Enforcer

Prologue

“What the heck, Tommie? I got places to go, man,” Rey said, fingers agitatedly

drumming on the steering wheel.

Tommie Perkins flipped his friend the bird. “Dude, hold your horses. It’s not like

you got a woman or anything.” He snorted in amusement at himself. “I have to check

something out for Cade. Something big is going on, Reyes. It’s got the hierarchy all

shaken up and Lex is more nervous and paranoid than usual.”

Rey snorted but kept driving. If his Alpha had business that needed tending to, he

couldn’t just blow it off. Even he had a sense of duty.

Tommie looked down at the scribbled address on the paper in his hand and back at

the street signs. “Make a right into that parking lot. I’m going to be across the street. It

shouldn’t take me more than ten or fifteen minutes.”

Gabriel Reyes pulled the dark sedan into the lot and parked it. He sat in the car,

smoking a cigarette, and waited while Tommie ran inside to do his business. After a

while he got bored listening to the radio and he made a few calls, but no one was

around.

Checking his watch, he narrowed his eyes when he saw that twenty minutes had

passed and still Tommie hadn’t returned. It would serve the jerk-off right if he just left

him. Rey got out of the car, sucked in a deep breath of the night air and heaved an

annoyed sigh when he saw Tommie talking with some men he couldn’t quite see in the

doorway of one of the buildings.

He resolved to make the other man buy him a beer as he watched Tommie running

toward him. As he got a few feet from the car, a shot rang out and Tommie looked up at

him as he clutched his side with surprised agony.

Rey saw his lips form “run” just before another shot rang out and hit his friend in

the head. “Jesus!” he cried out, jumping back into the car. He made quick work of

turning the car on, squealing out of the parking lot, heading to Bellevue, where his

sister lived. She’d know what to do.

5

Lauren Dane

Annoyed, Lex Warden snapped his cell phone shut and let out a long breath as he

took in the small cottage-style house. Once he pulled his bike onto the stand and got off,

he dropped the helmet on the seat and ran his fingers through his hair to get rid of the

helmet head he was sure he had after all that time riding over.

The house was light blue and someone obviously took great care of it. The lawn

was neat and window boxes overflowed in a burst of red and white, standing out in

colorful relief against the blue. There were raised beds along the front walk and a

climbing rose snaked up a lattice off the front porch.

On the porch, a glider swing and a small table with a citronella candle. More pots of

flowers and hanging baskets of greenery decorated the space. It was like a nice bit of the

wild right there in the city. It gave the place a sense of calm, of refuge.