“Anybody here see a scrawny guy in an orange shirt run through here?” Shauna asked loudly.

The answer was the clack of billiard balls being racked and set—the schtack from a pop top—the screech of a chair shifting on a concrete floor. No one else said a word.

“Unless there’s an exit door we don’t know about,” Shauna said to Danyon, “there’s no way Banjo could’ve gotten out of here without us seeing him. We would have passed him on the stairs.”

Danyon nodded and walked over to the bar. She followed, hoping he had picked up the same feeling she had—that the people in this bar might not take too kindly to their bartender being grabbed by the collar.

When they reached the bar, Danyon rested an arm on it, then asked the middle-aged guy standing behind it, “You have a back door here?” The man’s eyes stayed flat as he shook his head. Then he turned his back to Danyon and started rearranging bottles on the shelf by the register.

“Was that a no?” Danyon pressed.

The bartender didn’t respond.

Exhausted from being pushed and shoved on the street for hours, tired of not being any closer to answers than when they started, and furious that Banjo had managed to slip past them again, Shauna quick-stepped to the bar before Danyon could stop her, then leaned over it and slapped a hand on the Plexi-glass top.

“He asked you if there was a back door,” she declared. “If you can’t answer the damn question, I’ll go looking for it myself.”

The bartender turned and looked at her, and for a moment, Shauna expected him to either burst out laughing or pick up the phone and call the police. Instead, he cocked his head toward the pool table.

Thinking he may have just given away Banjo’s hiding place, she spun about on her heels.

But it wasn’t Banjo.

It was a huge white man about Danyon’s height, but at least two and a half times his weight. He had an acne scarred face, dark eyes that were too small for his face, and a bald head that not only looked like it was a trans plant from a bulldog, it was covered with tattoos of naked women.

He stared at Shauna and leaned over the pool table, stick in hand as if preparing to shoot. His thick lips curled into a sneer, that all but said, “You’re one good lookin’ piece of prime rib, and I’m hungry.”

The man had to be Big Frank Macina, the leader of the BGW gang that Jagger had told them about, the biker gang that thought they were big and bad enough to take over some Blood and Crip territory.

She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Macina didn’t look big and bad. He looked like he needed a bath, a dentist, and a hard-hitting weight loss program.

It suddenly struck Shauna as she stared at his tasteless tattoos—what better way would there be for a new gang to take turf from one of the toughest gangs in the country than to be the sole provider of the most potent drug in the underground market?

The answer to that was simple.

None.

Without giving it a second thought, Shauna stormed toward Big Frank.

She was a Keeper and was responsible for the safety and well-being of the weres in this city. She was also responsible for helping to keep peace between her weres and every other race living in the city.

However, there was one race she could not have cared less about maintaining peace with—assholes.

In her book, anyone out to harm her weres, directly or indirectly, fit into that category.

Being a Keeper wasn’t her job. It was her purpose in life. And if that meant tackling a three hundred and fifty pound, tattooed, yeast-colored piece of crap like Macina, then so be it.

Whatever it took to protect her weres.

And nothing and no one was going to stop her.

Chapter 17

Danyon had one eye on the bartender, wondering if a quick jab and a nose realignment might re-circuit the guy’s attitude and sharpen his memory, when he spotted Shauna heading for the pool table.

“Hey!” he called after her, meaning to get her attention, to stop her.

It didn’t work.

He saw that her hands were balled into fists at her side and knew big trouble was on the way.

Danyon took off after her, intending to steer Shauna toward a quick exit up the stairs, but he was two steps too short. Shauna was already leaning over the pool table, confronting the bull mastiff who was holding a pool stick.

Earlier, he had been so focused on finding Banjo and keeping Shauna out of trouble, that he hadn’t noticed the tattoos on the big man’s bald head. The entire lumpy sphere was covered with ink drawings of naked women in different poses. Danyon remembered the description Jagger had given them of the leader of the BGW biker gang that had recently come into town. Although there were a lot of people in New Orleans right now for Nuit du Dommage, he seriously doubted he would find more than one man who fit the gang leader’s description. He had no doubt he was about to meet Big Frank Macina.

Shauna kicked that meeting off with all the grace and charm of a MacDonald ready to take on the world.

“So, what’s your game?” Shauna asked.

