Above the Law

Chapter Six

Eden laid on her bed with an ice pack on her ribcage. The bruises from the masked man's intense training session were still a violent purple-black on her tan skin, of course it'd only been a few days since they'd trained—they were meeting again tonight for their second day and she still felt like she'd shatter at his mere touch.

A sharp knock sounded on Eden's door. "Get up," her father slurred through the door. "Take my—my money and get some fuckin' food in this house."

She sighed, swung her legs off the bed and unlocked her door. Of course he was drunk at seven p.m.; he didn't have to run the club tonight, how else would he spend his free time?

He shoved a few hundreds at her. The fell to the floor. "Make yourself useful," he snarled.

"Anything you want in particular?" she said quietly, an edge to her voice.

His eyes flashed and he swayed on his feet. "I want food! I just said that! But 'course a stupid bitch like you needs tellin' twice."

She smiled. It was a poisonous type that made her already hard features contort into something beautifully sinister.

Eden walked past him, then knocked on Lily's' door. "Lil, do you want to come shopping with me? We can get ice cream," she added when Lily didn't respond.

Eden wondered if Lily was still mad, still disgusted with the words she had said about the men deserving death, but the bedroom door flung open and Lily smiled brightly. "Just give me a sec..." She disappeared back in her room and emerged wearing a pair of jeans and a hoddie. "Let's go!"

Lily ran back in the store to get a pack of gum and Eden sat on the bus bench waiting for it to come, they'd walked to the store, but it was late, night was falling rapidly and they had a lot of bags to carry. Eden stood up and moved around the bench to get a better look through the store windows to see if Lily was coming yet, after a few seconds of gazing through the shadowy windows she turned back around and directly into a man's firm chest. His hands shot out and steadied her around her shoulders. She pushed the man away, looking applauded that he'd even touched her, and a large dog barked at her legs, its teeth bared. Her eyes locked onto the large dog. She stepped back.

"No, Bear," the man said quietly and the dog's ears went back, its tongue lulled to the side, panting slightly.

She glanced up at the familiar voice and smiled feebly at Detective Yates, tucking a strand of dark brown hair behind her ear nervously, then glancing briefly behind her shoulder for Lily. Her eyes landed back on the German Shepard at Yates's knees.

"You can pet him," Detective Yates said, crouching next to the dog and scratching behind its massive ears. "He won't bite unless he feels threatened or thinks I need protecting."

Eden chewed on her lip, glanced over her shoulder again, and then crouched next to the handsome man and the large dog. She watched him pet the dog in the fading light, he looked like a carefree child when he was petting his dog. She hadn't seen that look in a lot of adults she met. "What's him name?" she asked quietly. "Bear?"

She watched his lips turn up. "He was the runt; it was supposed to be a joke. But he really is the size of a bear. Aren't you, buddy?" he said happily, patting the dogs side.

She smiled lightly and crouched slowly and patted Bear's head tentatively. "I like it—him." She scratched behind Bear's huge ears.

"How... how are you?" he asked cautiously. He gazed at her features momentarily. She was really beautiful when she smiled like that, like smiling in itself was a secret.