All tall, all dark, one looked like the All-American boy gone wrong but in a good way (a very good way). Another had close-clipped black hair and killer facial hair, his mustache trimmed to razor sharpness down the sides of his mouth. If it had been on anyone else, it would have looked ridiculous but on him it was quite simply hot. The last was taller than the other two (which meant he was seriously tall). He had coloring and eyes that I knew, from the stories I’d heard about him, were from his Hawaiian ancestry. They all had fantastic bodies clearly noticeable under their clothes and they all looked like the badass mothers I knew them to be.
These men were Lee Nightingale, Luke Stark and Kai “Mace” Mason, in that order.
“God dammit,” I muttered under my breath.
They approached and instinctively I moved in front of the boys.
All of their eyes were on me and they noticed my movement. One side of Stark’s lips went up in a sexy half-grin, Nightingale’s eyes crinkled at the corners and Mace smiled flat out.
They thought I was some silly woman, the jerks. My back went straight and my chin went up.
“Law,” Nightingale said when he arrived at our group.
“Shit, Law. He knows who you are!” Sniff piped up behind me, his voice filled with excitement.
“Quiet, Sniff,” I said, not taking my eyes from Nightingale.
“You got business here?” Stark asked, positioning himself beside Roxie and telling me not so subtly that I didn’t have business there.
“I’ve just come to get my boys,” I assured Stark. Then, eyes still on Stark, I said to Roam and Sniff, “Let’s go guys.”
I didn’t hear chairs scraping so I turned to them. They hadn’t moved.
“I said, let’s go.” And I used my word-is-law voice.
They both immediately stood.
“Don’t forget your coffee,” Tex boomed.
I nodded to the big man but said to the boys, “Hazel’s down the street. Get in. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“But, Law,” Sniff whined.
“I’ll be there in a minute,” I repeated, walking over to take my latte.
I wrapped my fingers around its heat ready to offer to pay when the bell over the door went. I looked toward it and saw Vance walk in.
“God dammit,” I hissed under my breath.
His gaze locked on me and he walked to our group and stopped, his eyes never leaving me. I felt his stare like he was touching me and my mind, working against me, flashed on this morning and my body, also working against me, reacted.
Roam and Sniff had frozen.
I shook off the Crowe Effect. “Boys, get to the car.”
“I wanna work with you,” Roam said to Vance and Vance’s eyes left my face and sliced to Roam but he didn’t say a word.
“I wanna be, like, your trainee or somethin’,” Roam went on and you could tell just by looking at him that this was taking everything he had.
Crowe’s face was blank and he showed no reaction, not even to Roam’s obvious mixture of discomfort and longing. I felt my heart squeeze and my breath freeze, worried that Crowe would make a fool of him. There was nothing in Roam’s life that he ever wanted that he actually got and you could see, quite plainly, that there was likely nothing in Roam’s life that he wanted more than he wanted this.
“Roam –” I started to break in.
“You on the street?” Vance asked Roam and my eyes swung to Vance. He was not blank anymore, he was watching Roam closely.
“Sometimes,” Roam said. “At King’s,” he went on.
“Stay at King’s,” Crowe returned and that was all he intended to say. I could tell because his eyes cut to me.
I could feel Roam’s disappointment, it filled the air.
“We need to talk,” Vance said to me.
“I’ll do what you say!” Roam continued and everyone looked at him because his voice had gotten louder, higher, more desperate. His body was tense, solid, and I felt my throat close. “Anything you say. I won’t mouth off. I’ll just do it. I won’t be a problem, I swear.”
“Roam?” Crowe asked and Roam nodded, confirming that was his name. “Get your diploma, get smart, once you do that, I’ll think about it.”
Roam shook his head, not letting it go. “Has to be now.”
“Roam, we’ll talk about this in the car,” I said to him.
Roam’s body swung to me. “It has to be now!” he shouted and my body jerked.
I’d never heard him shout.
His face was distorted with something, an internal battle the physical manifestation of which could be seen in his expression.
“Be dead in three years,” Roam continued and my heart stopped.