Danyon stood about six feet behind her, trying to figure out if he should just scoop her up now and get her out of here, or let her get out whatever she had in her system. He also had to consider that she was a Keeper, which meant he needed to respect her space and abilities, instead of jumping at every turn to protect her, the way he had with the drunk on Bourbon earlier. Standing back and just watching was far from easy. His basic nature and instinct wanted to toss Shauna over his shoulder and haul her outside. But who was he kidding? Even if he did haul her out against her will, she would just turn around and head right back in. What concerned Danyon even more, was that he knew even if he wasn’t standing right behind her as backup, Shauna would still be up in Big Frank’s face.

Frank’s grin was wide and nasty. He tossed the pool stick on the table and laid his big hands palm down on the felt.

“Say again?” he said to Shauna.

“I said, what’s your game?” Shauna repeated. The Travis Tritt song that had been playing on the jukebox went silent, and the entire bar fell into an eerie hush.

Frank glared at Shauna, his eyes unwavering. “I’d say the game’s you, Missy.”

“You run with some skinny chick named Trish and a guy who goes by the name Banjo Marks?” she asked.

Frank’s grin grew wider, and he stood upright and sauntered over to the corner of the pool table, then leaned a hip against it and folded his tree trunk-size arms across his chest. “What’s it to ya?”

“Simply asking a question.”

“And I just gave you a simple answer.”

“No, you didn’t. You gave me another question,” Shauna said.

Frank laughed, a deep rumbling sound that had no humor in it at all. “Little girl, I think it’s past your bedtime. You best be gettin’ home.”

Danyon flinched. Now why did the guy have to go and call her a little girl?

As he suspected would happen, Shauna popped to attention, bristling.

Frank snorted, and his eyes traveled over Shauna’s body, pausing in places that made Danyon want to rip the massive guy’s eyeballs out of their sockets.

“The last thing you’re looking at is a little girl,” Shauna declared.

“Yeah?” Frank uncrossed his arms, then grabbed his crotch with a hand. “Then why don’t you come on over here and prove just how little you aren’t?”

Danyon wanted to pounce on the guy and yank his heart out through an ear canal. But he held his ground, allowing Shauna to keep the lead.

She didn’t disappoint.

“I don’t have to prove jack to you,” she said.

“Then maybe I’ll let big ol’ Frank here,” he pointed to the thick bulge in the crotch of his jeans, “be the one to do the provin’.”

She harrumphed.

Frank folded his arms again, appearing to grow bored. “So what the hell’s your game? You just bored and out to start some shit?”

“I hear you’re the head of some new biker gang,” Shauna said.

That must have pushed Frank’s pride button, because his chest expanded another two inches. “Yeah, well, you heard right.”

Shauna pursed her lips and nodded, and Danyon had a sinking feeling that things were getting ready to go from bad to worse.

“And the name of your gang is BGW?” Shauna asked.

“Somebody give the lady a stuffed penguin for getting two right in a row,” Frank said sarcastically.

“Better make it one of those big stuffed bears,” she said, “because I’m about to hit you with a third.”

“Go for it,” Frank said, obviously amused now.

“Word has it that you plan on scarfing some territory from the Bloods and the Crips. Is that right?”

At the mention of the Blood and the Crips, four men from a nearby table got up and slowly made their way behind Frank, forming a semi-circle.

“I asked if that was right,” Shauna pressed.

Frank’s eyes grew hard. “You one of their bitches?”

Appearing far from deterred, Shauna glared at each man standing behind Frank, then set her sights back on the big man. “Get real,” she said. “Do I look like I belong to either of those gangs? Quit acting like a punk and call off your goons.”

One of the guys standing behind Frank took a step toward her.

Danyon countered it.

“Back off, Tee,” Frank said to the front man who appeared to be getting a little ahead of the game.

Tee was about Frank’s size, and he had long brown hair that he kept flipping over his shoulder like a girl.

Even though he’d been told to stand down, he took his time about it, all the while staring at Shauna.

Frank leaned toward her. “You listen close. If you’re looking for information on this ‘Banjo’ dude, you came to the wrong place. But if you’re looking for trouble, you’ve hit the mother lode,” Frank warned. “There’s no business in here for you.”

“This is a public bar. I have as much right to be here as you.”

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