Hotshot (9 page)

He swiped sweat from his neck. “What about your yard shark?”

“Buster has a doggy door and self-feeder. He should be fine until I can get the spare key in the morning.”

“Not that I want you to change your mind, but why are you giving in so easily?”

“I might be tempted to sleep with Eli. Not a problem with you.”

Ouch.
“You’re great for a guy’s ego.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. You’re so obviously a crumbling mass of insecurity, Hotshot. So, are we roomies or not?”

“Like you even have to ask.” He passed her a helmet, glad the loaner had come with two. He straddled the motorcycle and fired it to life. “Mount up.”

She swung one long leg over the back of his bike, settling in behind him. The heat of her thighs clamped around him, but she kept her hands off, gripping the seat instead. Out of assurance of her balance from riding with others or determination not to touch him any more than necessary?

Either way, just the press of her legs against him was enough for him to know that this was a crappy idea.

East Side Mercenaries, FEAR 4-Ever.

Webber shook his head, ponytail brushing his back. Whichever moron had sprayed that by the mall’s service entrance had totally screwed them all over. This would be the last time they could hang out at night in empty store units. More of those new task force dudes would be crawling all over the place by tomorrow, taking notes, getting help from Shay Bassett in trying to “analyze” their heads.

As if that would change anything.

He juggled his box of carryout Chinese food as he slid through a slim part in the service entrance door propped open with a broken brick, and tried not to think about how scared Shay had sounded when he’d called in the threat. He’d gotten through the thing undetected, and that’s what really mattered.

Thank God their guy had sent someone to spring them out of jail after a couple of hours. Some dudes thought getting jacked up made them tougher in the gang. He worried more about becoming some big mother’s bitch by sunup.

At least he had a safe place to stay tonight. Webber padded quietly down the winding halls until he found the right door number and twisted the knob. He held his breath.

Sweet. Open and no alarm.

He put a swagger in his step—a man had to always be represented—and went into the room where Amber already waited, sitting cross-legged on a tarp, her belly heavy and low. He averted his eyes from the reminder that she banged some other guy.

She reached into her fast-food bag. “It would have been nice if you would have whistled a warning.”

“Sorry.” He screwed up everything else in his life. Why should now be different?

Amber bit into her hamburger, grease and lettuce spitting out the other side of the bun onto the wrapper. The lazy rent-a-cop here usually slept through his shift and rarely checked out these empty store cubicles. The security system was a piece of cake to disarm.

And on the rare occasion they got caught? They hot-footed it away from a groggy security guard armed with just a stick and a radio.

“What happened to Caden and Rickie?” she whispered, not quite able to keep the worry out of her eyes as she asked about Apocalypse members.

They hadn’t always been on opposite sides.

“Pulling an overnight in a holding cell. Pride for Apocalypse and all that.”

Cracking open his container of sweet and sour chicken, he leaned back against scaffolding sprawled along one wall and started shoveling in fried rice. At the first bite, his stomach cramped. He’d been too nervous back at the center to eat more than a slice of pizza and couldn’t remember when he’d eaten last.

“Hey, Amber? You feeling okay?” He worked hard to keep his voice neutral, his eyes down on his food in case Amber suddenly figured out how he felt about her. Fat frickin’ chance, but still.

“I’m good. Miss Bassett made sure I got out of the way.”

“Good, you gotta look out for the baby.”

She glanced down at her stomach, her layered T-shirts pulling tight across her tummy. He didn’t know much about pregnant women, so he wasn’t really sure when the kid was supposed to be born. Amber didn’t like to talk about it, and neither did he, actually. But wow, she looked about ready to pop.

He searched for something else to say, a joke, anything. He didn’t get to be alone with her that often. Maybe if he’d figured out a way earlier, she wouldn’t be having somebody else’s baby.

“Hey,” she said, pointing to his arm. “You added another jewel.”

Webber glanced down at the warrior sword tattooed on his arm. He got gemstones inked on the handle sometimes. This time he’d added a golden stone. Amber-colored.

Would she figure it out? If she did, would she think it was hokey?

“I did that last week.” He tore the wrapper off his fortune cookie and passed it to her, palm up. “Here.”

She looked at it, and her eyes said loud and clear how much she wanted it. “No, it’s yours.”

