Magnus felt an odd, creepy feeling of uneasiness go over him as he worked on the engine with Mike. The hairs on his arms stood on end, alert and at attention, and he looked over at Lindy’s office, wondering at the strange sensation.
Her window was shuttered and the door was closed. Was someone in there? Where was Tommy?
She might not be happy for him to interrupt her, but he couldn’t ignore the dragon inside him, insisting something was wrong.
He walked to her office door quietly and tested the handle. Locked. A second later, he heard angry words inside, and that was more than enough for the iron dragon to kick into high gear.
Without warning, he unceremoniously bashed in the door, just in time to see Tommy leaning menacingly over Lindy’s desk. Lindy looked shaken, her blue eyes furious but also frightened.
Nobody did that to his mate.
Clearing the distance between himself and Tommy in the blink of an eye, he hoisted the scrawny kid into the air. Tommy yelped in shock, crying for help.
Magnus had always thought the kid was weak, maybe even a little slimy. But he’d never expected someone Lindy trusted to do whatever it was he had just been doing.
“What the hell is going on here?” he roared at Tommy, who paled visibly. Lindy didn’t protest Magnus’s manhandling of the guy, so he didn’t back down.
“I… I-I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it…” he sputtered.
Worms like this rarely operated alone. Someone had put him up to this, made him bold like this. And they were probably the same people who had been attacking the shop.
He’d guessed there was someone watching the shop, but he hadn’t thought it was Tommy.
“Who sent you? Who are you working for?” Magnus demanded, adrenaline racing. He wanted to gut the little bastard, but he figured gutting probably wasn’t legal in this day and age. Plus, he needed information more than he needed the weasel’s head on a pike.
Tommy’s stuttering worsened, which only made Magnus angrier. With an easy heave, he hurtled Tommy across the small office and into the wall next to the door, hard enough to make a pretty severe crack in the plaster, but not enough to send him through it.
He didn’t want to kill him. That was off-limits. For now.
“Magnus, stop. He didn’t hurt me,” Lindy said, standing up and watching as Tommy tried to get up.
It made him glad to hear his mate wasn’t harmed, but he still wasn’t satisfied with Tommy. He strode over to the little worm and stuck a boot on his chest, pinning him to the wall. He writhed weakly to get free, but it was no use.
“Tell me everything. Now,” he said, emphasizing the last word with added pressure from his boot.
“Okay, okay. I’ll talk,” he pleaded desperately. “It was the other shop. Roscoe’s place. They came to me a couple months ago. Offered me money, lots of it. At least it was a lot to me.”
Behind him, Magnus could sense Lindy’s attention focusing in on Tommy’s words.
“And what did they want?” Magnus continued.
“At first, they just wanted me to keep an eye on things. Tell them everything I knew about this place. But lately…” He trailed off, turning to the side, shame and fear obvious on his face.
Magnus just pushed harder into his chest. “Lately what?”
“They’ve been more insistent. Said if I helped them sabotage Lindy’s operation, help put it out of business, they’d give me more. Give me a position at their shop that paid double. Maybe even make me a manager.”
Wealth. Greed. Betrayal. Tale as old as time when it came to humans doing horrible things.
“So the shelf accident a few days ago, was that you? Did you do something to it?” Lindy asked, alarmed.
“Yes,” Tommy said regretfully. “I didn’t mean for anyone to get hurt. Just to scare people.”
“And when those men came over, that’s why you disappeared. You knew they were coming, didn’t you?” Magnus said, rage still seething but gradually shifting from the pathetic asshole beneath him toward the organization that was really responsible for putting his mate in danger.
Tommy nodded compliantly.
“Tell me everything they’re planning,” Magnus growled.
“I can’t say. It seems like something new is going on over at Roscoe’s place. Something strange. I can’t put a finger on it, just a feeling.”
“Have you ever seen Roscoe?” Magnus queried.
“No. Just guys under him. I hear he used to be a pretty straight shooter before, but lately—” Tommy’s words stopped, either because he was running out of things to say or because he was running out of air from the pressure on his chest.
It was becoming more obvious by the second that Tommy knew even less than he wanted to pretend he knew, which meant he was useless to help Magnus solve Lindy’s problems.
But regardless of the rage he still felt at Tommy’s betrayal of his and, more importantly, Lindy’s loyalty, he was still a dumb kid who got in way over his head.
But that didn’t mean he deserved to get off scot-free.
“We should at least call the authorities. Have them deal with this mess,” Magnus said.
“No, I think he’s learned his lesson,” Lindy said, being merciful when Magnus felt the kid deserved anything but.
“He should be behind bars.”
“The last thing I need is a court battle trying to put my ex-employee behind bars when I’m pretty sure he won’t be any more trouble to us.”
Tommy nodded obediently, which annoyed Magnus. Removing his boot, he pulled the kid up by the front of his shirt and stared at him face to face, man to man.
“If I ever see you near this place again, or ever smell your scent in my life, I will hunt you, Tommy. Hunt you like a rabid dog that needs to be put down. Understood?”
His expression a mixture of confused and petrified, Tommy just nodded again. And when Magnus put him down, the kid ran like a bat out of hell. Only seconds later, Magnus could hear Tommy’s car start, then peel away from the shop.
But Magnus was far from done being angry.
Now he had a whole organization of people he hated but didn’t know, which only made his anger worse.
“Now what do we do?” he asked out loud, more to himself than to Lindy.
Lindy came up behind him, and he could feel her hand on his arm, calming.
“I’m pretty sure that with their thugs beat and their mole permanently gone, things may finally calm down. Still, I can’t believe Tommy would do something like that,” she said, a twinge of sadness in her voice.
Magnus turned and held her, letting her know he was still there, still by her side. That he would protect her, even though he probably didn’t need to say it more than he already had.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, looking down at her. “He didn’t do anything?”
She tucked her hair back nervously as she pulled back from him. “He just threatened me. If you hadn’t come…” She looked away. “Dammit, I’m coming to depend on you too much.”
“Just the right amount,” he said. “So he didn’t touch you?”