Page 34

Something about the entire situation didn’t sit right with me, so I dropped the cruiser off at the station and walked back to where her car was parked.

I scowled at the stupid piece of junk.

She’d been driving this particular car since she had turned twenty-one.

She’d gotten it from one of our impound auctions for a song—though that was likely due to the fact that the car was shitty enough that no one wanted to bid against her. That, and why would you bid against someone that very clearly couldn’t afford to buy anything else?

Using the key, I unlocked it and opened the door, scowling at the perfectness.

The car might be old as fuck, and barely worth the money that it took to cover insurance on it a year, but she kept it immaculate.

There was no trash, no clothes, no spare coat.

There were no coins in the cup holder, water bottles in the back seat.

There was nothing in this car.

I bent down and looked underneath the seats and, sure enough, that was clean, too.

I started it up and scowled at the red E that popped up on the screen.

Gritting my teeth to the point of pain, I drove to the closest gas station and filled it up, glaring after it only took twenty-two dollars to fill it.

Were things really that bad that she couldn’t afford to fill it up?

After the car was filled up, I drove it to the station and parked it in my spot, then got out of it and checked out the rest of it.

Like the inside, the outside was just as taken care of.

The only thing wrong with it was that it was running on four bald tires.

I gritted my teeth, telling myself not to interfere.

But that wasn’t the kind of person that I was.

There was something inside of me, something integral, that told me to take care of others when they couldn’t care for themselves.

That was probably why the maddening woman didn’t have a few felonies under her belt by now.

I’d been protecting her from herself since she was sixteen.

It was a hard habit to break, too, which was why I was still doing it when she was well into adulthood.

“What’s with that scowl?”

I looked up to find Denver there.

“What are you doing here?”

Denver, my club president, came to stand beside me as he stared down at the Fox.

“Had a couple of errands that I needed to run,” he said. “My girl needed some supplies for tomorrow, and I’d rather shoot myself in the foot than let her come out in this.”

Agreed.

“Boone couldn’t do it, so you had to get out in this.” I remembered.

Boone, another Dixie Warden, worked with Denver’s old lady, Holly, at the local vet clinic in town.