“Roam, don’t say that,” Sniff put in quietly.
“I’m gonna get ‘em. All of ‘em and I gotta know how to do it. If I don’t, they’ll kill me.”
I started to walk along the front row of the crowd to get to Roam and was just passing Vance when Roam started to back up. Vance stopped me with an arm around my waist and he pulled my back to his front. I didn’t fight Vance and didn’t try to get to the retreating Roam.
Roam backed up until he was against the wall.
“Roam, we’ll get back to King’s. We’ll talk,” I said softly.
“No. You’re after them. You’re doin’ it. I’m gonna do it too. They killed Park. They
didn’t shoot ‘im but they might as well have. Park was…” he stopped, his voice went hoarse. “Park wanted…” he tried to go on but stopped again.
I leaned away from Vance to detach his arm from me so I could get to Roam but Vance’s arm tightened and he pulled me deeper into his body.
“Best way to get them, Roam, is not to become one of them,” Nightingale cut in, his eyes sharp on Roam and I could tell he’d taken in everything.
“You don’t know,” Roam spat at Lee, taking (I thought) his life in his hands. I didn’t expect many people talked to Lee Nightingale like that, certainly not fifteen year old boys. “You have no fuckin’ clue.”
“My best friend is Darius Tucker,” Lee told him.
Roam’s body went still and his eyes grew wide. Mine did too.
“I do know,” Lee said with finality.
This hit Roam, I could tell, but he didn’t give up. His eyes went to me and Vance.
“I wanna be you,” he said to Vance quietly.
“You can’t be me. You gotta be you. And right now, you’re a kid. Be a kid,” Vance advised from behind me.
“I’m not a kid,” Roam protested.
“That ain’t a bad thing, Sugar,” Daisy put in.
“I’m not a kid!” Roam yelled at her.
All right. Enough was enough.
“Roam, don’t speak that way to people. It’s rude,” I put in and shoved forward, detaching from Vance and going to Roam. “We’ll get some hamburgers and we’ll go somewhere and talk. The three of us.”
“Done talkin’,” Roam said.
“Roam, let’s talk with Law. Come on,” Sniff approached him too.
Roam looked down on me. “You saw him lyin’ there, in a fuckin’ alley, fuckin’ shit and trash all around him. Trash, Law. Trash. You and me and Sniff, we all saw Park lyin’ in the fuckin’ trash,” he said to me and I knew the vision of Park’s dead body was burned on his brain too.
I swallowed then said, “Yeah, Roam, I saw him.”
“We was gonna go to California, learn how to surf. We was gonna go to Alaska and wrestle polar bears,” Roam told me, for the first time confiding the teenage boy dreams he shared with Park.
“Polar bears are mean motherfuckers. I saw that on some nature channel,” Sniff informed Roam, trying to be helpful.
“Stop saying motherfuckers,” I said to Sniff then turned again to Roam. “Let’s get a burger. Come on.”
“Park’d do it for me,” Roam said, still not letting it go.
I wanted to touch him, hold him, put my arms around him but I knew he wouldn’t want it. He was
a teenage boy and he was a street tough standing in front of a posse of the biggest badasses in Denver. He’d freak if I tried to mother him. Not to mention, he’d never had a mother who’d touched him, held him and put her arms around him in a loving way. He wouldn’t know what to do.
So instead I smiled at him. “Yeah, Park would do it for you and I’d be just as pissed at him, nagging him and getting in his face because it just isn’t smart.” Roam took a deep breath, maybe to say something, but I didn’t let him. “And then he’d listen to me and let me help him get his life sorted out.”
Roam stared at me.
“You know he would, Roam. Think about it. You know it,” I told him.
“He would. He thought Law was the shit, even before she actually was The Law,” Sniff added.
Roam kept staring at me.
“For God’s sakes, are you boys hungry or what?” I asked, throwing my arms out and pretending to sound exasperated.
“I’m hungry,” Sniff said.
“You’re always hungry,” I told him.
Sniff grinned. “I’m a growin’ boy.”
