Free A Cold Day in Hell by Stella Cameron

Maybe going to work selling hedgehog boot-scrapers at Poke Around?”
    Aaron sighed. “When I get caught up with school I’m going to college. Okay, I’m sorry I got pissed at you. I just don’t like thinking about my mom having sex, okay?”
    “Sure.” Sonny smiled to himself and wondered what Aaron would have done if he’d walked in on his mother having sex—with two men—and neither of them was his father.
    “Angel’s okay.”
    Sonny’s stomach flipped. “He’s the best guy I ever knew. Cares more about me than anyone else ever has.”
    “You think my mom will come right back?”
    I’ve got a big mouth. “Probably.”
    Aaron scrubbed at his face.
    Sonny drew in a long breath. “Chuzah said your clothes were too messed up to clean so he threw them away. That’s how you got to come home in a dress.”
    He expected the elbow he got and laughed.
    “Chuzah’s okay,” Aaron said. “He said we could go back there if we wanted to return the kaftan.”
    “I don’t think I’ll want to.”
    Aaron took a bit to say, “I’m going to. I like Locum. When I was a little kid we had a dog and he went everywhere with me. He was only a mutt, but he was the best.”
    “What happened to him?” Sonny said.
    Aaron frowned and sighed. “I don’t know. Ran off, I guess. One day he was there, the next he was gone. It was tough. Wouldn’t you like to have a sidekick like Locum?”
    “He’s okay for a dog. There was blood on my clothes, too. I got it on me when Chuzah carried you back to his place. It was comin’ through his fingers.”
    “Forget it, will ya? It must have been something from the swamp. It just looked like blood is all.”
    “You were shot,” Sonny said bluntly.
    Aaron didn’t answer him and Sonny sat up. He put on the bedside lamp and glared at the TV. Some black-and-white movie had come on. Loads of men in fedoras and ties hanging undone arguing with some guy behind one of those old-fashioned windows, the ones they used to have inside banks. Looked like a major heist gone wrong.
    He touched Aaron’s side and saw how he recoiled. “So show it to me,” Sonny said.
    Aaron got off the bed and shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. He paced back and forth.
    “Look,” Sonny said. “We’re in this together. All of it. Whatever happens, I’ll be there for you.”
    “And I’ll be there for you.”
    “So show me.”
    Aaron hauled up the left side of his T-shirt and walked close to Sonny. “Satisfied?”
    Sonny sat on the edge of the bed and touched a round, brownish bruise on the skin just beneath Aaron’s ribs. Aaron turned slowly around to show a matching mark on the other side.
    “Entry and exit wounds,” Sonny said. “Or that’s where they should be. That’s too freakin’ creepy.”

9
    A ngel lived on an oxbow lake not too far from The Willows, the building project he was currently managing for Finn Duhon.
    When Eileen had asked him why he’d chosen to buy an old house by the lake when oxbows disappeared eventually, he had said, “Because almost no one else lives there. Anyway, whoever built that place of mine had imagination. They knew it would stand, lake or no lake, and maybe there would always be someone to love it. I’m going to do a lot of the renovating myself.”
    He had big hands. Eileen watched them on the wheel while they drove the winding road west and out of town. His hands gave her a funny feeling; she wanted to take and examine them, to find out how the bones and the veins and the muscles felt. “You do think it was okay to leave the boys like that?” she asked.
    “They’ll be fine. Aaron’s a smart kid and Sonny knows a lot about how to look after himself. I pity anyone who tries to get in there after them. Anyway, Sonny would call me if he needed to.” He smiled at her. “We can’t keep them locked away. Learning to react effectively in bad situations takes practice.”
    She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. “That’s good then, I guess. It’s