Promising Peter (Bad Boy Alphas) (Shrew & Company Book 6) (15 page)

Peter went into a sort of trance whenever he was about to pull off a job, and that had been a matter of necessity. Early on, he’d had to learn to detach himself from the morality question or else he’d never be able to act. Contrary to what Tamara might have thought, he
did
have ethics. Very rarely did lines blur for him. He knew the difference between good and bad, and the only times he hesitated were when his victims were equal parts of both.

At the moment, no lines were blurring. Gene was an honest to goodness piece of shit, and the fact he’d been working under the sanction of some larger organization made his actions that much worse.

Not
killing the man was going to be the hardest thing Peter had ever done, but he knew people were counting on his restraint so they could have justice—so they could have their questions answered. They deserved that, and more than anything, he wanted Andrea to understand that nothing that happened had been her fault. Good things had come out of her ordeal, though it had taken them a while to catch up to her.

Jim crept the truck down the farm’s long driveway and said through his walkie-talkie, “I see him at the window. He’s watching us drive up.”

Peter squatted, ready near the back of the bed. As soon as Jim stopped, Soren and Maria were going to use the trailer for cover and run around to the back of the house before anyone in the house went to the front door.

Jim was going to go to the front door, and the rest of them would run along to the sides to watch windows and any other alternate exits.

They needed to make sure that Gene didn’t figure out the scheme too quickly or he’d wedge himself into some small sliver of the house and not come out without a fight. For the sake of those kids and Gene’s hapless ex, the little extraction crew needed to avoid that. Gene’s ex had already been traumatized enough.

“Just be cool,” Dana—still in the farm stand—returned to Jim via walkie-talkie. “Say exactly what you rehearsed. Don’t look around too much. Don’t act like you’re casing the place when you go to the door. Just talk to her, okay?”

“Got it.”

Jim stopped the truck, and said low into the walkie, “Here we go, folks. Good luck and be careful and all that shit.”

“Going now,” Soren said into the walkie they shared in the back.

He and Maria quietly lifted the edge of the tarp and slipped down from the back of the bed.

Peter nodded to Tamara and Eric. “Ready?”

Tamara looked to Bryan, who was set to cover Jim at the front door. “Be careful.”

“I will. You do the same. I know how you are.”

Tamara sighed, leaned to give her husband a kiss, and then hopped down from the gate with Peter and Eric following.

They padded past the truck, which Jim was disembarking, and ducked low, each picking a side of the house to monitor.

Peter ended up on the side facing the distant farm stand. Dana was supposed to be out there somewhere, probably on her belly in the high grass with her guns at the ready, and poised to move as soon as Gene did.

They weren’t going to let him get far.

Never again.

The window Peter crouched beneath was open a couple of inches, and he could hear the voices from the front room, and the nervous whispers from the back of the house. He could hear the footsteps against the wood floor, and Gene spitting, “You shut up. All of you. You make a peep and you’re gonna get it, you understand me?”

There was no response.

“Do you
understand
me?” he hissed.

“Yes,” came the chorus of young voices.

Footsteps again.

Peter straightened and peeked through the window just in time to see Gene pass.

Too late to get him.

I’ll be ready next time, though
.

Peter pushed the window up a little more and steadied the gun with the tranq bullets on the sill.

“You brought me
what
?” Gene’s ex asked Jim.

“I’ve been calling you all day, Cal!” Jim said in an exasperated tone. “I need to return this truck tonight. I borrowed it over the weekend from the guy I gave the rest of the hay to. I thought you could use these few bales. I figured while I was here, I’d see if you were interested in some goats.”

“Uh,
goats
?”

Jim grunted. “We’ve got too many. Bred like crazy last year. If you ever thought about keeping them for milk and cheese, I could cut you a deal. Maybe they could be a little project for your kid. Why don’t you send him on over to look at them? I’ll drive him back.”

“I—um…”

Peter caught the movement of the shadow in the hall coming from the room Gene had left, and then the lanky teen appeared in the room’s doorway.

He started at Peter in window.

Peter shook his head and held a finger up to his lips. He mouthed slowly, “Go to the back door if you can.”

The kid shook his head, and pointed to his eyes.

“He can see the door from where he is?”

The kid nodded, and then held up a hand in a “wait right there” gesture. He padded away, and returned through what must have been a connecting bathroom, with two girls small enough to squeeze through the window.

“Careful,” he whispered to the first as she put her head through the gap.

