Julie Walker - Hell for Leather

The bark sounded like something that would come from the throat of a pubescent boy, cracking up an octave somewhere in the middle.

“Well, that’s a pathetically wimpy excuse for a bark if ever I heard one,” Steady muttered, turning over to rub his tailbone—the thing no doubt bruised from the ass-plant he’d done onto the boards of the porch.

“Yorp!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Mac pushed at that big, yellow head again when it started nosing in his direction, long, pink tongue poised to strike. “We heard you the first time.” He squinted at the flashing, silver pendant attached to the dog’s blue collar, and thought, really? “Fido, huh? I guess ol’ Charles isn’t real creative when it comes to pet naming.”

“His name is Fido?” Ozzie called from the porch, having holstered his weapon.

Mac was about to turn and nod over his shoulder when he felt movement beneath him. A soft, seductive sort of wiggle.

For the love of Christ! He was still sprawled atop Delilah!

Now, he really wished he could say he nonchalantly, just oh-so-casually rolled off her. That would’ve been the acceptable way to handle the situation. But considering he remembered, at that precise moment, that he’d gone and sprung the world’s hardest boner—the thing could’ve been used to cut glass—it should’ve come as no surprise that the jackknife maneuver he used to propel himself upward was one for the record books. The World’s Most Ludicrous and Uncoordinated Dismounts record books…

“Well, yeehaw, cowboy! Did that pretty filly buck you off?” Ozzie called. “And you call yourself a bona fide Texan? Pssht.”

Mac chose to ignore Ozzie because, really, how the hell was he expected to think of a comeback at a time like this? Instead, he reached down, offering Delilah a hand, and hoping beyond hope that she hadn’t noticed the spruce tree he’d been packing inside his pants while lying atop her.

No such luck. When he hauled her to her feet, the surprised, slightly speculative look in her eye—not to mention the deep flush staining her cheeks and that deliciously overripe chest of hers—told him she hadn’t missed a damn thing.

Well…hell…

“Holy hemp balls, Batman! Look at the size of this thing! It’s Goliath’s bong!”

Delilah was sitting at Charlie’s kitchen table and frowning at the personal income tax returns and financial records she’d found in the filing cabinet acting as an end table in the nearby living room. A needle in a haystack…that’s what she was looking for. Something nefarious in Charlie’s dealings that might tell her why he was missing along with her uncle. And Charlie was missing. Gone for at least two days, by her guess. You know, given the state of the dry, crusty food on the dishes stacked in the sink and the general mayhem the dog had created when he began to worry his owner wouldn’t return.

The cushions on the brown, threadbare sofa in the living room were shredded, cotton sticking out everywhere and littering the space in great, white wads that glimmered in the light of the two lamps flanking the front window. Toilet paper was strewn around the downstairs bathroom and glued to the wet linoleum floor—glued because Fido had been using the toilet as his water bowl and he hadn’t been very fastidious about it, dropping big, sticky blobs of drool and potty water everywhere. And then there was the bottom of the front door… It looked like it’d gone ten rounds with a wood chipper and lost. The wood chipper being Fido’s teeth and claws in his frantic bid for freedom from the house.

Poor Fido…

She reached down to scratch the Lab’s soft, floppy ears and was rewarded with an adoring whine and the promise of eternal love shining in his soulful brown eyes. “Who’s a good boy? Who’s just the best boy in the whole world? Are you best boy in the whole world?”

“He’s probably the most mellow boy in the world if he lives with the guy who smokes this thing,” Ozzie said.

She glanced up from the dog to find Ozzie waving around a three-foot-long water bong in eye-bleeding orange. And, oh, how she wished the reason her uncle hadn’t been in touch with her was because he’d gotten himself good and baked.

If he’d pulled the ol’ Cheech and Chong, she’d be pissed at him for scaring her shitless and doing something that by Illinois law could get him thrown in the nearest eight-by-ten. But at least she’d know what to do… Namely, feed him copious amounts of White Castle and Cheetos and wait for the THC to wear off before hauling his stoner ass back home. As it stood, she was no closer to finding her uncle than she’d been before she left Chicago. And, to make matters worse, now she was dealing with another old Marine who’d mysteriously gone AWOL.

She glanced back down at the tax filings. There was something here. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. Besides his Social Security and military retirement benefits, Charlie Sanders didn’t have any income. But there were expenditures listed in his—

The air around her heated as Mac brushed by her. She glanced up, only to find him not paying her the slightest bit of attention—so what else is new? Instead, he was in the process of making his third slow circle around the kitchen table. Squatting, he studied the orange and green linoleum floor as if in search of some miniscule piece of evidence. When he stood, she managed to catch his eye, but his expression was back to being dismissive.

So, we’re playing it that way, are we? She lifted a brow, hoping the look she wore clearly relayed her thoughts. We’re just pretending nothing happened out there in the front yard? We’re just acting like you didn’t pitch a stick of wood big enough and stiff enough to hang my bath towel on?

Mimicking her, Mac lifted a dark brow, his expression sliding from dismissive to inscrutable.

Okay. So I guess the answers to those questions are yes, yes, and yes.

Then and there she decided that, just as she’d long suspected, Bryan “Mac” McMillan was a big, irritating, confusing, A-hole. A big, irritating, confusing, holy-hell-hot-as-homemade-sin A-hole. And to make matters worse—as if she needed matters to be worse at this point; thanks, Universe, you giant dickwad!—ever since he’d sprawled atop her, so warm, so heavy, so very much a man, blood had been rushing into parts of her that had been too long ignored. Well…too long ignored if you didn’t count the pulse setting on her handheld showerhead—which she most certainly did not. Because, if memory served, there was a vast difference between a man’s touch and that of her trusty stainless steel bathtub accessory. So, yes. Blood. Rushing. Parts too long ignored. And the sensation was driving her crazy. Crazy enough to throw caution, and all his repeated rejections, to the wind and jump on the man like he was a bouncy house.

