Rock Chick 01 (50 page)

“Dudette!” The
Kevster was aghast at Ally’s insult.

“You better
clue in before someone helps you check out,” Ally told him. “People
are getting shot at, stun-gunned, kidnapped and cars are exploding.
Wake, the fuck, up.”

Well, there it
was. Couldn’t get any more honest than that.

Rosie and The
Kevster stared at Ally, whether what she said penetrated was
anyone’s guess.

While all this
was going on, Willie was making a call and after Ally’s
announcement, he flipped his phone shut.

“Got someone
checking,” Willie said, “odds are Wilcox bonded these two
idiots.”

“Why would he
do that?” Rosie asked.

“I don’t know,
maybe because it’s easier to blow your brains out when you aren’t
under twenty-four hour police surveillance,” Ally replied.

Okay, so,
maybe you
could
get more
honest.

The door opened
and Dawn and Lee came out. Dawn scooted behind the desk looking
chastened.

Hee hee.

Someone
got in
trouble
.

Lee did a room
scan, his eyes fell on me, then he did a body scan. After he
ascertained I was all in one piece with no holes, blood leaking or
body parts blown off, he looked at Willie.

“What
happened?” he asked.

Willie ran it
down for Lee.

Lee’s face got
hard.

“Get Mace,” Lee
told Dawn and, without delay, she picked up the phone. “They
weren’t after Indy?” Lee asked Willie.

“Didn’t even
look at her,” Willie replied.

“Except when
she threw her ice cream cone at them,” Ally put in.

Lee looked at
me and I could tell he didn’t know whether to laugh or yell.

Instead, he
muttered, “Christ.”

I was pleased
he found a happy medium.

“I’ll take it
from here,” Lee told Willie.

Willie looked
relieved. I knew he cared about me but he had ice cream smears on
his backseat upholstery and he spent three hours in the mall, not
even with his girlfriend racking up brownie points. He’d gone way
beyond the call of duty.

“Thanks
Willie,” I said to him.

“Stay safe,” he
replied, then he took off.

Lee was looking
at Dawn and issuing orders.

“Take the boys
to the safe room and start a DVD. Get Hank on the phone and when
Mace makes contact, I want to know immediately.” His eyes cut to
Ally and me. “You two come with me.”

I wasn’t real
fond of being bossed around by Lee but I felt it best not to kick
up a fuss in front of Dawn.

Ally and I
walked behind Lee to the door to the Inner Sanctuary. I wish I
could say I was the kind of woman who didn’t do what I did, but I
wasn’t. I twiddled my fingers at Dawn in a “nanny, nanny, foo, foo,
Lee’s all mine” multi-finger wave. She totally got my meaning and
her eyes became scary hard.

I was
considering sticking my tongue out at her when I ran smack into Lee
who’d stopped to open the door.

He looked down
at me and I knew he caught the whole thing and was in my brain,
again.

He shook his
head and let us in.

Okay, so maybe
I could be jealous-possessive too.

Lee led us to
his office.

Sitting in one
of the chairs, opposite Lee’s desk, tapping away at his BlackBerry
was a handsome man with dark hair, blue eyes and he was wearing a
seriously cool dark suit.

He looked up
when we entered.

“Marcus, this
is India Savage and Ally Nightingale,” Lee said then turned to me.
“This is Marcus Sloan.”

So this was
Marcus.

He stood and
shook our hands. I knew by the way he greeted us that he knew who
we both were before the introductions.

He wasn’t
creepy, like Wilcox. He didn’t look Ally or me over. He was all
business, by the look of his expensive suit, big business, maybe a
little dirty business, but he was professional and, you could tell,
totally sane. He was still kind of scary, I didn’t know why I
thought that, he just was.

Lee ran down
what happened outside Liks for Marcus. It was embarrassing,
sounding like schoolyard antics being discussed by the teachers.
Lee and Marcus were not the type of men who messed around with ice
cream cones.

Marcus listened
to Lee without reaction.

“You’re being
patient,” Marcus commented when Lee was done.

“My patience
just ran out,” Lee replied.

A chill ran
down my spine the way Lee said that. Something was happening here,
something not about Rosie and The Kevster and ice cream cones.

