22. Twenty-Two

Pulling into the junkyard after so many days away felt like coming home. In a way, it was. My trailer was still there, waiting for me to come back, but I had never thought of the building as home . In fact, I couldn't remember the last time I'd thought of home as a place I wanted to be at all.

I put the Tahoe in park and glanced over at Dante, my heart racing in my throat. Why was I looking at him? Was I waiting to see his reaction? If so, why should I care what he thought of the place? Whether he liked the yard or the other members of my team shouldn't have mattered to me, but it did. I realized I wanted him to like my friends, that it was important to me for some reason.

No, friends wasn't the right word. These men were my brothers. Just because we didn't share any blood didn't make it less true.

"This is where you work?" Dante finally asked.

I nodded. "And live."

He looked over at me with a small smile. "You live in a junkyard?"

"It's not as bad as it seems."

"Actually, I think it's kind of cool."

I blinked in surprise. "Really? "

"Yeah, sure." He shrugged. "It's novel. Millions of people live in apartments or houses. How many can say they live in a junkyard? Plus, it kinda fits. Junkyard Dogs? I just didn't realize it was so literal."

"My boss is fond of literal interpretations." I opened the door.

The office door opened and Boone's two mutts, Trixie and Morticia, came barreling out at light speed, headed straight for Dante. Dante shrank back, so I moved between him and the dogs. The girls wouldn't hurt a fly without a command from one of us, but I didn't want him to get slobbered on, especially if he was afraid of them.

"Morticia, Trixie, eglis !" Ragar's voice boomed through the yard and the dogs sat down where they were.

The big man came out of the yard wearing a bubblegum pink wig done up in victory rolls, and a blue dress I knew he'd sewn himself. Looking at it, you'd never know. That thing would probably go for thousands if he ever felt like opening a fashion label. He must've been feeling patriotic, given the red, white, and blue bows in his beard. I'd never understand how a guy his size could walk around in those pumps, though. Yet Ragnar did it all the time, as comfortable in them as he was his steel-toed boots.

"Sorry about the girls. They might look tough, but they're big babies. I promise." Ragnar paused to scratch each dog behind the ears. He smiled and sashayed forward, offering a hand to Dante. "You must be Dante. I'm Ragnar."

I couldn't help but feel a little stab of jealousy as Dante took Ragnar's hand and bent over to kiss his fingers. "I'm honored. I'd be even more honored if you'd share your preferred pronouns with me so I don't make an ass of myself."

Ragnar chuckled. "Oh, he's a charmer. Anything's fine, as long as you promise not to stop talking about me."

"Never!" Dante replied with feigned offense .

"All right, that's enough talking," I grumbled and stepped between them to break up the flirt-fest. "We're not here for story time, Ragnar."

"Good thing too, because you missed it. Drag story hour is on Wednesday." He shot me another grin and a wink before turning around and gesturing for us to follow. The dogs fell into step right behind him with a command. "Boone sent me to get you. I hope you don't mind the smell of burned motor oil and gasoline too much, Dante. Xion's working on a ‘67 Impala someone brought in."

The shop always smelled like burned motor oil, grease, and gasoline, so I wasn't expecting anything different. When he opened the door, though, the smell hit me hard, and I put my hand over my mouth.

"God dammit!" Metal clattered down in the pit, followed by another string of curses from Xion. "I'm going to find the last mechanic that worked on this car and kill him twice!"

Ragnar put the back of his hand beside his mouth and whispered to Dante, "That's Xion. Boss's husband. I'd steer clear of him. He's in a bad mood today. Come on. This way." He took Dante by the hand, pulling him excitedly toward the stairs.

Dante shot an amused look at me as we ascended the stairs. "What's the matter, kitten?"

"Nothing," I growled.

"Then why are you scowling?"

"I'm not," I lied, even though I knew I was. I couldn't help it. I didn't like other people putting their hands all over my…

Your what, Church? Your momentary distraction? Your fling? He's not your boyfriend, and even if he was, Ragnar has no idea you've staked any sort of claim.

