Justice (3 page)

Despite locking the door, he wasn’t safe. Paul knew it. The shifters had found him, and someone—who the fuck, he didn’t know—had found Terence and Pat. Paul hoped they were dead, but he had no idea if they were. Even so, there was the matter of the third guy, whoever he was.

It could have been one of many men, shifters, who’d been allowed to fuck him by his—Paul stopped himself. He wouldn’t call that bastard his owner, not anymore.

He had to move past it all, somehow. Paul leaned his back against the door then slid down until he landed with a thump. It jarred his body, reminding him that he’d had a nasty fall earlier and he hurt all over. A shower was in order, and as many pain pills as he could take without killing himself.

Except that would mean he had to get up. Paul’s heart raced erratically at the idea of leaving the door unguarded. It was stupid. He couldn’t keep a shifter from breaking it down, but somehow, his brain kept telling him that if he got up, the door would be imploded by a rabid wolf. Images of himself with his throat torn out, entrails strewn all over the small apartment, wouldn’t leave his mind.

Paul gasped. He couldn’t get a decent breath. His head felt light and grey dots invaded his vision. Sweat popped up all over his body, chilling him even as he felt heated from the inside out.

Then the shaking began. Paul had thought he’d hit the ground hard earlier, but his body was bordering on convulsing. It caused his teeth to clack loudly together and his back and head to hit the door repeatedly. He tried to bend his neck, get his head down some. Whether it helped or not, he couldn’t say, because he couldn’t breathe—then his world went dark.

Chapter Three

“How is it two states can be side by side, yet be so damned different?”

Justice Chalmers glanced at his sister Vivian before returning his full attention to the road. Traffic was moderate on I-25 since they were on the outskirts of Denver. If they’d been an hour later, they’d have got hung up in traffic, but they’d hit Denver at nine a.m. so it hadn’t been too bad. It hadn’t been great, either.

“Arizona sure doesn’t look anything like this, at least not our part of it,” Justice conceded. “I wouldn’t live anywhere else than Phoenix, though. Suits me.”

Viv snorted and he just knew she was rolling her eyes. “Of course it does. I love that place, but there sure are some, er, different people there.”

“Snob,” he chided. “There are
different
people everywhere. Otherwise it’d be pretty damn boring. Bunch of uptight pricks wearing ties and shit…”

“Yes, I know, and for a psychologist, that did sound rather snobby.” She patted his arm. “As it happens, I love your eclectic town and friends, just like I love you, bro.”

Justice barely kept from rolling his eyes. “Drop the ‘bro’, Viv. There’s nothing worse than a prep trying to sound hip.”

“Now who’s being the snob?” she said with entirely too much glee. “Hey there, pot. Labels suck.”

“Yeah, they do, but not being able to tease and joke sucks too.” Justice signalled for the exit that would take them to his grandma’s place. “Stop being a stick-in-the-mud, sis.”

Viv tipped her nose up. Justice saw the movement in his peripheral vision and he grinned. His little sister was so much fun to tease, especially now that she’d got her license to practise psychology.

“Bet you never thought this is how you’d start your business off,” he told her as he checked to see if it was safe to merge.

“Helping family wasn’t on my list of expectations, no,” she admitted, “But only because I assumed it’d only include our blood family and their mates. You know how proud shifters are, and men? Right. Men are less likely than a woman to ask for help or even admit they need it. To be fair, I’m not exactly helping a family member, directly.”

“No, but you’re helping the brother of one of our long-lost relatives’ mate.” Justice had to run that over in his head to make sure he hadn’t bungled it. “Did that make sense?”

Viv snickered then patted him again. “Talking yourself in circles again? Yes, I do believe I know who I’m helping.”

Justice didn’t say anything else, having enough sense to know he’d come close to insulting his sister already. Still, he wondered what the newly-ish discovered family members would look like. Justice had missed the annual family reunion—and by God, his grandma had bitched him out good for that—so he hadn’t met the newbies, Nischal and Sabin. No last names as far as he knew. They’d been raised in the mountains of Nepal by their mother until her death. Isolated, except for an old guy who’d befriended them later.

