She was right. Too right. Scary right.
“Okay, fine,” I gave in. “My friends Annette and Jason are in town. Can they come?”
“The more, the merrier,” Ally, clearly the Haunted House ringleader, said.
Again, I knew I was in trouble but this was a different kind of trouble.
A tall, very thin woman turned the corner at the back of the shelves, carrying an armload of books. She jerked to a halt when she saw us, obviously she’d been in her own world.
“Hi,” she said, surprise at the existence of other human beings on the earth still on her face.
“Hi,” we all said back.
She waited a beat and then said to me, “Glad you’re okay.”
I blinked at her. I had no idea who this woman was.
“Thanks,” I said.
She shelved a book and wandered away.
“Who was that?” I asked Indy.
“That’s Jane, she’s worked here for years. She’s kind of… odd,” Indy replied.
Uncle Tex had told me about Jane. Quiet, addicted to romance and detective novels. Her life was devoted to Fortnum’s, reading, writing her own novels that were never published and not much else.
Daisy grabbed my hand, taking my mind off Jane. “How’s everything else? You hangin’ in there?”
Her cornflower blue eyes were kind but sharp. I knew from just her look she didn’t miss a trick.
I told them about seeing the vision of Billy in Hank’s bedroom that morning. I finished with, “Hank said it was a flashback.”
Jet, Ally and Indy watched me, all smiles gone; they were looking concerned.
Daisy, on the other hand, nodded.
“Yeah, I got those after I was raped,” she replied.
My hand clenched in hers.
“You were raped?” I whispered.
“Long time ago. Flashbacks lasted awhile but they went away. The mind heals just like the body, but it takes its time. It’s good you got a decent man to see you through it. Helped me that, during that time, I found my Marcus.”
I sighed.
No one believed me when I said I was leaving town and I knew they wouldn’t believe me when I told them Hank wasn’t my man, so I stayed silent.
Then we heard a shout from the front of the store.
“Jumpin’ Jehosafats! This place is fuckin’ great!”
That would be Annette.
All the girls’ faces were frozen with incredulity at the yell.
“That’s my friend, Annette,” I told them, broke away and walked to the front.
Annette and Jason were standing a few feet inside the door. Jason was Annette’s partner, same height as Annette, light brown hair and dark brown eyes. He always smiled like he meant it and was never in a bad mood.
Annette and Jason looked at me when I arrived and I realized Jason could have bad moods under extreme circumstances because the minute he saw me, his face went hard.
Annette stared.
“Hey,” I said, smiling at them.
Annette looked at Jason, then turned on her heel and walked out the door.
On the sidewalk outside, hands clenched and arms straight, she threw her head back and screamed at the top of her lungs. Then she started kicking the sidewalk like she was kicking dirt and punching the air like she was hitting a punching bag, all the while emitting loud, nonsensical, angry mutterings.
I turned to all the folks in Fortnum’s.
“She’s a little crazy,” I said.
No one said a word, they were all staring out the door.
Annette walked back in.
“I’m gonna kill that motherfucker,” she announced.
“I think that’s the consensus,” I told her.
“No, no, no. I’m gonna rip his dick off and shove it up his nose and parade him through the streets naked and dickless and then cut his head off.”
The entire store was silent.
“Annette, honey, I thought you were a pacifist,” I reminded her in a placating voice.
“Have you seen your face?”
“Um… yeah. It’s already a lot better.”
At my words, her eyes bugged out.
Holy cow.
Wrong thing to say.
Quickly, I said, “Let me introduce you to everybody.”
I did the introductions. Annette gave Uncle Tex a big, old hug and when I finished with Hank, she looked him up and down, turned to me and nodded while she said, “Nice.”
Hank’s arm slid along my shoulders and he pulled me into his side.
Annette and Jason took this in and Annette smiled huge. Then she said, “Very nice.”
I looked up at Hank and his lips were twitching.
Shit.