Peter was standing next to a prickly rose bush—damn near trampling it, really—but the lady of the house would just have to forgive him for the mess.

He helped the girl down, and then the other. Bending toward their ears, he whispered, “Run toward the back a few hundred yards, and then cut across the fields toward the farm stand. We’ll get you home.”

“My brother’s in there,” one of the girls said.

“Don’t worry. We’ll get him out. We’ve got folks on all four sides. Now
go
.”

Both girls paused, and then ran when Gene’s son said, “Go!”

“Kevin!” the lady called out.

He hurried away from the window, back to where he had been probably. “Uh. Yeah, Ma?”

“D-do you want to go take a look at a couple of goats?”

“Right now?”

She cleared her throat. “You don’t have them with you?” She was probably talking to Jim.

“Nah. Truck’s not equipped for livestock. I do need some help getting that hay off, though. And where do you want me to put it? Got a barn or something?”

“Anywhere! Um, I mean…you can…put the hay’s wherever’s easiest. Kevin and I will move it later if we need to. We’re used to doing things on our own.”

The floorboards creaked and Kevin appeared in that doorway again.

He met Peter’s gaze, and dragged his tongue across his lips.

Peter heard the snick of a lock toward the back of the house. Soren was probably getting that door open—the door that Gene could see.

Kevin closed his eyes, let out a ragged breath, and then hurried through the bathroom again. “I’m coming!” he called loudly. “We can just leave the bales next to the driveway and hope they doesn’t get stolen tonight.”

“Folks’ll steal anything nowadays,” Jim said flatly.

A moment later, Maria moved silently into the room, and went to Peter at the window. “Where are the other kids?”

“I pulled them out from here. Is the other boy out?”

Maria nodded. “I’ll go back around and see what I can do to get Kevin out of the way. Gene’s paying more attention to Jim than the back of the house right now.”

“We just need to worry about the lady now. Cal.”

Peter had to trust that Bryan was ready to pounce. All that was left of their plan was to make a quick grab of Cal before Gene could try to stab, choke, or shoot her. Gene might or might not have truly been a Bear, but even if he weren’t, that didn’t mean he wouldn’t still behave like a wild animal. When wild animals got cornered, they weren’t predictable. Peter was counting on that unpredictability. It was the reason he was glad he had two bullets and not just one.

Maria headed in the direction from which she’d come, and Peter heard the truck’s gate being dropped. “L-lots of…lots of hay,” Kevin called out, likely for the sake of his mother at the door. Bryan had probably frightened him into stuttering. He was a big man and a stranger.

“The kids are clear. Don’t do anything stupid, mama,” Peter murmured. There was no way in hell Peter could fit through that tiny window, though he wished he could. He didn’t like the idea of sneaking up on an opponent and shooting him in the back, but if doing so meant there’d be less collateral damage all around, he’d suck it up and cry into his coffee about what had gone down later.

He couldn’t get in from there, and he didn’t want to give up his post at the window to use the back door, so he waited. Eventually, Gene would pass, and if he didn’t, there were other good guys waiting to grab him.

Peter chuckled low and shook his head. “When’d I become a good guy?”

He had to admit being firmly on the do-gooder side for once didn’t feel so bad. In fact, he thought he could get used to his new affiliation.

“See, Andrea. I can learn new tricks. Just be patient with me, sweetheart.”

So patient.

He was a fucking mess, and she was so young and naive. But, she was his mate. The Bear goddess forged that link, and he wasn’t going to ignore it thinking someone more suitable would come along for her. He seriously doubted that there could be anyone more suitable for
him
.

Shouldn’t we both get to be happy?

“You’ve got to let me give you a little something for the hay,” Cal said. “I know how much it’s worth with the weather being so dry last year. I won’t be able to sleep well tonight if I don’t try to make it up to you. You’re a good friend.”

A perfect stranger
.

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Jim said, “but if you insist…”

“I do.”

Footsteps—light ones—toward the rear of the house. Toward Peter.

She appeared in the room, and Gene zipped in right behind her, hissing.

“You stupid bi—”

Time seemed to slow, and Peter’s reflexes were cranked up as always. But Gene moved suddenly. Peter’s first shot grazed his cheek. He’d started to bend as Peter pulled the trigger.

Cal screamed at the noise of the gun—at the shock of Peter being in the window with the weapon, but she couldn’t have known why he was there, only that he was.

She recoiled, pulling away from Gene, who’d finally noticed Peter in the window. Gene yanked her by the arm and tried to put her in front of him, but then Bryan stepped into the room.

