Defending Harlow (Mountain Mercenaries #4)(11)

Black walked Harlow to her car in the parking lot at the opposite end of the street from where the park was located. He remembered her saying the punks liked to hang out at the park, and he turned to look behind him. He didn’t see anyone lurking about. A big, white box truck was parked outside the antiques store, and a customer entered the tattoo shop.

“Do you see them?” Harlow asked nervously.

Black turned his attention back to her. “No. I’m just getting the lay of the land.”

“Oh. Okay.”

He looked up. “Those lights work?” he asked.

“Yeah. Although they aren’t super bright,” Harlow told him.

He frowned and kept walking. The parking lot was directly across the street from a vacant and crumbling gas station. Black had parked in the lot and hadn’t thought too much about it, his attention on getting to the shelter. But now that he imagined Harlow, or Zoe, or any of the other women in the shelter walking to their cars alone, or with their kids, it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

On the other side of the alley beyond the parking lot were a row of trees and the backside of a run-down mobile home park. There was so much about the situation that he didn’t like, but Black knew he couldn’t exactly change the location of the parking lot or the shelter itself, no matter how much he wanted to.

Harlow led him over to a bright-red Ford Mustang convertible. He turned to her and arched an eyebrow.

She smiled and shrugged. “What can I say? I love it.”

“It’s a sweet ride,” he told her honestly. Of course, it also brought attention to her, which he didn’t like. She would be better off in a nice sedate black Honda or Toyota. But he had a feeling if he mentioned that to her, she’d roll her eyes and tell him to fuck off. And he wouldn’t blame her.

“It is. For years, I had a used Honda Civic. I hated it. It wasn’t me. I’m not the most extroverted person in the world, but there’s something about the wind in my hair and the sun shining down on me that makes me feel free. I would’ve gotten a motorcycle, but I knew my parents would have a cow, so this was the next best thing.”

The thought of Harlow on a motorcycle made Black’s stomach turn. Not so much because he worried about the kind of driver she might be, but because he knew most of the time it was the skill, or lack thereof, of other drivers that caused accidents. “It suits you,” he told her honestly. And it did. He could picture her laughing and smiling as her blonde hair blew in the wind.

He couldn’t wait to see it in person.

Strengthening his resolve to know her better, Black merely smiled when she eyed him suspiciously. Finally, she nodded and turned to her car. He watched as she lowered the top and noted how long the process took. If she did that every time she came out here to drive home, it gave the assholes harassing her more time to approach.

Putting it aside for the moment, he waited until she’d gotten inside and sat down. Then he put his hands on the edge of her window and leaned over. “I’ll be by to pick you up at five thirty,” he reminded her.

“Oh . . . you need my address,” she said.

He didn’t. He could easily get it from Loretta or Meat, but he nodded anyway. “Text it to me.”

“Right. I will.”

Black didn’t move.

“Lowell?” she asked. “Is there anything else?”

There was. He wanted to tell Harlow how pretty he thought she was. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t sure he ever wanted to get married, but he might want to be her boyfriend. That he wanted the right to sit next to her as she drove home . . . and he couldn’t wait to see if she smelled like vanilla all over.

But he didn’t. She’d obviously been burned by men often enough in the past that he shouldn’t do anything to make her think they were dating.

If anyone could do covert operations, it was Black.

So he simply shook his head and said, “I’ll see you later. Drive safe.”

“I will. You too.”

Then he took a step away from the convertible and waved.

Harlow smiled back at him and slowly pulled out of the parking lot. He watched as she drove cautiously down the street. Yes, the speed limit wasn’t exactly fast, but watching the way she looked both ways three times before pulling out and how she slowly accelerated made it clear she didn’t drive her car the way it was meant to be driven. Fast and with abandon.

When Black turned to walk back to the shelter, he caught sight of something to his left.

He turned to look and thought he saw someone duck into the pawnshop. No, maybe it was the tattoo parlor. He wasn’t sure which business the man had disappeared into. He kept his eyes on the storefronts as he walked toward the shelter. No one else entered or exited any businesses. It could’ve been a regular customer, or maybe it wasn’t. He wasn’t sure.

But one thing he was sure about was the fact that Loretta’s shelter was going to get a brand-spanking-new security system. Complete with exterior cameras. It wouldn’t stop the harassment, and it wouldn’t make the cops get involved if no one was actually breaking the law, but it would help Meat and Rex identify the perpetrators, and Black would be able to “talk” to them and find out what was going on.

Taking one last look around before he entered the shelter to talk to Loretta, Black felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end once more. He didn’t see anyone suspicious, but he had a feeling whatever was going on was more than just a few bored teenagers.