Then, Jason came forward, took my hand and said, “Do you mind?” to Hank. He pulled me away from Hank’s arm and into both of his own. Then he gave me a tight hug, shoving his face in my neck.
The room, having recovered from Annette’s outburst, went silent again.
I felt the tears hit the backs of my eyes and slid my arms around him.
“Jason, I’m okay,” I whispered. “I’m fine, I’m here. It’s over.”
He didn’t let me go. I heard Annette give a loud, hiccoughing sob (Annette was a crier, just like me) then her arms came around both of us.
We stood like that for a while and then I heard Hank say softly, “Jason, Roxie’s got three cracked ribs.”
Jason’s arms loosened and he and Annette stepped away. Immediately, Hank slid his arm across my shoulders again and pulled me tight to his side.
“Annette tells me you’re a cop,” Jason said, looking at Hank.
Hank nodded.
“You’ll get him?” Jason asked.
Hank nodded again.
Jason looked at him for a few beats, then he nodded too and I watched the tension ebb from his body.
Everyone was quiet after that.
“All righty then!” Indy said into the ensuing silence, “Why don’t we all get lunch?”
“That sounds great, I could eat a horse but gotta unload the car first. We got a boatload of your shit,” Annette said to me. “The old Subaru is draggin’.”
“You can take it to my place,” Hank told her.
I froze.
No. No way in hell. I thought.
“No,” I said out loud.
“Cool,” Annette ignored me. “Should we follow you there?”
“We’ll all go,” Ally, all of a sudden, was there. “Many hands make light work.”
“No,” I repeated, slightly louder this time.
“Let’s go, I’m starved. The sooner we get this done, the sooner I can eat,” Eddie said as he and Jet walked up to us. He had Jet in a hold much like the one Hank was using on me.
“No,” I said again, even louder.
“Where are we going to lunch? I vote Las Delicias,” Indy put in.
“We had that yesterday,” Lee said.
“Every day is Las Delicias day,” Indy smiled to him.
“No!” I said for the fourth time and it was nearly a shout.
Daisy linked her arm in mine, pulling me away from Hank. “You can ride with me, Sugar. We got shit we haven’t talked about yet.”
It was Hank’s turn to freeze.
“Don’t worry, Hunkalicious, we’ll be right on your tail,” Daisy told him and guided me to the door.
“Don’t mind Tex, Jane and me, we’ll just stay here and work!” Duke shouted to us as we walked out the door.
“Thanks, you’re a doll,” Indy shouted back.
I looked back in dread at Uncle Tex but he was grinning.
Daisy took me to her Mercedes, which was parked in the back while everyone scattered to their own vehicles.
I sat in the car, staring unseeing out the window while she started the car.
“Sugar, you look scared as a jackrabbit,” Daisy said.
“I am scared. My car has been impounded and I can’t get home. I can’t get anywher
e. Now my friends are essentially moving my shit into the house of a man I’ve known for a week. It’s official. As of today, I met him a week ago.”
“Seems longer,” Daisy muttered.
She wasn’t wrong.
“Relax,” Daisy said. “One thing I learned, this life is a wild ride and you got to just go with it.”
I turned to her. “I need a moment to think. I need a moment to plan. I need a moment to myself.”
“That’s just when it all goes wrong, when you have time to think. And you got an eternity of lyin’ alone in your coffin. Now you best be spendin’ your time with good folk and a handsome man. Come when you’re eighty and wonderin’ where your life went, you won’t thank yourself for cuttin’ loose and leavin’ a good thing behind, comprende?”
I opened my mouth to say something but Daisy didn’t let me.
“Trust me Sugar, I –” then she stopped talking, her eyes got big and she looked beyond me, out the side window.
I turned to see what she was looking at and in my window was a man, bent over and looking in.
Not just any man, one of the men who took Billy.
He tapped on the window with a gun.
“Get out of the car,” he said, looking at me.
“Please tell me that’s a flashback,” I whispered.
