“Fuck off.” There was no better, more professional way to respond. “Just fucking fuck you and this awful fucking job. If you were so good at it—if you know everything—then why the hell are you in Montana right now?”
Eamon chuckled again, and again, the sound went straight through my chest. But this time it seemed less like a brutal squeeze of my heart and more like a gentle hug.
I hated that even more.
“I’m sorry. For everything.”
“Fuck you. I’m hanging up.”
“I mean it. I’m sorry. About Benny, most of all.”
I hung the phone up and threw it across the room.
THIRTEEN
“The thing is, he’s not wrong,” I mumbled, turning up the last bottle from a six pack as I paced the entire length of my apartment. The beer was still cold, because I’d had all six bottles in under twenty minutes—a skill a shifter learned to master if she wanted to pack on any kind of buzz at all. Even knowing it would fade almost as quickly as it built.
“He’s an asshole, but he’s not wrong.” Iwasthe only witness left to question.
Unfortunately, my memories of being kidnapped by Silas Morelock were not an endless cave of information ripe for mining. I’d never seen whoever hit me on the back of the head; if that was an accomplice of Silas’s, I had no way of knowing. I’d woken up alone in the cabin already raging with fever and delirious.
I had gone over those memories time and time again in the aftermath of my escape, and since then, I’d never uncovered a single new detail. Not for lack of trying.
I drained the last beer bottle and dropped it into the carton, where it clattered against two other empties. But that clattering continued, after the bottles had gone still.
“The fuck…?” I mumbled, turning toward the source of the new sound. It was coming from…beneath me. From outside, kind of. From—
I grabbed the baseball bat from my coat closet on my way out the door and raced downstairs with it held at the ready. The kitchen was dark and quiet, the back door still closed, and as I pushed through the swinging door into the front room, moonlight shining through the windows temporarily blinded my sensitive eyes.
Then they adjusted, and I realized I recognized the figure trying to break into my bar.
“Damn it, Bishop,” I said as I threw back the bolt and opened the door. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Trying not to sober up.” He said it as if it should have been obvious.
“We’re closed.”
“So’s the liquor store. That’s why I’m here.”
“How did you…?” I looked past him, and my gaze found the 4Runner parked sideways in the gravel lot. “You drove here? Drunk?”
“Yes, butvery slowly,” he said, each word exaggerated.
“Goddamn it. Give me your keys.”
“No. If you’re not going to serve me, I’ll—”
“Give me your fucking keys,” I snapped as I pulled him inside. “In half an hour, you’ll be sober, and I’m going to kick your ass. And I’m only waiting that long because it won’t be a fair fight while one of us is drunk.”
“Oneof us?” Bishop snorted. “I can smell the twelve-pack you just drank.”
“It was a six-pack.” I bolted the door behind him and held one hand out, palm up. “Keys.”
“Let’s make a trade,” he said, sliding one hand into his pocket, where the keys in question made a muffled clinking sound. “I’ll give you my keys, and you give me a bottle of Crown. Not as a gift. I’ll pay.”
I exhaled, staring up at him. “It would be illegal for me to serve you right now, Bishop. You’re already drunk, and it’s well after last call. You can’t order in a bar after last call.”
“Yet somehow, you’ve clearly been drinking.” His gaze seemed more focused. I could practically see him sobering up in front of me, even as that same blistering clarity began to surface through my own buzz.
