the looks of the meat-heads doing the chopping, he was probably fat and filled with cholesterol. Can’t be good for the tiger’s heart to eat a greaseball who’s been packing in the cured meats, salt, and vodka for fifty years.”
I wanted to laugh and barf at the same time, so I settled on groaning and covering my face. He kept up the gentle caress on the side of my throat, though it turned absent – like he didn’t remember he was doing it. It sent shivers through me, and not in a bad way. There was something very reassuring about a guy who knew exactly what to do in such a fucked up situation. Like not starting the car right away. I would have fired the engine up and peeled out of there like my ass was on fire.
I swallowed the sour taste in my mouth and slowly sat back up, confident I wasn’t going to pass out or barf – at least for the near future. His hand remained on my shoulder, and I resisted the urge to lay my cheek against it. “Why are you doing this?”
He glanced over and then dropped his hand, and my cheeks heated. I cleared my throat and gestured at my shoulder. “I didn’t mean... that. I meant...” And I gestured to take in the car, the sanctuary, everything. “This. Why? They could have seen you, too. They could still see you on the security footage. What if they want to hurt you, too?”
Dodge shrugged and turned his attention back to the road. “Because this is what I do.”
“What does that mean?” I was desperate to understand. He was like someone from another planet. He had a set of skills I’d never imagined existed in the real world.
“This is what I do,” he said, tone sharper than I expected. He didn’t even bother to look at me as he gritted out the words. “I spent years chasing after stupid, idealistic kids who went bouncing off into the worst places in the world because they thought they knew how to save everyone from sin and drug traffickers and terrorists and corrupt governments and diamond smugglers and every other stripe of criminal. Then those stupid kids get themselves tangled up in all the shit they thought would never hurt them. And then guys like me have to go save them. Have to kill and even be killed in the process, all because some entitled little shit thinks he knows better than the people who have been doing the work for decades.”
He ran out of steam and ended with a long, low growl that reminded me of the wolf-man in the Evershaws’ basement. My hands went cold and I sat very still. I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. So that’s how he saw me. A stupid, idealistic kid who thought she was going to save the world, one tiger at a time? I swallowed the knot in my throat and managed to speak in a relatively normal voice. “Then thank you. I’ll try not to do anything else stupid.”
Dodge exhaled with a groan, the breath almost whistling in his teeth, and ran his hand through his already mussed hair. “I didn’t mean – I didn’t exactly mean you.”
It was better than nothing. I slowly drew my legs up onto the seat so I could hug my knees, staring out the window without really seeing anything that went by. We were in the city and heading toward my neighborhood. He drove like he knew exactly where he was going. I tried to process, tried to understand. Nothing made sense anymore. I’d met this guy – just that morning. Could it really only have been a few hours since I stood on that porch and petted the cat and thought it might be a weird but lucrative job?
My vision blurred. How ridiculous and naive. I’d been walking around like the only thing that mattered was paying off my student loans and making a name for myself, while there was so much awfulness in the city around me. I shivered and hugged my legs tighter. What the hell was I going to do? How could I just – go on after all of this? If I survived, anyway.
What if Ms. Bridger called? Did she know about what Geordie was doing? Would Geordie check the security footage and realize I’d been there really late?
My breathing hitched and I tried to swallow it down, to sound normal, as