“You’ll know when I’ve come to kill you,” Knox replied with utter calm.
He started pushing the truck toward the opposite side of the two-lane, toward the sharp drop-off into the ravine and the deep, frozen river below.
“What are you doing?” Parrish asked, his big head swiveling to gauge Knox’s intent. “Oh, fuck. You can’t—”
“I can,” Knox said.
He kept pushing, pivoting the heavy front end of the truck and its plow blade right to the edge. Then a bit more. The front bumper teetered there, one nudge away from a head-first crash down through the bracken.
“Before you think about causing any more problems for Lenora Calhoun, understand that there will be consequences now.”
Parrish swallowed, anxious, impotent in his anger. His shiny new truck groaned as the edge of the shoulder began to give way beneath it.
Knox did smile now, baring the tips of his fangs. “I’ve decided to stick around town for a while, so that means you Parrishes are going to answer to me if anything happens to Leni or the boy. We clear?”
“This is about her?” Parrish sneered. “What the fuck does she mean to you?”
It was a good question, one Knox wasn’t prepared to answer. Least of all to an asshole like Dwight Parrish.
Finished with their conversation, he gave the truck a hard shove. It dipped forward, a rocking lurch that wrung a low moan out of Parrish. Then gravity took hold of the truck and the man inside it. The shiny black pickup crashed down the embankment, branches raking the sides, bracken and old stumps crunching beneath the tires and undercarriage as the heavy vehicle rolled all the way down to the bottom of the incline and onto the frozen edge of the water.
Knox didn’t free the locks until he heard the ice pop and crack as it began to give way and the front tires started to sink into the river. Parrish poured out as soon as he’d been freed.
Knox stared, unmoved. What he’d told the human was true. He hadn’t come to kill him tonight.
Whether he would on another night would be up to the Parrishes.
Because he meant what he said to Leni back at her house. One dead Parrish would mean war with all of them.
Knox wouldn’t go there unless they pushed him to, but he had just sent the first shot over their bow.
If they were smart, they’d heed it as the warning it was.
CHAPTER 9
The sun came up too early for Leni that next morning.
She’d barely slept, tossing and turning in her bed until only a short while before dawn. Every time she closed her eyes, she slipped into nightmares revolving around Travis Parrish. Wide awake, her thoughts returned repeatedly to the Breed male who’d entered her life as unexpectedly as he’d apparently left it last night.
It wasn’t only her thoughts Knox had dominated. He had commandeered all of her senses too. Without trying, she could still feel the warmth of his hand pressed against her cheek. She could still see the molten amber of his transformed irises as he’d gazed at her, glowered at her, growled at her.
She could still see the torment in his handsome, unearthly face in those fraught seconds when she couldn’t tell whether he wanted to take her in his arms or get as far away from her as he possibly could.
She figured she had his answer now. After waiting up confused and uncertain for a couple of hours following his furious departure, Leni had finally turned off the lights in the house and gone to bed.
Knox had to be miles into Canada by now. She told herself it was for the best.
She cringed in shame for what she’d asked of him last night, or tried to. Knox may have been raised and trained to kill, but that didn’t give her the right to treat him as if he were some kind of weapon at her disposal. He’d been right to refuse. He had said no to prevent her from living with the guilt, but it didn’t erase the fact that she’d asked.
As for the rest of it—the other impossible things she wanted from Knox, things he’d also refused her, much to her humiliation—she simply wanted to forget. Forget her selfish needs and desires, forget Knox, and move on.
God, what had gotten into her? Her first concern, the only one that truly mattered, was the little boy who depended on her for everything.
She sat up in her mussed bed, her thin cotton sleep tank askew over her bare breasts. She straightened it, then swung her legs over the edge of the mattress. From downstairs, the muffled sound of Riley’s voice drifted toward her open bedroom. It wasn’t unusual for him to walk around talking to himself, or, rather, to his favorite stuffed animals and an ever-changing roster of imaginary friends. Leni had learned to play along, even when it meant setting extra places at the dinner table or waiting a few extra minutes on those school day mornings when one of Riley’s invisible friends had delayed him getting ready to leave.
There was no school today. The storm had passed overnight, but the weather had shut down services across the county for the rest of the week. Her phone had buzzed with a closed-classes notice sometime before dawn.
She didn’t expect she’d have many customers at the diner today, either. Since she couldn’t recall the last time she’d taken a full day off, Leni decided what she needed more than anything right now was some uninterrupted Riley time.
