Sophie Oak - Siren in Waiting

Beth cocked a hip. That rifle was not sleeping in her bed. “And Roxanne doesn’t take double input. You think about that before you bring her to bed with you.”

Trev doubled over. “You are both insane. Bo? Seriously? You named your rifle?”

“Well, tell me you didn’t name your favorite football. Beth had like a thousand stuffed animals, and every single one of them had a name. And she slept with all of them. They’re in a box waiting to be picked up and moved. And my rifle is way more useful than a faded pink hippo named Horace,” Bo argued.

Beth opened her mouth to give Trev a piece of her mind, but Shelley was smiling.

“He called it Troy, after Troy Aikman,” Shelley said with a laugh. “He slept with that football. He carried it around for years. And, at one point in time, he named his biceps. Smith and Wesson. Because they were his guns.”

Trev flushed and shook his head. “Brat.”

Shelley hugged her brother. “You bet. Now go and do what you need to do. I’ll follow Bo and Roxanne’s instructions.”

“Finally a woman who respects you,” Bo whispered to his gun, but he gave Beth a wink.

She couldn’t help but kiss him. He was crazy, and he was going to make their lives so much fun. Her heart skipped a beat as she looked at Trev and Bo together. So different and yet they fit. She was suddenly looking forward to the rest of her life.

When Bo hustled her into the cab of the truck, she held Roxanne for him.

Bo pulled up to the house, his mind on the events of the afternoon. He could still feel Beth plastered to his body. Despite the shower he’d taken, he swore he could still smell her arousal. It had been the hottest sexual experience of his life. And he was worried.

Trev hadn’t said he would stay. Bo knew it wasn’t fair, but he wanted commitment. Just a couple of days before, he’d wanted nothing more than to see Trev McNamara’s back as he walked out of town. But now he couldn’t imagine it. He couldn’t imagine a life with Beth that didn’t include the Dom. For the first time, Bo was excited. He had so much to learn from Trev and not just about how to bind Beth’s breasts.

Bo looked through the front window as he parked behind Beth’s “car.” He knew he should pull closer so Trev would have space, but he didn’t want to run the risk of breathing on the Pinto and having it explode in a fiery mass. Yeah, she was getting a new car, and she was learning to drive it properly. He took Roxanne from Beth’s hands and eased out of the cab. He opened the door for the women and looked around.

Everything was quiet. The late-afternoon air was cool and calm. Everything seemed to be the way they had left it. Trev had him paranoid.

“Come on, let’s get what we need and get back to Aidan’s.”

Beth frowned, looking at the house. “I don’t want to leave it. Now I’m nervous that I’m going to spend the night at Aidan’s and someone will have taken a wrecking ball to it when we come back. I wanted to get started so bad.”

Shelley put an arm around Beth. “It’s a beautiful place, and it’s going to be standing when we come back. When Trev is satisfied that Bryce is just another douche bag, we’ll return, and I’ll help you. This is my specialty, you know. Before Bryce talked me into refurbing politician’s offices, I used to flip houses. I started when I was like twenty with our grandmother’s house. I love working with my hands. And I am handy with a jigsaw.”

Beth smiled, her face lighting up. “Good, because I have about two thousand square feet of bamboo flooring to put in.”

Bo groaned. He got the feeling there would be a whole lot of home improvement work in his future. “Let’s get this done.”

He took the porch steps two at a time and opened the front door, allowing Beth and Shelley to enter. The women walked into the front hall, chatting about stained concrete and how to best knock out the wall between the office and the kitchen.

“Stop.” Bo’s heart raced as he heard the sound. It was quiet, but the floor above them creaked with an unmistakable pattern. Someone was walking on the second floor. And it wasn’t Trev.

Bo put a finger to his mouth. Beth’s eyes widened, and Shelley reached for her hand. “Stay here.”

As quietly as he could, he walked up the stairs, sticking to the side where there was less chance of a creak alerting whoever was upstairs to his presence. He wasn’t taking any chances this time. He held his rifle, his finger on the trigger. It was just like hunting, he told himself. Patience would win the day.

“Fuck.” Bo heard the soft curse and the frustration behind it. Bryce Hughes was here. Trev had been right, but Bo would be the one to figure out the mystery. He intended to call in the police, but not until he had a few questions answered for himself.

“Come on, come on. Barry, you were such a fucker. Goddamn it. If I could kill you twice, I would.”

Bryce sounded past desperate. The words came out of his mouth in a harsh whisper, as though the dead man could hear him speaking from beyond the grave. Bryce had killed his partner? Barry Bellows had died in a car accident, and no one in Deer Run had really looked much past that fact. Had Bryce set up that little accident? What the hell was he looking for in Beth’s bedroom? It sounded like he was tearing the place apart.

Bo eased up to the second-floor landing and onto the carpet runner. He could move a little more freely. Bryce was making enough noise for both of them. The door to Beth’s bedroom was open, and even from his vantage point, Bo could see that Bryce had been hard at work. Beth’s pretty comforter was on the floor, feathers from the pillows littering the hallway. Bryce stood in the center of the room with a sledgehammer. He pulled it over his head, the wall that separated the bedroom from the bathroom his obvious target.

“Stop right there.” Bo wasn’t about to let this asshole start tearing out walls. That was Beth’s job.

Bryce stopped, staring at the rifle aimed solidly at his chest. The sledgehammer fell to the floor with a crack. Bryce turned, his normally perfect hair disheveled. His lower lip was busted, blood oozing onto his chin. One eye was swollen. It looked like a purple egg had made a nest of his face. “I have to find it.”

“What?”

“They’re going to kill me if I don’t find it. It has to be here. Why else would Barry have come here? He hated that old bitch. He fucking couldn’t stand her. He hid it here, the bastard. I built this business. I was the one with the contacts. He had no right to hold out on me. He tried to fucking blackmail me. No one blackmails Bryce Hughes. I showed him. I showed him.”

Bo took a deep breath. Bryce Hughes seemed to have found that “edge” everyone talked about, and he’d gone straight over in a happy swan dive. “I think we need to go downstairs and wait for the sheriff.”

Bryce’s head sagged. “No cops. Cops won’t stop them. I have to find it. Fuck. I have to find it or we’re all dead. You’re an idiot. You should never have walked in here. You’re supposed to be at Aidan’s. Shelley said she was meeting you all out at Aidan’s for the afternoon. Now we’re all dead.”

“Bo?” Beth’s soft voice nearly made Bo’s heart stop. He turned, ready to yell at her to get her ass out of here and take Shelley with her.

Beth and Shelley stood in the doorway, their faces sheet white.

“Beth?”

“You told me I had to tell you the next time someone tried to kill me.” Her voice was strained, a tight whisper. “Well, someone’s ready to kill me again.”

“I told you he’d kill us all.” Bryce shrank back.

Bo turned and saw an immaculately dressed man. He was roughly six foot three and wore an air of disdain, as though the world always disappointed him. He also carried a .45 in his gloved hand, pointed straight at the back of Beth’s head. His other hand was on her arm, keeping her close to his body. Beth was his shield.