“Because if you cause trouble around here, you’ll pay with your life.”
“Is that a threat?” the man asked.
Dylan shook his head. “Not from me. What could I do, right? I’m human. You have me sized up.”
The tension between them was heavy and had Tammy Ray’s heart pounding in her chest. Her cell phone was under the bar top, just a couple yards away. Was she going to have to call the police?
“I think you’re probably scrappy,” the stranger said. “You showed me the nine, but kept the knives hidden.”
“Knives, plural?” Dylan asked.
“I can smell the metal in your boot. The outline is obvious in your left pocket. You’ve got two. The one in your pocket has a clip, but you don’t keep it where someone would see it there.” The stranger smiled. “I would do the same thing if that was my weapon.”
“Mmm. What’s your weapon?”
“Teeth. Claws. Fire.”
Chills rippled up Tammy’s arms. They needed back-up. She made her way to her purse under the counter and yanked her phone out. “I think you should leave,” she said, and damn her voice as it shook.
“Calling Wreck?”
“He will fucking kill you if you hurt us.”
The man frowned, and his yellow eyes stayed glued to her as he asked, “Why do you assume I want to hurt you?”
“We don’t know you,” she said.
He nodded, thoughtful. “If you call anyone, can you call Jess?”
Tammy Ray froze, her finger hovering over Harley’s number. “You know Jess?”
“And Kade. I grew up with Kade. I was nearly Promised to Jess.”
“If you’re here to start some shit with Kade, it’s not going to work,” Dylan gritted out. “They’re happy.”
“I know. I can feel it.” The frown deepened on his face as he looked at the newspaper he’d been scribbling on. He pushed back from the bar top and stood, pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, and threw down a hundred-dollar bill to pay his check.
Tammy Ray reached for the cash register to make change, but he held his hand out. “Keep it.”
“That’s an eighty-dollar tip,” she said. “It’s way too much.”
He ignored her and took his pen and wrote a phone number on the top flyer in Dylan’s stack, then left the pen there as he headed for the door.
“Why are you here?” Dylan called out.
The man turned and God, he was equal parts sexy and terrifying, with those eyes glowing under the low bill of his baseball cap. “Because I don’t have a choice. I never did.” He lifted his chin higher. “Talk to Jess. Tell her Tawk is out of Sister’s Edge for good and looking for a place to eat. She’ll understand what that means.”
“I don’t care if you have fire. Wreck really can kill you,” Dylan told him.
“Jess can put my animal to sleep. She’s done it before.” He gestured to where the handgun was hidden under Dylan’s shirt. “Your weapon works better than mine here.” The man’s glowing eyes drifted to Tammy Ray and held for a few seconds before he nodded. And then he left without another word.
He was intriguing, for certain.
“What just happened?” she asked Dylan softly.
Dylan was staring at the newspaper the man had been writing on, and he held it up to show her the classifieds. She walked closer so she could see what he’d been circling. It was rental properties and apartments that were local to Darby.
Dylan sighed and swung his troubled gaze to the door where the yellow-eyed stranger had disappeared. “I think Sister’s Edge is haunting us.”