“I already ate tons of junk at the center,” he lied. “This could be your lucky cookie. Come on. Play along.”

She
should
be playing like a kid instead of having one. They should all be kids, but life just sucked for some people. For them.

Amber took the cookie, her fingers soft and cool against his skin that felt too hot and tight for his body these days.

“Thanks.” She cracked it open and read, her lips moving silently along. Then she smiled.

“What does it say?”

She waggled it in the air between them. “How bad do you want to know?”

“Hey, it’s my cookie.”

Laughing, she clasped it to her chest. “What will you do to find out?”

Anything.

“Dude,” a voice broke through the room, jolting them both. A person needed to stay on alert.

“Dude,” his Mercenary brother repeated, calling through the door before Brody walked inside, too loud and out of control for his own good, “Lewis is here.”

Amber shoved the cookie in her mouth and tucked the fortune in her pocket.

Lewis ducked into the room, sweeping aside a tarp hanging from the scaffold. “How’s it hanging?”

Amber bit her lip and rolled her eyes where Lewis couldn’t see. The guy was always trying to talk cool around them.

“Good, it’s all good, old man.”

Lewis walked deeper into the room. “Everyone is old in comparison to you, kiddo.” He wore jeans and a ball cap with a team logo, as if clothes would make him one of them. The only way he was like them? He answered to a bigger boss in his chain the same way they did in their gang. They were all just errand boys.

“You guys did well tonight.” Lewis was smiling, but something dark and pissed off lurked in his eyes when he watched Brody. “The boss will be pleased with how the bomb threat freaked everyone out.”

Brody pounded fists with Webber, FEAR tattoo glaring across the knuckles. “It was balla, dude, hanging out behind the Dumpster and watching everybody run out of there, scared as shit just because of your stupid call.”

Lewis propped a foot and elbow on the ladder, a Band-Aid peeking free on his arm. A lot of old bangers hid their tats later. Could Lewis be “cooler” than they thought?

“Webber, you did well phoning in the threat and not showing you knew the truth while you walked around after. We really need to shut up this Bassett woman. Do-gooders like her get people all riled up. Then you’ve got more cops crawling all over your every move. Slows down business.” Lewis paused, the pissed-off part of him sweeping out everything else. “I hear somebody took her purse.”

He wanted to correct the guy and tell him it was a chick backpack, you fucking fathead. The guy promised a ton but demanded even more. Too much, sometimes.

The guy also sniffed out lies, and Webber had enough to hold on to. Better to ’fess up, because something in Lewis’s eyes hinted he already knew the answer. “That was me.”

Amber pivoted toward Webber. “Why would you do that?”

He shrugged, shoving away his sweet and sour chicken. He did it for the same reason he did everything else, just to make it through the day as best he could and figure out how to fix the mess tomorrow.

Lewis stepped closer, as if he needed any help scaring the hell out of them. “Have you used any of the credit cards yet?”

“Nah, I figured she would cancel those anyway. I just used the cash.” And kept the gun. “I left her keys,” he lied, but Lewis would have no way of checking that, since those keys were in the bottom of Lake Erie, nowhere near the bag. “I know the keys are important.”

“But you used the cash.” Lewis stared pointedly at the Chinese food.

“That’s why I took her backpack. I’m short on food, and Mom is two months behind on rent.”

“Give me the woman’s bag.”

“I threw it in the lake, along with her credit cards.” And her keys. He’d wanted to give the pretty backpack to Amber. He’d seen her look at it often enough. “Nobody’ll ever find it.”

“You better hope so. We need to be careful.”

Why was her speech in front of a bunch of tight-ass politicians so important? There were other people who could talk about the local gangs in her place, people who specialized in following them around with notepads trying to figure out what move they would make next.

They didn’t have a frickin’ clue. Not like Miss Bassett.

And there was his answer.

The woman really did stand a chance at changing things around here with her words and her actions, something Lewis couldn’t afford to let happen. There was too much power at stake, growing every day here.

He snuck a quick look at Amber. He might not be able to save himself, but he would do his best to keep her and the kid safe. “That big guy, though, the air force dude—he needs to go home now. He’s too smart. He makes me nervous.”

Lewis crouched beside him. “Why do you say that?”

“He doesn’t look at us like she does, like she can save us. He looks at us like he knows us.”

