Dennis Howe hated small towns. They didn’t have the money that would support a large hospital, and if he had to be in a small town for more than a couple of days, he always made sure there was a helicopter pad nearby to have him flown out if anything should happen to him. He had no idea why on earth Dr. Nola—Gabriela—had come to this little hick town. But he was going to do everything within his power to get her to go back with him. She just didn’t understand what she was doing to him...to his hospital by leaving the way she had.
His appointment with her was at ten. Making an appointment like he was a patient was beneath him, but it was the only way he could see her. No one in this little town would tell him where she was staying. There wasn’t any listing for her in the phone book. And he was pretty sure that even had he called her, she wouldn’t have seen him. No, he thought, this was the best way possible to talk to her.
Dennis could have had any time he wished to see her. Gabe had a lot of openings today, the nurse told him. That alone showed him, and should her as well, that he was right in telling her she needed to return to the hospital. Early was good. He thought if he could get in and convince to return with him, he’d have to spend as little time as possible here.
When his name was called, he went to the reception desk. That was all it was too, a desk. Not a fancy window that slid back and forth, but a big antique looking desk that had pictures and flowers on it. Dennis thought it was the most unprofessional thing he’d ever seen.
Then there was the décor of the office itself. It looked as if someone had gone to a flea market and bought every tacky thing they could find. There were old tin signs on the walls that touted elixirs. One whole wall was dedicated to framed bottles of old medicines. Some of them were items that his hospital hadn’t used for decades. There just wasn’t any profit in them any longer.
The furniture didn’t match anything. Large overstuffed chairs sat alongside of something his mom would have called pressed back kitchen chairs. A large old trunk in the corner overflowed with toys and games. A ladder was leaning against one of the walls with hanging magazines over each of the rungs. Dennis thought that this McCade person should be horsewhipped for having so little care about how he projected himself in this office.
Then there was the building itself. It was in a large warehouse in which someone had divided up the rooms to make it look homey, he supposed. He could see the profit in it. There would be at least two dozen rooms beyond here, he’d bet. A doctor could see as many as twenty patients an hour with all the room, and really turn a good profit if they’d only clean up the front area. That was the smartest move anyone could have made, he supposed. Get a lot in, spend no more than three minutes with each person, then move on. Yes, that was wise on the owner’s part. But for some reason, Dennis was sure that the doctor took his time, five minutes with each person, before moving on, cutting his profit in half. Stupid hick.
He smiled now at the woman who sat at the desk, handing her the paperwork that he’d not filled out. “I just want to have a conversation with Dr. Nola. I don’t need to see her as a patient. I told you this an hour ago when I got here.”
“You sure did.” She stood up and Dennis took a step back. He’d not realized how tall or large she was. “But I also told you to fill it out so I can get a record of your visit. Now, you wanna see Dr. McCade, then you fill this out right—”
“Dr. Nola. Gabe, I want to see.... Christ, am I at the wrong clinic? How many of them are there in his stupid town?” She growled, actually growled at him. And when she shoved the clipboard with the broken pen attached at him, he had no choice but to take it. “I need to see Dr. Nola.”
“You said that. And as soon as you fill out that paperwork, like I’ve told you several times now, then you can go on back and see her. And so you know, there ain’t but one clinic in this town, and Dr. Nola is no longer Nola. She got herself a man.”
Dennis sat. She found herself a man? What the fuck did that mean? He looked down at the form in front of him and started filling in the blanks while his mind worked out the problem it was going to be with her having a man, and what that would mean to him. He surmised that was what the woman meant when she said that Gabe had a man, since she was now going by McCade. How the hell had that happened so fucking fast?
When he was finished, he took the clipboard to the desk. He wanted to tell the woman that he didn’t appreciate her attitude or her tone with him, but he said nothing. She might make him sit there longer, and he really did want to get out of there.
“I’ll take you right back, Mr. Howe.” Nodding, still biting his tongue, he was nearly run down by a little boy. The kid just smiled as he moved past him and into one of the many rooms. “Don’t mind him. His momma just got a job, and we’re keeping an eye on him today.”
“You run a daycare center here as well?” She just glared at him. “How is this place even staying in business? Do you have any idea what sort of standards you’re violating?”
“There are standards and there are standards. We like our little place here, and besides, Jeremy there needs someone like us watching over him on account’a he has a cold. Snotty nose and all. I sure do hope you don’t get it. It’ll have you draining from every hole you got on your face.”
She was still laughing at him when she showed him in the room. As soon as she shut the door he went to the little sink and began washing his hands. That was all he needed, to be sick.
Sitting in the large wingback chair, he realized that he’d been wrong about the patients’ rooms. They were entirely too large. This one looked to be the size of his bedroom at the breakfast place he was staying tonight. When he did a quick calculation in his head, he thought there could only be about five rooms behind the desk, and that would seriously cut back on their profit margin. Dennis was going to write up a little report for the owner when he left, as a gift for taking Dr. Nola...McCade back with him.
