What He Shields (What He Wants Book Seventeen) (15 page)

I got out of Colt’s car and walked toward Loose
Cannons.
 
Well, it was more like
stomping, actually.
 
By the time I
got to the back entrance, I was pissed as hell.
 
I hesitated for a second at the door
that said employees only, wondering what I would do if there was a security
guard or someone standing inside who was going to ask me what I was doing.

But then I realized I didn’t care if there
was.
 
In fact, I almost welcomed
it.
 
I hoped someone did try to stop
me.
 
I’d tell them I’d been the
victim of a purse snatching, and it was none other than their owner, Colt
Cannon, who’d done it.

I flung open the door.
 
But there was no one waiting on the
other side.

I was in some kind of back hallway, where
everything was dark and quiet.
 
The
walls and floor were made of cinderblocks, and the faint smell of smoke wafted
through the air.
 
It was slightly
chilly, like maybe there were no heating vents back here.

 
To
my right was a dead end, and to the left the hallway stretched about a hundred
feet before turning to the right and merging with another corridor.
 
I could see brighter light shining from
the other hallway, which probably led to the main part of the club. It must
have been some kind of utility or delivery entrance I’d just come through.

I turned to my left and starting making my way
to the end of the hallway.
 
I only
passed one door, a heavy black one with a laminated sign that read “
KITCHEN.”When
I got to the end of the hall, I followed the
light and turned into the other corridor.
 
This one was bright and carpeted and warm, and I could hear the low
murmur of voices coming from somewhere nearby, but I still couldn’t see anyone.

Part of me wanted to turn around and head back
to the car, but the bigger part of me was saying, screw it.
 
What did I expect, that I would open the
door and Colt would just be sitting there, waiting with my purse?
 
And it wasn’t like I was doing anything
wrong by being here.
 
He took my
purse.
 
I had a right to follow him
if I wanted to.

I took a deep breath and started walking down
the hall.
 
All the doors leading off
it were made of heavy oak, with glass windows, like you would see in an office
building.

One of the doors was open, and I made my way
toward it carefully, hoping that if Colt
wasn’t
in the
room, whoever it was would be friendly.
 
Or at least know where he was.

I crept closer and that’s when I heard it
– the sound of someone crying.
 
A girl.
 
She was sobbing, the
kind of sobs I knew all too well.
 
The kind of sobs you made when you were tortured by something, when
you’d sunk to a depth of despair you weren’t even sure was possible.

I had a partial view into the room now, and it
looked like a lounge or break room.
 
There was a leather couch pushed up against the wall with a
cream-colored marble coffee table sitting in front of it.

A girl with long blonde hair was sitting on the
couch, hunched over, her hair falling into her face.
 
She was wearing tight gold spandex
shorts and an oversized navy sweatshirt.
 
It was an odd outfit to be wearing, but maybe someone had given her the
sweatshirt because she was cold.

There was a guy sitting next to her, young,
maybe a couple years older than me.
 
He had his arm around the blond girl and he pulled her close to him
while she cried. She shifted on the couch and pushed her hair back from her
face.
 
She was startlingly pretty,
with a gorgeous, perfect complexion that was dewy and glowing.
 
Her lashes were long, and even though
she was crying, there was no mascara dripping down her face.

But there was a huge red welt on one of her
cheeks, the kind of welt you got from someone hitting you.
 
I’d had a lot of experience with welts
like those.
 
They were red as soon
as you got them, and then they turned into nasty bruises.
 
I would bet anything the girl’s cheek
was going to be all kinds of shades of blue and purple in a few hours.

“It’s okay,” the guy said, trying to soothe
her.
 
“You’re safe now, it’s
okay.”
 
His voice was cracking,
though, almost like he knew it wasn’t going to be okay at all.

The girl moved again, turning her face and
burying it in the guy’s chest.
 
I
almost gasped when she did.
 
There
was a long jagged scratch down the side of her neck, and her hair on one side
was shorter than the rest,
ending
 
right
above her ear.
 
It looked like maybe someone had taken a
pair of scissors to the girl’s beautiful hair and just started whacking away.

Something about the whole scene was extremely
eerie and creepy and put me on edge.
 
I quickly moved pass the doorway, hoping they were too caught up in
their own situation to realize I was there.
 

The rest of the doors were dark, and I kept
going, not looking inside any of them for fear of what I might see.
 
All I wanted was to get my purse and get
out of there.
 
There was a certain
feeling I would get sometimes, an instinct or a sixth sense that told me when I
needed to get out of a certain place, or avoid a certain person.
 
It was a feeling, deep in my gut, that
made the blood rush through my ears and my stomach burn.
 
I was getting that feeling now.

I thought about going back out the service
entrance, then doubling around to the front of the building and asking for
Colt, but I didn’t want to walk by the couple in that room again.
 
Even though I hadn’t seen anything that
horrible, I had a feeling that the less I knew about whatever was going on, the
better.
 
And I didn’t want to get
caught by them, whoever they were.

Plus, I was pretty sure that if I kept walking
I would find Colt, because where else could he be?
 
