Chapter 3

“Mason flat-out told me to stay away from his daughter.” Max and some of the other guys on the team were in the equipment room cleaning their weapons. They really weren’t dirty, but that’s the way it was in SWAT. If you had everything else done and found yourself with a few free minutes, Gage put you to work. “He actually said she’s out of my league and that I need to back off. I felt like I was in some kind of frigging Taylor Swift music video.”

Cooper looked up from the pistol he was cleaning, mouth set in his trademark smirk. “What the heck does Taylor Swift have to do with you and Lana?”

Max looked at Becker, who wasn’t much older than he was, knowing he’d get the reference. They both laughed, while Brooks, Diego, Zane, and Senior Corporal Trey Duncan, one of the Pack’s two medics, stared at them like pigs looking at a Rolex. At least Tuffie seemed to understand the analogy. The adorable pit bull mix the SWAT team had adopted regarded the older werewolves in the room like they were dense before giving Max a doggy grin.

“Forget it, dude,” Max told the team’s explosives expert. “You’re too old to get the cultural reference, Cooper. The important thing is that Mason is damn serious about keeping me away from his daughter.”

Cooper shrugged. “Can’t really blame the man. If I had a daughter, I wouldn’t want you near her, either.” He ran a brush over the barrel of his Sig Sauer automatic. “It’s nothing personal. The deputy chief probably took one look at you and imagined how hideous your children would be. No one wants ugly grandchildren.”

Max snorted, giving his fellow werewolf the finger. “Nice.”

Cooper laughed. “Tell me again what it is Lana supposedly sees in you?”

He and Cooper might be buddies, but that didn’t stop Max from picking up a bottle of gun cleaner so he could throw it at him. Brooks stopped him with a look.

“Forget Cooper,” Brooks said. “What are you going to do about Mason? Are you planning to keep your distance?”

Max shook his head, not shocked Brooks had changed the subject. The senior corporal was one of the peacemakers in the Pack, always making sure things didn’t get out of hand, which could happen easily enough. They were a close pack, but with a team full of alphas, fights could break out at any time. In fact, they frequently did.

“Hell no,” Max said. “Lana and I are going out tonight.”

Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at him in surprise. Even Tuffie seemed shocked.

“Two dates back to back with the deputy chief’s daughter?” Trey let out a low whistle. “Lana must be pretty frigging special.”

Max’s mouth edged up. Saying Lana was special was an understatement. When they’d kissed last night, it had been hard to keep from completely losing it. He’d never had the urge to bite a woman’s neck while making out, but with her, the desire was definitely there. She tasted so good he wanted to eat her up.

Then there was the way his body had reacted to those kisses. It almost bordered on scary. He’d gotten hard as a rock within seconds and stayed like that until taking a cold shower this morning before leaving for work. He’d laid awake the entire night staring at the ceiling and reliving how amazing it felt to have Lana in his arms. He was getting excited all over again just thinking about it.

“I don’t think you need to reply to that question,” Cooper said with a laugh. “I’m pretty sure we already know the answer.”

Max looked at his pack mates in confusion. “What do you mean?”

Around him, his teammates chuckled and shook their heads.

“Your eyes are glowing and your canines just popped out,” Brooks finally explained, still grinning. “And if those two things weren’t a dead giveaway, your pheromones would be. It smells like you’re close to blowing a gasket.”

Zane squirted more gun cleaner on the rag in his hand. “Don’t be embarrassed. You’re still young. You’ll learn more control once you’ve finished going through puberty.”

Max grunted, opening his mouth to come back with a witty reply and nearly sliced off his tongue on his fangs. Damn, he hadn’t even felt them extend. Abruptly, what Brooks had said about him being excited hit him.

“Shit,” he muttered.

Embarrassed, he tried to shift the major boner in his uniform pants into a more comfortable position. That worked about as well as could be expected. There really wasn’t any way to get comfortable when your dick was as hard as a crowbar. When the guys only laughed harder, he bared his fangs at them and growled.