Keeping people alive around here was tough enough without the mind games. He just hoped Lewis bought his story about wanting the bag for money. Showing a weakness was killer. He knew better. But something about that woman’s voice over the phone got to him. For the first time, he felt like somebody really cared.

Stupid lady.

Losing Shay’s backpack and everything in it was important. It wasn’t the answer, but it would buy time. Because he hadn’t lied about a bomb being planted by one of Lewis’s butt kissers. Except it wasn’t in the center.

It was in Shay Bassett’s car.

NINE

Shay scrubbed a towel through her wet hair, her face muzzy in the steamed mirror.

One thing was completely clear. Her body hummed with awareness from a simple motorcycle ride along the Lake Erie shore with Vince. What was wrong with her and this disconnect she seemed to have between what her mind knew and what her body wanted?

Well, she had about five minutes to get herself together before Vince returned from whatever errand he’d run, after he’d locked her in the hotel room. He’d even set up a code knock for when he returned, which seemed a little paranoid to her, but the past few days had been beyond bizarre.

Before tonight, she certainly couldn’t have foreseen a scenario that would land her in his hotel. All jokes about Eli aside, she had friends. She wasn’t a total workaholic. Much. But her friends were all married with families. A call to them meant waking up babies or interrupting couple time for Angeline and her hubby.

So here she was. She tugged one of Vince’s T-shirts over her head and shrugged into a hotel robe. In fact, nobody knew where she was.

Maybe she should call her dad, just to let him know she was all right. Shay reached for her cell phone—thank goodness she’d kept it in her pocket rather than her backpack—and typed in his number.

Four rings later, his voice mail picked up.

“Don Bassett,” his level tones echoed through the earpiece. “Leave a message after the tone.”

“Uh, Dad, it’s me, Shay. You may have seen the news tonight about a bomb scare and gang fight at the center. I’m fine. Mom already called to check in. She was pretty freaked out, as you would expect.” But it felt good knowing her mom cared, even if Jayne had been a sobbing mess. “So I’ve had a chance to speak with her.” Unlike Don, a man who hated rambling messages. “And uh, I guess that’s it. Bye . . .”

A knock sounded at the door. Her chest tightened. Two more quick taps, pause, one more.

It was Vince.

She shook her head to loosen her short, damp curls—damn her vain lapse—and rushed over. She slid the chain, the safety bar, and the dead bolt before tugging the door open.

Vince filled the entrance. “You should have asked who it was to be sure.”

“I just love being reprimanded like a six-year-old.” Damn. That sounded snippy. “Thanks for the T-shirt to go under the robe.”

He slid past, two bags dangling from his hands. “The laundry service will have your jeans ready before morning. But I also picked up some things for you from Wal-Mart.”

“Thank goodness for twenty-four/seven hours. Your shirts are a little, uh, roomy on me to wear out in public.” Tomorrow she would get her super to unlock her apartment so she could get to her clothes and the spare set of keys to her car. Tomorrow, in the daylight, with lots of foot traffic around for safety. “I hate feeling paranoid.”

“It’s not paranoia if somebody’s really gunning for you. We live in a world of big-ass scary threats.” He walked past and tossed his helmet into a chair.

He swept a hand over his head to clear away the do-rag and tossed it on top. Her fingers itched to test the feel of his shaved head.

She pivoted away on naked feet. “Duh, why else do you think I invited myself to stay in your hotel room? I’m pretty tough, but this week has pushed even me to my limit. I care about my safety, and this is about the last place anyone would look for me.” The hotel room suddenly felt very empty. Very intimate. She rushed to add, “Besides, it’s not like you’re going to make a move on me.”

“Are you so sure about that?” His voice came from right over her shoulder.

She started. How did such a big man move that softly?

He reached for her. His fingers stopped just shy of her face. Another inch, and he would be touching her. Would he go so far as to cup the back of her head and urge her toward him? She swayed, her bare toes curling into the carpet. A flash of Amber’s sad neediness stabbed through her mind, steadying her.

Shay ducked his touch. “You’ve always had a twisted sense of humor.”

“Hold still.” His knuckles grazed her cheek, his hands smelling of oil, musk, and man. “You really do need to ice that bruise.”

She flinched away. From pain? Or the lure of his touch? Curiosity was a dangerous thing. “I’ll live.”

