Hot as Hades (4 page)

He laughed, a low rumble in his chest. “That is a load of horseshit and you know it, Wildcat. Start talking.”

Okay, denial didn’t work. Time for plan B.
She stomped the top of his boot with her high heel. He cursed and his grip on her loosened. Then, she slammed her elbow into his ribcage. Hard. He let out a string of curses and doubled over, holding his stomach.

Ha! Didn’t expect that, did you?

She stopped crowing over her mad combat skills and made a run for it. Daisy sprinted to the truck, jammed her key into the ignition. He dashed over and tried to wrench the door open, but she threw the lock in place. The engine turned over and he jumped back as she gunned it out of the parking lot. She screeched down the street and glanced in the rearview mirror to see him on one of the Harleys, in hot pursuit.

She blew through the red light, causing a car to honk at her. Thankfully, traffic was light at four in the morning. He pulled up next her, in the opposite lane and kicked at her driver’s side door. Who the hell was he kidding?

Silverado versus bike. Do the math.

She pushed the pedal to the floorboard and lurched ahead of him. Not to be outdone, he revved the engine, blew by her and then pulled into her lane, causing Daisy to hit the brakes. Then, he switched to slow mo speed and motioned with his hand, to indicate she should pull over.

So we can play hostage again? No thanks.

She swerved into the other lane and took a quick right onto a side street. Evidently, he’d skidded to a halt and backtracked, because she watched him appear once more in the rearview.

“Give it up!” she ground out.

 He came up behind her yet again, pacing the Silverado, grasping the lip of the truck bed. He hooked his arm onto it and brought his bike in closer against her vehicle.

“Oh, come on! You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

He matched her pace and then hopped off his bike, letting it plow into the sidewalk, in a shower of sparks.

Cowboy clung to the truck bed like a monkey, pulling himself up and over the side of it. Then, landed directly behind her with a thud.

Shit.
Somehow she’d ended up playing Sarah Connor in
The Terminator
. Just her luck, of all the dudes she could have twerked for, she found the one nut job in the joint. Murphy’s Law could be a real bitch. She swerved to the left and then right, but he braced himself on the roof, holding on.

“Pull over!” he shouted through the glass behind her head, and then slammed his palm against it, making her jump. She caught a glimpse of him in the mirror. He was livid.

“Go to hell!” she shouted through the window.

With a grin, she came to a sudden halt, jamming on the brakes, and making him stumble. Then she hit the gas, throwing him off the side of the truck.

Oorah!

The biker landed on the blacktop and she watched from the mirror as he slowly got to his feet. NShe flipped him off, and drove off into the Texas sunrise with a triumphant grin.

***

An hour later, Daisy pulled into the Hades Motel & Diner, in a town called Hell, Texas and she’d be damned if the place didn’t actually smell like sulfur! And apparently, Hell took the moniker seriously. Nearly everything had a themed name. She’d passed Seventh Circle Motors, Devilish Diamonds, a bar named Perdition, the Bloody Hell Tea Room, Diablo Doughnuts, and Inferno Firearms, just to name a few!

Since the Raptors ran Canyon City, the neighboring town, she’d decided against staying close to the strip joint. Sooner or later they’d figure out she’d been digging up dirt on them and she didn’t want to be too handy when they did. After all, you don’t bed down in the enemy’s camp.

After she’d ditched Cowboy, she’d turned up the radio in her car and went for a drive to clear her head. She’d been wound up after a night spent dancing and outmaneuvering the sexy biker.

Eventually, driving around burned off the excess energy and she started to get hungry. She decided to get a quick bite and then a few winks. With any luck, she’d get more than a couple of hours of sleep this morning. Wouldn’t that be a nice change?

Hades looked like the perfect place to stay. Quiet and off the beaten, without many customers, it suited her purposes perfectly. It was a one floor red brick building with individual entrances and an attached diner for easy access to food. Behind the hotel, she noted a river, which she’d seen meandering through the town on her drive in. Not the Holiday Inn but not bad either.

Staying at a lower end establishment meant they would take cash, not credit, which made it easier to keep a low profile —no electronic records to worry about in case shit went seriously south. Hades looked to be in her price range, too. She had a really tight budget, at least until she started her new job.

