Rock Chick 06 Reckoning (3 page)

“Hang tight, Juno,” I whispered after I buckled in and I reached across myself with the hand that wasn’t bloody and stroked Juno’s head.

Juno woofed a calm woof.

Good to know my dog was cool in a crisis. Though it would have been better if I’d never needed that knowledge.

Mace was on the phone. “Ike,” he said. “Yeah. Cal Matt and Bobby. Sid’s made a move. We need confirmation on Ava and the girls. Ava reported to Luke they were under fire and he lost contact. Louie’s with them. They were outside that gay club on Broadway.” Pause. “Yeah, out.” He flipped his phone shut as Luke took another turn without slowing and we al leaned with it.

“Um, Mace –” I began yet again.

“There.” Mace ignored me and pointed at a cherry-condition, red, circa 1980-something Camaro il uminated by the streetlights and headed our way.

Luke hit the brakes, executed a swift, tight, three-point turn in the middle of the road (scaring the effing beejeezus out of me, by the way) and raced up behind the Camaro.

Once there, he flashed his lights.

Leaning to my side and looking between the seats, I saw the driver’s hand wave, the Camaro slowed and Luke shot round it. I looked behind us and the Camaro fol owed as I heard the bleeping sound of the phone being dialed on the dash. I turned back around to front, one ring and connect.

“I’m okay,” a woman’s voice said.

“Nick?” Mace asked.

“He’s okay too.”

“Have you contacted Vance?” Mace went on.

“Yeah, he’s heading back from Albuquerque now,” the woman said and I knew this was Jules, a more recent friend of mine. I’d met her a few months ago when she’d come with some of my friends to a gig. She was married to one of the Nightingale Men, Vance Crowe. In fact, they were just back from their honeymoon.

For your information, it was just my bad luck that after one of the Nightingale Men broke up with me, one of my closest friends hooked up with
the
Nightingale Man, Lee Nightingale. Her name was India “Indy” Savage. I’d known her for years. Now she and her best friend Al y (a Nightingale herself, Lee’s sister), both close friends of mine, were mixed up with the Nightingale posse. This meant for almost a year I hadn’t had a lot to do with my friends. They knew about me and Mace because they guessed but they also didn’t know because I didn’t share details, not during our five month relationship and not after it ended. It was too precious to share, not even with Al y, whose brother was my now-ex-boyfriend’s employer, and it had never gotten to the point where it wasn’t. When it was over I just got busy. But then again they were al busy too.

As the months passed Indy and Al y added Rock Chicks to the club and al of them were claimed by Nightingale Men along the way.

As I said, it was bad luck, what I didn’t say was it was super shitty bad luck.

Also for your information, I was the Queen of Super Shitty Bad Luck and getting shot was only the most recent example of that fact.

“Fol ow us,” Luke told Jules.

“Gotcha,” Jules replied.

Disconnect.

The dash phone started ringing immediately and Luke pressed a button.

Without a greeting, Jack informed the cab, “Ava’s fine.” I expel ed a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Luke’s fear disappeared.

“Louie returned fire, got the girls and boys in Daisy’s limo. Everyone’s safe, no one was hit. They’re headed to The Castle. Lee says that’s the rendez vous.”

“Copy that. The others?” Luke asked.

“Soon to be in transit but not good. Both Eddie and Hank got cal outs. Both houses were hit by drive-bys after they were gone. AK-47s again. Roxie and Jet were sleeping.

They’re okay. Lee’s just been in to get a vehicle. He’s picking them up and heading toward The Castle.” To keep you up to date, Eddie was Lee’s best friend, Jet was his fiancée. Hank was Lee’s brother, Roxie was living with him.

See how this al came around and went around? Sucks for me because I lost Mace, though the girls were happy as clams, getting married, having babies (Jules was pregnant), living the good life of being a Hot Guy’s Woman.

The life I tasted and loved but lost and would never have again.

“Fuckin’ Sid,” Luke clipped, breaking into my thoughts.

“Fuckin’ Sid,” Jack agreed.

