I put the car in park, and turned off the engine in just enough time to see Cleo coming out of the house at a full sprint, barreling straight towards me.

"s.h.i.t," I hissed.

He looked really, really mad.

Why on earth was he running so fast?

I'd just gotten my belt off when my door was yanked open and, like a rag doll, was pulled into Cleo's arms.

They felt like steel bands around me.

He squeezed so tight that I was having trouble breathing...not to mention tasting the three tacos I'd just eaten.

"Can't. Breathe," I squeezed out.

His arms loosened some, but just enough that I wasn't in danger of losing my midnight snack all over his chest.

"What's going on?" I asked awkwardly.

My arms were down straight at my sides, and my head was bent at an unnatural angle due to Cleo's face buried deep into my neck.

He was shaking so bad that I started to get really scared, even more so when it took him nearly five more minutes of standing like that before he answered.

"Thought you were gone," he rumbled into my skin.

Shivers raced up my spine. "I was...but your sister came over drunk and falling over, and there was no way I was spending the night with her whining about no air when I could just take her home."

He laughed.

Not just a chuckle, either.

No, it was an all-out, body shake, throw your head back, kind of laugh.

One that you felt from down deep in the pit of your stomach.

I wiggled until I got one arm loose, and then smacked him on the shoulder. "What the h.e.l.l, Cleo?"

He let me loose, allowing me to take my first full breath in ten minutes.

"I got a call from Dante Hail. He'd gone out to recover the vehicle that took out the power line out by my road. The man that did it was moaning about seeing a man dressed in black running across the road towards my property," Cleo explained harshly.

I looked at him like he was crazy. "And? And anyway, why would you know him well enough for him to call you? You only met him a few months ago."

He shrugged. "Seen him around. We've made nice. He uses my boat ramp now when he goes fishing."

I blinked. "The power company said it was a drunk. Maybe he just hallucinated that he saw something."

Cleo shook his head and took my hand, leading me through the multiple vehicles, past the scary looking men of The Dixie Wardens MC, around the front of his house, and up the back porch steps.

That was when I gasped, and felt bile running up the back of my throat.

"When did that happen?" I asked quietly.

He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me into his chest. "Within the last two hours. My guess was as soon as the lights went out. The power company said they've been out for two hours and five minutes now. The guy that hit the power pole only did this guy a favor by taking out all the lights."

"It was my fault, wasn't it?" I asked quietly. "She was raped because of me."

Cleo didn't give any false plat.i.tudes. He knew it just as well as I did. Oh, G.o.d. Oh, my G.o.d. Audrey.

"Audrey must hate me," I said on a deep inhale.

I didn't want to cry, but I could feel the ball of sadness welling in my throat, and my eyes were filling up with tears.

"She doesn't hate you, honey. She knows you didn't want this," Cleo rasped.

I read the words that were splashed across Cleo's deck in white, bold letters.

I told you what would happen. Back off the case, or this'll happen to someone else.

"What happens if I don't testify?" I asked as I surveyed the hundreds and hundreds of pictures that were laid out all over the deck.

Some of them weren't too bad.

One of me leaving the grocery store. Another of me walking out of my apartment. One talking with Cody as I left the hospital.

Then there were the ones of me naked.

Or the ones of me and Cleo pressed against each other in an intimate embrace.

The ones that really got me, though, were the ones of my friends.

Cody and his husband. Their daughter.

Cody's mother.

Cleo.

Cleo's sisters.

The club.

And Audrey. The girl that was raped...all because of me.

There were pictures of her on the ground with her pants and panties around her ankles.

Some of her on her hands and knees with her face smashed into the grill of a car.

I closed my eyes, not wanting to see anything else.

"This can't be happening," I cried, finally letting the tears spill over.

Cleo turned us, and started heading down the back stairs. "We'll go to your place tonight, and then tomorrow I'll get some security sensors and a generator so the system doesn't go down again."

I nodded, numbly. "Okay."

Cleo I walked out of Rue's apartment door, closing it quietly behind me before turning the corner and coming to a stop on the side of the building.

Loki, Trance, Torren, Sebastian, Silas, Tunnel, and Kettle were all there, waiting for me.

"She asleep?" Loki asked once I'd made it close enough to them.

I nodded. "Yeah. She wasn't doing too well."

"Audrey wants to come by in the evening, if it's all right," Tunnel said quietly.

I nodded once. "She'd like that."

Audrey started back to work only a few days ago, and she seemed to be doing just fine.

Rue hadn't been there for those two, she ended up on opposite shifts than Audrey and that was something she planned on rectifying tomorrow when she went in to work.

It'd be a long day for her with only three hours of sleep, but she'd said that she wanted to go in, regardless, and I wasn't one to argue.

Usually.

"Got some prospects on the friends place, as well as your sisters," Silas rumbled.

"Thanks," I said. "I called Meredith's husband and Mikayla's husband while I was inside. They're going to keep an eye out."

"What now?" Sebastian asked.

Something we were all thinking.

"I don't f.u.c.king know," I said, lifting my hands up to run through my hair.

It'd gotten long.

My beard had gotten long, too.

I was getting soft.

Only six months out of the Air Force and I was growing my hair out.

What would DP and Cord think of me if they saw me right this second?

My phone rang DP's ringtone, and it was as if he could tell I was thinking about him.

We'd done that quite a few times before, too, guessing when the others were in trouble.

If I had to say that I had a best friend...or friends...it'd be those two.

They got me.

They let me brood in the corner if I felt like it.

They listened to me moan about Rue.

They went to my mother's funeral with me.

They saved my life more times than I could count.

They truly were my best friends.

Not that the men standing in front of me right this moment didn't mean something to me, but they didn't get me as well as Cord and DP.

Stepping back away from the still discussing men, I tapped answer and held it up to my ear. "Are your ears burning?"

DP's dark chuckle rang in my ears. "Yes, sir. I was just watching a TV show and thought of you. We haven't spoken in a few, so I thought I'd come down for the weekend. What do you think?"

I thought about all the s.h.i.t swirling around in my life right now, and couldn't think of a better man to help me deal with it. "Abso-f.u.c.king-lutely."

Rue would be pleased, too.

She'd made a friends with the two men and their wives...now ex-wives, and I knew she'd be excited to see them. It may just be the thing to keep her mind off of what was going on at the moment, too.

"10-4. I've called Cord, but I'm not sure if he'll be able to get off in time. He started with the Sherriff's department last week," DP said.

"Alright, well you know where I live. I can't promise clean sheets, but there's bound to be some around somewhere. I'll see you this weekend," I said.

We hung up, and I walked up in time to hear the back half of the idea that Torren had.

"So why doesn't the DA just call her up to the witness stand. Get it over with. See what happens," Tunnel asked us.

I thought about that for a moment, and couldn't find a single thing wrong with the idea...other than the obvious threats she'd been getting.

However, we were a lot more aware now. n.o.body would be getting to her. Not without going through me and the other men standing here with me at the moment.

"I can't find any flaws with that," Silas said.