Brooks glanced up from the M4 he was cleaning. “So, this thing with Lana must be serious if she’s getting to you this fast.”

Max nodded since denying it would have been a waste of time. “Yeah, I guess it is. I’ve never met anyone like Lana before. All it takes is a smile from her and my heart starts to beat out of control.”

“You make any headway on figuring out what kind of werewolf she is?” Trey asked, curious.

This morning, Max had filled in the team medic on the conversation he and the other guys had at DPD headquarters last night, specifically the part about Lana not smelling quite like any beta they’d ever run into before.

“Unfortunately, no,” Max said. “I started to doubt my nose, so I asked her some questions to see if I was right about her being a werewolf at all. She admitted she can eat whatever she wants and not gain weight and that she can stay awake for days at a time and not get tired. Then, just when I was sure she’s a werewolf, other evidence contradicted the theory.”

“What do you mean?” Brooks asked, slapping his M4 back together and putting it through a function check so fast Max could barely follow his hands.

Max tossed his rag on the table, then carefully began reassembling his own weapon. He didn’t want to be so distracted by thoughts of Lana that he ended up putting his carbine back together without the firing pin installed correctly.

“Her nose doesn’t work right,” he said. “Three or four times during the date, she admitted she couldn’t pick up scents that were blatantly obvious to me. She has the same sense of smell any normal human would have.”

“Maybe her nose was damaged at some point, like Hale’s,” Brooks suggested. “That might explain it.”

Max doubted that. Hale Delaney had the most god-awful sniffer in the Pack. His nose really served no other function than to separate his eyes and give his cool sunglasses someplace to rest. But his nose was nonfunctional because he’d had his face smashed in by someone’s fist before he went through his first change. The damage had been so extreme that even being turned into a werewolf hadn’t healed it.

“I didn’t see scars to make me think that might be the case. Besides, like I said, she can smell stuff. She said the pizza smelled good, and the cheesecake, too. She simply doesn’t have a werewolf’s ability to pick up subtle scents or anything at a distance.”

“I’m guessing she didn’t flash any fangs or claws either, right?” Diego asked.

Max shook his head. “Definitely not. A werewolf’s sense of smell isn’t the only thing she’s missing, either. She also can’t see in the dark.”

That earned him a few raised brows and a head tilt from Tuffie. Sometimes it seemed like that dog understood English better than Max did.

“We were walking toward the front door of her house last night and a skunk scurried across the lawn a few dozen feet away,” Max explained. “It was dark, but you couldn’t miss it. Lana didn’t see it at all.”

“How do you know?” Zane said. “Maybe she saw it and didn’t react.”

Max frowned. “It was a skunk, dude. It’s genetically impossible for a woman to see a skunk in the dark and not freak out. I’m telling you, she can’t see in the dark.”

“Did you ever get the impression she might be faking it?” Trey asked. “Maybe she’s hiding it from you.”

“Why would she do that?” Max asked. “I’m another werewolf. She has to know she’s safe with me.”

“Think about where your head was when you and Gage first met,” Brooks said. “Back before you knew there were others like you in the world. Did you recognize Gage for what he was the first time you met him?”

Max considered that and realized Brooks was right. He’d been able to see and smell things he shouldn’t have been able to back then, but none of it had made sense to him. When Gage had shown up, he’d been too freaked to analyze his scent.

“I see your point,” he said.

“Lana may have no idea what she is or that there are other people like her,” Brooks added. “If so, it’s not like she’s going to run right out and admit she’s different.”

Max was mulling that over when Cooper lifted his head from the handgun he was cleaning. “There’s another option we haven’t considered. What if Max is right, and Lana is simply a werewolf who never learned how to use her nose or her eyes?”

Zane snorted. “That’s bloody barmy, Cooper. What kind of werewolf can’t use their nose and eyes?”

