Alex Hardy, in his early twenties and looking it, took a deep drag of his cigarette as he eyed the man who had just walked into the local dive bar. Annie Patel, who worked the bar and knew Alex’s drink order as well as his tastes, leaned over the bar wall to eye the man as well. “You look like you’ve just spotted a tasty snack.”
Alex eyed the way the man’s jeans fit tight over his ass, pinched around thick thighs like trunks, and made a hmming sound before replying, “Maybe more like dinner.”
Her nose wrinkled, “Gross, but I guess I started that one. You gunna eat him up?”
Alex eyed Annie. Sweet, blond, and dressed like she’d stepped out of a Coyote Ugly film, she was the type of girl most men found themselves tripping over just to get her to look their way. Unfortunately for them Annie didn’t swing for that team, and she’d clocked Alex the second she’d layed eyes on him. Alex had tried to deny it at first, but Annie was no fool and it didn’t matter if Alex was closeted in the face of her unwavering certainty. After a couple terse conversations they’d fallen into an easy camaraderie, pretending to flirt so Annie could gossip to Alex about every attractive man who walked into the bar. She was hilariously determined to get him laid and Alex put up with her efforts with good nature. She was well intentioned, over-eager in the face of finding an ally in the middle of nowhere South Carolina.
The man who’d walked into the bar was tall, taller than Alex and Alex had a decent bit of height to him. His grizzled face spoke of a person who traveled often and slept little, beard scruff threatening to turn greasy and the lines under his eyes dark. Maybe if he got a decent night’s sleep he could pass for a men’s magazine model, but there was an edge to his face that warned of danger. He had sharp cheekbones under amaretto eyes, the color holding a richness that Alex felt he could get drunk on.
Alex tipped his head in contemplation. “You think he’ll mind if I bite?”
Annie snorted. “Careful. You drool any harder and there’ll be a puddle.”
Alex let himself smile and looked away. He turned his back to the man, turning to face Annie fully as she stepped back more comfortably to her side of the bar.
“Too bad I’m not on the hunt tonight.” He picked up his drink, a liquor just a little more high end than he could afford, and took a reluctant sip.
Annie frowned. “Carl got you on another run tonight?”
Alex grimaced. “Tonight and tomorrow.”
Annie swore. “He’s running you into the ground.”
Alex took another slow sip. “‘Price of being good at what I do, I guess.”
“Or he’s trying to make you slip up so he can run you out.”
The conversation paused as they both thought over what Annie had just said. She looked like she wanted to take the words back, her lips tightening into a flat line as she looked away with a pinched look. Alex knew she was right, though.
He was relatively new to town, had only been here a month, and had clawed his way into a grunt spot in the local gang, desperate to prove himself so he could move on to better work. He’d told the local boss, Carl, a day job paid decent but crime always paid better.
Carl didn’t like Alex, hadn’t from the secobd they’d met and it had been obvious. Big, gruff, burly Carl who looked like he ate timber logs for breakfast had taken one look at Alex, a city boy who looked a little too shiny and on this side of skinny even if he had decent muscle mass, and spit right at his feet and told him to get lost. Alex had persisted, knew and could read how men like Carl worked, and had wormed his way into night jobs, running messages and undisclosed items from one stretch of the highway, where Carl’s territory ended, to the other, where the territory of the next largest gang in the area started.
Carl didn’t like it, didn’t like having Alex even affiliated with their gang at all, but Alex had proven to be good at his job. He had been able to keep a cool head and keep the merchandise safe when a third party had tried to intercept his run the first week. He’d been trusted to do the runs mostly alone from then on, but it didn’t step Carl from practically snarling every time he saw Alex anyway.
Alex cleared his throat, playing with the cool glass of his drink. “I’m okay, Annie. Carl can hate me all he likes. He’ll keep me around as long as it’s good for business.”
Annie scowled, picked up a rag from the bar well and muttered, “I gotta go see where Tim is with the ice,” before stalking away, her boots making an angry clack over the low chatter and country music of the bar.
There was a moment where Alex felt guilty. Annie was a good person, worrying over a man she’d barely known a month, and he didn’t deserve that level of care from anyone, let alone the sweetheart of Enderton Valley. A population of just in the thousands, Enderton Valley was a good place to disappear if someone was trying.
