The big human male’s heavy brow furrowed. “Who the fuck are you?”
From his seat in the booth, Knox stared flatly at him, ignoring the demand. “Put your two-fifty on the counter, both of you, then go.”
On a chortle, Dwight swung his head toward his nervous-looking buddy. “You believe this guy?” He started to approach. “The only one who’s gonna be leaving is—”
Knox moved out of the booth and stood. His size had been somewhat diminished when he was seated. Now, his six-and-a-half-foot height and two-hundred-sixty pounds of muscle and bone was unmistakable. No doubt, so was the cold invitation to violence in his eyes.
Leni’s aggravator stopped short, half a dozen paces between them. At the counter, the man in the hunting jacket suddenly jolted out of his willful ignorance of the situation. Scrambling off his stool, he inserted himself between Knox and the other man while the two truckers who’d been eating at the counter paid up and made a hasty exit.
“All right, everyone, let’s simmer down.” The man faced Knox as if he were the one at fault. His woodland camo jacket was unzipped, but he made a point of opening it wider to reveal the pistol holstered at his hip and the sheriff’s badge clipped to his belt. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you around here before, Mister . . .”
Knox let the prompt for his name hang unanswered, his eyes still on Dwight, who was clearly more than relieved to have the law coming to his rescue. Gutless pussy.
The fact that the apparently off-duty county sheriff didn’t bother to step in while Leni was being verbally harassed annoyed Knox more than it should have. She wasn’t his concern. Neither was the obvious protective bias the local cop seemed to have toward the arrogant man at his back. Still, suspicion stirred inside him.
The officer cleared his throat and tried another tack. “Hell of a storm out there. What brings you to Parrish Falls?”
“Just passing through.”
The dodge earned him a nod and a narrowed look. “Where ya from, son?”
“Here and there.”
Knox found it vaguely amusing that the fifty-something human hadn’t yet clued in on the fact that he was Breed. Nor did he seem to realize that Knox was even more lethal than that.
He’d spent the entirety of his childhood, from birth to his teens, in the laboratory of a madman, being conditioned to kill without a speck of emotion just like the others in the Hunter program. Those hellish beginnings were training for the years he would spend under the collar of the same sadistic lunatic, doing his murderous bidding as one of scores of assassins who’d been bred in the lab.
It had been two decades since Knox and a number of other fortunate Hunters had been freed from their imprisonment in the program. That didn’t mean he’d left his skills behind.
Far from it.
He was still a born-and-bred killer, easily the most lethal creature lurking in this isolated corner of the north Maine woods. Part of him hoped the chickenshit hiding behind the sheriff would give him an excuse to prove it.
“Didn’t notice you drive up in a vehicle tonight,” said the man with the badge and the gun. “Someone drop you off?”
“I walked.”
The man gave him a dubious look. “Where you headed in weather like this?”
Knox shrugged. “Haven’t decided.”
“You sure don’t talk much, do you?”
“Is that a crime in Parrish Falls?”
The sheriff grunted. Behind him, Dwight collected a small measure of courage, enough to scoff as he peered around the smaller, older man who separated him from Knox.
“Disrespect may not get your ass arrested but loitering can. So can being a public nuisance.”
“He’s not loitering,” Leni said. Her gaze met Knox’s and held for a long moment. “I told him he could stay in the diner as long as he likes. I’ve never turned anyone away and I’m not about to start. There’s only one public nuisance in here tonight and it’s not him.”
Dwight sneered. “Sheriff Barstow, why don’t you arrest this drifter for vagrancy? Maybe he’d prefer to wait out the blizzard in the county jail.”
“You think there’s a cell strong enough to hold me?” Knox spoke past the law officer, staring straight at Dwight. For good measure, he gave him a brief flash of his fangs.
“Holy shit!”
For a big man, it was amazing how fast he was able to leap back. The sheriff retreated a pace too. He held up a hand, which, to his credit, only trembled a little.