Cooper shrugged. “How about the kind that doesn’t know they are a werewolf.”

Everyone—including Max—stared at Cooper. Leave it to Cooper to head to left field. Max blamed it on all those years his fellow werewolf spent sniffing explosive fumes in the army. Or maybe it was all those times he’d been blown up by those same explosives.

“What are you saying?” Brooks asked, apparently taking Cooper seriously, which was never a good idea in Max’s opinion.

“Is it so difficult to believe that at some point we’d run into a werewolf we know absolutely nothing about?” Cooper asked. “Until a year ago, no one but Gage knew there were such things as alpha, beta, and omega werewolves. Maybe Lana is a completely different kind of werewolf. One who doesn’t have the same abilities we do or whose abilities are stunted for some reason. Brooks, you’re the one who said she smelled slightly different than the other betas we’ve run into lately. My theory would explain that. It’s like she’s a latent beta.”

Max wanted to say that was crazy, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Lana was a werewolf who had no clue what she was. Moreover, she had no idea Max was a werewolf, either. It explained why she hadn’t reacted to his scent at all.

“Should I tell her what she is?” he asked.

Brooks, Zane, Diego, and Trey all shook their heads, indicating they thought that would be a bad idea. Cooper, on the other hand, seemed to be considering it.

“I think you should tell her,” the explosives expert said. “Take it from me, women don’t like it when you hide stuff from them. They can get pretty pissed. And don’t even try that for-your-own-good crap. That never works.”

Brooks frowned. “Don’t listen to Cooper. Take your time and work up to the truth slowly. If you’re right, and Lana doesn’t realize what she is, telling her too soon could freak her out.”

Cooper snorted. “Working up to it slowly won’t freak her out any less.” He looked at Max. “So, are you going to follow my advice since I actually have experience dealing with a woman who turned out to be The One in my life? Or do you go with Brooks’s approach? Keep in mind that he tackles moving cars for fun.”

Max looked back and forth between Brooks and Cooper, wishing one of the other guys would give him his opinion on the subject, but Zane, Diego, and Trey stayed silent.

Finally, he shook his head. “Sorry, dude. I have to go with Brooks on this one. He might tackle cars now and then, but at least he’s never gotten himself blown out of a ten-story window.”

Cooper shrugged. “Have it your way. But when Brooks’s approach blows up in your face, come on back and I’ll tell you how to fix everything.”

They were still talking about whether this latest theory on Lana meant Deputy Chief Mason didn’t know about werewolves when Gage stuck his head in the door.

“We got a call for support,” he said. “Brooks, Zane, Diego—I need you to provide backup on a rollout to Northwest Dallas, near the apartment complex off Webb Chapel and Park Lane.”

Brooks, Diego, and Zane immediately jumped up, weapons in hand.

Even though his boss hadn’t said his name, Max was next on the rotation along with the other guys, so he automatically moved to join them.

“You don’t need to take this one, Max,” Gage said. “It’s a domestic violence call.”

The other guys didn’t slow as they headed for the building’s exit that led to the parking lot with the response trucks. Their gear would already be loaded and waiting for them.

Max hated DV calls for obvious reasons. Gage and the rest of the team knew it, too, and did their best to keep him off those calls. But he couldn’t avoid them forever. It was a major part of SWAT’s job to help out uniformed officers on DV calls when things looked like they might get out of hand.

“Sarge, I appreciate you trying to protect me from this stuff, but I’m going to have to go on a domestic violence call at some point. They’re like thirty or forty percent of our workload. I can deal with it.”

Gage didn’t say anything. Cooper and Trey were studiously focusing on the weapons they were cleaning. They didn’t like the idea of Max going out on these calls, either.

“Okay,” Gage finally said. “Go on the call, but keep yourself detached from the situation. Stay in control and follow Brooks’s lead, understand me?”