Or not trying, even. There’d been a string of disappearances in Enderton Valley, twelve people in the six months before Alex had arrived. There were whispers, as there always were in rural areas. The younger kids gossiped about Bigfoot and a monster in the woods. The adults kept a closer eye on the kids, curfews were enforced, and conversations went quiet when strangers approached.
A month into his stay Alex was still a stranger to most, but he was working his way into being a known face in the Valley. Some of the locals had begun to open up to him, reluctant for now. Annie was the only one he could honestly call a friend, and even she had only recently quietly admitted she suspected the gang at the end of the highway was up to something other than their regularly scheduled crime. If she thought it was related to the disappearances, she didn’t say it. The entire town was pretty tight lipped, even as far as small towns went.
A loud bang at the other end of the bar startled Alex out of his contemplation. He didn’t jump, but it was a near thing, and he turned in his seat quickly to catch what had made the noise.
It was the man from earlier, the one with the amaretto eyes. Alex could see he was snarling as he held another man up from where he’d smashed him into the wall, the man’s feet slightly dangling. The other man was alresdy raising his hands in a placating gesture and Alex would have turned away, should have turned away, except he recognized the poor soul currently floating six inches off the bar floor.
He sighed heavily, but abandoned his drink easily as he slid out of the stool and slipped between the crowd with ease. Folks who recognized him stepped out of his way and folks who recognized the lapel on the arm of his leather jacket also stepped out of the way.
The man Alex had been eyeing earlier was speaking quietly and Alex picked up a snippet as he got closer.
“-think that Joe will let that go? Don’t be a fool.”
Christ, he even sounded hot. Growly and rough, with deep tones to his voice that made Alex want to get on his knees and-
Well. Certainly something that would make Annie blush.
Alex sighed heavily.
“Hey there friend,” he stepped lightly to the side of Mr. Growly, putting one hand on the muscled arm that was currently keeping Spencer, Carl’s younger cousin and the local idiot, a few inches off the ground. Freshly eighteen years old, Spencer was the type of reckless that had Alex unsurprised that he’d angered a stranger into violence so quickly, but that didn’t mean Alex was going to allow anything to happen if he could stop it. “How about we discuss whatever this is somewhere a little less public.”
He caught those amaretto eyes slowly, holding his gaze. He wanted to drown in those eyes, no matter how ill advised. Instead, once he was certain he had the man’s attention, he slid his gaze slowly away, making a lazy sweep of the crowd that had gathered around. A couple guys in the crowd had jackets like Alex’s, with a simple lapel on their jacket arm. A few more had jackets like Spencer, with a large patch taking up the entire back, an owl clutching a skull and a rose taking up the whole back. One group were potential initiates, like Alex, and others were full fledged members who’d either earned their spot or been born into it like Spencer.
Most of the crowd didn’t have jackets, but still looked ready to defend Spencer. Aside from being a gang-nepo-baby, Spencer was also well liked. Troublesome, but charming for all his lack of wit, Spencer was a local and a community member even more than he was a gangster. If the man wanted trouble, he’d found it.
The man follow’s Alex’s gaze, seems to note that he’s one man practically surrounded by a bunch of locals that he’s already pissed off. He drops Spencer suddenly. Spencer stumbles, but Alex is quick to catch the kid, getting a handful of the plaid under his jacket to keep him standing until he’s steady on his feet again.
The man is staring at Alex, hard, and Alex stares back. “Do we have a problem?” Alex’s voice stays steady, a hard edge that he hopes will get across that the answer should be ‘no’.
The man stares some more, his eyes tracking across Alex’s face like there’s something there that doesn’t make sense. Alex pushes Spencer slightly back, slightly behind him, ready to defend the kid if the man decides that yes, he does have a problem.
The man notes the movment and then his face twists into a snarl. Alex swears he sees a flash of fangs, but it must be a trick of the dim bar light. Maybe he’d drank more than he’d thought. “Tell your boss to keep his pups away from Joe’s territory. You’re toeing a very thin line.” This last sentence is spoken directly to Spencer, the man’s gaze shifting directly behind Alex.
Spencer makes a sound that might be a whimper, but the man is already turning away. Already leaving the bar. Alex finds he can’t relax, still tensed for a fight that didn’t happen. Energy buzzes under his skin.
