Eight

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Tenny didn't think he was ever going to understand why people were so damned easy. Didn't they know what was out there? Did they have even a shred of caution? The job he'd been trained for was made all the more possible, at every turn, by the way people just caved when they shouldn't have. The right sort of smile, a sympathetic glance, and they dropped all their walls; they invited the wolf inside the sheep pen, only to reel, later, at the sight of blood.

He supposed he should be thankful, if it made his life less difficult.

Mrs. Eckridge hesitated only a moment when Walsh pressed her about the Lean Dogs, and then she was talking in a breathless rush, as if she couldn't get the words out fast enough, telling them all about the others in her chat room who had claimed the Dogs could help find her missing daughter. "I know they probably do some bad things, and they break the law, but they aren't playing games like the police are. They care."

Woefully easy.

Tenny was having trouble aligning his brain with the idea that her easiness was a good thing in this case – for them and for her – rather than looking at her as a mark. Old habits and all that.

She admitted to having been in contact with "one of the wives," – that was Michelle – and said she didn't care about propriety at this point: she wanted her daughter back, whatever the means necessary.

Fox steered her deeper into the idea, claiming to have a cousin in with the club – all his brothers, actually, but – and by the time they left, phone numbers exchanged and poor Mrs. Eckridge looking something like hopeful, they were armed with information that Tenny privately thought was a waste of time.

"This is a waste of time," he said, thirty minutes later – some things should stay private, but some needed expressing – as they stood beneath the glaring lights of a department store.

"I guess we'll find out," Fox said, agreeably, as he flicked through hanging pairs of jeans. "Here, try these."

Tenny sent the offending pants a flat look. "I'll try them if I want to look like an absolute tit."

Fox quirked his brows and kept looking.

"I should be picking out your clothes, old man."

Fox hummed, and pulled a pair of black skinny jeans off the rack, knees and thighs all but shredded, white paint flecks dotting the calves. "Reese?"

Tenny surveyed them critically, imagined Reese in them – the shape of his thighs on display and plenty of skin showing – then grunted an assent.

Fox's smile was small and smug.

"Asshole," Tenny said, and moved down the rack.

Mrs. Eckridge had sworn up and down that her daughter Kaylie was "a good girl," to which Tenny wanted to roll his eyes. Everyone thought the best of their children; assumed that if they'd gone missing, it was villains instead of their dumb kid's own poor decisions to blame.

Like he'd said: easy.

Finally, she'd admitted that Kaylie and her friends had been spending Fridays, and sometimes Saturday nights at what she called a "dance club." A quick Google search proved that Nine was brand new, only open for the past two months, and that, going by its social media pages, drew a large college crowd. The cover charge was cheap, IDs weren't checked all that carefully, and the place offered a chance for local bands to perform on busy nights and gain some visibility. The blurry shots posted on Facebook revealed a dim interior, bright neon, and lots of sweaty, casually-dressed college kids in various stages of intoxication.

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