Vodka On The Rocks (The Uncertain Saints Book 3) (4 page)

I agreed with him, and it’d been a dilemma on my mind since I’d started at the school two years ago.

Yet, the administration had never done anything about it and had no plans to.

“It’s not in their budget to install a security system,” I told him. “Let’s go, ladies, you’ve got a little over an hour for practice before you have to be at your first class.”

They filed through the hallway, one by one, each of them tossing curious looks over their shoulders at the two of us.

“Thank you,” I said once the last girl filed through the gym’s door.

He looked away. “You need to be more cautious.”

I did.

But I’d been doing this for two years now.

“Thanks for the ride,” I called as I walked past him.

He glared at my back until I disappeared around the corner, grabbing the carts of balls as I went, smiling as I did it.

If you want to see bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning, look out the window. Because I’m not a fucking squirrel.

-Tasha’s secret thoughts

Casten

I couldn’t say why I was upset, but by the time I reached my office, I was beyond pissed off.

There were fifteen girls there, including Tasha, and the entire school had been dark.

The gym was massive, and there were so many dark areas and places for someone to hide that I’d been sick with dread by the time I made it back around the parking lot to find the suspicious car gone.

By the time I’d gotten to my office, I was ready to spit nails.

None of the girls would’ve been able to protect themselves. They were all ranging in age from fifteen to seventeen.

I’d never, not once, imagined that I would be worrying about the safety dynamics of a girls’ volleyball team, but there I was, contemplating how to make it better.

“What’s your deal?” my sister asked.

I looked to her, then away as I started to input the number of the person who texted Tasha earlier this morning.

It came up as a burner phone, and I narrowed my eyes at the screen as if it would give me the information I sought if I glared hard enough.

“Nothing,” I muttered darkly, standing up and facing her with my cup of coffee in my hand.

Her eyes went to the paper cup and widened.

“Why does your cup say ‘Whore-Hey?’” Her eyes glittered.

I shrugged.

“What are you doing here?” I changed the subject.

I wasn’t ready to talk to my sister, or anyone, about Tasha.

“I thought you were sleeping,” I lifted a brow at her.

She worked night shift, and she
should
be sleeping right now.

“I got a phone call from our mother,” she huffed, taking a seat on the couch with a soft plunk.

I gritted my teeth.

“And what did she want?” I leaned against my desk and crossed my feet.

“She’s getting married next weekend, as you know, and she wants to know if either one of us needs a date or if we plan on wasting our plus one,” CeeCee explained.

“Fuck no she didn’t,” I growled.

CeeCee smiled like it was painful.

“I told her we had dates,” she smiled like she’d solved a problem instead of creating one.

“But we don’t have dates,” I stated the obvious.

“I’ll have a date, even if I have to ask Joe.”

My brows rose at that.

“You’d ask Joe?” I questioned in surprise.

She nodded. “Yeah, Joe.”

Joe was her ex-husband, and he was her ex because he was so vehemently against her being a cop. He was so against females becoming law enforcement, at all, that it wasn’t funny.

Joe hated that his wife was going out and putting her life on the line night after night.

Joe hated that CeeCee wouldn’t just stay at home, barefoot and pregnant, content being his little housewife, and I couldn’t say that I was totally against that idea, either.

It wasn’t that I thought women couldn’t handle themselves, I just felt like my sister shouldn’t
have
to.

She was all of five-foot-nothing, and would go down in a swift wind like she did one year at a water park when a storm blew in.

I just didn’t know if my sister would be able to protect herself from some meth-head addict that was high out of his mind or a robber intent on getting away.

“What am I supposed to do?” I growled at her.

“Ask the brown beauty you were with last night,” my sister suggested.

I shook my head. “That isn’t going to work.”

CeeCee’s eyes rose. “And why not?”

I twisted the paper holder around the cup absently as I stared out the windows to my office.

“She’s Annie’s sister.”

“The one you have a crush on,” CeeCee teased.