Unless he cut through the kitchen and
out into the front of the club, he had to be in one of these rooms.

I was almost to the end of the corridor and
starting to think that Colt wasn’t back here after all, that I was going to
have to double back down the hall anyway, when I heard his voice.

It was low and serious, coming from the very
last room at the end of the hall.
 
I
made my way down there, and as I got closer, I was able to start picking up the
conversation.

“…
go
to the police,”
Colt was saying.

“You know we can’t let that happen, Colt,” came
the reply.
 
It was a deep voice,
that of an older man, and I was pretty sure I recognized it as the voice on
Colt’s
speaker phone
in the car.
 
Mick, the caller ID had said.

“Bullshit we can’t let it happen,” Colt
said.
 
He was talking louder now.

“Keep your fucking voice down.”

“No,” Colt said.
 
“There’s no way, Mick.
 
It’s not what he would have wanted.”

“Let it go, Colt,” Mick said. “They wouldn’t do
anything anyway.”

“You don’t know that! And that doesn’t even
fucking matter.
 
What matters is
that she –”

“What matters is that she got what she
deserved,” Mick said.
 
A shiver went
down my spine.
 
Something about the
way he said that reminded me of my foster father, Karl, who used to say things
like that all the time.
 
If he hit
us, if he yelled at us, if he kept food from us, well, in Karl’s opinion,
everyone got what
they
deserved.
 
It didn’t matter if you hadn’t done
anything.

“You fucking bastard,” Colt said, and the sound
of something scraping across the floor echoed through the hallway.
 
“If you ever say –”

There was a huge crash then, like a chair or
something being thrown to the ground.

“Listen to me, you little shit,” Mick
said.
 
“You’re not in charge around
here
 
So
shut
your mouth, Colt, or I’ll kick you out on your ass faster than you can say
‘fuck you.’”

I frowned.
 
I didn’t get it.
 
Why was
Mick saying he was going to kick Colt out on his ass?
 
How could he when Colt was the owner of
the club?
 
Of course, no one had
actually told me he was the owner of Loose Cannons, I’d just assumed it from
the way he carried himself, and because of that fact that he was in charge of
hiring.
 
But maybe I had it wrong.

I waited for Colt to fire back at him,
wondering what I should do if it became clear they were really fighting.
 
Should I go in there and break it
up?
 
Or just let them fight it out?

But I didn’t have to worry about that, because
a second later, a man came barreling out of the room and into the hallway.
 
Mick.
 
He was wearing a blue and black flannel
shirt over a pair of stone washed jeans.
 
There were work boots on his feet and he stomped by me down the hall.

I held my breath and waited for him to ask me
what the hell I was doing there, but he didn’t even look at me.
 
He just pushed by me, his weathered face
crinkled into annoyance.

I let out the breath I was holding and peeked
into the room Mick had just left.

Colt was standing there, his hands gripping the
edge of a huge desk, his head lowered. “Fuck,” he swore under his breath.
 
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”
 
He stood up and slammed his fist down on
the desk.
 
Once.
 
Twice.
 
Three times.

“Wow,” I said, leaning against the
door frame
.
 
“Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

He looked up, his eyes blazing, ready to get in
a fight with the first person he saw.
 
That’s how angry he was.
 
I
recognized it because I’d had that kind of anger inside of me before.
 
But instead of expressing it the way
Colt was doing, I pushed it down as far as I could, until I couldn’t control it
anymore.
 
And then I would cut
myself.
 

You could argue that Colt’s way of dealing with
his emotions was healthier, that at least he was trying to release them.
 
But I knew better – you didn’t get
that angry in the first place unless there was something unhealthy going on in
your life.
 
Out-of-balance emotions
were the product of an out-of-balance life.

You’d think that since I knew that, I should be
able to fix the things that were making me feel that kind of pain.
 
But it was one thing to understand
why
you had anger, or felt the need to
cut yourself.
 
It was quite another
to try and fix whatever it was that was causing it.

“What are you doing here?” Colt said when he
realized it was
me
.
 
“I told you to stay in the car.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not good at following directions”

“You shouldn’t be here,” Colt said.
 
“Go back to the car, Olivia.”
 
I didn’t like the way he said my name
this time, like he was in charge of me, like I needed to be scolded.

“No,” I said.
 
“Not until you give me back my purse.”

“I’m not letting–” he started.
 
But then he shook his head.
 
“Fine,” he said.
 
“You want your bag?
 
Here.
”
 
He reached over and picked my purse up
from where it was sitting on the windowsill.
 
“Here you go.
 
Now you’re free to go back to the
shelter, take the city bus, sleep on the streets, whatever it is you’re
determined to do.”

“Thanks,” I said, reaching out to take it from
him.
 
Our fingertips brushed, and I
wasn’t sure if it was my imagination or not, but I felt like he hung onto my
bag for a beat longer than was necessary, like he wanted me to stay.

Our eyes met, and my breath hitched.
 
For the first time, I saw something
beneath the surface in him –
hurt.
 
I thought about his anger just now, how
he pounded the desk like he did, how that man Mick was yelling at him, and I
wondered if there was more to Colt than I’d first thought.