“That ain’t no fuckin’ flashback,” Daisy replied. Then she slammed the car in reverse and sped backwards on a vicious tug of the wheel, curling sideways. The bad guy jumped out of the way of the bumper and Daisy nearly rammed into Eddie’s truck, which was pulling down the alley behind us.
The man with the gun ran to a car on Bayaud and got in as Daisy took the turn onto Bayaud. The other man who’d come to take Billy, the one who tied me to the sink, was driving the car. They shot away from the curb after us.
“Oh no. No, no, no. Shit!” I shouted.
I looked behind and saw that they followed and Eddie turned in behind them.
“You know these boys?” Daisy asked.
“They’re the ones who took Billy.”
“Mm hmm,” she mumbled, shifting up and staring in the rearview mirror as she ran the red and turned onto Broadway.
Cars honked and swerved as we cut into traffic. I held onto the dash with one hand, the ceiling with my other and braced my body as best I could. When we were rocketing down Broadway, I chanced another glance behind and saw that the two guys and Eddie had taken the red too. To my further despair, I saw a Subaru pulling up the rear, it’s end dragging under a load and two mountain bikes were strapped to its roof.
Shit.
Cars were swerving everywhere, honking and I could see angry faces through windows.
A Crossfire and Hank’s 4Runner both zoomed out of parking spots at the front of Fortnum’s and joined the chase.
Then, the bad guy in the passenger seat leaned out the window and aimed the gun at us.
“Holy cow! He’s gonna shoot!” I yelled just as we heard gunshots and a “ping, ping, ping” as the bullets hit the trunk of our car.
“They shot me! They shot my Mercedes! Those fuckin’ bastards!” Daisy squealed, then she hooked a right down some narrow road with parked cars on either side; barely enough room for us to drive down.
A car was coming toward us and Daisy leaned on the horn. “Get out of my way, motherfucker!” she shouted, leaning forward squinting through the windshield like she was nearsighted and nearly resting her huge bosoms on the steering wheel.
At the last possible moment in our scary game of chicken, the car swerved into an open spot and we flew by. I looked behind us and saw the rest of the cars in our convoy fly by too.
“Drive to a police station,” I said to her.
“What?” she asked, still laying on the horn.
“Take your hand off the horn and drive to a police station!” I yelled.
She stopped honking her horn and I heard my purse ringing.
“Shit!” I snapped.
“Put your seatbelt on. Fuck the phone. Belt. Now!”
I did as Daisy instructed. She hung a left running a stop sign and then two blocks down, she took another left, thankfully through a green light, and got onto a two-lane road. My phone finally quit ringing and Daisy weaved in and out of traffic, honking her horn liberally and staying out of the line of a clean shot.
We took several more turns. I kept glancing behind us; Eddie’s truck had fallen back, the Crossfire was behind the bad guys, Hank behind the Crossfire.
Daisy took another turn and we were in the parking lot of the police station Eddie had taken me to the day before.
I watched out the back window as the bad guys kept going. The Crossfire stopped on a squeal of tires. Hank’s 4Runner shot passed it and kept after the bad guys. Indy jumped out of the Crossfire and the minute she closed the door, it took off on another squeal of tires.
Then I could look no more.
Daisy executed what could only be described as a Bo-and-Luke-Duke-General-Lee stop on a squeal with the back half of the Mercedes swinging around and rocking to a halt. The red truck came in behind us. Annette’s Subaru following it.
Two squad cars flew out of another exit; sirens and lights flashing.
Eddie didn’t bother to park. He stopped behind us, got out of the truck, Jet getting out the other side. She immediately started running toward the entrance of the police station, Indy was there, holding the door for her. Eddie jogged toward us.
Daisy and I climbed out of the car.
“Get into the station. Now,” Eddie demanded and I realized Jet and Indy already had their orders.
Daisy and I didn’t quibble. She threw her keys to Eddie, he caught them in midair and we hoofed it into the station, joining Jet and Indy. Annette and Jason came in not a minute later.