She thought about grabbing a bite at the diner. She’d spotted a vending machine as she pulled in and it would be convenient to get a quick snack from the machine, but the thought of a warm meal made her stomach growl. She vaulted out of the truck and headed for the restaurant.

When she opened the diner door, she felt like she’d stepped into the 1950s. An antique jukebox stood on one end of the room, playing
Jailhouse Rock
by Elvis Presley. It had a black and white checkered floor with steel countertops, red booths, and steel stools with red vinyl tops.

A huge stockpot bubbled on the huge steel stove, visible through a window into the kitchen and it smelled absolutely delicious. Across the room, a pretty redhead and a beautiful older, dark-haired woman had coffee together. She could hear their laughter, but couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.

A man in a pair of black leather pants and a muscle shirt printed with the words
Think on Your Sins
carried a crate of vegetables through two steel doors. He nodded to her as he set it down next to the industrial stove. She placed him a couple inches over six feet tall with mocha skin, and unusual silvery eyes. His dark hair twisted into short dreadlocks and came down just below his ears. He had sharp cheekbones and full lips and when he turned, she could see a cool skeleton tattoo on his back. The images were inked in white, and presumably mirrored the bones beneath his skin.

“Are you hungry,
ma belle
?” he asked in a slightly accented voice. She couldn’t quite place it. A trace of French, combined with a bit of Southern, and maybe a hint of Spanish. Creole, perhaps? If so, he’d traveled a long way from the bayou.

She drifted towards the counter, speaking with him through the window. “Starving!” she confessed. “I’ll have a bowl of whatever that is,” she said, nodding to the pot.

 “No, you won’t.” He grabbed a cutting board from the cupboard and a sharp knife from the drawer, then began to slice an onion from the crate.

Did I just miss something?
“This is a restaurant, right?”

“No, it is a diner, not a restaurant,” he corrected. He set the onion aside and then started to cut up a handful of mushrooms. “And I am a chef, not a short order cook.”

A diner where you can’t order the food you want?
That sounded, well, un-American.
Vending machine meal, it is.
She turned to leave, but his soft laughter stopped her.

 “That be gumbo and it isn’t ready yet. It needs to cook two, maybe three hours.” The way he said
three
sounded like
tree.
“I’m making you an omelet.”

What the hell?
“I didn’t order one.”

He put down the knife, and crossed his muscled arms over his chest. She could see a tattoo of a skeleton in a tuxedo and top hat on his forearm. Below it, a set of cards, aces and eight—the dead man’s hand. “
Oui.
No one orders at my diner. I know you won’t like the gumbo, the same way I am sure you love eggs.”

Okkkkaaay.
She’d never had gumbo before, but she didn’t mind trying new things. Yes, she did like eggs, but it would have been nice to see a menu or make her own choice. But honestly? She didn’t have the energy to argue. She’d been up all night and her stomach growled so she decided to go with it. An omelet sounded pretty damn good.

“Um, well, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,
ma belle
.” He gave her a wink and returned to the vegetables. He ripped up a few leaves of baby spinach and added it to the pile of ingredients. Next, he put a pat of butter in a frying pan and tossed the onion in to sizzle.

“What is your name?” he asked.

“Daisy Weston. And you?”

“You may call me Voodoo.”

She noted the way he spoke. Earlier, he’d asked if she was hungry, but he didn’t offer to take her order. He wanted her to call him Voodoo, but didn’t say it was his name. She got the impression with him, you had to read between the lines and not assume too much.

“Voodoo, huh? Are you from Louisiana?” She sat down on a stool at the counter.

He cracked two eggs and whipped them up until they were frothy and she noted chipped black nail polish on his nails but somehow, it suited him. “Oui,
ma belle
. From the French Quarter. And you?” He spun to grab a spoon from a nearby drawer. She liked watching him move because he had a gracefulness usually reserved for dancers.

 “I’m from Abilene.” The diner had a homey feel, combined with the smell of good food cooking relaxed her.