“I hope so. You need to fill out. The inspectors come to the Shelter and look at you, they’ll think we’re starving you all to death,” I said.
“’Specially if they look at May. I swear, she eats most of the pudding cups,” Sniff returned.
“That’s not nice,” I admonished.
“It’s true,” Sniff retorted, his grin growing into a smile.
“Okay, maybe it’s true,” I relented, giving him a subtle wink.
“Would you two shut up? I want a double beef burger with cheese, giganto-sized,” Roam cut in.
I nodded to Roam immediately, trying my damnedest not to look as happy and relieved as I was that whatever it was that had a hold of him, he’d let go.
I turned to take the boys out and stopped dead.
Everyone was watching us, including and especially Vance.
His eyes were on me and there was something in them I couldn’t read, something familiar, even precious, something I remembered from a long time ago but hadn’t seen in so long, I didn’t remember where I saw it in the first place. Before I could figure it out, the look disappeared.
I nodded in the general direction of everyone. “Nice to meet you all,” I said then started to shove through but Vance caught my bicep and stopped me.
“Your place, six thirty,” he said, his eyes serious.
I just gave him a look. He released me and the boys and I walked away.
“What was that about?” Sniff stage-whispered to me.
“They got a date,” Roam answered, too quick for his own good (and mine).
“No shit? You got a date with Crowe? Holy fuck!” Sniff yelled.
I rolled my eyes. Now this would be all over the street in an hour.
“Keep your voice down, Sniff. And don’t say shit or fuck. Don’t you boys ever listen to me?”
“No,” Roam said and grinned at me.
For the first time that day the sky of my life brightened and I grinned back at him.
Just as the door closed behind me, I could swear I heard, “Now I’m thinking Law’s the shit.” This was said in an unfamiliar man’s voice so it had to be Mace who hadn’t spoken.
“You ain’t wrong about that, Sugar,” this was obviously Daisy.
I ignored their words, got the kids in the Camaro and we went to get burgers.
It wasn’t until after we were sitting eating burgers that I tasted my latte and, even cold, it was the best flipping thing I’d ever tasted in my life.
Chapter Five
Nick’s Third Degree
At six thirty when I was supposed to be nervously anticipating Vance’s arrival at my duplex, I was in Heavy’s garage, wearing silvery-gray sweatpants with two black stripes running up the sides and a white t-shirt with the arms cut off with Gold’s Gym on the front in black. I was jabbing a punching bag and sweating like a pig.
“Jab, Jules, fuckin’ jab!” Heavy shouted at me, sitting on a bunch of boxes stacked at the side of his garage, working through his second double pack of Ding Dongs. “You jab like a girl. Keep your leg back, aim for the kidneys. Jab!”
“I’m jabbing, Heavy!” I shouted through my panting then quit jabbing and started roundhouse punching the sides of the bag then I quit doing that too, hugged the bag and stared at Heavy. “How long do I have to do this?” I asked.
“You only been at it an hour,” Heavy said and then shoved an entire Ding Dong in his mouth.
I glared at him. “Don’t you think an hour is enough?” I asked. “I’m not exactly going to be boxing with drug dealers for a whole fifteen rounds.”
“Don’t do fifteen rounds anymore, the sissies, only do twelve,” Heavy informed me.
“Well, I won’t be going twelve rounds with them either.”
“You gotta be in shape. ‘Specially now that you’re goin’ up against the Nightingale Boys. Fuck, girl, you… are… loco.”
I used my teeth to yank at the strings of my boxing gloves then shoved one under the pit of an arm and tugged it off. “I’m not up against the Nightingale Boys,” I said.
Heavy shook his head. “Got a friend, he’s a cop, says Hank Nightingale and Eddie Chavez pulled up all sorts of shit on you yesterday. Searchin’ your name and findin’ it all over your kids’ records.”
So that was how Vance knew everything.
I found this annoying. The whole bedroom interrogation that morning was bullshit. Vance knew the answers to most of his questions before he’d even asked them. This meant his “making me talk” was just an excuse to kiss me.