Max nodded once and headed for the door at a run to catch up with the other guys. While he was glad Gage had relented, he was a little worried about whether it had been a good idea to push the issue. If there was one situation that messed with his control of his inner wolf more than any other, it was DV calls.

Tuffie gave him a look when he sprinted past, as if she was a little worried about him, too.

* * *

They got to the apartment complex on Park Lane at the same time two DPD cruisers from the Northwest Division rolled in. According to dispatch, this address had been the subject of over a dozen domestic violence and noise complaint calls over the past two years and everything pointed to the situation escalating each time—hence the request for SWAT backup.

Max had personal experience with how these things tended to escalate and how they usually ended. He hoped it wasn’t the case this time, but he wasn’t holding his breath.

The two patrol cars stopped in front of a single-family dwelling on the other side of the street from the apartment building. While it had obviously been built in the same manner as the other houses around it, there was something about this particular house that made it stand out. Max wasn’t prone to being melodramatic, but it was like the house itself was sad. It was a stupid thing to think, but how else did you describe a home that seemed a little bit dimmer and less alive than the other houses around it? Max couldn’t help but wonder if this was how his apartment in Vegas had looked to others in the neighborhood.

An officer from one of the cruisers headed toward the house next door to talk to the person who’d called the police about the disturbance. The second cop, Senior Corporal Alvarez, walked over to Max and the other guys.

“We’ve been out here four times over the past few weeks,” he explained. “The guy’s a real son of a bitch, but the wife and kids are too afraid to say anything to us. It could get ugly in there.”

“We’ll keep that in mind,” Brooks said.

Giving them a nod, Alvarez headed up the walkway toward the front door of the ranch-style home, his back stiff and straight, one hand resting on the top of his holstered weapon. No doubt the patrolman had been called out to this address before and was assuming the worse.

Brooks motioned to Zane and Diego, indicating they should go around to the back of the house while he and Max followed the uniformed officer onto the front porch. Senior Corporal Alvarez gave Max and Brooks a quick glance, confirming they were there and ready, then knocked on the door. It looked like there had been a doorbell on the exterior at some point, but the gaping hole that appeared to have been filled with old bubblegum was the only thing there now. A well-used aluminum screen door protected the heavy wood inner door, but even with those two barriers, Max still picked up the scent of fresh blood coming from inside the house. He was glancing at Brooks to see if he smelled it when the inner door jerked open.

The metallic odor of blood hit Max all at once, and his fangs slid out as a big man in a mechanic’s uniform filled the doorway, a pissed-off look on his face. The urge to grab the man by the shirtfront and rip him through the screen door was tough to ignore. He might have done it if it hadn’t been for Brooks. His fellow werewolf gave him a warning look and a nudge. Max used the distraction to shut out the scent and get his pulse under control.

“What the hell do you want?” the man demanded.

“We’ve received a call about a disturbance at this address, Mr. Wallace,” Officer Alvarez responded calmly, clearly familiar enough to know the man’s name. “An altercation involving one or more of the residents.”

The man’s face twisted into a scowl. “It was that damn old fart next door, wasn’t it? He’s full of shit and needs to mind his own damn business.”

Max had to hand it to Alvarez. The patrol officer didn’t so much as bat an eye. “Sir, we’ll have to come inside and check to make sure everyone in the house is safe, so I’m going to need you to open the screen door and step back.”

The big man didn’t move. “This is bullshit. Not to mention harassment. There’s nothing going on here and you have no right to come in this house!”

Max was all too familiar with the lines Wallace was spouting. It was the same kind of shit his old man used to say on those very rare occasions when the LVPD had bothered to show up.

Max took a step forward, ready to kick in the door and flatten this jerk on his way to figuring out where the scent of blood was coming from, but Brooks reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. Max almost turned and snarled at Brooks. His teammate had to be able to smell the blood. Someone in the house was hurt.

But Brooks didn’t move his hand. He didn’t look at Max, either. Instead, he kept his gaze locked on the piece of crap blocking their entrance.