“What the fuck just happened?” Jason snapped.
Okay, so I’d learned of another situation that could take away Jason’s good mood.
I told them about the bad guys.
“Those fuckers shot my Mercedes,” Daisy said when I was done talking. She was shaking, maybe with rage but I figured it was something else.
I put my arms around her and she reciprocated the gesture.
“Those fuckers shot my Mercedes,” she whispered.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered back, feeling the weight of her fear settling firmly on my shoulders.
She held on.
Eddie walked in. His dark eyes, glittering with anger, went first to Jet and then they came to me.
“You okay?” he asked me.
I nodded.
“Daisy?” he said.
She took her cheek from my chest and nodded, but she didn’t let me go.
Eddie watched her a beat and then said, “I’ll call Marcus.”
Something changed in the air. I saw it in Daisy’s face and in Jet’s but I didn’t know what it was. Then Eddie looked at me. “You know those guys?”
I shook my head but said, “They took Billy.”
“Billy isn’t with them now,” he noted.
I just stared at him.
“Fuck,” Eddie finished.
He could say that again.
* * * * *
I was sitting on a couch in the room where I gave my statement to Detective Marker.
Daisy was by the door, being held by a good-looking, dark-haired man that I knew had to be her husband, Marcus. He was ignoring some very weird looks he was getting from all the cops in the room.
Indy was six feet away, talking to some handsome black man in uniform. Jason was standing with them, his face still had not morphed back to the good-natured Jason I knew.
Jet was sitting on one side of me, Annette on the other and we were all holding hands.
Eddie was talking on the phone.
Then, some guy who was on another phone said, “Yo, Eddie!”
Eddie put his hand over the receiver and lifted his chin.
“Hank got ‘em,” the guy said.
Eddie’s eyes slid to me.
r /> “Thank the goddess,” Annette breathed.
I stared at Eddie and felt my chest squeeze.
Before, I thought I was leaving town to guard my heart.
Now, I had to leave town to guard my friends.
* * * * *
What seemed like forever later, Hank and Ally walked into the room. Ally had been in the 4Runner with Hank and he’d taken her with him, hell bent on going after the bad guys. This was talked about by the cops like it wasn’t a big deal and I got the impression they all knew Ally was the kind of girl who could handle herself in a crisis.
I could tell from across the room that Hank’s body was taut, he was wired and he was seriously and completely pissed off.
He scanned the room until his eyes fell on me and then he came straight to me.
I got up from the couch.
He stopped in front of me, toe-to-toe, totally in my space.
He tilted his head down and looked me directly in the eye.
“You’re stayin’,” he declared in his authoritative voice.
Shit.
Chapter Fourteen
“She’s the One”
I was lying on top of the covers of Hank’s bed, wearing my dusty lilac, stretchy nightie with the black lace on the bodice and hem. It was a little risqué for hanging out in Hank, the-guy-who-I-was-telling-myself-I-was-trying-to-shake’s bedroom but fuck it, these days risqué was my middle name.
Shamus was lying on his belly beside me. His head on my stomach, his eyes closed, content as I scratched his ears. “Born to Run” was playing on the stereo in Hank’s bedroom and I’d just finished writing a letter to a friend in Atlanta (but did not share any of the recent goings-on; that would have to be a phone call).
I had put my stationery aside and I was staring at the ceiling and trying to decide how my life had descended into such madness (and obviously avoiding blaming myself in an attempt to save what was left of my sanity). It was like someone in a suit walked up to me and gave me a certificate, which stated “Roxanne Giselle Logan, Your Life is Fucked”.
* * * * *
I’d spent the afternoon at the police station.
First, they took everyone’s statement, then, Daisy and I identified the two bad guys in a line up. It gave me a chill up my spine to see Sink Man again; so close he seemed right there.
Luckily, Hank was right there too, standing behind me, his strong hand warm on the back of my neck.