“Oh, but…” Travis glanced down at his fancy suit again.
“I’ll help you find something to wear that Tommy will love,” Gabriel volunteered. It was the least he could do for the man who had clued them in to who was looking for him. Now, he just had to figure out why Mr. Peterson was looking for him. Gabriel pulled out his cell phone. “Give me your phone number, Travis.”
“Really? You want my phone number?”
“How else am I going to call you about the barbecue?”
Travis quickly rattled off his phone number. Gabriel saved it in his phone before looking at his coworker. “So, I have some family business I need to take care of. I’ll call you in a couple of days.”
“Okay.” Travis stood. “You’ll call, though, right?”
Gabriel had to wonder where the self-assured man he knew from work had gone. That guy and this guy seemed like two different people. “I promise.”
“Okay, well…”
“Give him your phone number, baby,” Chay said. “That way he can call if there’s any problems.”
Gabriel smacked himself in the forehead before dialing Travis’s phone so he’d have the number. “I should have thought of that.”
“I’m sure you would have if you weren’t so freaked out right now.”
Gabriel shot Chay a smile before walking Travis to the door. “Thanks for coming here to warn me, Travis. That means a lot to me.”
Travis shrugged. “I know it wasn’t much, but it just felt weird listening to Mr. Peterson and these guys talking about you.” Travis gave a little shudder. “There was just something about them that made my skin crawl.”
That wasn’t good.
Gabriel glanced at Chay again as Travis walked toward his car. “We can’t let him go back to that until we know if he’s in danger.”
Chay sighed. “Fine, he can stay, but no shifting while he’s here. No one can know.”
Damn.
“What if we take him down to meet Tommy and convince Tommy to show him around town? That’ll keep him busy, but keep him from heading back to town until we can figure out what Mr. Peterson is up to.”
Chay gave a brief nod. “That might work.”
Gabriel smiled as he turned back to Travis. “Hey, Travis, would you like to stick around for a little while? Maybe we can take you down to the shop and introduce you to Tommy before the barbecue.”
Even from the porch, Gabriel could see how much Travis’s eyes lit up. “Really?”
Taking him to meet Tommy was the only thing he could think of to keep Travis here. If Mr. Peterson was in on this thing to wipe his family out, then he would be none too pleased that Travis had come here to warn him. That, potentially, put Travis’s life in danger.
Gabriel might not know the man very well, and up until know, thought he was a pest, but that didn’t mean he wanted anything to happen to him.
“Come on in for a few minutes,” Gabriel said. “Let me get my shoes and we can head on down.”
Travis’s happy bounce as he hurried across the front lawn was amusing. The eagerness on his face made him seem years younger. Maybe all he really did need was a friend.
A shot rang out, and Travis went down. Gabriel had just enough time to see several men pouring out of the woods across the street before he was grabbed and yanked back into the house.
“Travis!” Gabriel shouted. “Get Travis.”
Chay must have moved like lightning because a moment later, he was laying Travis down on the floor next to him. Gabriel scrambled to his knees and hovered over Travis, scanning him for injuries. Blood was pooling under his right arm, but nowhere else.
That was something at least.
Gabriel whipped his shirt off and held it to the bullet wound in Travis’s arm. When he applied pressure, he heard a soft whimper and glanced up. “I’m so sorry, Travis. I never wanted you hurt.”