“Mr. Wallace, I’ve been out here enough times to know you’re aware of how this works,” Alvarez said. “If you don’t voluntarily let us into your house, I’m going to ask the two officers with me to open it instead. It’s up to you.”

As they waited for Wallace to decide, Diego’s voice came through the earpiece Max wore. “I’m looking through the kitchen window right now and can see four people sitting in the living room—a woman, a teen boy, and two younger girls. The boy has a bloody towel wrapped around his hand.”

Beside Max, Brooks clenched his jaw. “We need to get inside,” he said softly to Alvarez.

The uniformed officer didn’t look back or ask what was going on. In fact, he never took his eyes off the man on the other side of the screen door. “Three seconds, Mr. Wallace.”

Wallace cursed and pushed open the screen door, stepping aside to let them in.

“This is bullshit!” he said as Max and Brooks led the way inside the house. Two seconds later, Max heard Zane and Diego come in through the back door.

“Where the hell did they come from?” Wallace groused as the pair walked into the living room.

Max ignored the man, focusing his attention on the four scared people sitting on the couch. The woman was probably in her midforties, but the lines of stress and tension around her face made her seem older. Her face was pale and her eyes unfocused as she gazed distantly at a spot on the carpet in front of her. Even with everything going on around her, she never looked up.

The two girls, one maybe thirteen, the other a little younger—ten or eleven—were sitting close together, clinging to each other in a heartaching gesture of mutual support. The younger one had her face buried in her sister’s shoulder, refusing to look at anyone around her. The older girl was gazing around the room at all of them but refusing to make eye contact. It looked like she’d been crying recently and had dried her tears only seconds before Max and the others had come in.

The boy, who couldn’t be more than fifteen or sixteen years old, sat there with a bloody dishrag wrapped around his right hand, his face tight with pain. Like his sister, he refused to make eye contact with anyone around him. Max had worn that same look on his face when he was a kid back in Vegas. It was the look of someone who believed he was all alone in the painful world he was living in.

Max knew right then that the woman and her kids weren’t going to say a word about what had gone on here today. But as he slung his M4 over his shoulder and headed for the injured boy on the couch, it wasn’t difficult to figure out what the hell had happened. The boy’s bleeding hand and the broken top of the glass coffee table in front of the couch said it all. Something—or someone—had knocked the boy down hard enough to put him through the glass. The boy’s hand had almost certainly been damaged as he attempted to stop his fall.

Max stopped to glare at Wallace over his shoulder, rage that he hadn’t felt in a very long time building up inside him again. His heart hammered in his chest and he felt his fangs slide out a little. As if on cue, his claws began to force their way out, too.

Turning, he strode toward the big man before he even realized what he was doing. He had no idea what he was going to do when he reached the piece of shit in front of him, but he promised it wasn’t going to be pleasant for the bullying asshole. He knew he’d told Gage that he’d keep it under control, but he couldn’t. Not after seeing this scene that was so achingly familiar to him.

The asshole was oblivious to Max, instead telling Alvarez that his son was a klutz who’d stumbled over his own feet and fallen onto the coffee table. Max barely suppressed a growl. He didn’t care that he was on the verge of losing it completely. Someone had to do something to stop this.

Suddenly, Brooks was in front of Max, forming a wall he’d never be able to get around while at the same time providing a calming presence to allow him time to get it together. Max fought down the rage, forcing his body to retract his claws and fangs before anyone saw them.

“Go check on the boy,” Brooks said softly. “I need to know if we have to call the paramedics.”

Max took a deep breath and nodded. Based on the blood seeping through that rag around the boy’s hand, some kind of medical attention would be needed. He threw one more look at Wallace, then walked over to the boy. He shoved the remains of the glass coffee table aside with his boot, noting blood on some of the larger shards. Yeah, the kid had definitely gone through the table hand first.

