Reeve (The Henchmen MC 11)

Closing her in, I moved around the back of the truck, shaking my head at the turn of events.

"Fordy, buddy, settle down," she crooned as I climbed in, holding my fingers up to the heating vent, trying to get some feeling back in them.

"Why is he away from his mom?" I asked, getting a good look at the kitten that couldn't have been more than four or five weeks old.

"He's not mine," she told me, using the edge of my coat to scrub at the pathetic thing's soaked fur. "I was walking home and heard the meowing."

"Home from where at two a.m.?"

Her head tilted up a bit, watching me from under her lashes with those intense eyes of hers. "I was watering someone's plants while they were on vacation."

"At two a.m.?" I asked, unconvinced, and completely unsure why I was engaging her about it.

"Well, I had just brought Iggy and Bowie home after their walk."

"Iggy and Bowie?" Was it just me, or was this woman talking in circles?

"A very overweight Rottweiler and a very lithe Borzoi."

"You're a dog walker? At two a.m.?"

"Their humans are out of town as well. They are used to being let out at one in the morning before they settle in for the night, and the owners didn't want their schedule upset."

"Why didn't you bring your car in a snowstorm?"

"I don't have a car," she said casually, as though that made the least bit of sense. This was Jersey, not the city. Everyone had a car. "Carbon emissions and all that. I walk. Or bike. Or if I have to, take the bus to go out of town. Keeping my footprint light."

Alright.

She was a bit of a flower child.

It was starting to make more sense why she was a bit naive and trusting. And did shit like watered plants at two in the morning. And saved kittens. And climbed in cars with strange men.

"Well, you're soaked through. You can't walk now. How about I drive you home so you can get him - and yourself - warmed up? I'll try not to step on the gas too much," I offered with a small lip twitch.

"Okay," she agreed, trying to scoot the kitten closer to the heat vent.

"I am going to need an address, babe," I told her when she said nothing further.

"Oh, right," she said, glancing over. "Over past the place that used to be a hole-in-the-wall deli next to the farm that used to have cows, but now only seems to grow blueberries soaked in pesticides. But not into the subdivision. Over down where the old bridge is with the wild blackberry bush that is bigger than I am over by the creek."

Normally, that would be a batshit crazy way to direct someone to your house.

It was clear she was a lifer in Navesink Bank.

And, luckily, I was as well.

And I actually knew exactly what she was talking about even though that deli closed when I was nine years old. And the farm hadn't had cows since years before that. But I remembered cutting through that subdivision on my walk home from high school. Not to pick wild blackberries, but because that secluded little patch of woods by the bridge and creek was where you went to hang out, catch a smoke, sneak a drink, normal rebellious kid shit we all did here or there.

"Alright," I agreed, buckling up, and turning the truck in that direction, wipers on blast to keep the ever-falling snow off the windshield. "And where to after that?"

"A left at the house with the dalmatian mailbox, then a right at the house with the beautiful snowball bush."

It was December. There wouldn't be a blossoming snowball bush until summer.

"Then?"

"Then a left into the dead-end street."

"The Victorian?" I asked, chancing a glance over at her as I drove, seeing her nuzzling her cheek into the kitten's head fur, and for some reason, the sight made a warm feeling spread through my chest, something I didn't even have a name for.

"Mhmm."

That house was one everyone in the area told stories about, kids and parents alike. The house and the batshit crazy old woman who had lived there since as long as anyone could remember.

There was no way she was still alive, but judging by the oddness of the woman in the seat beside me, her legacy was alive and well.

"Do you have a name, babe?" I asked as the silence droned on.

"Everyone has a name," she countered softly.

Jesus.

"Can you tell me it?" I pressed, shaking my head.

"Rey," she supplied.

"Reeve," I told her even though she didn't ask.

With nothing else to say, no knowledge on how to engage a woman as flighty as this one appeared to be, I let the silence hang as I followed her directions and drove down the quiet dead-end street toward the old Victorian.