“How do you know all of this, Dad?” DB asked, lifting his hand away from the weapon he’d reached for at the same time that I’d reached for my own. The only one of us who didn’t seem surprised by their appearance was Logan, who was leaning against the counter like we were meeting for a drink.
“I was doing something,” Jarrod muttered in his deep voice. “And when I drove past, I saw him coming up behind your brother. He had him before I could stop and do something and then I saw the gun. I figured I’d go around the back of the house and bumped into this guy here,” he nodded at Alex who started laughing quietly.
“Yeah, my reaction was like y’all’s just now. Damn near shot the poor bastard.”
Seeing something on the counter beside him, Logan reached over and picked it up, examining it closely. “What’s this?”
“The laser that drove her cat insane…” I started to explain, but then an idea hit me. “Give it to me.”
Taking it out his hand, I ran through to Garrett’s room, snatching up the binoculars he’d been showing me the day he arrived. Making my way back to where the men were waiting for me, I gestured for them to follow me and crawled until I was under the window.
“What are we doing?” Jarrod asked, watching as I took the protectors off either side of the binoculars.
Not taking my eyes off the house, I passed them across to him. “You’re going to use these to tell me exactly what he’s doing and which direction he’s looking in,” I said, turning on the laser. “And I’m going to get the cat to lose his shit.”
“What’s that going to do?” Alex asked, looking at me like I’d lost my mind, and maybe I had but this was the best option to get to Rose that we had at this moment.
Figuring it out, DB grinned at me through the dim light coming in through the window from outside. “You smart bastard. Dad, you didn’t see the damage the cat did last time.”
Life wasn’t black and white, it was a billion different shades of both until they met in the middle, so the trick wasn’t to approach situations like they were just those two colors. The law was very clear to a policeman and the general public, but when you were dealing with it, you had to toe a gray line – and that’s what I was doing now. I was thinking outside the box, and I was using what I could to save my woman and brother. A laser, and one big assed cat.Chapter NineteenRoseWhen I first saw the little red dot moving across the wall, I was sure I was seeing things because of how hard he’d punched me – a-fucking-gain! But then when it started to move around, I realized what it was and almost cried with relief.
“Can I call my cat?” I asked Chad, who was standing eating his sandwich. The asshole had dragged me through to the kitchen to make it and then dragged me back, which was totally unnecessary because if he’d asked me to walk beside him, I would have! Now I was going to have bruises around my arm to match the new ones on my face.
“Like I give a fuck!” See, totally unnecessary. A simple yes or no would have sufficed.
“Rex!” I called, knowing he’d come running thinking he was going to get some of the food. He might be fat, but my kitty cat had manners and waited to be invited first. Sure enough, only seconds later he was prowling through the doorway, sniffing the floor for crumbs. “Come here, baby.”
With what looked like half of the sandwich in his mouth, he garbled, “Looks like a tiger.”
Jumping up beside me, Rex dug his nails into my thigh, waiting for me to hold something out for him. But I had something better for him, something he loved even more than food, and it was pretty much the only other thing in the world that made him move. Carefully so that Big Foot didn’t see, I turned his head toward where the red dot was waiting for him.
“Look baby,” I cooed quietly in his ear. “It’s the pretty you love.” There was no way in hell this cat understood anything apart from food and treat, but the second it started to move in a circle he was on it.
Picking up a cushion, I covered my face and called out, “Hey, Garratt, remember that time you had the laser?”
And then it all went to shit. There were growls from the feline who was in a laser frenzy, thuds, screeching, hisses, the sound of something smashing, curses coming from Chad… but I didn’t move the cushion at any point during the massacre. I didn’t even look when I heard a gun shooting and something breaking behind me, but you can bet your ass that I dropped down off the couch and crawled behind it.