"You must mean the alligators," Lara said when it was quiet again. "I hear sometimes they attack."
Grady's gaze was warm as it met hers, but frank.
"That's the thing about prehistoric animals," he said. "You never can tell what they'll do. Best to be on your guard."
Lara's smile felt frozen on her face then. But she kept aiming it right at him, like that would make it friendly. Or erase the shame she was sure he could see all over her, like Chaser's dirty fingerprints.
"I'll keep that in mind," she said.
And when she murmured a goodbye and walked down the alley to her apartment, Grady sat there in his police car and watched her, because that was the sort of good, kind man he was. Clean-cut and handsome. Gorgeous, even, in his crisp uniform and the way he wore it so easily, stretched over a lean, rangy body. As if he was the very embodiment of law and order. Really and truly a goddamned Captain America.
There was no reason at all her teeth should be clenched together like that, or her neck should feel as stiff as her stomach was knotted.
She waved as she unlocked her door, then closed it carefully and slowly behind her, lest anyone think she was slamming it shut in any kind of indecent haste. Then she kicked off her shoes and bolted up the stairs, not resting until she was inside her apartment at last. She locked all three locks she'd insisted her landlord put on the door, three separate dead bolts to keep out bayou ghosts and hungry alligators and no-good bikers alike. And only then, finally, did she give in to gravity and her wobbly knees. She sank down on the floor right there with her back to the overly locked door.
Lara thought she would burst into tears, but she didn't. She couldn't. She didn't deserve tears.
Because any way she looked at it, she was way past that. And straight on into epically fucked.
Chapter 4
Chaser was in a seriously shitty mood.
He didn't much like watching his prissy little wet dream of a teacher smile all over that Boy Scout sheriff some ten minutes after he'd been inside her. Chaser wanted to see where she lived and what her situation was because he really didn't like either coincidences or surprises, and especially not when they came in a package he wanted his hands all over. What he did not want to see was Lara making eyes at the new prick in town, the recently elected Sheriff Archer, who'd slid into office on a "clean up St. Germain Parish" kick.
Chaser didn't like that he gave a shit either way, but he really didn't like watching her smile and laugh and talk to the fucker in his police car without any of the aggression or condescension or snotty teacher armor she'd thrown Chaser's way earlier. It made his gut knot up a little too tight for his peace of mind.
Or anyone's health.
The fact that she'd been aiming all that sweetness and light that Chaser would have said she didn't have in her at an outspoken enemy of the Devil's Keepers didn't help. He had to get out of there before he forgot that doing something to satisfy the urge toward violence that itched in him was straight-up stupid, because everybody knew the sheriff was looking for reasons to mess with the club.
Chaser was not about to give the douchebag a reason.
But he wasn't happy about any of it.
He headed out to the clubhouse the way he did at the end of any club-related trip, to check in with Digger and let his president know what had gone down. A modified version, anyway, because there were always a few things Chaser kept to himself, especially when brothers in other charters shot off their mouths to him over a few drinks. It was always better to filter that crap before passing it on, and Chaser was particularly good at inter-charter diplomacy or he never would have survived his many years of wandering around between DKMC charters all over the country and reporting back to Luther. No one liked a snitch, after all. But a brother who was all about the club and brought concerns back to those who needed to hear them without pointing any fingers or stirring up any shit? There was a reason Luther didn't want to replace him. Chaser was damn good at his job. All of his jobs.
He thought he was a decent father, too, for that matter. Certainly better than his own. And he didn't like that some random woman with too many question marks over her had made him wonder about that.
But when he got to the clubhouse-way out on that lonely bayou road that gleamed beneath the summer moon, long and flat and thick with the noisy green swamp on both sides and the sprawling old club warehouse waiting at the end like the perfect homecoming after days on the road-Digger still wasn't there. He wasn't there and he hadn't been there in the time Chaser had been away.
Which was not good.
"Shit is tense, brother," T'Roscoe told him, straight-up. "Every day Digger stays away, we get a little deeper into a hole and I'm not sure there's any way out."