His face closed up. “We hope you’ll live.” He turned away and walked toward the mini fridge. “You stay in that job, even though they try to kill each other, try to kill you, steal from you.”

He knelt to pull out the small ice bucket, his jeans outlining his firm butt.

She shoved her hands deep into the robe’s pockets. “You stay in the air force even though they send you to countries where they keep shooting at you, trying to kill you.” She’d fought hard for these kids. She wouldn’t surrender now, not even in a discussion. “Nights like this only make me more determined. The clinic and the work here must be making progress for someone to want to destroy it that much.”

Vince poured ice into a plastic cup and walked back to her. “What if these kids don’t want to be saved? What if the work destroys
you
?”

He pressed the cool glass against her arm.

“I won’t let it.” She glanced down to find a long scratch stretching from either side of his makeshift ice pack. “That’s nothing. Must have come from Amber’s fingernails when I pulled her out of the fight.”

“Or someone had a knife drawn, after all.”

Bile burned the back of her throat. “I must have been too distracted to feel it happen.”

She refused to accept the alternative, that she’d somehow become numb to pain again. That she would have to push harder, deeper until she felt something. Her knees folded under her, and thank goodness the bed was so close, or she would have landed on the floor rather than on the edge of the mattress.

Vince steadied her at the waist. “Deep breaths. Adrenaline letdown, I would guess.”

She dropped her head between her knees, her wrist throbbing with that phantom sting from a long-ago slash. Something she definitely didn’t want to explain to Vince. At least her dad had enough respect for a person’s privacy to keep that bit of horror in the family. “I resent feeling like a wimp.”

He rested the cup of ice against the back of her neck, and God, that felt good.

Vince rolled the cup lightly against her neck. “My buddy Berg is a hardened combat vet, cool as can be during battle, and yet more than once I’ve seen him hurl the second he steps out of a plane. You’re right about these street gangs being at war.”

Her head drooped forward as she sank into the comfort of his care . . . Wait, what was she doing?

Shay straightened, putting a couple of extra inches between them. “Most of the time I try to think of the kids as regular teens so I don’t go running for the hills.”

“A little more caution wouldn’t hurt.” He gestured to the long scratch, not touching this time, simply brushing the air over her with the cup in his fist. “At least you weren’t seriously cut.”

“True enough.” She knew just how deep to slice before inflicting serious damage. She had faded scars on the inside of her thighs to prove it.

His eyes held her intently, firmly, until her chest went tight again as if squeezed by a strong embrace. What was going on here that she couldn’t even freaking breathe around this man? Was she just caught in a time warp of unresolved feelings from their teen years? Or simply feeling sorry for herself because her father didn’t care enough to call and her mother had been so hysterical Shay had ended up comforting her?

Or did she want Vince now in a very adult way?

Regardless, she may have made a big mistake in coming with him. “Should I call the front desk and ask for another room?”

He blinked. Just a simple blink, but enough to release all the oxygen that had somehow been held hostage from her. He looked away, rattling the ice in the glass for a second before setting it on the bedside table and standing. “I’ll find a plastic bag for your ice pack.”

She struggled not to gasp for air. Simple breaths.
In. Out.

He dumped his purchases out of the Wal-Mart bag: sandals, sunglasses, a hat, and a frilly shirt. “You’re easier to watch over here. No arguing about another room or the sleeping arrangements.” He picked up the ice bucket, poured the rest into the bag, and tied a double knot at the top. “I’m on the sofa bed since it’s closer to the door.”

She decided to ignore the dictatorial tone rather than risk more sparks. “You won’t hear me arguing over taking a comfy bed.”

“Good.” He passed her the ice bag and a hand towel.

“Thank you.” She lifted the bag in salute, but she really meant so much more. Like thanks for not pushing her to admit how much she wanted to be there.

He clicked off the lights, plunging her in total darkness, alone in a hotel room with Vince Deluca. She burrowed under the downy comforter. The sofa bed creaked under his weight, covers rustling for what seemed like forever.

Totally surreal.

And totally agitating.

Which left her totally awake.

Where was that ice pack? Oh, in her hand. She pressed it to her overheated face.

“Why did you shave your head?” she blurted.

The sofa bed squeaked from what sounded like Vince turning away from her. “Go to sleep, Shay.”

