Defending Harlow (Mountain Mercenaries #4)(28)

It wasn’t until Harlow appeared on the video that Black felt his heart rate increase. He watched as she walked out the back door into the alley carrying a bag of trash.

A voice offscreen immediately rang out.

“Hey, baby. Hey, I’m talkin’ to you.”

“Go away.”

“Awwww, don’t be like that. I can make you feel good. Don’t you like to feel good?”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“So?”

“So?” Harlow threw the bag of trash into the garbage bin and turned to face the man who was speaking to her. He was obviously standing at the end of the alley because she stared in that direction with her hands on her hips.

“Why can’t you leave us alone? Why are you harassing us?”

“Because I can. Because this is my part of town. You do-gooders don’t belong here.”

“The shelter has been here longer than you have. It was here way before you grew into your dick. If anything, this is our part of town, and you don’t belong here.”

As proud as Black was of Harlow for sticking up for herself, he was also pissed. She should know better than to egg on a punk.

“You don’t know shit! You better watch your back, bitch.”

Black saw the moment when Harlow realized she probably shouldn’t be standing in an alley provoking a man who could easily hurt her with no remorse. She shook her head and backed up toward the door to the shelter. She was smart not to turn her back on the man, but Black still worried about who might be sneaking up at her backside.

Luckily, she reached the door without incident. The man was still offscreen, but Black heard him call out right before Harlow slipped inside.

“We’re watching you, bitch. Your cameras can’t keep you or any of the other bitches inside safe. Remember that! It’s in your best interest to move on.”

Then the door shut, and the alley was quiet again. Black realized that he was clenching his fists together tightly, and his nose was almost touching the computer screen. “Damn it,” he swore.

“Harlow call to inform you what’s been going on?” Meat asked.

“No.” And that bothered Black more than he wanted to admit. He’d spent the last two days after Arrow’s lecture telling himself that he wasn’t doing anything wrong by flirting with Harlow. That they could have a fling, then go their separate ways. He’d forced himself to not text, call, or stop by the shelter to check on her and the others.

But it had sucked. He’d missed her. Which was crazy. It had been less than a week since they’d reconnected. And it was obvious the harassment had been amped up. He didn’t like the threat for Harlow to watch her back.

He was done trying to keep his distance. One, he didn’t like that she was keeping things from him. And two, he liked hanging out with her. He liked her sunny disposition. Liked her enthusiasm when she talked about what was on the menu for the day. He just plain liked her.

He’d pretty much decided to put his plan to date her—without calling the outings “dates”—on the back burner, but no longer. They needed to talk. And there obviously needed to be a more visible presence of men at the shelter. The women there needed protection against the assholes who had decided it was fun to harass them.

“Any luck on the background checks?” Black asked Meat.

“Nothing yet. But there are a lot of people to look at. You know how it is, it’s like going down a rabbit hole. You look into one person, and that leads you to someone else, and to someone else. But so far, while there’s no doubt the residents in the shelter have been with some extreme douchebags, I haven’t uncovered a reason for anyone to have hired the punks to harass them.”

“Could it just be a local gang who’s bored and fixating on the shelter?” Black asked.

“Yeah, it’s possible.”

“Then we should pay them a visit,” Black said. “Stop with the investigating and just grab their asses, scare the shit out of them, and warn them to stay the fuck away from the women.” He was frustrated that things were moving so slowly. When they went on a mission, they made decisions on the fly. They didn’t have to necessarily follow all the rigid rules and laws the various branches of the military had to. But this kind of thing was different. It was not only in their backyard, so to speak, but so far there hadn’t been any evidence that anyone had broken any laws.

“You know we can’t do that,” Meat said, frustration easy to hear in his tone. “Rex wants to make sure we play this by the book so we don’t piss off the police chief. You know he works closely with him, and Rex doesn’t want to do anything to damage that relationship.”

“Fine,” Black said. “I scheduled a personal-safety class for this weekend, but we need to move it up. You can tell by the body language of the women that they’re frightened. And I can’t blame them.”

“Good idea.”

“Can you call Ball, Gray, and Ro, and see if they can join me?”

“Why can’t you call them?” Meat asked. He didn’t sound pissed, just curious.

“I’ve got a chef I need to talk to,” Black said.

Meat chuckled. “Go easy on her. She might’ve sounded tough on the tape, but she was scared out of her mind.”

Black nodded. He knew she was. That’s part of why he was so upset with her. If she’d been so scared, she should’ve called him. Texted him. Something. But she hadn’t reached out at all.