When she came into the room with him, he could tell that she was upset. He’d be that way too if he had to work here, or even had to stay in this town. Dennis stood up and offered her his hand and his sympathy in all that she’d had to endure.
“You’re sorry? For what? You have no idea what you’re talking about, Dennis. I’ve had nothing but a wonderful experience working here. Now, what do you want?” He was flabbergasted by her statement. “Dennis, I have three more patients today, and you’re taking time from them. What do you want?”
“Three? It’s only just after one. You should have at least....” He did the math in his head quickly. “There should be as many as fifty more people to see today. What are you doing? Spending hours with each person? That won’t do…how will you make any money?”
“It’s not always about that, Dennis. It’s more of the thought of paying that makes this job perfect. Why, just this morning I got paid with a quilt. It’s quite beautiful, and I’m excited about putting it on my bed. Yesterday a woman brought me eggs and home-cured bacon. We’re having that for dinner tonight, with some homemade biscuits.” He was shocked that she’d fallen so far beyond what he wanted for her. “I want you to tell me what you’re doing here.”
“I’ve come here to take you back to work. I can’t believe I have to say this to you, but Gabe, you’ve really fallen in with the wrong group. I’m betting that you’re not getting paid as much as you were making working for my hospital. Nor, and this is quite obvious, nor are you as happy as you think you are. Bacon and quilts? How the hell do you expect to make any sort of profit if you’re taking goods over money to pay bills? What do you do about prescriptions? Do you call in some voodoo witch to chant over them, and then let her have a chicken?”
“Don’t be obtuse. Of course we can’t use the witch. She’s on her honeymoon with the local troll.” He wondered if she was joking, but she continued before he could ask. “Actually, I’m so happy I could just about bust. And I am making more money for the simple reason that I don’t have to kill myself every day to pick up the slack of other doctors who don’t show up.” She went to the little refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of water. After offering him one, she sat down. “I’m not overworked or stressed out, and I have time to have a nice lunch. Today I had a juicy hamburger with fries that my husband made me. He’s a grill cook at the local diner. And you know what was the best part? I got to eat the entire thing and not have to wolf it down like an animal so that I could hurry back to work. It was wonderful. It was liberating.”
“Husband? You can’t be serious. People like you don’t marry. And doctors do not marry grill cooks. What have they been giving you? Drugs?” She stood up and Dennis pushed her back down. “Look. I’ll book us a flight out of here and we’ll set you up in a nice hotel for a few days, to make sure that kid out there didn’t give you something. That’s all it is, more than likely, you have a fevered brain. Then after that, I’ll put you on the schedule and you’ll get back to the way things were before. I’m telling you, when you gave your notice I thought for sure you’d be back by now. And this time you’re going to have a nice contract with no loopholes in it. That one you had your attorney fix up was really bad of you. It allowed you things that I never thought you’d follow through on. Well, it’s all water under the bridge now and taken care of. You leaving like you did wasn’t very professional of you.”
“I gave my notice, Dennis. And I worked it out to the end. It’s not my fault that you couldn’t get anyone to replace me. I’m not going anywhere with you.” He told her that he’d not even tried to find her replacement. “Then that’s your loss. As I said, I’m not going back to work for you.”
She stood up and he pushed her back down again. He had no idea where she thought she was going, but he wasn’t finished. But before he could launch into another reason she had to return with him, she hit him, knocking him back into the chair across from her and bloodying his nose.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” She told him she wasn’t going to be pushed around. “You were leaving and I’m not finished speaking yet. What brought that on? I’ll expect you to apologize to me right now. That isn’t any way to treat your boss, Gabe.”
“You aren’t my boss and never will be again. I told you when I left I was finished. I’m working here now and I love it.” He took the tissues when she handed them to him. “I think you need to leave, Dennis. I don’t even know why you came here. Or how you got it in your head that I was going to go anywhere with you.”
“I think you’re thinking of this all wrong, Gabe. You can’t be happy here, married to some cook. What the hell were you thinking marrying anyway? You know as well as I do that he’s going to expect you to support him. And what sort of money could you be making here to afford that? No, you’re not seeing this right. I’ll just make the arrangements and you’ll come back with me.”
“No.” He let out a long breath. This wasn’t going the way he wanted it to and he was beginning to get angry. “You need to leave.”
“Gabe, you don’t know what you’re saying.” He watched her go to the door and open it. The big man, Kenton, as she called him, came in the room too. Dennis stood up and tried to make himself taller by bouncing on his toes and heels. It wasn’t working. Whatever they were feeding these monster sized men around here, it was working. “I was just talking to Gabe here, telling her that she needs to come back with me.”
