It made me sick to my stomach.
Belle broke off when the child finally got ahold of the tip of her hair and pulled.
Belle grimaced, disentangled her hair, and then immediately scooted out of the aisle.
Yeah, she really didn’t like being touched.
Not even by a toddler.
That made me feel remotely better knowing that it wasn’t just my touch that she spurned.
Just as she was about to head even farther away from me, I got her attention by softly calling her name. “Belle.”
She paused mid-step, then turned her head curiously to the side, causing that mass of curls to fall all around her left side.
“Yes?” she asked.
I jerked my chin. “Come here.”
I needed a cover if I was going to stand here for any longer, and she would be a great one.
Frowning, she marched her way toward me, her face an adorable mixture of confusion and curiosity.
“What?” she asked when she was practically toe to toe with me.
Her head was tilted way back on her neck, and she was staring at me like she could see straight into my soul.
I brought my hand up, not quite touching her, but giving her the understanding that I was about to.
She didn’t flinch away, so I pressed my hand to her arm and closed my fingers around her wrist.
She didn’t flinch.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t my touch, or anyone’s touch, as much as she just needed warning that the touch was happening.
Noted.
“Do you mind standing here with me for a few seconds?” I asked, squeezing her wrist lightly.
Her small wrist felt tiny in my hand. I could practically wrap my fingers twice around it.
She frowned. “Why?”
I reached up and tucked a swath of curls back behind her ear, not even realizing I’d done it until my fingers touched the inky, silky strands.
My eyes flicked to the man that was on the move, but again, following the woman and her unruly children.
“Because I want to keep an eye on that man right there.” I jerked my head toward them. “And I don’t want to make the woman nervous. I’m not dressed very inconspicuously, but he is. She hasn’t made him, but she’s definitely made me.”
To give her credit, she didn’t whip her head around and stare at the man and woman behind me.
She stayed exactly where she was, head practically all the way back, and stared at me.
“The one with the seventeen kids and the man following her around in the lingerie section?” Belle asked, surprising me.
I nodded.
“I clocked him in the frozen section,” she mused. “I actually called the cops about him. Or, at least, I called my dad. Who said he would call someone. But since we’re not in his jurisdiction, he couldn’t come himself.”
Souls Chapel was no-man’s-land. Nobody worked this particular stretch of the county. The one and only cop that we had that roamed around here, Briggs, was actually out doing fuck knew what at the interstate.
“We were called,” I said. “Since we do a lot of the patrolling in the area. No cops means that we get to do a lot more stuff our way. And this is going to be done our way.”
Belle tilted her head, shrugged, then turned around and started walking. “Let’s go find out where they’re going,” she urged.
I fell into step beside her. “I’m going to hold your hand.”
Belle looked over her shoulder at me, wrinkled her nose, and then offered me her hand.
“You telling me that you’re going to take it helps me do better,” she admitted. “I don’t do touch well unless I can see it coming. Or initiate it myself. Sorry about that flinch where Briana was concerned.”
She was apologizing for no reason.
And before I could tell her that, she turned the corner and I saw the man that’d been doing the following around the store now standing directly behind the woman.
“I guess I can buy these for myself,” Belle mused as she got into line.
I looked at the underwear.
Honestly, she could probably pull them off easily.
Before I could relay that, she continued to talk.
“I moved here because I liked the peace and quiet, and I liked how close I was to this superstore. I don’t know why they have it out in the middle of nowhere, but I love this place. No joke.”
I’d thought much the same thing about the massive bulk store out in the middle of nowhere. At first, I’d wondered if they’d made a mistake on the placement, because why the hell would they want a big store like this somewhere that was so far from civilization? But then I saw how busy it was, day in and day out, and realized that it was really the only store for about an hour around. It saw more action than the local grocery store at times.
“Souls Chapel is sort of weird, though.” Belle moved until she was practically tucked into my front when one of the kids broke off from standing next to her mother to crowd in close to the candy where Belle was standing.
I saw the man tense, as did Belle.
He wanted to grab the kid and run. I could see that all the way from over here.
My own muscles tensed, my body stiffening impossibly as if readying itself to explode into motion if the man so much as twitched toward the kid.
But the man slowly allowed his muscles to relax, which then caused me to control my breathing in reaction.
My eyes flicked up over the entire line to see Sin standing next to a toy grabber machine.
He had one eye on the grabber and the other on the man in the line.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something pink and sparkly come up with the grabber and drop down into the bin.
Sin bent down, retrieved it, and then handed it to some little girl that’d been staring at him with awe.
She already had two others in her arms.
The line moved quickly, and when the man’s turn came up after the woman and the kids walked away, the man cursed, comically patted his pockets and declared, “Oh, shoot. I forgot my wallet. I’ll be right back.”
Then he too was gone.
I watched as Sin followed him out.
“I’ll be outside, babe,” I said to Belle, absently leaving her behind before she could so much as agree or disagree.
When I arrived outside it was to find Sin walking two paces in front of the woman, behind a row of cars and mostly out of sight, while the mom tried to corral her unruly children into some semblance of control.
The man doing the following had his phone to his ear, and everyone was walking toward a mini-van with two adult stick figures on the window, as well as three small children characters. Next to the mini-van was a white panel van that had my insides tensing in anticipation.
Sin walked up from the opposite end of the lot, taking an immediate right beside the van on the opposite side of the one I could see.
Just as the woman reached the doors of her van, the ones of the other van burst open and men started to pour out.
I came off the curb and started to run, hitting the guy that’d been doing the following with a right hook to the back of his head.
The kids started to scream as one of the attackers caught the oldest and started to pull her away from the mother who’d finally caught on that something wasn’t right.
Sin came out from the side of the van like an avenging angel and took that man in the mouth with a fist.
I saw two front teeth fall out to the dirty parking lot ground before the rest of the man’s body joined them.