Rock Chick 08 Revolution (46 page)

“I don’t know her name. The tall knockout brunette.”

Jeez. Did he think I looked like Stana Katic, otherwise known as the
most beautiful woman on American television today?

“You think I look like Kate Beckett?” I asked.

“Who’s Kate Beckett?” he asked back.

“Stana Katic. She plays Detective Kate Beckett, Castle’s partner on the
show. Or, more accurately, Castle’s her partner,” I informed him.

“Then no. If she’s the gorgeous, bossy, badass homicide detective I
just watched for the last five minutes, I don’t think you look like her. I
think she’s the spittin’ image of you.”

Wow.

Cool!

“Seriously?” I asked.

“Babe,” he muttered, his eyes wandering back to the TV where Beckett
was paused having a conversation with Castle, “fuck me, definitely seriously.”

This.

Was.

Awesome.

I didn’t share I felt that, nor did I tell him that wasn’t the reason I
watched
Castle
(though it was part of
it; Kate Beckett was the freaking
bomb
).

I just said the truth. “I never noticed.”

He looked back at me. “How could you not notice?”

I probably didn’t notice because I was paying more attention to Nathan
Fillion.

Since this was the reason, the answer I gave Ren was a shrug.

Ren’s arm around me curled me closer, his head turned back to the TV
and he hit play.

I turned my eyes to the TV and studied Kate Beckett.

She did kinda look like me.

Totally cool.

I relaxed into Ren and tangled my legs with his.

It was then it hit me we’d never done this, something totally normal
like relaxing in front of a TV.

It also hit me it felt nice.

And last, it hit me that after a busy day that didn’t end great, this,
just this, was exactly what I needed. A belly full of Ren’s cooking. A wine
glass that, unless I wanted it to be, never was empty. A couch. A TV. A good
show.

But most of all.

Ren.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Impossible

The next morning, post-coffee rush at Fortnum’s, the bell over the door
rang.

I had a lot to do, and unfortunately part of that was keeping liquid
until my insurance check came in. My credit card balance was getting high and
my bank account balance was never high. Thus I needed my take from the tip jar.

I twisted from doing dishes at the sink, looked and saw Mr. Kumar and
his mother-in-law, Mrs. Salim, enter the store.

They were regulars. They were also (kind of) part of our posse.

Mr. Kumar owned a corner store on Tex’s block and he’d been dragged into two
Rock Chick Rides, Indy’s and Ava’s. He was a good guy who, against the odds,
kept his little store open. I helped by shopping there occasionally, even
though it was out of my way.

I didn’t know much about Mrs. Salim except that every time I saw her, I
feared she’d keel over and quit breathing, she looked that old. And this wasn’t
being mean. Seriously, she looked
that
old.
Just saying, the woman’s wrinkles had wrinkles.

I also knew she liked to read.

As usual, Mrs. Salim shuffled to the books.

Mr. Kumar came to the coffee counter and, weirdly, had his eyes on me.

He stopped and looked at Tex.
“Did you speak with her?”

I turned from the sink, grabbing a towel to wipe my hands.

“Talk with me about what?” I asked.

“No,” Tex
answered Mr. Kumar “I talked to Hank.”

“But the police aren’t doing anything!” Mr. Kumar suddenly cried, and
the skin on the back of my neck prickled.

I moved to the espresso counter, jamming in close to Tex. “Talk to me about what?’

“Hank says they’re lookin’ into it,” Tex told me.

“Looking into what?” I asked.

“And I’m keepin’ an eye out,” Tex
went on, still not answering me.

“Keeping an eye on
what?
” I
snapped.

“The rash of burglaries on our street,” Mr. Kumar finally answered me.

“You’ve had a rash of burglaries?” Indy asked, coming up to the
counter, hands full of empties.

“Yes,” Mr. Kumar answered.

“I’m keepin’ an eye out,” Tex
stated.

Giving big eyes to Tex,
Mr. Kumar then turned to me. “Tex
looks out for the neighborhood, but he’s not finding anything. I talked with
some of my customers and we got a… what’s it called?”

I didn’t know what he was talking about so I couldn’t tell him what it
was called.