Before they were caught and used as a sideshow attraction to draw in victims for some kind of human trafficking scheme. Justice wasn’t real clear on how all that had happened, but Nischal and Sabin were related to Grandma Marybeth on their mother’s side, and therefore, they were family no matter how many times removed they might be as cousins to Justice and Viv.

And Nischal had found his mate, a short little ginger man by the name of Preston. That was about all Justice knew. He’d seen pictures of the new family members and Preston a while back. They seemed happy.

But Preston had a twin who was having problems. “You think—and please don’t get mad, sis, I’m just asking out of concern for you…” He really was, because if she failed, and something went wrong, Viv would never forgive herself. She’d already had one severe trauma in her life. Justice hadn’t been around to help her through it, but he’d make sure she wasn’t hurt again.

He cleared his throat then continued, “Are you ready for something as intense as this will be? I mean, this Paul guy, he was kidnapped, sold, abused—sexually and probably in any other way possible. By shifters.”

Viv sighed and he risked a longer look at her since the road was all but abandoned to them. She wasn’t mad at him. That was sadness pulling the corners of her mouth down.

“Viv—”

“I have to try,” she said. “Paul can’t go to a human psychologist and talk to them. He can’t confide in one, and he’s a mess, of course he is. From what I’ve been told…” Viv shook her head. “I can’t spill his secrets, that’s unethical. He needs help, and I’m going to be there for him if he’ll let me. Anything else is out of the question.”

The words dug into Justice’s conscience like sharp little daggers. He gripped the wheel tighter. He’d said it before, but it bore repeating. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Viv. I wish the military would have let me come home—”

Viv cut him off. “This isn’t about what happened to me, and really, what happened to me? Nothing compared to that poor man we hit.” Her voice wavered and she sniffled. “Young, dumb, drinking and driving. We all knew better, Jus. We just thought nothing bad would ever happen to us.”

Justice had to bite back any more protests. If he’d been home instead of in Iraq a half-dozen years ago, Viv would never have been out running around with a bad crowd.

Not a bad crowd. Just dumb kids.
It wasn’t like he hadn’t done his share of idiotic things when he’d been a minor. He’d got drunk lots of times, even smoked a few joints. He’d never driven drunk, and neither had Viv.

And yes, he’d ridden with a friend driving who had been too intoxicated to be at the wheel. He could honestly say, there but for the grace of God… Which was why he’d have known what Viv and her friends were up to back then.
If
he’d been around. But he hadn’t been, and her best friend had died in the same wreck that had killed a father of three who’d been pumping gas.

“It’s true, what they say,” Viv said, interrupting his musings.

“What’s true? Or what do they say?” He wasn’t sure there was a difference in what he was asking. Sometimes Viv confused him, or he confused himself.

“There’s this general consensus that people go into psychology and psychiatry because they really want to know what’s wrong with themselves.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Justice said a little louder than he meant to. He winced, sent his sister an apologetic look. “There’s not. You were doing the same dumb shit teenagers have been doing forever. Kids aren’t known for their stellar judgement.”

“I know that, but what happened has affected me, and, in a way, impaired me.” Viv slapped the dashboard. “You know it. Otherwise I would be able to drive, and I can’t. I just can’t. Even sitting in the driver’s seat sends me into a panic attack.”

Justice had seen some fighting in Iraq. He knew how the memories of torn bodies could haunt a person. Being a teenager, sitting in the front seat and seeing the car strike someone who then flew up into the windshield—that had to cause as many scars as the ones he carried around in his head.

“I’m happy to drive you. Grandma would have my nuts in a vise if I didn’t come along, anyway.”

Viv made a gagging sound. “Gross, bro. Do
not
mention Grandma and your testicles in the same sentence. In fact,
I
don’t want to hear about—”

“Sorry. Honest slip.” Sometimes he just blurted out shit like he was talking to one of his Marine buddies. A decade of serving in the military had left him with habits that weren’t all good. “Grandma Marybeth will twist my ear off then thump my nose with the bloody cartilage.”

Viv’s laughter was a little forced, but it still warmed him inside.

“You want to stop in town before we hit up the family compound?” he asked about an hour later when they were close to Holton. From there, it was only a fifteen- or twenty-minute drive to their Grandma’s.