“They didn’t
even look at me,” I cut in, I probably shouldn’t have but what
happened this afternoon was not about me, it was about Rosie.

Marcus ignored
me.

“Your next
move?” he asked Lee.

“Do a sweep.
Come tonight, Coxy’s out of commission.”

Holy crap.

That didn’t
sound good.

Marcus nodded
then his eyes came to Ally and me.

“Nice to meet
you,” he said politely and, without another word, he left.

I turned to
Lee. “What just happened?”

Lee sat on the
edge of his desk, leaned forward and grabbed my hand, pulling me to
his side. I leaned a hip against the desk and looked at him. Ally
moved in closer.

“Rosie and
Kevin are going to a safe house. Hank set it up for them. I’m
sendin’ Mace out to pick up Coxy’s boys, all of them. I want Coxy
vulnerable before the show.”

“What show?” I
asked.

Lee didn’t
answer.

Uh-oh.

“Lee –”

“I’m done
fuckin’ around. Tonight, it ends.”

“What about the
mob?” I asked.

“The mob?” Ally
cut in.

“Don’t worry
about it,” Lee said.

I put my hands
on my hips.

“I’m hardly not
gonna worry about the possibility of you getting in trouble with
the mob.”

“In trouble
with the mob?” Ally cut in again.

“I said, don’t
worry about it,” Lee ignored Ally and responded to me.

“
Do I
have to cuff
you
to the bed?”
I asked.

Lee grinned,
as, of course, he would.

This did not
make me happy.

“Cuffed to the
bed?” Ally persevered.

I ignored Ally
this time.

“Seriously,
Lee. Maybe we should just go to the cabin in Grand Lake for a
little while, let this blow over.”

I was thinking
maybe a year or two would do it.

“It’s over.
Tonight. If there are consequences, I’ll deal,” Lee replied. I
opened my mouth to say something but Lee beat me to it. “We aren’t
discussing this.”

My eyes
narrowed and my hands went from my hips so I could cross them on my
chest in my, We’ll Just See about That, Mister Pose.

“Hello! I
haven’t ceased to exist. I’m still in the room. Is anyone gonna
talk to me?” Ally was sounding a bit pissed off.

Before either
Lee or I could answer, there was a quick knock on the door, then it
opened and a man was there, hand still on the knob, he barely
entered the room.

He was not just
any man, with one look at him, I knew he was one of Lee’s men.

Tall, taller
even than Lee, black hair, fantastic body, jade eyes, he looked
like he had a hint of Asian in him. He was beautiful, beyond
beautiful, artists and sculptors would likely beat each other to
death for the opportunity to use him as a model.

Not that this
guy would ever model.

It took all my
effort but I tamped down the instinct to flirt and I just smiled at
him (without the tilty-head-flirty bit, Lee was in a bad enough
mood as it was).

The man’s eyes
swept over me, over Ally, face blank, then they settled on Lee.

When he’d
looked at me I’d caught something in his eyes, something not happy,
something that tugged at my reflexive flirt instinct just to get a
rise out of him, a smile, a grin, some reaction.

He was the
Ultimate Girl Flirt Challenge.

“Oh my,” Ally
breathed.

Obviously, Ally
felt the same.

“Mace, this is
Indy and my sister Ally,” Lee introduced us.

At this point,
I was regretting my thought that any guy named Mace was a macho
idiot. If anyone could pull off a name like Mace, this guy
could.

Mace’s eyes did
another slice through Ally and me, then they went back to Lee.

“Get Coxy’s
boys. Bring them to the holding room. All of them. I don’t care how
you do it and I don’t care who you have to pull from their cases to
help you do it. Just do it,” Lee said.

Finally, Mace
grinned.

Oh Lord.

Maybe I was
wrong about that macho idiot thing.

Without a word,
Mace backed out and closed the door behind him.

Lee looked at
me.

“You’re hanging
with the boys until I can take you home.”

“Can I hang
with the boys?” Ally asked.

Lee nodded.

Ally’s face got
happy.

“What boys are
we talking about?” I asked. Lee had one guy in the hospital and the
rest were probably going to be out rounding up bad guys.