Luckily, he found the word and stated, “
Kitty.
To pay you.” He dug in his pants pocket, pulled out a card
and turned it to me. “We’re hiring a Rock Chick.”

I looked at the card, a card I’d asked Brody to make for me way back in
the day when Indy and I were searching for Rosie.

Mr. Kumar had kept his.

Righteous.

What was not righteous was, as much as I wanted the business, I had to make
coffee, continue my stripper education and robberies happened at night, the
same time as stripping did. And last, there was only one of me. Brody was
strung out finding out about the books and he never worked in the field, unless
that work required him to be in a surveillance van. Darius worked for Lee and
was on the stripper case with me.

I couldn’t take the case.

And that sucked.

“I’m sorry Mr. Kumar,” I said. “I have another case I have to work at
night and I can’t be two places at once.”

His face fell. “But we’ve had nine cars on our streets broken into,” he
told me. “Stereos stolen. Glove boxes rifled through. Windows smashed. All this
in less than two weeks. People are worried.”

Crap.

“I’m keepin’ my eye on it,” Tex
repeated, sounding more than his usual grumpy.

“Tweakers,” I muttered, and Mr. Kumar looked at me.

“I’m sorry?”

“Tweakers,” I repeated. “People who need to steal car stereos and fence
them to buy drugs.”

Mr. Kumar nodded.

“No one would hit one neighborhood repeatedly in that time unless they
were stupid or desperate, and tweakers are both,” I told him.

Mr. Kumar nodded again.

It was then it occurred to me that no one would hit Tex’s street because he
did
keep an eye out. He did this by sitting on his porch randomly,
but often, with a shotgun across his lap and night vision goggles on his head.
The presence of a sleeping cat also in his lap was not unheard of.

This was a weird thing to do, but this was also Tex we were talking
about. And except for when Rock Chick business leaked into their ‘hood (because
Ava lived with Luke now, but she still owned the pad she used to live in there;
not to mention Indy’s business brought us there, repeatedly), crime was nil.
Probably because Tex
lived there and sat outside in night vision goggles with a shotgun.

Shotguns were definitely deterrents. Wild men wearing night vision
goggles having shotguns were much stronger deterrents.

This meant the culprits likely knew this, kept an eye on Tex and when he went off
duty, they did the deeds.

In other words, locals.

I looked up at Tex.
“You got a house in the ‘hood that’s home to a bunch of meth heads?”

“Only about every other one,” he replied.

Fuck.

Door to door action.

Hector.

Hector said if I had a case he could work with me, he was there.

It would have to be pre- or post-stripping (likely post, which would
make it a long night), but we could hit the houses, gain entry cops couldn’t by
being badasses (or Hector could be one; I’d pretend to be one), hope they
didn’t immediately fence the property they stole and therefore call it into
Eddie or Hank so they could get a search warrant and roll in.

“I’ll take the case,” I said to Mr. Kumar.

He grinned.

“I said, I got an eye out!” Tex boomed, and I looked up at him.

“You’re getting married tomorrow,” I reminded him.

“Yeah, and it’s no big deal. A piece of paper. Nance already lives with
me and we’re not takin’ a honeymoon for a coupla weeks ‘cause she’s got some
cruise she wants to take and they were all booked up for the week we wanted so
we had to wait. So I can
keep
an eye out
.”

He said a lot of words, but I was stuck on one thing.

Tex
was going on a cruise?

Tex
was going to be confined on a cruise ship
with hundreds of other passengers?

Tex
was going to be lumbering around the decks
in his jeans and flannels with his wild-ass beard and hair, frightening
unsuspecting vacationers… on a
cruise?

I burst out laughing.

“What’s funny?” Tex
asked.

“You,” I choked out, “On a cruise.” I looked to Indy and saw her
shoulders shaking.

“What’s funny about that?” Tex
demanded to know.

“You,” I choked out again. “
On a
cruise.
”

“I know,” Jet said from behind me, having returned from one of her
seven hundred daily pregnancy-related bathroom breaks. “I laughed for fifteen
minutes when Mom told me.”

“Tex
on a cruise!” I cried.