“You make it sound like some weird cult.”

“Aren’t all cults weird?” Justice would have thought so. “It’s part of what makes them a cult, because they don’t fit in with societal norms.”

“I’m impressed,” Viv said with enough approval in her voice that he knew she meant it. “You’re smarter than you look.”

Justice laughed and waggled his eyebrows. “Brains and handsome, too. It always surprises people.”

Viv looked just like him, well as much like him as she could while still retaining the feminine beauty version of his looks. She was taller than him, even, six-two to his six feet even. She wasn’t the tallest woman in the family, not at all. There were plenty of them, though there were more petite women, too. But Viv had broad shoulders, and a muscular build that, when combined with her curves, had Justice growling at gawkers every time they went out.

He’d been raised better than to treat any woman like a sex object. The same went for men. Once he’d figured out he was gay and told his parents, he was given the same talking to about respecting men. Call him old-fashioned, but the lessons had stuck. Fucking around had its place in life, but Justice tried not to treat anyone like a piece of meat.

“You know, I would like to stop in town,” Viv said as they were approaching the Holton sign. “I forgot to bring pads—”

“I’m not listening,” Justice hollered, holding one hand to his right ear. “La-la-la-la!”

A hard pop to his shoulder almost sent his head against the glass. He put his hand back on the steering wheel. “Beating me up isn’t going to encourage me to stop.”

“I’ll just talk about how my last period was so—”

“Fine!” Justice signalled to turn onto Main. “You win. Please don’t subject me to the gory details. I already have to deal with your PMS.”

“At least I have an excuse for my moods. You just act like an ass at times. Besides, I’m moving out next month. You’re going to miss me
and
my hormonal rages.”

“Right.” Justice dragged the word out. “I’ll miss you, but as for the other, I can just drag my nails down a chalkboard for days or something.”

“Jerk,” Viv said before laughing. “I wasn’t that bad.”

Justice parked in one of the many open spots by the post office. “Uh, yeah, Viv, you could be. You screamed at me for leaving the seat up when you were the one who did it, and before you bitch about having to clean the toilet, it was your turn. That whole deal was totally not my fault.”

She shrugged. “I’m sure there’ve been plenty of other times I could have yelled at you and didn’t, like when you used all the mouthwash or put the milk container in the fridge empty. Consider it a delayed reaction.”

He knew when he was beat. At least she hadn’t nailed him over using the last of the toilet paper in the middle of the night and forgetting to warn her. Then again, she’d shrieked at him for a week over that. Maybe he’d already paid his dues for it.

“I’m going to go to the pharmacy first, then I want to hit up the new boutique and the antique store, too.” Viv glanced at her phone. “We told Grandma we’d be there by three, so we have time. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, it’s good. You want me to go with you?” He didn’t want to, but he wouldn’t abandon his sister.

Viv waved him off. “No, you’ll just whine when I’m trying to shop. Go to the hardware store, or the diner. I’ll meet you back here at two-thirty.”

“Deal.” Justice waited for his sister to get out. He pulled out of the parking space. The gas tank needed filling, and he’d always hated doing it with Viv in the car. She said it was fine, but he was afraid she was reliving that wreck every time he pumped gas.

There was a gas station on the outskirt of town, the opposite side from where they came into Holton. Justice pulled up to a pump. The place was actually decent-sized, with numerous pumps and a good dozen eighteen-wheelers parked in the large lot to the left of the store.

He got out and took care of fuelling up. When he finished, he stretched and his lower back popped. He walked around the front of the car. The smell of gasoline was burning his nose and he sneezed. One of the downsides of being a snow leopard shifter—his olfactory senses were very…sensitive. He could sniff out things no human ever could hope to, which was a plus at times. Not always. Bad odours hit him a lot harder than a regular person, and some things could send him into a sneezing fit.

Gas didn’t always do it, but sometimes it did. He sneezed repeatedly. His eyes teared up and Justice had to swipe at his cheeks. No doubt he made an amusing figure to anyone who might be watching. There he was, a big, muscular guy with tears streaming down his cheeks.