Ragnar pulled open the door and held it for us. Dante, of course, grinned and thanked him pleasantly. What the hell was with those two? Since when was Ragnar such a damn flirt?

Boone's office was already cramped by the time we arrived. He'd brought out the long card table where we sometimes had meetings. Bowie was already sitting at it, his boots propped up on the chair next to him while he worked on a carving with one of his knives. Leo's face was half-hidden behind the screen of his laptop, his LED headphones flashing to the beat of whatever rap song he was listening to. Wattson was over by the coffee pot, filling a foam cup. He was the first one to greet us with a slight nod of his head as he swirled the plastic stirrer in his cup.

"'Bout time you two showed up," Bowie said without looking up from his carving.

I yanked the folding chair from under his feet. "Where's Boone?"

"Negotiating with the big wigs." He gestured to the closed door on the other side of the office. There was nothing but storage on the other side, but sometimes Boone went in there to make private phone calls because the walls were thicker. Bowie jerked his chin toward Dante. "How you holdin' up, kid?"

"Better than yesterday," Dante said. "Hopefully, tomorrow'll be even better."

"Why?" Wattson asked on his way past us to his chair at the far end of the table.

Dante shrugged. "Just trying to be positive."

Wattson replied with a grunt and snapped open the newspaper he'd kept tucked under his arm.

I sat down and glanced around the room with a frown. "We're short a chair. "

Bowie paused. "No, we're not." His eyes bounced from chair to chair, counting. "Are we?"

"Yes, we are. There's only one left and Dante's about to take it. Where's Boone supposed to sit?"

"Oh, he can have my chair." Dante waved a dismissive hand and then, to my absolute horror, sat down in my lap.

Leo eyed us from overtop his screen while Bowie smirked next to me and Ragnar chuckled. If Wattson noticed from the other side of his newspaper, he didn't show it, but Boone sure as hell would when he came in.

I swallowed and put my hands on his hips to move him. "Get off me, Dante. We can get you another chair."

"Why? I'm perfectly fine here." He scooted back with a contented sigh.

My face flamed as my body started to react to the closeness. There was no way I'd be able to sit through that entire meeting, let alone the next minute, without getting hard. All the wiggling he was doing certainly didn't help.

"Are you trying to get me in trouble?" I growled low next to his ear.

Dante shuddered and smacked my arm. "Not here. Save the bedroom talk for later, kitten."

"Kitten?" Ragnar arched an eyebrow.

I glared at him. "Say one bloody word and I'll shave half your mustache the next time you fall asleep first."

He gasped and turned away dramatically. "You'd better not. I have the dogs trained to piss on command, and I know where you keep your boots, Christian Danger Pope."

I winced. I was going to bloody kill one of them before this was over .

Dante was too keen to miss it, of course. His head whipped around so he could stare at me wide-eyed. "Oh my God. Is that true? Your middle name is literally Danger?"

I sighed. "My dad got to pick my middle name. He thought it was clever."

"If you ever needed proof your parents are whacko, there it is." Bowie pointed his knife at me. "Nobody sane names their kid like that."

I picked a stapler up off the table and batted the knife away. "Nobody asked you."

The door to the storage room swung open and Boone strode out in his favorite red flannel shirt and a faded blue trucker cap. "Enough jaw flapping. Church, put the stapler down. Bowie, clean up your wood shavings before you leave or I'll have you cleaning out Ragnar's chicken coop. Ragnar…" He paused and pointed. "That eyeliner is on point."

Ragnar batted his eyelashes. "Thanks, boss."

Boone took a few more steps before he paused, looked at me, and tilted his head. I tensed, expecting a barrage of questions from him, most notably for him to ask why our client was sitting in my lap like he owned me. I just hoped he didn't ask me to stand up because there'd be no hiding my erection if I did.

Dante grinned and stuck out his hand, interrupting whatever Boone was about to do. "Hi! You must be Mr. Calhoun. I'm Dante."

Boone hesitated as if he wasn't quite sure what to do. When his brain eventually caught up, he took Dante's hand and shook it. "Sorry. It feels like we just talked, but I guess we haven't met yet. You can call me Boone. Mr. Calhoun's a little formal for me."