Gene was trying so hard not to get shot that he didn’t do anything to guard himself from other harm. Like Bryan’s fist sailing toward his head.

At the impact, Gene let go of Cal, and stumbled backward.

Before he fell, Peter fired, and the bullet hit Gene right in the face.

Peter hadn’t had to shoot him in the face. He’d just wanted to, and he hoped it hurt. He’d ask for repentance from whichever god cared later and would tell Andrea he was sorry for not doing better—for not aiming lower when he could have.

Bryan stared down at Gene for a while, and then nudged his limp body with the toe of his boot. “He’s not even worth
spitting
on.”

“I don’t know if I’d agree,” Peter said. Even with the man down for the count, Peter wanted to rip his limbs off and build a different fire for each. It wasn’t like he hadn’t done the same and
worse
before. Hiding evidence was one of Soren’s favorite tasks.

“Who are you?” the lady asked in a strained whisper.

“Best if you didn’t know,” Peter said. “We’re going to get out of your hair, and make sure Gene doesn’t bother you again.”

“For good?” Her expression shifted into a contorted mask that one quick stop away from uncontrollable sobbing. Peter had certainly seen that face enough times in his line of work.

Peter nodded. “For good. We’ll all see to it. Trust me. One way or another.”

Her tears fell. “Thank you. You’re a blessing. All of you.”

Not even Peter’s mother had ever told him that.

He was starting to wonder if he’d stepped into the Twilight Zone. He could hardly recognize his life anymore. It didn’t seem real.

Andrea had sat inside the Bear bunker outside of Gene’s cell for far too long, staring at the unconscious waste of skin and energy. She’d worked up entire monologues to tell him when he woke—litanies of complaints to make against him the second he opened his eyes.

But as soon as he did pick up his head and fix cold, black, soulless eyes on her, all she could do was choke back a sob and hurry away before he could see her tears fall.

She walked past Dustin at the guard desk, ignoring his query about her welfare.

She walked past Bryan and Tamara at the underground bunker’s entrance where they were on the phone coordinating schedules with Dana, who was back in Durham.

She walked past Eric, who’d left the bunker to get some air.

She even walked past Peter, who was perched on the bumper of his truck being very still, but she knew like the rest of the personnel milling around, he wasn’t being idle because there was nothing to do. He was resting because there was
more
to be done.

Word had gotten around quickly that they’d grabbed Gene, and apparently that made people feel safe enough to wag their tongues and spill all. Where those people had been when the Bears and Shrews were actively trying to locate Gene, Drea didn’t know, but their hesitance didn’t matter anymore. What mattered was that their lives were disordered because of Gene and they didn’t know how to quickly set things right again.

Get in line and take a number. We’re all screwed,
Drea mused as she walked toward nowhere in particular.

She couldn’t leave. She’d ridden west with Astrid, and Astrid wasn’t going back to Durham just yet. She had some business concerns to take care of for the lodge. Since Dana had already left, and Tamara wasn’t leaving for a few days, either, Drea didn’t have a ride.

Sighing, she stopped.

Turned.

Headed back toward the bunker.

Maybe I’ll try again with Gene. Get all the anger out.
She scoffed and batted at her short hair.
Yeah, right.

Peter straightened up from the truck bumper and put out an arm to stop her.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing.”

He let out a breath and gave her the tiniest pull closer to him. Her plodding feet were reluctant to let go of the ground they were seemingly tarred do, but all the same, she moved a few inches closer, facing him.

She raised her gaze slowly, afraid of what she’d see in his eyes. She hadn’t even managed to work up a good and acerbic barb to hurl at Gene for all the shit he’d put her through for all those years, but Peter had been there to grab him. He’d known what to do and when to act. He had to have been ashamed of her.

“I don’t believe you.” He trailed the pad of one calloused thumb along the bottom of her earlobe and then gave it a gentle tug.

“Well, then, I don’t know what to say.”

“Tell me you’re hungry.”

She closed her eyes and groaned.

“Are you?”

She sighed. Nodded. “I might have missed breakfast.”

“Let’s get something on the road, then. Tell Bryan you’re leaving.”

She opened her eyes, but kept her gaze focused downward at his chest. If she didn’t have to look at his face, she wouldn’t feel so compelled to perform.

You promised yourself you wouldn’t do that anymore.

There was no need for her to be anyone she wasn’t, but old habits were so hard to break.

“Where are we going?” she asked his chest.

