“Get in the van,” I whisper to Cub. She stands just slightly behind me and gives my wrist a soft squeeze before she moves around the van toward the passenger door.
“Pretty sure the boss is going to want to talk to her, too. Just to get to know her. She’s obviously important.” I could argue, but it wouldn’t do any good. I argue and raise my voice, then so does Jerry, and next thing I know Cub is yelling at him and he finds out who she is—if he doesn’t already know. My girl can’t help but slipping into Italian when she’s angry. I never know what she’s saying, but she’s sexy as hell when she does it. So it’s bad news if they figure out who she is. Voices get raised and Jerry’s guys rush over and my guys run over and it’s a fucking mess and this day gets worse than it already is.
I reach out and grab ahold of her wrist. With a firm grip, I pull her close to my side.
“Fine.” My voice is strained as I speak the word. Jerry turns on his heel, and we follow him in. I swore that I’d keep her safe, and here I pulled her into this fucking mess. She deserves better than what she has, and if she wants to go to school and learn about numbers and math and shit, I should support her. I should be a better man. I can work on my route to evolution tomorrow. Today is about keeping our heads on straight and not getting my ass handed to me by my boys when they find out about this. Because they will if Jerry’s boss knows.
We make it halfway across the field when she gives my hand a squeeze. She says she can always tell what my squeezes mean. I don’t really know what she’s talking about. She calls me on it, though, and she’s just about always right. Apparently sometimes my squeezes are for support and reassurance, and sometimes they’re just to let her know that I’m there. Don’t know how she deciphers between that shit. All I ever get out of it is that she wants something.
This relationship crap is half-terrifying and half-fucking-twisted. Who the fuck knows the language of squeezes?
Apparently Cub does.
“We’re okay,” she mouths to me and nods her head. Her long brown hair is in a messy braid that hangs over her shoulder, and her brown eyes are practically sparkling from the excitement of everything going on around her. All I want is for her to understand—for one goddamn second—that this shit isn’t a game. It’s dangerous, and working with other clubs always carries a certain risk and requires a high level of sensitivity. But here she is like she’s got no clue how bad this could be—smiling her ass off. I give her a warning look, but she ignores me. Either Mancuso totally kept her in the dark about how real shit can get, or she just fucking refuses to understand the potential for how bad things can go here.
Jerry walks us into the large barn that sits in the center of the open field that welcomes visitors to the Mendo Ranch. Once a month or so they open the ranch up to sell fresh meat at a discount to locals who want to cut their costs at the grocery store, and a portion of the sales goes directly to help cancer research. The rest of the meat is sold to supermarket chains around the county who have no clue they’re doing business with Forsaken. The same store owners and managers buy our product and then turn their noses up when we frequent their stores. Fucking assholes don’t know how fast we could cripple their businesses if we wanted to.
The barn doors are open and welcoming, like fucking Disneyland for cows or some shit. There’s a front desk and an elderly receptionist who sits here and handles the phones when we get calls. On the walls are photos of cows that have called the ranch home, their names tacked onto the top in colorful pieces of paper. I’ve never fucking understood it. We kill the goddamn animals and eat them and put their pictures up like being here is winning a prize? Fuck. If I put up pictures of everybody I killed with their name attached, people would think I was fucking psychotic. Whatever.
“Ryan Stone,” the receptionist says in an uninterested but kind tone into the cordless phone at her ear. She shifts in her chair on the hay-covered floor, then redirects her eyes to Cub. “And a lady visitor.”
Bitch. She must be on the phone to Jerry’s boss—whose name I never can fucking remember—and she just sold Cub out. Not that he wasn’t about to find out anyway, but the element of surprise is always handy, and now we’ve lost it. She better fucking pray Cub makes it out of this unscathed, or all that dry hay under her feet will light up quick and she won’t make it to the door before her flesh is burned off.
“You may go in,” she says without looking up.
I take a deep breath to chill myself out, but it doesn’t work. “I fucking own the place, lady. I know perfectly goddamn well I can go in.”