Spencer claps him on the shoulder, leans in with his breath heavy eith relief, “Man, you really saved me there. Thought he was going to rip into me-”
“That’s enough, Spence.” One of the men with the gang’s large patch on the back of his jacket, a full member, steps forward as the crowd disperses. He looks tersely at Alex and then ignores him. “The fuck did you do to get the Shepherd on your tail?”
“The who?” asks Alex, and is ignored.
Spencer looks down, shuffling his feet a little. “I just- I thought that if-”
The other man, Alex thinks his remembers being introduced to him once as ‘Eric, he handles stuff’, cuts off Spencer. His tone is angry, almost frantic, raising in pitch ad he speaks, “Well forget whatever you thought. We need to report this to Carl. Now.”
“Can I come?” asks Alex, and Eric grabs Spencer ruffly by the arm, pulling him away while shooting a glare over his shoulder to Alex that read, ‘Don’t you fucking dare.’
Right. Message received. He still wasn’t trusted. Not with whatever the inner workings of the gsng were, and not with whatever trouble Spencer had gotten into with this “Joe” and his “Shepherd.”
Alex huffed, shrugging his shoulders. It was for the best anyway. If he wanted tonight’s delivery to be on time he’d have to hit the road soon.
He looked around the bar, but no one was paying attention to him anymore. Across the way, Annie was chatting up another regular that Alex vaguely recognized. Like him, her work wouldn’t end until the early hours of the morning.
He used a side exit to step into the alley outside the bar. He checked behind the large trash bins, making sure no one had snuck back there for a quick fuck. The bathrooms were usually the preferred spot for tipsy locals to get their quickies, but it wouldn’t be the first time if Alex did find someone out here.
There was no one. Sure that he was alone, Alex pulled out one of his phones. He carried at least three, always. One he referred to as his ‘personal’ phone, used for his regular day to day life. It was the most expensive of the three and the one he used the least. It had Annie’s number in it, a few of the other locals, a restaurant Alex liked the take-out from, and little else.
The second phone Carl had given to him. Ot was for jobs and work. It had a few numbers pre-programmed in, Carl and members he was more likely to interact with on his jobs, and nothing else.
Carl had been suspicious of Alex’s third phone, a burner phone that had texting and calling but was so cheap it didn’t even have a camera. Alex had explained to Carl, stumbling with embarrassment, the that burner was so he could talk to his girlfriend without his other partner finding out. He’d asked Carl to not tell anyone about the burner phone and, though Carl looked at Alex with disgust despite being a hardened gangster, as far as Alex could tell Carl hadn’t bladded.
Alone in the alley, Alex tapped on the one contact listed in the phone, the name line only displaying ‘babygirl’ with a few different heart emojis swirling on either side. Exactly the type of nickname a lover might input into a phone themselves, hoping it’ll make them look cuter in their lover’s eyes.
Alex hit the call button and put the clunky phone to his ear.
A sweet, saccharine voice picked up immediately, feminine and overly happy, “Baby! I was wondering when you’d call me next! I was just thinking about how much I miss-”
“Put me through to Hicks.”
A pause. The voice returns, no longer as sweet. More blunt, to the point. “You’re alone?”
“Yes. I’m alone. Put me through to Hicks.”
“Call signal?”
Alex rattled off a series of numbers. They changed day to day, based off of the date and an equation that Alex had to do mentally before calling this number for anything serious. So far, he’d only needed the number twice before.
“Please hold.”
The line clicked lightly with the transfer. More silence. Then, a second click that Alex knew meant the transfer had been picked up.
He cast one more look around the alley, noted it was still empty, and spoke, “Agent Dayton. Reporting in. What have you heard about ‘the Shepherd’?”
Alex didn’t have a secret girlfriend, or even anyone he was willing to call a steady partner. Alex wasn’t even his real name.
What Agent Dayton did have was an assignment, undercover for as long as it took, to dig around Enderton Valley until the FBI could figure out why the fuck twelve children had disappeared without a lick of evidence over the past six months. Until proven innocent, everyone in Enderton was a suspect as far as Agent Cooper Dayton was concerned.
And the Shepherd had just shot to the top of his list.