"Got it. I'm not big on formalities either. "

"I can see that." Boone nodded to me. "We can get you another chair if you'd rather."

"Nope, I'm good." Dante beamed like he was a completely innocent little angel, but he wasn't. This man was the devil, and he was bringing the devil out in me, too.

"Right, well, I suppose we should get down to brass tacks then." Boone slid around to the other side of the table, taking up the only other available seat.

Wattson finally folded up his newspaper and set it aside. "Xion's not coming?"

Boone shook his head. "He's doing a little car therapy today. Better he cuss at that Impala he's been workin' on than our guest." He tapped Leo on the shoulder.

Leo fumbled to take his headphones off. "Sorry."

"I know you met most of the team," Boone started, "but I'm a man of habit. I like to do introductions first so that everybody's clear on who does what. Starting on your right, that's Doc Wattson, our medic. He did two tours in Afghanistan patching people up before he went to work for Doctors Without Borders. When he got bored with that, he came to work for me. I think I got the best part of that deal. Anyway, next to him is Ragnar, our dog handler and repair specialist. He was in a K9 unit up in Chicago for eight years before I got him. Then over here, we've got Leo, former Army data analyst, and Bowie, former Army Ranger. And of course you know Church, who's former SAS."

Dante shifted in my lap, glancing around the table. To someone who didn't know him well, his smile might seem confident, but over the last two weeks, I'd learned some of his nervous tells. He had that same fear in his eyes when I told him to call his mom. But he waved at everyone as if nothing was wrong. "I'm Dante. Former alcoholic screw up. Oh yeah, and I sing good sometimes, too."

I think he was expecting chuckles from his self-depreciating humor, but he wasn't used to people like the Dogs, who all saw right through him. When nobody laughed, he squirmed until I put a hand on his thigh and squeezed.

"Right," Boone said, folding his hands on top of the table, "Now onto business. I just got off the phone with your manager, Dante, and all the big heads at the label. They want to pull you out. Send you to another rehab program behind locked doors."

Dante stopped breathing. I closed my hand around his and squeezed. He squeezed back.

"They're pissed," Boone continued. "And rightly so. We dropped the ball when it came to Oscar, and I want to apologize for that. I told them as much about forty times. I ain't apologized that much since Gran found out why I was stealing her favorite lotion. But the good news is I managed to convince them it was a one-time oversight. Nobody was hurt. I told them that you were safer with us than behind any locked door. You can pick a locked door, but a state-of-the-art secure military bunker… Now that's another story entirely."

Oh no.

"Military bunker?" Dante shook his head, hair swishing. "I'm sorry. What?"

"The cabin was a security nightmare," Boone said, tapping his finger on the table. Acres of woodland, staff coming in and out. The staff, by the way, was your people's idea. Not mine. My boys can clean up after themselves. Anyway, all the hills mean getting a signal out of those woods is harder than catching a rabid racoon. Even with a dozen cameras, unless I put Leo there twenty-four seven to monitor the feeds, and get people patrolling the grounds, I can't seal off every possible entry point there. But the bunker has one way in, one way out. And we control the door and the space above it."

"You want to stash me in a bunker ?"

"Yep." Boone stomped one foot. "She's right beneath us and built to withstand a nuclear blast. You'll be safer than the president down there, guarded by all of us around the clock."

"That's a bit much, don't you think?" I said. "Oscar's not some terrorist with a rocket launcher. He's a skinny kid with a used sedan and roofies."

"And Dante's an addict." Boone said firmly. "Addicts in recovery care more about scoring their next hit than being safe. They will lie, cheat, and manipulate anyone to get it, including you."

Dante lowered his head.

"Unless you want to change," Boone added.

"I do." Dante said firmly.