I snapped my eyes over to hers.

“I never said I had a crush on her,” I informed her.

She shrugged.

“I didn’t say that you did, but you also haven’t tried to bring a woman home since you met her. Figured you had it bad for her if you weren’t trying to pound my wall down,” CeeCee said.

My stomach tightened.

“They’re my walls, and you said you couldn’t hear anything,” I grumbled.

CeeCee smiled.

“I lied.”

Shit.

“That…” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “That’s just wrong. If I’d have known, I wouldn’t have brought anyone home.”

CeeCee shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal, Ten. When it happens, I turn my TV on, and I can’t hear a thing anymore.”

My sister moved into my house with me after her divorce. And, although she’d looked for a place here and there, she hadn’t found one that had caught her fancy yet.

I didn’t care.

I was rarely, if ever, there.

My business kept me gone until late, and if I did manage to come home, I was only there for a couple hours to sleep.

It was nice to have someone there to take care of Koda.

Koda was my dog.

She was a beast, and I loved her like she was my own kid.

I’d become her handler while I was on a tour in Iraq.

She’d saved my life by warning me of a roadside bomb before we walked past it, and I’d moved at the last minute.

Had she not been there to warn me that day, I would’ve been dead, along with eight members of my team.

Koda and I had some awesome PTSD from the incident, and we’d both been injured.

While she and I were recuperating, my team moved mountains and I’d kissed some major ass and pulled some serious strings to get her home with me.

And she’d been with me ever since.

“The doctor’s office called,” CeeCee revealed. “Did you mean to skip your appointment this week?”

I grimaced.

“Yeah. I had a skip,” I confirmed, dropping my empty cup down on my desk and circling around it. “Did you do the paperwork, or did Rhea do it?”

“I did it, boss,” my other sister, Rhea, called.

I grimaced.

Rhea was all of eighteen years old, and I wasn’t sure she really needed to be involved in my business. However, she was my little sister, and I’d rather her work somewhere where I knew she’d be paid what she was worth.

Rhea was what one would call a brainiac.

She’d graduated from high school when she was sixteen, graduated from college with her degree in electrical engineering two and a half years later and was now working as my secretary, of all things.

Why, I didn’t know, and I wouldn’t question her on it.

If she needed the time to integrate herself in the world, I’d give it to her.

“Thanks,” I said. “Did you get all the invoices paid?”

Rhea nodded. “Yep. Sent you the email this morning. I also paid your gym crew.”

“Thanks,” I muttered, scanning my emails.

I stopped on one I assumed was spam, but opened it regardless.

The email wasn’t spam.

But I should’ve deleted it anyway.

It was from Tasha.

How she’d gotten my email, I didn’t know.

But it was simple and to the point.

A picture she’d sent from her iPhone, with a caption that read, ‘Does my butt look big in these shorts?’

She was standing facing away from a mirror, and she was taking a picture of herself over her shoulder.

I could see the top part of her thighs encased in similar work out pants to the ones she wore yesterday. The same t-shirt. The only thing different was her hair.

It cascaded down her back in long waves that nearly reached her butt.

She was laughing.

She was so sexy, it hurt to look at her.

“Who’s that?” Rhea chirped.

“That is the girl he has a crush on,” CeeCee cooed.

I clicked out of the email without commenting, then skipped down to the one just below the one from Tasha.

The subject line read: Meeting time: 2000 hours.

“Fuck me,” I groaned, scrubbing my hands down my face.

It was from Dante Hail.

He owned Hail Auto Recovery, an automobile repossession business, and from time to time, we ran jobs together.

He’d get the vehicle, and I’d get the man.

It worked out in a lot of ways, because most of the time people got downright cranky if you tried to take back their ride.

I was there to recover the men (and sometimes women), because the two of our businesses ran hand-in-hand quite a lot…not that we got along all that well ourselves.

I ignored the two of them as I scanned through the rest of my emails, finally deleting about two hundred of the two hundred and twenty there.

