hand and foot to a chair, and my knife is very sharp. Your only weapon is information, and if I were you, I’d start deploying it.” He lifted his brows in invitation, his smile fanged and so wide and false it was ugly.
“Let him go,” Carter said, and Tenny didn’t move a moment. “Now, let him go.”
Slowly, the knife pulled back a fraction, and Tenny righted the boy’s head, though he kept hold of his hair, and he fired a dark look from beneath his lashes at Carter.
Reese swallowed. It was a situation poised to tumble into disaster, and he knew if that happened, he would be the only one capable of stopping it.
“Jimmy,” Carter said, tone softening. “Tell me what’s really going on. If you’re in trouble of some kind, the Dogs can help.” He even managed to sound sincere.
To his credit, Jimmy held out a moment longer, breathing like a caught prey animal, gaze darting from one face to the next.
“Jimmy,” Carter prompted again.
And the boy dissolved into tears. Harsh, messy tears pouring down his face, sobs catching in his throat, nearly choking him. He closed his eyes against them, shuddering against the tug of Tenny’s fingers in his hair. “I can’t – I can’t – I can’t tell you.”
“Yes, you can. We aren’t the cops. We can’t charge you with anything. Whatever you’ve done – whatever you did to Allie–”
“I didn’t do anything to Allie!”
“Then why do you keep saying the Lean Dogs kidnapped her?”
“Because I have to! Because he said–” He bared his teeth, biting back the next words. Opened wide, wet, pleading eyes on Carter. “I can’t tell you, or they’ll kill me. Me and my parents.”
An alarm pinged in the back of Reese’s mind. Whoever they were, they frightened this boy more than the Lean Dogs did. Frightened him enough that he’d lied, committed vandalism, and snuck on their property tonight with the intent of committing more.
He was back in Texas, suddenly, watching a grown man snivel and get drunk and maudlin, terrified down to his bones, talking about a man in a robe with a knife and a wicked new drug.
“Who’ll kill you?” Carter asked, sounding breathless. “Jimmy, who? I swear we can protect you, you and your friends.” It was what the Texas Dogs had said, too, to Benny, and to the clerks, and that teenager from the body shop. We can protect you – but all of them had ended up dead, one way or another.
Jimmy sniffed, snot gleaming on his upper lip. “No. No, please, I just wanna go home. I can’t–”
Tenny yanked his head back again; the knife flashed, and bit into skin, a red line welling along the boy’s jugular. Tenny was breathing hard now, visibly rattling with each inhale. His voice was a growl. “Fucking tell us, you little–”
Several things happened at once.
Boomer yelled, “Shit!”
Evan said, “He’s gonna kill him.”
Carter said, “Ten, stand down, now!”
Reese said nothing; he moved. A few long strides took him across the garage bay. He laid a hand on Jimmy’s collarbone and pressed him back, away from the knife. With his other hand, he gripped Tenny’s wrist, pinching at the nerves there, trying to numb his hand.
But Tenny, though focused solely on his victim, noticed him at the last second; twisted out of his grip, bringing the knife up with a twirling flash.
Pain lanced across Reese’s arm, the soft inside of his forearm. A look showed a deep, clean slice, already welling and spilling blood.
The knife flashed again. Reese brought up both hands, and captured the blade flat between his palms, the knife’s point only a few inches from his face.
He tensed, waiting for the next move, ready to counter it, even as he felt the hot tickle of blood sliding down to his elbow; felt the sting and heat of it filling his palms.
But nothing happened; the knife quivered; Tenny was quivering, he saw, when he lifted his head and sought the other’s gaze.
Tenny’s eyes had blown very wide, his face blank and white with shock. As Reese watched, his blown-out pupils retracted; shrank down to pinpricks.
Below them, Jimmy sobbed quietly.
Reese said, “Stop.” And slowly pulled his hands away.
Tenny stared at him a moment, the knife trembling in the air between them, his body poised for violence – or flight. Reese could read it in his eyes, the horror of what had just happened. His gaze flicked down to Reese’s arm, bleeding freely now, and then his hands, slick with his