“Not holing you up in another of my apartments, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She let out a short, quiet scoff. “I wouldn’t mind if you did. Having other people make the decisions most of the time makes me comfortable. Assuming they…have my best interests in heart, anyway.”

She didn’t have to say the name. Peter had to have known the exact person who’d done such a bad job fulfilling her needs, or even at simply being mindful of them.

“I think about little else but your best interests, Andrea.” He put his big hands on her shoulders, and squeezed a bit. Massaged a little. Pulled her closer when she dropped her guard. “In fact, I keep asking myself if your best interest would be me getting in my truck, going away, and not looking back.”

She looked up then—a reflexive action, her body responding instinctively to an undesirable stimulus. “Why would you do that?”

“I didn’t say I’m going to. I said, I keep
asking
. I know I’m probably not what you expected to get for a mate.”

“I could say the reverse is probably true as well.”

He shrugged. “That may be so, but the truth is, I can’t bring myself to go away. I can’t leave, unless I take you with me. I just
can’t
, and I don’t want to. If that makes me selfish, so be it. I’m having a hard time giving a damn.”

“I’m flattered that you feel that way,” she said timidly, “but I can’t help but to think you’ll change your mind soon and decide I’m not enough.”

“Why?”

She closed her eyes again and pinched the bridge of her nose. “To be an alpha Bear, you don’t know very much about them, do you?”

He didn’t say anything, but she sensed his movement.

She opened her eyes to see him gesturing to Bryan.

Bryan bobbed his head in acknowledgement and waved to Drea.

Peter crooked his thumb toward his vehicle. “Get in. I’ll take you home.”

“Don’t you have somewhere else you need to be?”

“Even if I did, if you wanted to go home, I’d take you home. Priorities shift, and I can’t think of a better reason to change mine.”

“Long drive.”

“Not really. Four-and-a-half hours. You’ll probably sleep through most of the trip. Bryan said you always sleep when vehicles are moving.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes at her brother. “I can’t help it.”

“Neither can my mother,” Peter said with a smile. “She falls asleep the moment the ignition is turned.”

Well, at least he’s not annoyed by it.

If her tendency to slumber in cars didn’t irritate him, she could think of numerous other bad habits of hers for him to get turned off by.

“Come on. If we leave now, you’ll be settled at home before primetime,” he said.

“What’s happening at primetime?”

“For once, nothing but television, I hope.” He canted his head toward the SUV once more. “Get in.”

“I—”

Whatever objection she was going to make quickly fell off her tongue at the sight of his quelling squint.

She closed her mouth, walked to the passenger side, got in, and then pulled her seatbelt across her body.

He did the same, and turned off the radio that had apparently been tuned to local police chatter.

Again, she was reminded of how different their lives were and worried they’d never find any common ground to come together. She was his mate, sure, but they could have children without having an actual relationship. That happened in shifter groups all the time. The commingling of genetics was more important than whether or not a child’s parents lived under the same roof. Drea wanted more than that, though. She wanted what Bryan and Tamara had. They were partners in all aspects of their lives, and so affectionate in spite of whom might have been looking.

“All right with a drive-through?” Peter asked as he turned the vehicle around. “We should eat now so we’re not too off-schedule for dinner.”

“I bet you’re like Bryan. Always hungry.”

Peter grunted. “Aggressive metabolism. If I didn’t get four or five meals per day, I’d probably lose twenty pounds in a month.”

She shuddered. “And there are two of you Ursu men. You and Soren probably never let a day go by without emptying a refrigerator.”

He grinned and got the SUV onto the road. “Sometimes I think that’s why my mother and father stopped at just the three children. They didn’t want to risk number four being another boy.”

“They like each other.” She rolled her eyes inwardly at the stupid remark. She was still trying to get used to be able to keep up with the beats of a conversation, and wasn’t good yet at engaging her verbal filter.

“My parents?” he asked.

“Yes. At Bryan and Tamara’s wedding, I watched your parents because they were funny.”

Peter cringed.

“You don’t think so?”

“Perhaps they are to outsiders, but they certainly kept an iron grip on Soren and me when we were growing up.”

“Maybe they knew you needed it.”

“Did you just insult me?”

Drea’s pulse crashed in her ears and gut seemed to plummet to her feet. Heat rushed up her neck to her face so fast that her head swam. “I—”

He laughed. “No need to be cruel, Andrea. I know I’m a hopeless case.”

She scooted lower in her seat as if making herself smaller would mitigate the effect of her words. Then she closed her eyes and groaned at herself.
Always so afraid to say things. You couldn’t even say anything to Gene.