“Shut it, woman,” Tex
ordered.

I kept laughing.

“It’s not that funny,” Tex
boomed.

It totally was.

I looked to Jet. “You make your mom promise to take pictures.
Lots of them.
”

Tex
growled.

I looked back at him and kept laughing.

His eyes narrowed and he declared, “You’re on this case, I’m workin’
with you.”

I swallowed laughter, wiped a tear of hilarity from my eye and caught
his.

“Fine. You make a list of houses we need to hit. I’ll call Hector, who
said he’d work a case with me. I’ll get a night when we can hit them before you
go on your,” I swallowed again then forced out, “
Cruise.
Then we go out and hit them. We find stolen property, we
call it into the cops. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Tex
grunted.

“Can I get a coffee?” A man standing behind Mr. Kumar asked.

“Are you blind?” Tex
asked back.

“Sorry?” the man queried.

Tex
threw out a beefy mitt. “Don’t you see we’re
havin’ a meetin’?”

The man looked around. He also looked confused.

He looked back at Tex.
“I thought you made coffee.”

“We do. We also fight crime. Don’t you read the papers?” Tex asked, and
I heard Jet giggle.

I was right with her.

“Um… yes, but I didn’t know you did it when you were making coffee,”
the man replied.

“Crime don’t happen
when
you want it to,
” Tex
returned. “You gotta be prepared. You gotta plan. And that’s why we’re havin’ a
meetin’.
Now shut it and wait until
we’re done.”

The man gave big eyes to Jet and I. He also appeared indecisive, like
he didn’t know whether to wait as Tex ordered,
or take his life in his hands that Tex might
not like it and flee.

Obviously not a regular.

“We’ll be right with you,” Indy assured him as she moved to walk around
the counter.

“We’re done meeting anyway,” I announced then looked between Tex and Mr. Kumar. “The plan’s in place. I’ll give you
both a heads up when we put it in action.”

“Thank you, Ally,” Mr. Kumar said. “The neighbors will be very happy to
hear this news.”

“You’re welcome, Mr. Kumar,” I replied.

“What’ll it be?” Tex boomed to the customer.

But he wasn’t looking at Tex. He was watching, with some alarm, as the
apparent walking corpse of Mrs. Salim shuffled to Mr. Kumar carrying a pile of
seven books in her arms.

All hardbacks.

I fought the urge to leap over the espresso counter to relieve her of
her burden just as Mr. Kumar took the books from her and led her to the book
counter.

My eyes went there to see Jane standing behind it, and I began to look
away when I looked right back.

One of the pink
Rock Chick
books was sitting on the counter and she had her fingers to it; not leafing,
lightly brushing. As Mr. Kumar and Mrs. Salim approached, she jolted, like she
didn’t expect customers (ever) then gave them a small smile.

This wasn’t unusual, Jane being startled. She lived in her own world
most of the time. And anyway, selling a book didn’t happen frequently so seven
of them would surprise anybody.

But I wasn’t thinking about that.

I was thinking about how she was touching that pink book.

Jane loved books. She was an avid reader. And as a book lover who worked
in a bookstore her whole life, she treated them with reverence.

That wasn’t what I saw.

Her touch on that pink book was reverent, for sure.

It was also loving.

Hmm.

Before I could move that thought to fruition, Indy interrupted it.

“I got broody Lee last night,” she whispered to me as she dumped her
empties by the sink.

I tore my mind from Jane and looked at Indy. “What?”

“Broody Lee,” Indy answered. “Schedule goes, I get broody Lee at least
once a week. A tough case is happening, maybe three or four times. Rock Chick
stuff is going down, he veers from broody to annoyed to resigned. Last night, I
started with broody Lee because of the meeting and super broody Lee because I
told him he needed to quit giving you shit and start giving you support.”

Oh crap.

“Indy, I love it that you did that, but you don’t have to do it,” I
told her. “In fact, please don’t do it again. I don’t want to be the cause of
trouble between you and my brother. Let this be between Lee and Hank and me.”

“I also told Eddie he needed to sort Lee out,” Jet put in. “And Hank.
He said he’d have a chat with them.”

