“Did I or did I not just tell you to shut up?”
Sig stopped struggled and quieted save the too-fast whistle of his panicked breathing.
“See? That’s better,” Shep said, falsely cheerful. “Here’s how it’s gonna go, Siggy. I’m going to ask you questions, and you’re going to answer them, and only answer them. No backtalk. Got it?”
A beat passed in which Sig’s lashes fluttered, and Shep thought he might faint, but he finally jerked a nod, cheek squeaking on the counter.
“Sig? Hey, man, you can’t do that! What’s going on?” someone asked somewhere behind him.
Without letting go of Sig, Shep pulled the gun from his waistband and twisted just enough to aim the barrel at the speaker. It was the ginger guy from the front door, and his eyes bugged.
“Shit! Oh, shit!”
“Call nine-one-one and I’ll put a round through your head.”
The kid scrambled, bug-eyed, out of the room, and Shep figured he had maybe thirty seconds to get his message across before he had to book it out of here.
Shep turned back around and pressed the gun barrel to Sig’s temple. The kid stilled with a gasp, his eye huge and rolling toward the Colt pinning him to the counter.
“Question one,” Shep said. “Is this your house?”
Sig hesitated, but gasped again when Shep ground in with the gun. “Okay, okay! It’s my parents’ house.”
“Okay. Who invited Cassandra Green here last night?”
Another hesitation—but not long enough for Shep to do more than twist his wrists to a painful angle. “I did.”
“Huh. You like her? You wanted to get with her?”
“I don’t…I don’t know. She’s…”
“What did you put in her drink?”
Sig’s eyes were going to pop right out of his head if they bugged any harder. “I didn’t. I would never—”
Shep lifted him up and slammed him back down. His head ricocheted off the counter and popped back up into the gun. That was going to bruise. He might even have a bit of a concussion. He made a thick, shocked, swallowing sound in his throat.
Shep leaned in close to speak directly into his ear. “I’m not interested in your rich boy denials. I know she got dosed. This is your house, and your ass was sitting outside with her, trying to get her to drink more shit.”
“I didn’t—”
“Shut. The fuck. Up. This isn’t a discussion. This is me telling you that I’ve got eyes and ears everywhere. If you ever speak to Cassandra again, if you even look at her, if you talk to your friends about her, I willend you. Not beat you up. Not call the cops on you. Not sue you like your little rich boy friends do. You willcease to exist, and mine’ll be the last face you ever see on this earth. Do you understand me?”
“Y-yeah.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Y-yes, s-sir,” Sig echoed.
“Good boy.” Shep hauled him off the counter, and clapped him across the back of the head with the gun.
“Ow!” he shouted.
Shep stalked out of the house, through the still-open door, and down the front steps without looking back.
~*~
Cass entertained Natalia while Raven headed for her meeting and Toly took a shower. When she went to check on him after a half-hour, she found that he’d fallen asleep face-down across the foot of his and Raven’s bed, only half-dressed.
