Just Kidding (SWAT Generation 2.0 #1)(44)

I wasn’t sure what he thought she was going to do, but he was preparing for it nonetheless.

Then the husband finally arrived, and he looked pissed.

“What’s going on over here?” he snapped.

“Listen, Gary…” Dax started.

“It’s Jerry, not Gary,” Jerry not Gary snapped. “Rachelle, let’s go. I didn’t realize you needed to talk to him for more than five seconds to get him to sign the damn book. You know that we don’t need this. I can afford to take us on vacation.”

“What are you talking about?” Dax asked, sounding confused.

Hell, I was confused, too.

“Let’s leave,” Jerry ordered, grabbing Rachelle by the arm and hauling her away.

That was about when the waitress showed up with a refill on our drinks.

“Love your calendar,” she said. “Where can I get me one of those? I’d for sure love the chance to win five grand. Enough of you come into the diner that I could likely get all of your autographs without having to leave the comfort of my own business.”

“Autographs?” I asked.

“People that get all twelve months signed by the SWAT cops posing get entered into a raffle to win five thousand dollars and a trip to Cabo,” the waitress said. “I’ve heard that it’s legit, too. The mayor is the one funding it.”

All I could do was shake my head.

“Thank you for the drink,” I said, sounding odd.

When she did finally leave, Dax was looking at me with worry.

“This is about to get bad,” he pointed out.

Yes, yes it was.





Chapter 12


Evidently I always manage to take the path that has the most shit to trip over.

-Dax’s secret thoughts

Dax

I watched as Rowen fairly launched herself at an older man that was just as tattooed as me.

Though, he didn’t bother to cover them up anymore.

“Uncle Michael!” Rowen cried, jumping down off the steps and running full tilt for the man.

Michael caught her and wrapped her up in his strong arms, grinning like a fucking loon.

“What the hell happened to your hair, Rowen?” Michael asked her.

Rowen pulled back with a grimace and looked worriedly at me.

I raised my brows, wondering what it was that she wanted.

“Well…” Rowen began. “It started like this.”

Michael’s face was like thunder when Rowen finally finished explaining…as was her mother’s.

“If it wasn’t illegal to kill someone, I’d be driving to San Antonio right now,” Reese muttered.

I barely contained the urge to laugh.

The only reason I didn’t was because she was being very serious. The only thing keeping her in check was her daughter’s desire for this not to go any further, and Luke’s insistence that she calm down.

Though, saying ‘calm down’ hadn’t really worked in his favor. Something in which I’d witnessed twice over the course of our meal together.

We were eating lunch at The Back Porch.

I wasn’t sure how or why it’d come to be—me getting invited to the family dinner with Rowen—but I was glad that she’d asked me to come.

I was even more glad that I’d come considering our waiter seemed to have a thing for Rowen, bald head and all.

“Do you know the waiter?” I asked curiously.

She looked at where the waiter had disappeared, then looked back at me.

“I graduated with him,” she answered. “It’s been a really long time since I saw him last. He’s put on a lot of weight. I almost didn’t recognize him at first.”

“Man doesn’t look like he used to be skinny,” I found myself saying. “He looks like he’s always been jacked.”

And by jacked, I meant on steroids. The motherfucker was huge. Even bigger than me, and I worked out a lot to get what I got.

But our waiter? He looked like he downed steroids for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

“Do you think he can even take his shirt off?” Reese wondered. “I wouldn’t think his massive arms would contort into that small of a space.”

Luke snorted then took a gulp of his beer.

“Why are we talking about our waiter, anyway?” Michael asked. “Let’s talk about what we’re going to do to this bitch that did this to our girl.”

All eyes were once again on Rowen.

“I agree,” Katy snapped. “Surely there’s something we can do.”

She looked at Luke, and Luke sighed.

“Like I’ve already told your mother and your sister, there’s nothing that can be done,” Luke explained. “There’s no evidence that she did it. She doesn’t even live there any longer. And to top it off, we’re not stooping to her level.”

“You’re being awfully level-headed about this,” Michael surmised.

Michael’s wife, Nikki, snorted.

“He’s pissed just like the rest of us are,” Nikki said. “The only difference is, he’s trying to be diplomatic and not get arrested. It would look bad if the chief of police was arrested.”

She did have a point.

It would look incredibly bad.