“My sister isn’t going anywhere unless she wants to.” Dennis looked from her to the man. “Yes, you heard me, she’s my sister. As of the moment she and Dalton got together.”
“Dalton? The burger flipper?” Kenton nodded. “I see. Your mother must be so proud. A doctor and a burger flipper. What else is in the family? A child molester?”
He should have seen it coming. Dennis knew he’d gone too far with the comment about the molester. But he’d been trying to make a point. The fist to his face, he supposed, was the good doctor’s way of making his point. Dennis felt his head explode in pain. And then nothing.
~~~
Dalton laughed every time he looked at the unconscious man on the gurney. He had both his eyes blackened, his nose was obviously broken, and he was going to need stitches to put his lips back in the right place. He wondered what would have happened to his poor face had Gabe not been there to pull Kenton off the man.
“You think he’ll press charges?” Dalton told the cop it was clearly self-defense. “How did you come up with that one?”
Dalton was there as a civilian, but it didn’t mean that he wasn’t concerned with the law. Not that the other police were treating him that way, more like he was lead man on the case, but he pointed to the overhead cameras in the office where the man had been.
“My wife said that he pushed her a couple of times too when she tried to leave the office. I guess that he gave Sharon a hard time as well.” The cop, Billy was his name, looked shocked. No one messed with Sharon and got away with it. “This man has been brewing trouble since he arrived late last night.”
“I’ll take him to the cell then. You coming by to talk to him later?” Dalton reminded him again that he was no longer employed as a cop. “Yeah, you said that, but we all think of you as one of us still. You come on and talk to him later, and we’ll make sure that the cameras are off in there, if you know what I mean.”
“I do, and you’ll do no such thing. That’ll get all of us in trouble if you try something like that.”
The cop nodded and walked away. Christ, what the hell was wrong with people nowadays? Dalton went to find Kenton and Gabe. They were in Kenton’s office going over the event with another officer.
“Do you think he’ll leave now? Without taking me with him?” Dalton told Gabe that he doubted it. “Yeah, more than likely not. He seems to think that I’ve really lowered myself by marrying a burger flipper.”
“It was when he insulted Mom that got me. To think she’d be ashamed of any of us for doing what we want.” Dalton sat down as Kenton continued. “I have to say, I was really surprised when you showed up. I thought for sure you were going to shift into your dragon and kill him. Christ, I don’t think we could take another clean up like we had with Emma’s mother. That was a mess.”
“It was.”
As Kenton explained to Gabe about the men who had come in to kill Emma and her mother pretending to be dead, Dalton thought about his new job. He really did like it, and he hadn’t felt this good in a very long time. Looking up when Kenton said his name, he realized that his beautiful mate was nowhere to be seen.
“I asked her to take a patient of mine for me. I wanted to talk to you.” Dalton nodded and asked him what was up. “Have you spoken to Vance lately? I mean, I noticed that his house was being worked on. I wondered if you knew anything about that.”
“No, I know that Kurt is watching over things for him, and that Opal has finally moved in with Kurt because of something that Vance said to her. I don’t know what it might have been, but it must have worked.” He told him about the cigarettes in the warehouse, but nothing about him being hurt. “What’s going on?”
“I got an email from him earlier this morning. You know how he can be when it comes to speaking, his emails are pretty much the same. But all it says is, ‘The next one is coming.’” Dalton asked if he meant the next woman. “Yes, and I have a feeling that he’s not going to come home until we can figure out if this person is Lewis’s mate or not. It would be like him to do something like that.”
“Pretty much. I did point out once, a while back, that we’d all have to be mated to bring this thing to fruition, and he snorted at me. I think he believes there is no one out there for him. I mean, he is a little intense.” Kenton just rolled his eyes. “I guess we’ll have to get things ready here too. Be better prepared. I’m really surprised that no one has come for Gabe.” Dalton thought of the conversation he’d had with Vance, and his promise not to tell anyone most of it. “Grady knows where the next pieces are, right? And I know that we all agreed that we’d be better off just making sure that they’re all right and not go to them. I get that. But what if Vance is out there watching over one of them now? I mean, that could be what he’s about, couldn’t it?”
“I guess. I think we should have paid more attention to Vance when he was younger. He’s gotten away from us.” No shit, Dalton thought, but said nothing. “You think he’s all right? I mean, we’ve all said that he looks really burnt out. I don’t want him to think that just because he’s not here, that we don’t worry about him anyway.”
“I think, and you know as well as I do, that Vance does what he wants. But I think that if he needed us, he’d come for help. He might be really stressed and this badassed guy, but I will never believe that he’s stupid. Do you?” Kenton shook his head, but he didn’t look sure. Dalton thought he’d ease his mind. “He asked me to help him with this cigarette bust soon. I don’t know what he wants me to do, but I jumped at the chance to help him. And since I’m not a cop anymore, I mean officially someone that has to follow the rules, I think we’ll work well together. Don’t you?”
