Page 21 of Sparrow

“They won’t know we’re the ones who took her.”

He snorts at that. “Mars, we live in a town with five hundred people in it. It’ll take them about five minutes to figure it out. We need to send her back to where she came from.”

He’s right.

I know he’s right.

But I also know that she’s under my roof and I’ve promised her that she’ll be safe.

I never make promises I don’t mean. And I’m never wrong.

I glance at his hand on my arm and then up at his face, and take in the handsome, nearly gaunt look of it. Orion’s grown into a big man, but he’s never lost the haunted, underfed look in his face. It comes, I suspect, from having been hungry for a very long time before I found him and forced him to come back to Wood with me.

I’ve never asked him where he came from or how he got into that junkyard. He has secrets, and I let him keep them. It’s part of the contract we never discussed. But now I wonder how much he’s actually seen in his short life. He knew Arden was in that cottage, and that’s suspicious. And he’s not reacting to a kidnapping victim the way any normal citizen would react.

I’ve never thought he was a normal citizen. Always assumed he’s lived much of his life on the wrong side of the law. But there’s more knowledge in his eyes right now than I expected, and as much as I hate it, I take the next mental step.

He knows more than he should about where she came from, and the knowledge is eating him up.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to give in to his wishes here, though.

I lean closer to him and drop my voice. “I told her she’ll be safe here. I told her she can stay as long as she wants to. And that makes it our job–both of us–to make sure that even when they find out, they can’t do anything about it.”

I leave before he can reply, rushing out the door and into the driveway with a desperation I’ve never felt before. I need to get away from the room where Arden is getting in bed, with all of her confusing background.

And I don’t want to have to defend my decisions against Orion’s direct logic.

I’m afraid he’ll make me admit that I’m making this decision based on emotion rather than rational thought.

And that would be the end of our relationship.

I stalk into the deep dark of the driveway, pause, and force myself to take three deep breaths. I don’t lose my temper often–I try very hard not to–but when I do, it comes with such a rush of adrenaline that it can be hard to recover.

I’ve spent my life keeping my anger tamped down for that very reason. People count on me to be steady and dependable. To fix their problems and show up when they need someone.

Letting myself get emotional destroys that.

Once I’m under control, I stroll out toward the street in front of my house, my eyes on the stars above. It’s mid-April now and the days are starting to get longer, but the blackness of a midnight sky is the same no matter the season, and I let the solitude of it sink under my skin and slow my breathing. I sweep my eyes across the stars, cataloging the ones I know and taking comfort in the fact that they don’t change. They move through the sky, sure, but when it comes down to it, they’re always up there somewhere.

Watching.

Guarding.

I turn my eyes down to the street, and then glance to the right when movement catches my attention. My own garage sits here, right next to the house, but it’s dark and deserted now.

The movement is coming from the other garage in town. The one the Saints started when they abruptly moved in and made themselves at home several months ago. Wood is a small town that hosts less than five hundred people, and we’ve never had more than one motorcycle club.

We don’t need more than one garage.

But the Saints came here like they had a personal invitation and settled in without asking anyone. Not our small city council or my cousin, the de facto leader of the town. Not the sheriff or the people.

It’s been rubbing me the wrong way for months, now. Even worse, I’m starting to suspect they’re intentionally pulling my customers away from me.

And right now, there are men crawling all over their garage. At least twenty of them, moving in and out of the garage like fucking ants, all of them carrying something. I glance at the town around us, wondering, but see exactly what I expect: No one else is open. The buildings are all dark, but for the streetlights. Businesses are all closed.

Because it’s the middle of the fucking night.

And yet the Saints are operating like it’s daylight hours, moving in some sort of coordinated ballet as they do whatever they’re doing.