Enforcer
Prologue
“What the heck, Tommie? I got places to go, man,” Rey said, fingers agitatedly
drumming on the steering wheel.
Tommie Perkins flipped his friend the bird. “Dude, hold your horses. It’s not like
you got a woman or anything.” He snorted in amusement at himself. “I have to check
something out for Cade. Something big is going on, Reyes. It’s got the hierarchy all
shaken up and Lex is more nervous and paranoid than usual.”
Rey snorted but kept driving. If his Alpha had business that needed tending to, he
couldn’t just blow it off. Even he had a sense of duty.
Tommie looked down at the scribbled address on the paper in his hand and back at
the street signs. “Make a right into that parking lot. I’m going to be across the street. It
shouldn’t take me more than ten or fifteen minutes.”
Gabriel Reyes pulled the dark sedan into the lot and parked it. He sat in the car,
smoking a cigarette, and waited while Tommie ran inside to do his business. After a
while he got bored listening to the radio and he made a few calls, but no one was
around.
Checking his watch, he narrowed his eyes when he saw that twenty minutes had
passed and still Tommie hadn’t returned. It would serve the jerk-off right if he just left
him. Rey got out of the car, sucked in a deep breath of the night air and heaved an
annoyed sigh when he saw Tommie talking with some men he couldn’t quite see in the
doorway of one of the buildings.
He resolved to make the other man buy him a beer as he watched Tommie running
toward him. As he got a few feet from the car, a shot rang out and Tommie looked up at
him as he clutched his side with surprised agony.
Rey saw his lips form “run” just before another shot rang out and hit his friend in
the head. “Jesus!” he cried out, jumping back into the car. He made quick work of
turning the car on, squealing out of the parking lot, heading to Bellevue, where his
sister lived. She’d know what to do.
5
Lauren Dane
Annoyed, Lex Warden snapped his cell phone shut and let out a long breath as he
took in the small cottage-style house. Once he pulled his bike onto the stand and got off,
he dropped the helmet on the seat and ran his fingers through his hair to get rid of the
helmet head he was sure he had after all that time riding over.
The house was light blue and someone obviously took great care of it. The lawn
was neat and window boxes overflowed in a burst of red and white, standing out in
colorful relief against the blue. There were raised beds along the front walk and a
climbing rose snaked up a lattice off the front porch.
On the porch, a glider swing and a small table with a citronella candle. More pots of
flowers and hanging baskets of greenery decorated the space. It was like a nice bit of the
wild right there in the city. It gave the place a sense of calm, of refuge.