“Ike’s mobilizing Matt and Bobby,” Mace put in. “He was looking for Ava. Now he needs an alternate assignment.”

“Copy that. I’l cal him,” Jack responded.

“Out,” Luke said and hit a button.

Silence.

“War,” Mace declared.

“Fuck yeah,” Luke replied.

I didn’t know what they meant but I didn’t like the sound of it.

Effing hel .

Stella

When they referred to “The Castle”, they meant an actual castle. I didn’t know Denver
had
a castle but there it was, right in front of us.

We’d driven to the ritzy part of Englewood, down a winding lane in a heavily wooded area and, al lit up with a shitload of lights that would make even your average environmentalist shudder, was a stone castle, complete with turrets and a moat.

During the drive I decided that it was evident that I was not going to die of my wound.

I also decided I did not want Mace to know I was injured.

If he knew I was injured, it might mean I’d have to spend more time in his presence. The last time I’d spent more than a few minutes in his presence was when he’d come to a gig with the Rock Chicks. I ended up singing Hank Wil iams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” directly to him. I had no control over it. It just happened. Even the band was taken aback. I did not want a repeat of that moment of weakness.

Unh-unh.

No effing way.

I had a plan. I’d slip into a bathroom, clean up, maybe confiscate a washcloth then I’d cal Floyd to come get me.

This was a total y stupid plan but I wasn’t thinking clearly.

Floyd was my pianist, older than anyone else in the band by a decade and a half. Floyd was married to Emily, had a steady day job, two kids in col ege and could play and sing Bil y Joel’s “And So It Goes” so beautiful y that if you didn’t at least tear up, you had to be made of stone.

His lead on our rendition of “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant” didn’t suck either.

Floyd and Emily would take care of me, I knew it.

Especial y considering there was a bleeding bul et wound involved.

They were the only ones in my whole life who took care of me or at least the only ones who did it for any length of time. I didn’t cal on them often because I didn’t want that to end like it had with Mace that night when he stood, shoulder leaned up against my doorway, and told me I needed him too much.

That wasn’t going to happen to me again, not if I could help it.

Two men wearing dark suits, white shirts and slim ties and carrying big guns materialized and approached the Explorer as we swung into the drive. I sucked in breath, thinking this was not exactly a welcome party but they spied Luke and Mace and disappeared in the shadows again.

I had no time to dwel on castles with moats and men with guns because Luke’s lights flashed on a limousine that was parked in front of the house. We could see the bul et holes along the side. At the sight, the cab went electric and this electricity was emanating from Luke.

“He should have gone down like a man,” Mace said softly.

“Now he’l pay,” Luke replied.

“Now he’l pay,” Mace agreed.

“Who?” I asked.

Mace turned around to look at me as Luke parked and I got the gut kick feeling that he forgot I was there.

“You okay?” he asked belatedly but not, I noticed, answering my question.

No, I’ve been shot which could be the definition of “not
okay”,
my brain replied sarcastical y.

“Hunky dory,” my mouth said.

Luke had turned off the truck and was now twisted to look at me too. He heard my reply and I saw his half-grin. I grinned back.

“Out,” Mace snapped, sounding for some reason impatient and jerked open his door.

I opened my door too. Juno trundled over me and hopped down. I gritted my teeth against the pain and hopped down behind her. It took a lot but I walked normal y and, to hide it, kept my bloody hand pressed against my bel y like a pregnant woman.

Luke had forged ahead probably keen to get to Ava.

Mace walked at my right side, opposite the wounded left side. He walked beside me but he put distance between us.

When we’d been together he didn’t like distance anytime, anywhere. Mace was not a man who shied away from public displays of affection. He walked with his thumb hooked in the side belt loop of my jeans so I was plastered against him. In restaurant booths he sat next to me not opposite me. He lounged in front of the TV with my head or feet in his lap or me pressed against his side. In bed, he was a spooner, the front of his long, hard body curved and pressed into the length of the back of mine. When we kissed, standing up, sitting down, lying in bed, he sought maximum physical contact. He didn’t seek it, he demanded it. It was another one of the seven hundred and twenty-five thousand things about Mace that I missed the most.

