She couldn’t be more than sixteen—maybe even less. Her chin was narrow and pointed, her wide-set eyes an interesting shade of rusty amber. And the dirt and ragged denim couldn’t hide her long curves and the high bumps of her breasts. He didn’t know what had drawn him toward Warehouse Seventeen that afternoon, or why he’d gone toward the sounds of a fight when he normally would’ve headed the other way, but he knew one thing for certain: She wouldn’t last much longer on the streets without someone looking out for her.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She opened her mouth, hesitated, and then said, “Reese Montana.”
He snorted. “No, it’s not.” For one, she had stalled. For another, it sounded made up. Then again, “Snake Mendez” wasn’t exactly a winner in that department.
“It is now,” she said.
That he got. Most of the street rats he knew had run away from more than just a location, and many of them changed their names to avoid being scooped back up.
Something mean and nasty worked its way through him at the suspicion of what she was running from. For a mid-upper-class suburban kid—he got that from the way she talked and the oldest layer of ragged clothing— without an obvious attitude or drug problem to be on the streets like this . . . yeah. A hundred bucks said there had been a family member with grabby hands. He was going with that over outright beat-you-’til-you-bleed because she didn’t have that flinch-when-touched response. He should know.
It looked like she had taken—or at the very least ducked—a few punches recently though. She was squared off opposite him, ready to run or fight at a second’s notice. Her body vibrated, strung tight as shit, and with good reason. He had gotten her away from Hood and his fanged freaks, but for all she knew, he was just looking for some privacy.
“You’ll be safe here,” he said for like the fifth time. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him.
What the hell was he going to do with her? Teach her a few things and send her away? Keep her around? “You hungry?” he said when the silence got weird.
Her stomach grumbled in answer.
He grinned, then took a risk by turning his back on her to crouch and pull up the loose floorboard to reveal his food stash, which was heavy on the salt and protein his body craved, with some other randoms because a guy had to grab what he could get. “I’ve got pepperoni, mixed nuts, nachos, and this chipped-beef jerky crap. It tastes like cardboard and takes forever to chew, but it’ll keep you going.” When he looked up, though, he saw that she had crept toward him, her eyes locked on the edge of a bright orange wrapper. One of the randoms. He pulled it out, looked from it to her and back again. “Reese’s, huh?”
She nodded slowly, then lifted her eyes to his. They packed even more of a punch up close, sucking him in and making him suddenly all too aware of his body, and hers. She’s just a kid, asshole. Hands off.
A sad smile quirked the corners of her mouth. “My dad used to get them for me.” Then she pressed her lips together, like she wished she hadn’t said even that much.
He nodded, filing the info. The father hadn’t been the problem then. Stepfather? Uncle? Fucker. Even after everything that he’d seen and done—or fought off—since he’d been on his own, it pissed his shit right off to imagine someone going after her like that. I’ll protect you, he thought. I won’t let anybody else hurt you. He would do it for the baby sister he hadn’t been able to save. And he would do it for her, for this whiskey-eyed kid whose street luck had run out the moment Hood got his eyes on her and picked her to be the next in the rolling cast of disposable “girlfriends” he used up and tossed aside.
He needed to play it low key, though. Didn’t want to scare her off. “So why Montana?” he asked over the open food stash. “Is that where you’re from?”
“No, it’s . . . it’s stupid.”
He wiggled the peanut butter cups, holding them just out of reach. “Why Montana?”
She scowled. “That’s blackmail.”
“Technically, I think it’s extortion.” But it had gotten her attention without scaring her. “Why Montana?”
Rolling her eyes, she said, “Because when I was a little kid, before the—well, before things got bad—I had this poster of Montana in my room, on the wall over my bed.” She held out her hand. “Pay up, Hannibal.”
Hannibal? Oh, quid pro quo. “Not yet,” he said. “What did you like about the poster?”
“It had these mountains in it, with a big blue sky, green trees, wide-open field, the works. There was a man and a woman riding double on a spotted horse, headed for the hills.” She was flushed but her eyes were defiant. “At the bottom it said ‘Escape to Montana.? And if you laugh, I’ll break your nose.”
“No laughing.” He held up a hand. “Scout’s honor.”
Her eyes locked on the scar that ran along his lifeline. “You were a boy scout?”
“Nope.”
“Mendez, right?”
It was what Keban had called him—that and “boy” or “pussy,” depending—because he said he hadn’t earned his bloodline name yet, probably never would. “Yeah, it’s Mendez.” But then he surprised himself by saying, “You can call me Dez.”
“Dez,” she said it slowly, trying it out, as if she somehow knew he’d never used the nickname before. Then she nodded. “Okay, Dez. What’s the deal here?”
“Beats the hell out of me.” He held out the candy. “Earlier today, something told me to go into that warehouse even though I usually stay the hell out of Cobra business. Now, that same something is telling me we should stick together, watch each other’s backs, stay out of Hood’s way. That sort of thing.” Mentally, he added: get you your GED, a job, and up and out of this hellhole. Because she sure as shit didn’t belong down there in the stews.
She took the chocolate, but shot him a long look under lowered brows. “That’s it? Watch each other’s backs? Nothing else?”
His fingers tingled where they had brushed against hers, but he shook his head. “Not the way you’re thinking.”
Because although most of Keban’s “lessons” might’ve been cracked crocks of shit, a few that made sense had stuck. And one that had gelled on a gut level said a man didn’t take a mate until he had everything else under control.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
December 17
Solstice minus four days
After being cooped up in emergency confabs all morning, Sven was feeling seriously squirrelly. The news was bad and more bad: two more villages had been taken, and Lucius and the others hadn’t been able to pinpoint the fifth artifact, figure out what “dark lord” Iago planned to summon, or zone in on where the bastard was hiding or how he would attempt to set off the weapon now that he had at least four of the five pieces, maybe even the fifth. Reese was recovering, but slowly, and that had tied up Mendez, who refused to leave her for long. Strike was looking seriously ragged around the edges, and Nate and several of the others had been shooting Sven strange looks for the past couple of days, like they were afraid he was going to pass out again, or worse.
I’m not your problem, he had wanted to snarl at them, but kept that one to himself. He had been keeping lots of things to himself lately, including the headaches and the dragging fatigue. Sasha’s chu’ul magic hadn’t helped with the symptoms, so why bitch about them? For all he knew, they were in his head, just like the funky dreams he’d been having, where smells and sounds were amplified, his perceptions altered, and he awoke with a keen sense of loss, like he was missing something important.
Before, he would’ve taken one of the dune buggies out, or headed over to one of the nearby lakes and bummed a boat. Now, he prowled the halls of Skywatch, not sure what the hell he was looking for anymore. All he knew was that it wasn’t in the mansion.