“You have your
choice, surveillance room with Monty or computer room with
Brody.”

Hmm.

Tough
choice.

Not.

“Surveillance
room,” Ally spoke my thoughts immediately.

I thought it
was prudent to inform her about Monty, just in case she got any
ideas. “Monty’s married and has five kids.”

She looked at
me.

“Surveillance
room,” she repeated.

I nodded.

Surveillance
room definitely sounded better than computer room with Brody.

“We’ll take
surveillance room,” I told Lee.

* * * * *

I felt a hand
lightly touch my shoulder and I woke with a start to see Vance
standing over me.

I blinked at
him and stared.

I was in the
surveillance room and had fallen asleep in my chair.

Ally and
I had made the wrong decision, the
way
wrong decision.

The
surveillance room might seem cool, but spend more than fifteen
minutes in it and it was boring as hell. I wasn’t into that kind of
thing, but after thirty minutes of staring at pretty much nothing
happening on the monitors, I was praying for some poke-the-nanny
action just for a little excitement.

“Let’s go,”
Vance said.

I looked
around, I had no idea what time it was but I figured it was late,
Monty was gone and Ally and I were alone in the room. Ally was
staring at Vance. Even in all my years of knowing her, I noticed
she was staring at Vance with a new look, one I’d never seen
before. It was an oh-my-God-that-guy-is-hot mixed with an
oh-my-God-what-the-fuck-is-going-on look.

My eyes turned
to Vance and he was not in a flirting, grinning, hot guy mood. He
was in a serious, badass, hot guy mood.

“Where’s Lee?”
I asked.

“Out,” Vance
replied and that was all I was going to get and the way he said it
made me decide not to go for more.

I stood and as
I did, Vance got tense, his body turned so he was facing the closed
door as well as standing in front of me and his hand went to a gun
holstered at his belt.

We heard a
violent thud on the wall outside the door and a muted exclamation
of pain.

My mouth
dropped open and I stared at the door.

Ally came up
beside me and she stared at the door.

Vance listened
(also staring at the door).

After awhile,
there was silence, Vance relaxed and nodded to us.

He left the
room.

We
followed.

The place was
darkened, but not dark, the light on Dawn’s desk was burning and
the overhead lights were on but muted. The office seemed, somehow,
sinister. There was not a good vibe in the air.

We ran into
Brody in the parking garage.

“Hey!” he
yelled, trotting up to us, all excited and happy and definitely not
feeling the sinister vibe. “Guess what? Monty called and he’s
letting me do the surveillance room.” Brody lifted a plastic bag
filled with cheese puffs and energy drinks. “All night. I’m, like,
one of the guys!”

“Righteous,
Brody,” Ally said quietly, definitely attuned to the sinister
vibe.

“You guys want
to do the shift with me? It’ll be cool. We’ll order pizza.”

“No,” Vance
said and Brody’s eyes swung to him.

“No?” Brody
asked.

“No. No pizza
and no visitors. The office is no longer safe,” Vance replied.

Brody got
pale.

Ally took in
breath.

I forgot to
breathe.

What on earth
did that mean?

Vance kept
speaking. “You lock down the surveillance room once you enter it,
watch the screens, field the calls and that’s it. You don’t open
the door unless you get the code.”

Brody was
beginning to look a little panicked but he hung in there. “Oh shit,
another code, what’s this one again?”

“Same as
always,” Vance said.

Brody looked
blank.

Vance looked
unhappy. “Three two two.”

“Got it. Yeah.
Right. Okay.” Brody didn’t say good-bye and walked away, whispering
to himself.

I allowed
myself a moment to hope Brody was going to be all right before we
all climbed into a black Ford Explorer.

Vance took Ally
home first, asking her address. She got out, quiet and looking
worried and she promised to call me.

Vance waited
until the door closed behind her and her inside lights went on,
then he took me home and didn’t ask my address. He walked me to the
door, took my key from my hand, opened it and made me stand just
inside the closed door while he checked the house. He came back
downstairs, went out to the Explorer, came back carrying a small
duffle and walked immediately to my dining room table.