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“Well, we’re glad to have you here.”
Once he told Angeline about Tanner Phillip’s last words and the photograph he’d entrusted to Lincoln, he doubted she would share her aunt’s sentiment.
At her departure, Lincoln closed the menu and pushed it aside. He didn’t much care about what he drank and the plethora of options made him antsy.
Unease coiled inside his chest and his body tingled from the hairs rising on his skin, despite not being on any covert mission about to face untold danger. In fact, since joining the Dogman program, Lincoln had never touched a paw in a more peaceful place than Maico, the quaint little town at the center of the Walker’s Run pack’s territory.
Definitely, nothing like Taifa.
Lincoln dug into his pocket for the Program-issued satphone, a mobile device that connected to private satellites rather than cell towers on the ground, and dialed into a secure message line.
Nothing.
During his recovery at the hospital, Lincoln had been in contact with Colonel Llewellyn, the commander of the human forces in Somalia. Of course the colonel had promised to do all he could to find Dayax.
But sixty-three days had passed and the boy had not been found. In his gut, Lincoln knew Dayax was alive and waiting. Waiting for Lincoln to bring him home.
“I’m Tessa.” The bubbly blonde appeared table side, holding a round tray with a glass of ice water balanced in the center. “You must be new in town. I haven’t seen you before, and everyone eventually makes their way into Taylor’s.” Her broad grin and sparkling green eyes didn’t stir his senses the way Angeline’s unamused frown and blue eyes darkened with irritation had.
“I rolled in Saturday night.”
“Staying or passing through?” Tessa placed the glass of water on the table.
From the dilation of her pupils and the subtle way she inched closer to him, Lincoln got the feeling her questions were more for personal interest rather than the friendly banter the owners would typically ask their servers to provide to customers.
“A little of both. I’m doing some consulting for the Co-op for a couple of weeks.” Unless Brice’s contact in the Woelfesenat managed to get Lincoln’s active duty status reinstated sooner.
“Well.” Tessa laughed lightly. “They have a sneaky habit of keeping those they hire, so I expect to see you in here for a good, long time.”
Lincoln didn’t share Tessa’s expectation.
“Ready to order?”
“A steak, rare.”
“The Co-op steak?” She pulled a pad from her apron and slapped it on the tray hooked in her arm. “It’s an eighteen-ounce porterhouse.”
Suddenly, Lincoln remembered Lila, smirking at him and saying that he could thank her one day with a big, juicy steak.
“Make it two orders.”
“You get two sides per platter.”
Lincoln look at her and shrugged.
“Baked potato, sweet potato, steak fries, potato salad, Caesar salad, mac-and-cheese, green bean amandine, grilled asparagus—” Her words rolled into an incessant buzz.
“Surprise me,” he said, swallowing the uncomfortable feeling scaling his throat.
Tessa jotted on her pad. “We have an extensive selection of domestic and imported beers.”
Lincoln rubbed his hand along his jaw, stubbled with a day’s worth of beard. “I’ll have whatever Reed usually orders and make it two.”
She stopped scribbling and slowly lifted her gaze. Her smile flat.
“You know him, right? He said he’s in here a lot.”
“Yeah, I know him,” Tessa huffed. “It’s a small town.”
Her reaction suggested more, but Lincoln didn’t care to ask.
“He drinks Little Red Cap.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s domestic with limited distribution. We order it and a few other ales from Grimm Brothers Brewhouse in Colorado.” She tapped her pen against the pad on the tray. “Is Reed joining you later?”
“Not tonight.”
“You ordered two meals.”
“I did.” But Lincoln only planned to eat and drink one. The other he owed to Lila.
“As much as I appreciate you doing this,” Jimmy Taylor said, accepting the weekly inventory sheets Angeline handed him, “I could get one of the full-timers to handle counting the supplies.”
“I’ve been doing inventory since I was sixteen,” Angeline replied. “It would be weird to hand over the job to someone else.”
Her uncle smiled, but his eyes were filled with worry. “I don’t want you to feel obligated.”