Maybe one day, she’d be a more confident speaker, but she didn’t think that change was going to come soon.

She must have nodded off, because the next thing she knew, Peter was nudging a fast food bag toward her and cramming a drink into the cup holder.

She sat up quickly and clutched the big order on her lap. As the bleariness in her eyes cleared, the scent of hot fried chicken hit her nose. Maybe she didn’t have the best nose for a Bear, but that smell would have made anyone’s mouth water.

He pulled away, stuffing his wallet into the console, and she stared down into the bag.

“Hand me something,” he said.

“Anything in particular?”

“As long as it’s battered or fried, I don’t care.”

She rooted out a drumstick out with a napkin and handed it to him. Then she looked in the box in search of a breast. She’d always hated dark meat. Fortunately, Bryan hadn’t been picky when they were growing up. He’d always finished what was left on her plate. He was the reason, in fact, that she was out in the world and not
still
sitting at her parents’ kitchen table struggling to finish a meal. That had always been the Ridge rule—“you may leave the table when you’re done.”

Her portions had gotten smaller and smaller after puberty, and she still hadn’t been able to finish them. Her mother might have suspected that something was wrong with Drea, but couldn’t discern what, much less what to do about it. Bears weren’t generally susceptible to eating disorders.

“How do you feel about not living in the area anymore?” Peter asked through a mouthful of chicken.

“I guess I haven’t given the move too much thought. I like my job and my apartment, and there’s so much to do around the Triangle. I mean, not that I get out much. Getting out is hard. Someone always insists on escorting me, and everyone is always so busy. I’m looking forward to exploring. And getting out to the coast more, too.” She popped a potato wedge into her mouth and had a little salt orgasm. Her blood pressure shot up out of its lowdown baseline at the first chew.

“So, you’re not particularly eager to move back?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think so. The mountains are the Ridge Bears’ ancestral home, but I guess I’m ready for a fresh start. So many negative memories are attached to western North Carolina right now, and I’d like to pile some better memories on top of those before I even consider a move back.”

“I think that’s very reasonable.”

“Not cowardly?”

He furrowed his brow. “No. Not at all. Why would you think it is?”

“Because what I’m doing is running.”

“Sounds more like self-care to me.”

She chewed on that for a while along with her chicken.

“Sometimes, bravery is overrated, Andrea.”

“Says the alpha Bear.”

“My mother likes to remind both her sons that we got all the alpha shit and no common sense, so read into that what you will.”

“You make it sound like you’d change that if you could.”

“I don’t know about changing what I am, but…” He shrugged.

She held open an empty bag for him to toss his chicken bone into.

“I don’t know. I do wish for a little balance sometimes. I wish I could be more confident about some things and less certain about others. I get trapped in habits and they’re hard to break.”

“What kind of habits?”

“Like never being still. Never keeping an address for longer than a few weeks. Not having anything be stable, and I think for the longest time, that’s the way I wanted things. If you don’t commit, no one can fault you for failing.”

She bit off a piece of another potato wedge. “I’ve failed at lots of things I wanted to achieve.”

“Everyone fails at things. Some of those things matter, and some don’t. But the more important consideration is whether you cared enough to try in the first place. For a long time, there were things I wouldn’t even try to do because I knew I’d crash and burn.”

“Like what?”

“Getting a real job.”

“You have a real job.”

“You know what I mean. I’m talking about a job where I’m on someone’s payroll and there are clear performance expectations, and… Fuck, I don’t know. A retirement plan or something. And having a job like that means having a permanent address and belonging to a community somewhere. It’d mean uprooting myself would be letting a bunch of folks down. I’d have responsibilities to the people in the community, and them to me.”

“That’s not a bad thing.” She handed him another piece of chicken.

“I agree that it’s not, but I used to think so. Being a ghost who moved from place to place without forming attachments was easy, but life’s not supposed to be easy, is it?”

Drea let out a breath and then pulled in a long draw of soda. “Sure hasn’t been for me.”

“But things are getting better.”

“Sure, in some ways. I mean, I’m not paralyzed with fear and uncertainty anymore. Now I just have the usual sorts of confidence issues. I’m having to figure out who I am again and get to know myself. I don’t feel like the same person I was before the bear inside me left, and I keep expecting myself to respond to situations in certain ways. When the drive doesn’t start up, I’m slow to figure out an alternative action.”

“That’s not a bad problem to have. To me, though, you’re still the same Andrea.”