I didn’t know what to do with that so I didn’t do anything with it. I’d have time to think about it maybe when I was eighty.
Heavy was watching me closely as I tugged off the other glove.
“Unh-hunh,” he read my face correctly and went on. “Nightingale and Chavez searched you and Lee’s got a big nerd workin’ for him who could hack into the computers at the Pentagon. By now, they know everything about you, even your panty size.”
This gave me pause for reflection. I didn’t like the idea of Vance knowing everything about me. Though I didn’t care about my panty size unless he felt like buying me a present for my birthday which was only a few days away.
What was I thinking?
Vance was not going to be in my life, thus no birthday present. And certainly not panties.
I looked at Heavy. “My birthday is Thursday,” I told him.
“Well, happy fuckin’ birthday,” Heavy grinned, white cream and chocolate cake in his teeth.
I dropped my gloves to the floor, sat next to him on the boxes and pulled back some tendrils of hair that had come loose from my ponytail.
“Not today, Thursday,” I took a deep breath and then went for it. “You want to go out for a drink or something?”
Heavy stared at me. “Don’t you have girlfriends?” he asked.
I pulled in my lips and hit him in the shoulder. “Forget it,” I said and smiled. “I gotta stretch.”
I got up and walked over to a mat that Heavy had put out for when he showed me moves to defend myself against attack. I dropped down on it and started to stretch.
“You goin’ to the range after this?” Heavy asked, still staring at me.
“Yeah.”
“You goin’ out after that?” he went on and I knew what he meant, was I going out after bad guys.
I’d been giving it some thought especially after what Roam had done. I wasn’t exactly being the best role model.
Still, I was an adult. I was being smart and I was getting trained. I wasn’t a kid pelting a drug dealer with rocks (I had to admit, though I’d never tell Roam, that was a good one).
I looked at Heavy. “I’m going home for food and then, yeah, I’m going out.”
“Be safe,” he said, got up and went into the house.
I stretched and when I was finished I pulled on my black, zip-up sweatshirt and grabb
ed my bag. I walked into the house and I could see the back of Heavy’s blond head. He was sitting in front of Monday Night Football.
“I’m outta here Heavy,” I called.
“Cool,” Heavy called back.
I walked to the front door and I heard Heavy say my name, so I turned. “What?” I asked, peering around a column to look into the living room.
He’d twisted around the side of his reclining chair to look at me. “I’ll go out for your birthday but not to one of those girlie bars with martinis or any of that shit. American beer. Televisions. Women wearing tight t-shirts. You doin’ that for your birthday?”
I smiled at him. “I could do that.”
“Great. I’ll be there.”
Then he twisted around again and stared at the football.
* * * * *
I went to the range and shot for half an hour then gabbed to Zip for half an hour then went home figuring Vance would be long gone. It was well after eight and I didn’t think Vance was the kind of guy who hung around for long after it was obvious his date had stood him up.
I let myself into the duplex and listened to Boo telling me about his day for a few minutes before I shut him up with some treats. Then I listened to Boo complaining about lack of treats for a few minutes before I shut him up with a kitty cuddle.
I dropped him and took off my clothes, got in the shower and cleaned off the sweat and gun smoke.
When I stopped the shower, Boo was sitting on my toilet seat, staring at me and then he told me how he felt about me stopping his cuddles and taking a shower.
“Oh Boo. Shut up,” I said.
He gave me a look and jumped down off the toilet seat, did a little graceless skid on the bath mat, corrected himself and flounced out of the bathroom, all haughty.
“Damn cat,” I muttered, smiling to myself.
I slathered with lotion that smelled of cucumbers and melon and pulled a comb through my hair. I put on underwear then I yanked on a pair of faded, navy blue, fleecy sweats with a drawstring waistband that I let ride low on my hips. The sweats had loose hems that had a small notch on each side at the ankle. They were too long and rested over most of my feet and dragged under my heels. I pulled on a white, thermal, long-sleeved shirt, scooped up Boo and headed over to Nick’s for leftovers. I knocked on the backdoor and stuck my head in.