Page 7 of Cold Foot Revenge
She would always be here, dancing for freaking dollars, worried about paying rent on a duplex she hated in a shitty neighborhood, around men she didn’t respect.
It was like that for her now, and would be like that forever. She would end up just like Lucky, who was getting ready backstage to start dancing some of her regulars. She was the oldest dancer here, and someday, Lucky was going to pass the torch to Roxy.
That was the future she had to look forward to.
“No,” a booming voice bellowed from the front door, and Donnie’s hand flinched from her waist.
She didn’t startle at Grave’s voice. She grown desensitized to his anger a long time ago. She just offered the boys an empty smile and made her way back toward the stage.
She dared a look at Grave, and he stood at the entrance with his arms crossed over his chest, his blazing orange, pissed off glare leveling her.
She wanted to flip him off, but where would that get her? Nowhere, and besides, she’d done what she’d meant to. She’d distracted the Grit-Bron Crew from talking about who that mysterious guy had been until Grave could get here to yell at everyone and ruin the night.
There was a strange sensation in her chest that she almost didn’t recognize.
She’d helped. In her own way, she’d helped Dylan tonight. She’d offered him an out, and made sure no one went after him tonight.
It had been a long damn time since she’d done a good deed.
Garret and Dylan Hoffman didn’t understand how lucky they had been to escape. Why the hell was Dylan back here sniffing around this place?
If she had a chance to be free, she would never come back here again.
Not ever.
Chapter Three
Clearly, Wolf Mask had been desperate to keep him away from the Rabbit Hole, and for some reason, a part of Dylan trusted her.
He didn’t know why, and even if someone was holding a gun to his head, he still couldn’t explain it, but his instincts said he needed to heed her warning.
That wasn’t going to pull him off this hunt though.
He’d gone back the next day and parked across the street, out of range of any of the cameras at the Rabbit Hole, and he’d waited for her to come out. She hadn’t come out in the early hours of the morning with the other girls, which meant she probably had the night off.
He’d taken a picture of all the cars in the parking lot the night before, and one was missing from the line of run-down cars parked up front. It was an early two-thousands Lexus in a gunmetal gray. It had been in a wreck at some point and had dents and scratches down one side.
If he had to bet, he would guess that was Wolf Mask’s car.
So, he had a starting point. He could see the license plate numbers of the front row of cars in the picture he’d taken, and he’d done a search on Wolf Mask’s license plate number but came up with nothing. He wasn’t as good at this detective stuff as one of the girls of the Cold Foot Crew would be, but he didn’t want to touch base there yet. Already, he’d been avoiding Garret’s calls and texts asking where he was.
This had to be his hunt alone.
Today he’d gone and visited a couple of old friends, and though he’d brought up the Rabbit Hole, they’d all said they avoided that part of town now. Marriage and kids had tamedtheir friend group. Dylan definitely didn’t belong here anymore. Everyone had moved forward. Everyone but him.
He turned into the parking lot of the grocery store and parked. The hotel had a minifridge and a microwave, and he was tired of greasy restaurant food. Tomorrow he was heading to his parent’s house to catch up, and he was going to call Garret back, but for the rest of the day, he was going to spend researching the Rabbit Hole on his laptop. He just needed a random kernel of information that would lead him down…well…down a rabbit hole.
This hunt was going to take a while, but he was prepared for that. He was renting his hotel room by the week.
If it took him ten years, he would find out what happened that night. And it might. Garret had Changed in the downtown in front of a row of restaurants right in the middle of the day, and they’d had to leave town in a hurry to avoid police and Garret having to register as a shifter at the time. There were so many stones left unturned back then. There hadn’t been time, but trying to turn over those stones now, when the evidence had long gone cold was going to take some time and effort.
He shut the door to his truck and shoved his wallet into his back pocket as he walked up to the grocery store. He didn’t know why he looked to the right, or why his eyes landed on the grey, early two-thousands Lexus, out of all the cars in the busy parking lot, but he did. There was some instinct inside of him sayinglook over there.
Dylan came to a stop and blinked hard, thinking he was imagining it, but nope. The beat up Lexus with the dents on the side was still there.
He strode closer and checked the license plate, and sure enough, it was the same one.
There was no way. He looked around the parking lot. Things didn’t happen this easily.