Boone nodded. "Today, you do. Today, it's easy. Today, you don't have any other option. But when you're out there, and one of your friends passes you the bottle, or somebody sends you a nice whiskey as a present, or you have a fight with the man you love because the stubborn fucker won't go to one lousy doctor's appointment…" He paused suddenly, looking around the room before dropping his head with a sigh. "Look, kid. I doubt anyone's told you this, but I've been where you are. Maybe nobody else has the guts to tell you this, so I will. That temptation? It never goes away. I'm eighteen months sober and every damn day is a new fight. I have to make the same choice I never would've made if I hadn't been staring death in the face the first time I made it. It's not enough to want it. You have to need something more than you need to be drunk or high. That's the only way out."

The room was quiet after Boone's speech. I hadn't heard him talk at length about his battle with alcoholism. It was one of those things that he only brought up on occasion because that wasn't who he was anymore. It had to be hard for him to be there, just feet away from someone who was so much like him. But Boone was right. The only way Dante was going to get better was if he had something more in his life.

"Hiding him away in a bunker isn't going to give him something more," I said.

Boone exhaled loudly. "I know. I also know it doesn't matter where he spends the next two to three weeks. Where you are, kid, won't matter so much as what you do with the time. You need time and space to focus on yourself. I think everyone agrees on that. I also think everyone agrees you can't have that if we're all worrying what direction the next threat is coming from. So, we lock you down tighter than Fort Knox and that's a starting point, at least. Most of the rest…You've got to do it yourself, kid. But if you're here, at least you know you've got some crotchety old men who've been through what you went through." He gestured over to Wattson, who shifted in his seat.

"Of course," Wattson said. "We'll be with you every step of the way."

"Will Church still be with me?" Dante asked, his voice small.

I knew the answer before Boone even spoke. I'd known it before walking into the room, and I couldn't blame him for pulling me from the job. I'd fucked up and it could've cost Dante his life. I deserved to be reprimanded. He should've fired me.

Boone drummed his fingers on the table, looking straight at me. "If those jackasses in LA had their way, you'd never have any contact with Church again. However, I told them you'd already formed a bond. You trusted him. When your support system is so fragile, I think it'd be wrong to remove one of the few faces you trust. However, Church will no longer be the lead on your file. I'll be taking over effective immediately."

I closed my eyes and lowered my head. "Yes, sir."

"What about Oscar?" Leo asked. "He's still a threat, and he's still out there. Maybe he can't get to Dante while he's in the bunker, but once he's out…"

"Once he's out of our care, he's not our problem." Wattson looked over at Dante. "No offense."

Dante shrugged. "None taken."

"Have we ever left a job half done, boys?" Boone asked with a cocky smirk. "Leo, call your boyfriend and get him to take the case."

"He's not my boyfriend," Leo said firmly, but nobody listened. We all knew that was bullshit, anyway.

"If this kid leaves a digital fart in the cloud, I want to know about it. I want to know about his great-great-grandfather's farts. You get the metaphor. By the end of the week, I want to know everything there is to know about Dante's number one fan. Then we track him down, bring him in…"

"You can't hurt him," Dante said, rising to his feet. "I know he stalked me and tried to kidnap me, but he's just a person. It's not like he's got a collection of severed heads in his basement."

"You don't know that," Bowie said, deadpan. "This guy could be digging up bodies to build a flesh doll of you to put in his basement shrine and you wouldn't know."

"Relax," Boone said. "We're not murderers. Which is why you're under strict orders to make sure none of the other Laskins get word of this, Leo. Oscar just needs to go away for a long time to get the help he needs."

Dante looked at me with a frown. "If this is what you think is best… "

I rubbed my hand over my face. My gut said this was a bad idea, but I couldn't trust my gut when it came to Dante. My feelings were getting too mixed up to be reliable. I had to stick to reason, and Boone's reasoning made sense. I'd never been through what Dante was enduring, but Boone and Wattson had. They'd know better than anyone how to get him what he needed, and what environment he'd be safest in, even from himself.

"I trust Boone with my life," I said. "You can trust him with yours."

Dante sighed. "All right, then. Let's do it."

"Good." Boone stood, pushing his chair back. "Then all that's left is for you to go pack your bags, and I'll get you checked into the bunker before nightfall tonight."