Juno loped beside us, alternately trotting and sniffing the ground.

After we crossed the little stone bridge over the moat and Mace caught the door Luke was holding open for us, I said, “I’l cal Floyd to come get me.”

Luke was again moving ahead. Mace fel back in step beside me. I was staring in awe at my surroundings. A long, stone-wal ed hal , a bright red carpet runner punctuated by shiny brass rods holding it down, crossed swords, wrought iron torches with electrical lights in and ful suits of armor decorating it down either side. It was unbelievable. It was indescribable. It was like I stepped into a different world.

“You need to wait until we debrief. Then I’l tel you what you can do,” Mace replied.

I lost my awe, I forgot about the pain in my hip and my head turned to Mace. I was pretty certain I was pissed off again.

“What did you just say?” I asked.

“You heard me,” he answered but didn’t look at me.

Either in an attempt not to argue or because he was raring to debrief, whatever the hel that meant, he forged ahead too, his long legs taking him wel ahead of me. I scrambled to catch up.

He, and then I, entered a big room with a beamed cathedral ceiling, a massive fireplace and loads of studded leather furniture. There were banners dangling from the stone wal s with multiple rows of olde worlde lions and fleur-de-lis depicted on them. I lost my anger at Mace because I regained my awe.

I stared. It was the kind of room where you stared. You couldn’t do anything else.

“Holy shit! Stel a! What are you doing here?” That was Indy.

I looked at her and saw the room already held a number of people. Luke and Mace, of course. Also Indy, her neighbors Tod and Stevie (a gay couple I knew from meeting them at Indy’s many parties which I attended back in the days pre-Mace), Ava, Daisy (a new-ish addition to the club, I’d met her too, she looked just like Dol y Parton, but a younger version and yes, she even had the enormous hooters) and Al y. They were al standing and they al turned to me.

“What’s on your leg?” Al y asked, her eyes on my leg.

Effing hel , how could I forget about my hip?

“Is that… blood?” Tod’s eyes were huge and his hand went to his chest.

“She’s been shot!” Daisy screeched.

My eyes flew to Mace. He was standing several feet in front of me, his back to me and, at Daisy’s words, his head whipped around.

“It’s nothing,” I told them, backing away.

Mace had turned and he was bearing down, gaining ground and I kept edging backward. I ran into something and turned to see a man wearing glasses, tal , dark hair, some gray and his hands settled on my shoulders, ending my retreat. I looked into his blue eyes, they were kind but I also got the impression that he wasn’t going to let me go anywhere.

“I’m okay,” I told this man I didn’t know.

Different hands came to the top of my hip. My gaze swung down and I saw strong, long-fingered hands I knew real y wel . I looked up from the hands and Mace was in my space.

“Mace, let me go. I’m fine,” I said as he bent slightly to the side, tilting my hip gently toward his gaze and he looked at the wound. I looked too. There was a lot more blood than I expected. It was everywhere.

When I looked back up, everyone had gathered around.

“I’m total y fine,” I repeated.

Mace straightened and his eyes came to mine.

“Hunky dory?” he asked, his voice low and sounding a bit cheesed off.

“Hunky dory.” I nodded.

Then without warning, I was lifted up, found myself cradled in Mace’s arms and he started striding back into the big room.

“What the –?” I began to yel .

“Privacy,” Mace clipped at Daisy, interrupting me.

“Through here. I’l get a first aid kit,” Daisy replied, racing along beside us.

“First aid! Girlie, she needs a doctor.” Tod was racing alongside us too.

“She doesn’t need a doctor, she needs a hospital.” Stevie was on Tod’s heels.

“I don’t fucking believe this shit. Someone shot Stel a,” Al y snapped, trailing along as wel .

Juno woofed, trotting with the pack, obviously agreeing with Al y.

“We need to boil water. We need clean towels,” Ava announced, fol owing too.