“Yes, I do. And I’m glad you’re going to be helping him out. I just wish he’d come home to us. For good.”
Dalton said nothing. He wasn’t sure that Vance would be able to settle down. Vance was sort of...he was militarized, he thought. Too much death and destruction to have him ever be anything but a hard core killer.
Their mom showed up about an hour later and told them that she had a date with Gabe. They were going shopping for wedding things. Dalton was glad that he had to work the evening shift. He did not want to have to go to the mall with his mom. He loved her to pieces, but she could shop like it was an event and she was going for the big prize. Just keeping up with her when she walked the place was hard enough, but shopping was worse. She could find a sale better than anyone he knew, and still get a better price than it was marked. Dalton thought about warning Gabe, but decided that she was on her own with this one. Laughing, he made his way back to the diner.
He knew something had to be done about the station house. There wasn’t really anyone there equipped to handle the daily in and out of things. A schedule, he knew, could take hours, what with all the part timers working for the city. And now that it was coming up on the holidays, he knew for a fact it would be a nightmare. When he’d gone in yesterday to pick up his few things, he’d told them that he was done when asked if he could come and cover.
“I was told flat out that if I didn’t take the commander job then I wasn’t going to be thought of as a cop any longer. I was, plainly put, threatened.” Two of the men he’d worked with for years told him how rotten that was of them. “Well, it could be, I guess. But to be honest with you, I’m sort of happy. I can spend time with my family, and that’s something that I’ve not had a lot of time to do lately. And with a new wife soon, I’ll have the energy to keep up with her. Then sometime down the road, I can be a house dad and have a lot more fun than filling out paperwork all the time.”
“You enjoy them while you can, Dalton. Too soon they’re all gone, and then you got nobody.” He nodded at Walter, the oldest cop they had working there. “I miss old Harold, I do, and you too, but if I could do it, I’d be gone from here. I have three kids living with me again and they’re not working. Hard life having to re-raise your kids. And their kids too.”
Dalton knew that Walter’s kids were taking advantage of the elderly man. They’d been offered employment, working for his family or the pack doing construction jobs and such. But each of them had said that it was beneath them to be working menial jobs. He’d have Kenton talk to them. That would put a fire under their asses.
The diner was busy when he arrived. Just as he was setting up to watch what Gerald did for the night shift meals he felt the touch of one of his family. He held onto the table when his mom spoke.
I’m to tell you that I’m all right and so are the rest of us. He told her that was good. Yes, you bet it is. But I think you need to come here to talk to poor Gabe. She’s having a hard time right at the moment.
What happened? His mom hesitated and he moved to the main part of the diner to talk to Milly. Mom, I’m starting to freak out a bit, so tell me or I’m going to come there hell bent on leather.
A man approached us and started talking to Jasmine about her earrings. I didn’t think a thing about it, just so you know, but Emma backed away from him. He told Milly that someone had been hurt and she told him to go. I should have listened to her. Had I done that then....
His mom was crying. Dalton felt it with his whole heart. Whatever had happened, it was too much for her. Just as he was coming out of the diner, he saw Kenton getting in his car and decided that he’d ride with him. Jorden and Grady joined them before they could leave. Dalton told them what he knew.
Mom, what happened? They could all hear Kenton asking her…it was the family link, he called it, and it would be much faster this way than her telling him then him repeating it to the others. We’re on our way, but you have to tell us what we’re coming up on.
He’s dead. Dalton felt his skin crawl and knew it was his dragon. I don’t think she meant to kill him…I know that…but he grabbed me and tried to get the others to listen. Once he wouldn’t listen, Gabe killed him.
Was he one of the dragon slayers, Mom? She said that she had no idea why, but she thought it was simply a robbery. That he’d tried his best to take her purse and her. And did he have a weapon?
Yes. She sobbed again. He had it right at my head, like he was going to fire it at any second. I don’t care for that feeling, let me tell you. I don’t ever want to.... Then Gabe told him that she’d had these lessons, and that if he didn’t let me go she was going to hurt him. But he would not listen. Why wouldn’t he just do as she asked him? Politely too, I might add. But he had to be all macho, Emma called it, and now he’s dead. Just dead.
We’re here now, Mom. Where are you? Mom told them what store they were near and that there was a huge crowd around them. Don’t talk to anyone. We’re on our way in now.
They located the women when they arrived. The security cops seemed to have no idea what they were doing, and the crowd was standing in what Dalton would consider evidence. But the moment that he saw Gabe, Dalton knew that he had to go to her. She looked beaten. As soon as he touched her arm and said her name, she broke down. Dalton picked her up in his arms and held her to his chest as the others made sure that everyone was all right.