“I seriously want to know.” Knowing suddenly seemed so important she couldn’t possibly sleep until he solved the mystery for her.

He sighed, mattress groaning again as he rolled onto his back. “I started going bald at twenty-two. I trimmed it short for a while, but that meant I had to go for haircuts all the time. It was easier just to shave it.”

“I didn’t recognize you at first.” He’d scared her then. He scared her now in a completely different way.

“It’s been seventeen years.”

“For some reason it doesn’t feel that long.”

“Working with the teens brings back lots of memories.” Some of those memories were actually good.

“So you mentioned earlier. Those kids do make everything feel more immediate.”

Silence settled again, her eyes growing accustomed to the dark until his bulk took shape across the room. “Thank you again for your help.”

“I would have done it for anyone in the same position.”

Her BS-ometer started niggling again. “I appreciate you’re interested in what I do, and I’m thankful for the help you’ve given, even if you make me crabby while you’re doing it. But I still don’t get it.”

“Get what?”

“Why you’re here, hanging out with me during your vacation. And please be honest.” She rolled to her side, plumping the pillow. “I spend so much time with these kids I’ve developed an internal lie detector. I call it my BS-OMETER.”

He hesitated.

A horrible possibility blindsided her. “Are you dying?”

“What?” He sat up, his big body a blur in the dark.

She held herself completely still, not sure how she would deal with the worst kind of answer. “Do you have some kind of terminal disease, and you’re on a pilgrimage to make peace with your past? I thought maybe the bald head could be a result of chemotherapy.”

“Shay, you always did have a wild imagination.”

To go with her wild side? “Am I right or wrong?”

“I absolutely promise I do not have a terminal disease, and my head is shaved completely by choice.”

She exhaled. Hard. “Then I’m not sure what you hope to accomplish with these catch-up sessions.”

A thought scampered through her brain, every bit as outrageous as her assumption that Vince had lost his hair from chemotherapy. What if he’d come to Cleveland because of her? What if he had as many unresolved feelings from the past as she did?

Her stomach tumbled. Too much.

He reclined back on his two stacked pillows, his arm under his head. “Everything will make sense soon. I promise.”

Another no answer, and one that sure didn’t lead her to believe he had feelings for her. Especially since she’d given him a gold star opening if he’d wanted to confess some kind of lingering affection.

She eased up—abandoning the ice pack before her face went numb—and hugged her knees. “What aren’t you telling me?”

Tension hummed from him almost as loudly as the air conditioner on full blast. “You were right about tonight being a bumpy trip down memory lane.”

Her BS-ometer didn’t miss his abrupt subject change. He was definitely hiding something from her. If her stomach fluttered much more, she would levitate off the bed. “I look at each one of them as an opportunity to rewrite history.”

“Have you had any luck with that yet?”

“I see some glimmers of hope here and there, but the jury’s still out. I have to admit Amber’s pregnancy struck me hard, but I still have hopes of getting her settled into a dental hygienist training program with on-site babysitting. It’ll take time to see how much of what we’ve done at the center has stuck. One thing’s for certain. We need more help.”

“More people like Officer Friendly?”

“I assume you mean Jaworski.”

“None other.”

“He’s, uh . . .”

“Arrogant?”

“Brusque.” She smiled, her first of the night. A short-lived levity. “Since I’ve been sitting on the other side of this situation, I’ve seen how easy it is to grow a hard shell. It’s a tough balance between caring and caring too much. The people that care too much end up self-destructing or slapping up walls so thick, nothing can get through.”

“Like Officer Friendly.”

“Exactly.” Her arms tightened around her knees. If she could keep herself from flying apart, maybe . . . “Five Mercenaries caught him outside his apartment. Their brass knuckle beat down left him covered in FEAR bruises.”

“Damn,” he whistled low and long. “That explains a lot about the guy. Back in the day we may have resented cops, but we never took it to that level.”

“We pushed it close, though, that night Tommy died.”

After a Civil Air Patrol meeting, Vince and Tommy had been fighting, the cops caught them, and Tommy pulled a gun. Bullets started flying. Bodies falling. Dreams dying.

A friend dying.

“I really am grateful you saved my life that night.” But if she hadn’t played them against each other, would that fight have even started? “Even if you did it for my father, I should have thanked you back then, rather than scream at you to go away.”