His accounts were plentiful. Enough that it’d taken me a moment to process the balances.
It was weird, he’d just given me access to it all, his trust so easy.
That was something I didn’t come close to understanding.
How to just…give.
Because giving was dangerous.
I forced myself to focus on the task at hand. Slowly but surely, I made my way through a box of receipts that had been stuffed in the corner. Lost in the work. In using my hands. In being a part of something that felt like it mattered. As if I were making a difference for someone else.
Someone who was making a difference for me.
Only I stilled when a sense whispered across my flesh.
An aura.
An innuendo.
It was close to chills lifting on my skin, though not quite as intense.
It was just this disquiet that gusted through the muted intensity of my focus.
Slowly, I pushed from the stool where I’d been sitting at the desk that ran off to the side of the main high counter. I eased closer so I could peer over the top and out through the windows that I knew were a shimmery pitch from the outside.
Because of it, there was no chance a soul could see through the tint.
Still, my heart thugged like lead when I saw a car sitting on the far side of the curb. It wasn’t directly across the street, but a bit farther to the left, mostly concealed by the thick foliage of shrubbery and trees.
But I saw it—the tail-end of the same black car I could have sworn I’d seen outside our house earlier this morning.
Again, up the street.
I’d barely acknowledged it then, where it’d sat up the road like any other.
But this?
Alarm sparked in the place where I would forever be on edge, and it sent a tremor rocking through my being.
A warning that blared.
My being buzzed, jumpstarting the fight or flight reaction it always did.
But me?
It was always flight.
I had to get out of here.
I had to get out of here.
Run. Run. Run.
I stumbled back from the counter as panic seized the air in my lungs.
In an instant, I felt as if I were suffocating.
The world spinning. The floor trembling.
It was the only thing I could do—flee.
Frantically, my attention darted for an escape route, only to scream when a hand landed on my shoulder.
I whirled around in shock, in fear, in a tiny bit of that fight, ready to battle through to the end.
“Salem.”
That rumbly voice broke into the frenzied paranoia.
“Salem, look at me, darlin’. It’s just me.”
I gasped and blinked and tried to reorient myself.
I realized I was pressed against a row of black file cabinets that ran the left wall behind the counter. There was a small wall that jutted out to keep them hidden from the lobby.
It left me out of view of anyone who would walk through the doors.
But Jud saw me.
Watched me carefully.
That obsidian gaze fired and flared and rushed over me in his own bid of panic.
“Not gonna hurt you, darlin’.” Those big, big hands were held out in front of him in a calming fashion, and I squeezed my eyes closed and attempted to swallow over the jagged rock that had lodged itself in my throat.
My lungs panged and my heart hammered and God…this was so embarrassing.
“Are you okay?”
My nod was tight.
“What’s going on? What freaked you out?”
My head shook and my body shivered. “Nothing.”
“Not nothing if it’s got you spun up like this.” The words cracked like venom.
Manic laughter tumbled from my tongue, and I waved a crazed hand toward the window, unable to stop the flow of words.
“I just…there’s a car out there sitting on the street, and I swore I saw the same one sitting across the street in our neighborhood this morning. It’s probably nothing.”
What was I doing? Giving this to him?
But a spec of that trust was there, offered into the air. Into his hands. Into his big, beating heart that battered at his chest.
His attention darted to the windows. I saw the moment he saw it, too. The way every bulky muscle in his body flexed in a bid of aggression.
“It’s nothing,” I reiterated, mostly trying to calm myself down.
Only Jud didn’t seem to think it was nothing because he grunted, “Wait right there.”
Then he turned on his heavy motorcycle boots, his giant body hulking around the counter and across the lobby, the man casting me a harsh glance as he slipped out the door.
He didn’t slow.
He strode like menace across the lot.
I watched in abject horror and awe as he slipped his hand around to his backside and under his shirt and pulled a gun from the waistband of his jeans.
His muscles vibrated with hostility.
With violence.
I’d known there was something about the man that whispered of his darkness.
Of danger.
Of bloodshed and barbarity.
But I’d never been so sure of it until then.