“So why are you dressed like that at five in the morning?” He eyed her stripper attire with curiosity and a smidge of male admiration. There was a big difference between being ogled and being appreciated as an attractive woman. Frankly, after dealing with pervy biker bosses and horny army dudes, she appreciated the break.

“I just came from work. I waitress and strip at the Pussycat Palace. I’m not a hooker or anything.” Did she actually blurt that out?

She wrapped her arms around her torso. Truthfully, he couldn’t see that much. Her bare legs weren’t visible behind the counter. The corset offered up some cleavage, but nothing too scandalous. Though, for the umpteenth time, she wished she would have changed. She made a mental note to bring a clothing to work whenever she stripped. Maybe a pair of roomy jeans and an oversized shirt, something completely tomboyish.

He raised a brow at her and his flinty eyes danced. “And you would be confessin’ to me if you were a prostitute?” He threw some cheese into the pan, along with the eggs.

She laughed. “I guess not.”

“I believe you all the same.” He shook the pan, getting the eggs to loosen up and then eventually flipped it in the air, deftly dropping it on a plate with a flourish. He breezed through the kitchen doors and handed it to her, along with a knife and fork.

She dug in right away and it tasted damn good, a mix of dinner and breakfast. “This is delicious, thank you,” she mumbled around a bite.

He paused to study her once more. “I can tell by your aura. No, you aren’t a prostitute.” He cocked his head to the side, scratching his chin in a thoughtful manner. “Not a stripper either. No, you like rules and order.”

Anyone who’d been in the military would give off that vibe. Someone told you when to eat, when to sleep, what job to do, and it made life very tidy. She loved that kind of clarity.

“Oh, you read auras?” She didn’t believe in anything even remotely supernatural.

He raised a brow, giving her an unreadable expression. “Perhaps I am merely very observant.”

Another non-answer. Evidently, he enjoyed toying with people. She switched topics, nodding to the skeletal man and the cards on his arm. “Tell me about your tattoos.”

Voodoo strolled to the end of the counter and removed two lethal, but small curved blades from the sheaths at his sides. The martial arts variety, not the kind a chef would use. Then, he pulled a whetstone from a drawer and sharpened the knives with an intensity that gave her pause.

Why would a businessman carry ninja knives with him?

 “Baron Samedi,” he responded to her earlier question. “He is a loa and the cards are the dead man’s hand.”

 “What’s a loa?”

 “A voodoo god, and in Samedi’s cause one who is usually found at the crossroads between life and death.”

“Like the grim reaper?

“A bit.” He smiled and it didn’t quite make it to his eyes. “I can relate.”

An involuntary shiver raced down her spine.

She didn’t want to know what
that
meant. Despite the homespun atmosphere in the diner, Voodoo shouldn’t be underestimated and she wouldn’t forget it.

“Are you staying at the hotel tonight?” he asked, placing his knives back in their sheaths.

“Yes, is it possible to do an early check in?”

 It had been a long day and despite the disturbing vibe, she didn’t feel like driving all over Texas to find another motel far enough from the Raptors but within her price range. All things being equal, she had some serious firepower and if Voodoo tried anything, he’d find out the hard way why you shouldn’t bring a knife to a gun fight.

He gestured to the lobby doors on the left. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Tell the hotel clerk I said checking in early was fine. Enjoy your eggs,
ma belle
.”

“But what about the bill?” she asked, gesturing to her plate.

He shook his head. “No charge for hotel guests. We don’t have much in the way of amenities, so the food is included.”

 “Well, thank you.”

He inclined his head. “You are welcome.” With that, he disappeared between the steel doors once more.

After she finished her meal, she found a playboy bunny working at the front desk. At least she could be one with her long bleached blond hair, big blue eyes, and huge breasts squeezed into a snug neon pink top. The pink miniskirt she wore barely covered her behind. Not the sort of girl you expected to be working as a hotel clerk, but why not? Today was strange. She hadn’t anticipated an impromptu car chase either.

“Welcome to the Hades Motel,” she called cheerfully.

 “Thanks. I’d like room for one.”

“Sure thing,” the clerk said with the brightest of toothpaste smiles and gave Daisy the total.