“I don’t,” Angeline assured him. “I like working for you and Aunt Miriam.” Mostly she liked having a routine that got her out of the apartment and gave her a chance to interact with people. Since she didn’t work with a partner, songwriting was a solitary endeavor.
As pack-oriented creatures, Wahyas thrived on socialization and there was no better place for it than Taylor’s Roadhouse. At least in their human forms.
The protected forest of the Co-op’s wolf sanctuary allowed pack members to fraternize as wolves, especially during full moons. Although, when temperatures dropped below forty degrees at night, she preferred to run in the woods behind the apartment building. Afterward, she could walk straight into her toasty apartment, rather than waiting for the heater to warm her car on the drive back from the sanctuary.
“Do you like it well enough to take over the business one day?” Jimmy’s gaze fell just shy of hers.
“What about Zach and Lucy?” Angeline’s much younger cousins were Jimmy’s true heirs.
“Zach has been talking to a Dogman recruiter again.”
Icy fingers twisted Angeline’s stomach. She certainly didn’t want her cousin to end up like Tanner or Lincoln. She and Zach would have a frank discussion about the very real possibility of death and dismemberment.
“Lucy is considering transferring to a bigger college out of state.” Jimmy sighed. “The more their mama and I try to keep them close, the more they can’t want to scramble away.”
“They need time to see that the world outside Walker’s Run isn’t all they think it is.” Angeline hugged her uncle. “They’ll come home, just like I did.”
“Still.” He squeezed her tight before letting go. “You’re the one who’s put time into this place. Miriam and I would like for you to take over the restaurant when we retire.”
“I’ll consider it,” Angeline said more to alleviate her uncle’s concern than to suggest actual intent. “But I expect you to keep running this place for a long, long time.”
Relief washed over Jimmy’s face and his smile turned genuine. “Deal.”
The daily grind of actually running the restaurant took more time than Angeline cared to invest, but she didn’t mind giving Jimmy and Miriam some peace of mind while their children sowed their oats.
They walked out of the storage room into the kitchen. While one cook tended the large gas stove, the other dropped a basket of steak fries in to the fryer. Another cook and one more server would arrive shortly and stay through closing.
“Aunt Miriam,” Angeline called to the woman entering the kitchen.
As a child, Angeline didn’t think her aunt favored her mother very much. But as Miriam aged, not only had she grown to look more like her sister, she had developed some of the same mannerisms and quirks.
With Miriam, Angeline could almost imagine what it would’ve been like to have grown up with her mother. Her aunt had even encouraged Angeline’s love of music and paid for her lessons when her own father refused to do so.
“I gave Uncle Jimmy the inventory list, but despite the numbers now, you might want to increase the meat order for more steaks and ground beef. The full moon and Valentine’s Day is Friday.”
“Thanks for the reminder.” Miriam wiped her hand on the apron tied around her waist as she walked toward Angeline. “Did Jimmy talk to you?” she asked quietly, touching Angeline’s arm.
“Of course I did.” He brushed past them and headed to their office to thumbtack the inventory list to the bulletin board. More than once Angeline had suggested they modernize the books, but her aunt and uncle were old school and feared entrusting their tried-and-true manual accounting system to a computer program.
“Well?” Her mouth drawn in a pensive grimace, Miriam peered at Angeline with the same dark shade of blue she remembered seeing in her mother’s eyes.
“I told Jimmy that I would consider his offer, but he had to promise not to retire anytime soon.”
Miriam’s eyes twinkled with tears, and she hugged Angeline. “Thank you for putting his mind at ease.”
“It’s the least I could do for all that you and Jimmy have done for me over the years.” She stepped back from Miriam, willing her tears to stay deep in the wells. An O’Brien never showed weakness, a mantra her father had drilled into Angeline and her brothers after their mother’s tragic and untimely death.
“I should get out there and help Tessa.”
“Yes, you should. There’s at least one customer anxiously waiting to see you.” Miriam shooed her from the kitchen.