“One of you go get breakfast,” I ordered, leaning to the side and removing my wallet from my back pocket.

I snatched forty out and placed it on my desk before going through the stack of mail.

Owning your own business was not as glamorous as it was made out to be. There were a lot of responsibilities that I disliked immensely.

Such as checking my mail, paying my bills, getting office supplies. Making sure things were clean when clients came in.

“I’ll go,” Rhea snatched the money. “I have to drop off the mail and make the deposits anyway.”

I didn’t say anything as she left, nor did I talk to my other sister.

I had shit on my mind, and a million things I needed to get done before I had to meet Dante later that evening.

But first, I had to make a phone call about a piece of shit car at a bar.

Later that night, I was even more tired that I normally was, but I guessed that was what happened when you only had about four hours of sleep within a forty-eight-hour time period.

“Ready,” I slammed a magazine into the butt of my Glock.

Dante eyed me, then moved his eyes to the two other men with him.

I was a one man show; whereas, Dante wasn’t.

It took multiple people to get a car moved when there were dangerous criminals involved.

He was also a smart man, not letting anyone on his crew go out without having back up.

Tonight, Dante being there was a rare treat.

He rarely ever did his own dirty work anymore.

Working by myself, I didn’t have to worry about putting anyone else in danger.

I’d had enough of that in the Navy with a whole fucking team to look out for.

I was over having people die on my watch.

I hated delivering the news of a soldier’s passing to the family. To see the look on a widow’s face when I told her the man I was supposed to protect wasn’t coming home was hell on my heart.

I never wanted to deliver another message like that again, which was why I’d gotten out of the Navy. I was burned out.

Now it was all me, myself, and I.

The only news that would have to be delivered was to the police department if a capture went bad.

Because if it was me or a criminal, it was going to be me every single time if I could help it.

“Nice,” Dante eyed my piece.

I nodded. “It is nice, isn’t it? Just got her yesterday.” Referring to my new Glock 18, semi-automatic pistol.

Dante nodded, turning his eyes to his boys.

“Ready when you are,” he said.

The two men got into the tow truck, and I jumped on the back to hitch a ride before they took off down the street to the house where our mark was located.

It was a shitty house in a shitty neighborhood on the outskirts of Uncertain.

The banks of the river were less than a hundred yards south, and if the inhabitants were smart, they’d have an escape plan already routed out, and it would be on the river.

Which was why I went around the back of the house instead of the front.

Dante was making it so they would have no reason to go out the front.

Their next plan of action would be transportation, and around here that meant the Caddo River.

I’d just hopped off and took up at the back door when Dante texted my phone.

Dante: Car here. Old Chevy Malibu. Gray. 88B-B665 plate.

I circled back around front, and what I saw made my blood boil.

“Motherfucking cock sucking son of a goat fucker,” I growled low in my throat, hurrying to the car and dropping into the passenger side before the driver could shut the car off. “Back up and get the fuck out of here, now.”

Tasha screamed.

“Goddammit, you asshole! You scared the life out of me!” Tasha bellowed.

“Go. Now,” I ordered with deathly calm.

She listened to me, noticing that the tone of my voice was anything but happy to see her.

She backed up, and pulled forward down the street at normal speed.

“Stop,” I demanded.

She stopped, her eyes glancing down nervously at my gun.

“What are you doing here?” she asked carefully.

“I should ask you the same question,” I snapped.

She narrowed her eyes at me.

“I’m here because Carly, one of my volleyball girls, called me, telling me that her sister brought her out here, and she can’t find anyone to come get her,” Tasha explained reluctantly.

I scrubbed one hand down my face; the effort to keep my eyes open now was getting on the verge of uncomfortable.

“Go down the road and park by my bike under the shadows of the stop sign,” I instructed. “Don’t move until I tell you to, and if I’m not back in fifteen minutes, just go home.”

She wanted to argue, I could tell.