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Chapter 9

We were allowed a few days to settle into our new homes before Jace was expected to training so he could take patrol shifts.

During our time of settling in, we explored the town we were attached to. To my delight, there was a nursery where we bought a lot of flowers to plant around the house, and even some plants to have in the house. Jace seemed like he was going to tolerate it all, but I overlooked that. All of these plants and flowers were going to make me happy.

At the house, I set the flowers all around in the front, trying to figure out where they would look best. Jace shocked me by coming out to help me, I thought he had some other things to do, but was happy to be working with him.

When we finished, I stood back in the yard admiring our work. Theo walked over, and I asked him to join us for lunch. As we were walking in, it occured to me that we'd been there for two days by that point, and we'd not seen Kat or Matteo. We'd walked by their house plenty of times, because I enjoyed being out of the house walking, and they'd not even been outside. I thought for sure that Kat would have been trying to spruce up her house as well.

Jace suggested that maybe they were doing what we did every night. After turning a little green, to his amusement, I told him I didn't want to think about it.

I served lunch outside on the patio, and we enjoyed the ocean breeze. Jace cleared the plates, then Theo talked him into going to do some training. They were expected to take a patrol shift the next day.

The idea of a patrol shift perplexed me. We weren't really close to the border, and they had a police force, so why did they need people who were basically just citizens to act as if they were police.

I was putting out dinner the next evening when Jace came back. He'd had some orientation to go through before his first shift.

To say he was angry would have been putting it very mildly.

He walked into the kitchen, we liked to eat in there and not the dining room, and threw down his keys. He paced the length of the room a few times, clenching and unclenching his fists a few times before he turned and hit the wall.

"Want to talk about it?" I wanted to go over and put a hand on him, but I was rather scared to.

"Theo and I are on night shift," Jace turned to face me. "Night shift. As in, as soon as I eat, I have to leave. And I won't be back until sunup." He laughed, but it wasn't from amusement. It was easy to tell he was anything but amused. "I get one night off. Supposedly, this is in exchange for us living here. Want to know the kicker though?" I nodded. "Matteo and Aron don't have to have shifts. Just me and Theo."

I bit my bottom lip. "I was thinking something was off about this place. I don't really like it here, Jace. Something isn't right."

"After today, I agree with you, but what can we do?" Jace pulled me to him.

"Do you have to leave as soon as we eat?" I asked.

"I have to be back in an hour," Jace sighed.

"Then we can at least walk down to the beach for a few minutes," I smiled, but I didn't quite mean it. I was mad. "Do you want me to go down there tomorrow and fix all this?"

"I think they wear protections," Jace snorted and sat down. "They also want you to come in and start working too."

So it began.

They were supposed to be hiding us, instead they were using us. I knew that pure and simple. I just wanted to know what to do about it.

After dinner, I told Jace to just leave the dishes, and I'd take care of them after he left. We stepped outside, but didn't make it of the patio.