Angeline ducked into the employee room to put on her half apron and grab an order pad before walking into the dining room. Tessa finished taking an order at a table in Angeline’s section then beelined for her.
“You have two orders in, plus this one.” Tessa handed her an order ticket. “Table twenty should have their food coming out in a couple of minutes. Seventeen just went in. And have you met Lincoln, the new guy in town?”
Angeline followed Tessa’s gaze to the bistro table for two in the bar where Lincoln nursed his beer. An untouched bottle sat on the placemat across from him. Curious, but definitely not jealous, despite the little kick in her gut, she couldn’t help wondering who would be joining him.
“He’s really hot, even if he does keep company with Reed—the rat bastard.” Although Tessa had mumbled the last part beneath her breath, Angeline’s wolfan ears had heard every word her recently dumped friend had uttered.
“Lincoln is my new neighbor,” Angeline said, watching a kitchen helper deliver two steak platters to Lincoln’s table.
“Lucky you.” Tessa sighed dreamily.
“No. Not me,” Angeline said, but Tessa had already walked away.
Over the next hour Angeline had a steady flow of customers and only managed to say “Hey” to Lincoln on her way to and from the bar with drink orders. The beer and food at the second place setting remained untouched throughout his entire meal.
Periodically, she’d felt him watching her. Perhaps he wanted an explanation for her behavior this morning. She wasn’t quite sure herself. His warning that she should not expect him to become her new confidant shouldn’t have bothered her. She knew better than to expect anything from a Dogman. Though Angeline felt no obligation to provide an explanation for her reaction, she did want to let him know that she wasn’t angry at him.
Waiting for the bartender to fill a drink order, Angeline casually strolled to Lincoln’s table. The beer for his guest remained untouched. “How was your day?”
“Informative.” His eyes still looked tired and barely a fleeting smile dusted his lips. “I spent most of the time running the woods with Reed.”
“He’s a good guy. Smart. Loyal.”
“Cynical,” Lincoln added.
“He got shot by a poacher a few months ago.”
Lincoln swung his left foot out. The hiking boot concealed the prosthetic within. “A bomb blasted me out of a two-story window.”
“You still have nightmares.”
“I imagine he does, too,” Lincoln said easily. “Our failures haunt us far longer than our victories stay with us.”
“He took a bullet for Shane. I wouldn’t call that a failure.”
“The failure is in believing we are invincible.” Lincoln guzzled the last few swallows of his beer and slammed down the mug on the table. “And learning we aren’t.”
“You sound a bit cynical yourself.”
Lincoln shook his head, avoiding her gaze. “Cynicism colors one’s judgment and clouds the vision. What happened, happened. All I can do is adapt and keep going.”
“Are you waiting for Reed?”
“No.” Lincoln fiddled with the edge of his linen napkin. “I owe an old friend a steak dinner.”
“You’ve been a while. Did he take a wrong turn somewhere?”
The muscle in Lincoln’s jaw twitched. He lifted his sorrow filled gaze. “Died in the line of duty.”
Angeline’s stomach dropped, a sick feeling rose in her chest and her heart hurt as if it had broken all over again. Not for her loss but for all those who’d lost loved ones, living and dead, to the Program.
Dogmen turned their backs on everything and everyone they’d ever known. All communication with family and friends ceased. No one ever knew what became of their loved one unless they received a death notification or an injury forced the soldier into retirement, like Lincoln soon would be.
Long simmering anger ignited Angeline’s tongue. “Instead of eating and drinking with the dead, maybe your sympathies should lie with those he abandoned when he became a Dogman. And, for what? To feed his ego and die who knows where without regard to those he left behind?”
“Angeline—” Lincoln began.
“Have you called your family? Do they know what happened to you? Do they know you’re even alive?”
His guilty look answered for him.
“Unbelievable!” Angeline barely managed to keep the shriek out of her voice.
“They’re better off not knowing.”
“That’s a lie Dogman tell themselves to keep their consciences clear. Speaking from experience, it’s not better. It’s far worse than any nightmare you’ve ever had.”
