not one, but two black eyes.”

The young emergency room doctor hands me a prescription for some painkillers and leaves me alone in the room. Alone except for Clint, who is still seething and on the phone with, I assume, Gus.

“No. We won’t need a ride. Cops are waiting to talk to us, but Beth doesn’t want to talk to them—I don’t know, why don’t you try to talk some sense into her.”

The phone is shoved in my hand. Clint turns his back and with agitated moves rubs his hand over his shaved head. I turn my attention to the person on the other side.

“Hey.”

“Girl,” Gus’s voice soothes over the line and I feel tears stinging my eyes. Aside from being furious and barking orders at whoever was near, Clint had not shown even the slightest gentleness, and I’ve been sucking back the tears and the shakes all afternoon. “How are you holding up?”

“I’m okay,” I sniffle, not even convincing myself.

“You’ve gotta talk to the cops, Beth. I get why you think it will hurt Dylan if you do, but the truth is in the end he’s got more to fear from the goons after him than he has from the cops. Regardless of what he’s done. Trust me on this. We’ll keep you safe, but you’ve gotta tell them everything they want to know.”

I let the silence stretch uncomfortably, using the time to contemplate my options. Not that I had many. I come to the conclusion that Gus is right, whatever consequences Dylan has waiting for him from the law, he’s better off in their hands.

“Okay,” I concede softly, causing Clint to swivel around and stare at me incredulously. I’d ignored his pleas for me to do the same, so I’m not really surprised to see the anger he was harboring shift to me. The moment I hang up the phone, he’s on me.