“The kid’s fine,” Wallace complained as Max moved closer. “Don’t coddle him.”

The look Max threw the man was enough to make the guy go pale. Even Officer Alvarez lifted a brow.

Dropping to one knee in front of the boy, Max caught his eye. “Hey,” he said softly. “My name is Max Lowry. I’m going to take a look at your hand and see how bad it is. You okay with that?”

The boy didn’t meet his gaze. Max understood that. If you never looked people in the eye, they could never see the pain you were in. Max didn’t push but simply waited patiently.

After a few seconds, the kid finally looked up only long enough to shake his head. “I’m good. It’s not that bad.”

“Mind if I look anyway?” Max asked.

The boy shrugged but held out his hand.

Max slowly and carefully unwrapped the towel. Why weren’t Trey or Alex here? Everyone on the SWAT team had basic first-aid training, but those two were certified paramedics who were qualified for crap like this.

There was one long gash across the boy’s palm and another starting at the heel of his hand, running up the inside of the wrist for a good three or four inches. The older girl leaned over to peek, but then quickly looked away, tears pooling in her eyes. The boy’s mother never looked up from the imaginary spot on the floor she was focused on. Max had seen that expression before, too. It was that of a woman who had given up on everything and everyone.

Max cautiously moved the boy’s hand this way and that, checking for severe bleeding, as well as ligament, tendon, or muscle damage. That slash along the wrist worried Max, but even though fresh blood seeped out, there was nothing to indicate any arterial damage. The cuts didn’t look deep enough to affect the use of the kid’s fingers, but Max wasn’t a medic. He knew one thing for sure, though. The boy would definitely need to see a doctor to treat these.

“He’s going to need stitches,” Max told Alvarez.

“That’s bullshit!” Wallace bellowed. “It’s just a scratch.”

Max ignored him and turned back to the boy. “What’s your name?”

He tried to be as gentle as he could as he rewrapped the kid’s hand, but pressure was the best thing for the wound right now, even if it hurt. The boy didn’t flinch regardless of what Max did. That was a sure sign of a kid who’d been hurt so many times he barely felt pain anymore.

“Terence,” the boy said quietly, his voice giving nothing away as he answered the question. No pain, no feelings, no hope.

“These are my sisters, Nina and Natasha,” Terence said, motioning with his chin at the two girls.

The older girl, Nina, locked gazes with Max for a second, her eyes a mix of hope and curiosity. Unlike her mother, she hadn’t completely given up on the world yet and retained some hope that maybe something would happen one day to stop all this.

“How did you hurt yourself, Terence?” Max asked in a low voice.

“I told you already,” Wallace bellowed. “The stupid kid fell over his own feet. Tell them, Eileen,” he added, looking at his wife.

Max caught Terence’s eyes and held them. “Is that what happened? Did you fall down? Or did someone push you?”

Wallace was making a fuss about the cops talking to his underage son, but Max stayed focused on Terence. The kid returned Max’s gaze, his face distrustful. Max’s heart almost tore in half. He’d been in Terence’s shoes, hoping things would change but never believing it would happen. In that kind of place, you’d be an idiot to trust anyone.

“Terence, nothing is going to change unless you help it change,” Max murmured. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what happened. Did you fall down, or were you pushed?”

Terence stared at him, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nina gazing almost hopefully at her brother. Terence opened his mouth, and for a moment, Max thought the boy would tell them everything. That for once, the ending would be different.

But before Terence could say anything, his mother snapped her head around to look at him, her face full of pure terror as she shook her head. Just like that, the slight glimpse of hope Max had seen building in the boy’s eyes disappeared, snuffed out like a candle.

“I tripped and fell, just like Dad said,” Terence told Max in a voice so flat and emotionless it was almost robotic.

“Your father didn’t touch you?” Max prompted.

The kid shook his head, refusing to look at Max.