“Yorp!” Fido sang demandingly, upset that her attention had turned from him.

“So sorry,” she soothed, resuming her petting, watching the dog’s entire back end swing to and fro with the force of his tail wagging.

“There’s nobody on the second floor, and the garage is empty save for a pretty cherry El Camino,” Zoelner announced as he descended the stairs and marched into the living room. “I called back to headquarters and had Becky run the plates. The car belongs to Sander. No real surprise there. Oh, and FYI, Becky told me to inform you guys that Ali delivered a daughter. Nine pounds, six ounces.”

“Mazel tov!” Ozzie crowed, then, “And, damn! That’s a big baby!”

Zoelner nodded. “Anyway, mom and baby are doing well. Though, supposedly, Ghost is a wreck.”

“And speaking of big,” Ozzie grinned, wiggling his eyebrows, “check out the size of this thing.” He brandished the bong in Zoelner’s face. “It’s Goliath’s bong!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Zoelner rolled his eyes, yanking the contraption from Ozzie’s hand and tossing it on the ruined sofa. “I heard you the first time. Very witty. Now shut up.”

“Any sign of a struggle upstairs or in the garage?” Mac asked. He posed the question to Zoelner, but he was staring at a kitchen chair that was tipped on its back. Eyes narrowed, he glanced over to the old-fashioned tin coffee cup turned upside down on the floor before turning to study the newspaper lying beside the table leg.

Obviously, Fido, hungry and looking for any small form of sustenance, had gone after the coffee mug Charlie had left on the table and, in the process, created this little tableau of mayhem. Which reminded Delilah…

She scooted her chair back and walked over to what she suspected was a pantry door. Turning the knob, she nearly lost her balance when Fido rushed ahead of her, barking ecstatically and turning in tight circles within the small space that was, indeed, the pantry. His thick tail whacked against her shins hard enough to leave bruises.

“Okay, okay,” she soothed. Then, spotting a thirty-pound bag of Hills Science Diet pushed into the back corner, she nudged Fido aside and used the large bowl she found inside the bag to scoop out a healthy portion of dog food.

“Yorp! Yorp!”

“Who’s a hungry boy?” she asked in that weird sing-songy voice women tended to don around infants and canines. “Who’s just about starving to death?”

“Yorpyorpyorpyorp!”

“I gotcha, big boy. Just a second.” She exited the pantry and set the bowl of kibble in front of the stove. “Here you go. Eat up.”

Fido attacked the food with gusto, his hind end swinging back and forth so forcefully he caused himself to stumble.

“Poor dog,” Zoelner observed before turning back to Mac. “And to answer your question, that’s a negative on any signs of a struggle upstairs or in the garage. All appears as it should.”

“Maybe they were abducted by aliens,” Ozzie posited unhelpfully.

“You’ve been watching too much of the Syfy channel,” Zoelner said, crossing his arms and tilting his head at Mac, who was back to staring at that silly, knocked-over chair.

“Yeah, right,” Ozzie scoffed. “There’s no such thing.”

“No such thing as aliens, or no such thing as watching too much of the Syfy channel?”

“Well, the second, naturally.” The look on Ozzie’s face was dubious. “Because of course there’s such things as aliens.”

“Of course?” Zoelner’s lips quirked.

“Yeah. I mean, the universe is a pretty big place, right? And if it’s just us, that’s an awful waste of space.”

“You stole that from Carl Sagan,” Zoelner accused.

“No, I didn’t. I stole it from the movie Contact. Maybe they stole it from Carl Sagan.”

“Whatever.” Zoelner waved him off. “The point is, Charles and Theo were not abducted by aliens, and—”

“So, I get why ol’ Sander decided to stay tucked away in the middle of nowhere, holed-up in this hellhole of a crumbling house,” Steady interrupted, emerging from the door leading to the basement stairs. “The guy’s got a state-of-the-art grow room set up down there. It’s enough to make Jay and Silent Bob weep with envy.”

Ah, the marijuana. Delilah knew she recognized that smell when she was standing out on the porch. And it hadn’t been the dried-out, skunky aroma like the kind emanating from the bong—the odor of used Mary Jane. It’d been the earthier, almost sweet smell of freshly growing weed. Not that Delilah was an expert or anything. But her roommate in college, Sarah Moore, had been a philosophy major and had kept a couple of pot plants flourishing under a UV light in her closet for…wait for it…strictly “medicinal/experimental purposes.” Feel free to insert eye-roll here.

Of course, the presence of the jolly green downstairs could also account for the discrepancies she’d seen in Charlie’s financial records. So then the question became, was it possible his disappearance, as well as her uncle’s, was some sort of drug deal gone terribly wrong? As her stomach took a nosedive into her biker boots, she posed her theory aloud.

“Are all the plants still there?” Mac asked Steady, continuing to stare at that stupid chair until Delilah was forced to glance down at the thing. What in the world is so mesmerizing about it? But no matter how hard she looked, she couldn’t discern anything exceptional about the standard wooden ladder-back.

“Sí, hermano,” Steady replied, his Puerto Rican accent lilting in the stale air of the house. “Everything appears to be in order. Nothing missing that I can tell. Nothing moved.”