Biting back a curse, Max reached out and gently pressed two fingers against the boy’s stomach, right below the sternum. Terence winced in pain, involuntarily pulling back a little. Max moved his hand away even as the boy tried to recover and act like nothing had happened. Blows to the stomach hurt like hell, but they rarely ever left a mark. Wallace was a smart, twisted, sadistic son of a bitch. Just like Max’s father had been.

Max glanced at the kids’ mother. She’d seen her son get beaten by the man who was supposed to love and protect him. Maybe he could plead his case with her. But there was nothing in the woman’s eyes to make him think there was any reason to bother. The woman was gazing at her husband the same way his own mother had looked at his father. Eileen Wallace was thinking her husband would finally realize how much he’d hurt their children and then everything would be better.

But it never worked out that way. The violence would stop for a time. Maybe a few days, maybe even a few weeks. But at some point, it always started up again.

Sighing, Max stood. On the other side of the room, Wallace gave him a smug smile. The urge to rip the man a new asshole surged inside Max, bringing fangs and claws with it. He probably would have gone at the bastard right then, but once again, Brooks stepped in front of Max. Taking Max by the arm, Brooks led him outside, blocking both Alvarez’s and Wallace’s view of Max as he did.

Out on the front steps, Max inhaled deeply, fighting for control over his inner wolf and tamping down the desire to kill that piece of shit Wallace regardless of how stupid it might be. Zane came out a few moments later.

“Alvarez will make sure the kid gets medical attention,” Zane said. “He’s in there right now laying into that wanker, promising to come back tomorrow to check the kid’s stitches himself.”

“For all the good it will do the kid,” Max muttered. “His hand will heal, but what about the next time, when his father puts his head through a wall?”

Zane didn’t say anything. There was only so much a cop could do in situations like this. SWAT cops could do even less. This wasn’t their patrol area, and it wasn’t like they’d be coming out here again anytime soon on official duty, unless it was to deal with another DV call that went even worse than this one.

“Go talk to the neighbor who called 9-1-1,” Brooks suggested. “See if he can tell you anything.”

Max nodded. If he stayed on the steps any longer, he was going to end up walking into the house and ripping out Wallace’s throat.

He and Zane found the old man sitting on his porch with the patrolman, filling out paperwork.

“This is Ernest Miller,” the officer said. “He’s the one who keeps calling us out here. He’s also the only one who cares enough to fill out the reports.”

Ernest was a crusty-looking guy who sported shorts and a T-shirt, chilly November weather be damned. He had faded naval tattoos covering both forearms and an irritated look on his face.

“Those poor kids okay in there?” Ernest asked, his voice coming out in a gravelly, two-pack-a-day gargle. “Or did that bastard finally kill one of them?”

“They’re all alive…barely,” Max said. “You hear them fighting in there a lot?”

Ernest snorted. “Three or four times a week. Normally I’m not one to put my nose into another man’s business, but I can’t stand by while that man beats up his wife and children. What kind of bastard does that and still calls himself a man?” The guy turned and spit over the side of the porch, as if just talking about his neighbor made him sick. “You going to be able to finally arrest that piece of garbage?”

Max shook his head. “Unfortunately, no.”

Ernest cursed. “If I were ten years younger, I’d take that jackass behind the woodshed and beat him within an inch of his life.”

Max couldn’t argue with that. Next door, Brooks and Diego came out of the Wallace house. Reaching into his pocket, Max pulled out a business card, handing it to Ernest. He’d never had a reason to give anyone his card before, but this seemed like a good use of one.

“My personal cell phone number is on there,” he said. “Call me if you hear anything from the Wallace house. Day or night.”

Ernest assured Max he would. “Not that I imagine I’ll have to wait too long. You might have put the fear of God into that bastard for a little while, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear the screaming and hollering start up again before long.”

Max knew the man was right, which made getting back in their SWAT vehicle to leave damn hard. But not nearly as tough as when he looked back and saw Terence gazing out the front window at them, his face a mask of anguish.