I stared.

“Really?” Indy asked.

Jet nodded. “Yeah. He says he’s seen the tape and he’s also seen
veteran officers go into a situation like that and not be able to keep their
cool when things go south the way Ally did.”

Whoa.

Wow.

Righteous!

“Seriously?” I asked.

“You were the shit,” Tex boomed, flicking the latch on the coffee
grinder to fill the portafilter and doing it so hard the entire grinder shook.
“It was fuckin’ frustratin’. Whole thing took, like, two seconds, and I only
got one punch in on the motherfucker. Then he was down.
Splat!
”

Indy looked at Tex, then at the customer, then at Tex. “Can you
please
watch your mouth in front of
customers?” she asked him.

“No,” he answered her, then packed the coffee grounds down before
shoving the filter up into the machine so the thing lifted off the counter an
inch.

“Okay, then can you
please
not abuse my seven thousand dollar espresso machine?” Indy asked.

“No,” Tex answered then went on. “Been doin’ this years, woman.” He
flipped a switch and patted the top of the machine (hard). “This bitch is built
to last.”

Indy glared at him then rearranged her face and looked at the customer.
“I apologize for my barista.”

“Once you get your coffee,” a blonde who’d just approached the counter,
a regular I knew by the name of Annie, stated knowingly, “it’ll totally be
worth it. Trust me. He abuses me all the time, and I don’t care as long as I
get my coffee.”

“I don’t even know you,” Tex boomed at her.

“I come in every day at eight fifteen,” she shot back, and she was not
wrong. She did.

“I’m supposed to remember that?” Tex asked.

“Yes,” Annie returned. “Because, for years,
I’ve come in every day at eight fifteen.
”

“I’m sorry, Annie,” Indy said.

“Just as long as the crazy guy never loses his touch with the coffee,
again, I don’t care,” she replied then ordered. “Half and half mocha latte with
a half a shot of almond syrup.”

“I remember
that
,” Tex
muttered.

“Farewell Rock Chicks and Tex,” Mr. Kumar called from the door,

We all looked there and returned his wave (except Tex, who looked but
didn’t wave). We also all braced when Mrs. Salim lifted a bony hand and waved,
undoubtedly every one of us prepared to grab the broom should one (or more) of
her digits break off because the blood stopped circulating there fifty years
ago.

They moved out.

We all relaxed.

“That woman creeps me out,” Annie remarked, looking back after looking
over her shoulder. “I don’t mean to be mean, but all the zombie movies lately…”
she shivered. “Flashback.”

“She’s a good mother and a good grandmother who keeps her culture alive
for her family when they’ve moved far away from home in order to make a decent
living,” Tex stated and Annie’s eyes shot to him. “So yeah, she looks like the walking
dead. She’s alive enough for her family.”

“I meant no offense,” Annie muttered.

“Then don’t say people that I know creep you out,” Tex shot back.

“Tex, you’re always saying shit about people,” I pointed out the truth,
and he scowled at me. “And, incidentally,
to
people,” I went on with more of the truth.

“He’s nervous about getting married tomorrow,” Jet guessed.

“Oh my God! You’re getting married?” Annie cried. “How exciting!”

“Fuck,” Tex groused.

“Can I have my coffee?” the other customer asked.

I moved in to finish the guy’s coffee as Tex said to Annie, “You want
your coffee, shut your trap.”

Annie grinned at him.

I handed the male customer his coffee.

He moved away, taking a sip, and stopped dead.

No one reacted to this. This was because a lot of newbies did this.

But what a lot of newbies didn’t do was what he did next.

He turned back and looked at Tex.

“I’m gonna say, you scare me. But I’m also gonna say, this lady’s
right.” He tipped his head to Annie and lifted his white paper cup with its cardboard
holder. “This coffee is unbelievable. And last I’m gonna say, good luck
tomorrow and congratulations. I’ve been married for fifteen years and every day
I wake up next to my wife and feel lucky. I wish for you that you feel the
same.”

Everyone stared at him except Tex.

He boomed, “What’s your name?”

“Barry.”

“When you come back, I’ll remember you.”

Then Tex turned his attention to making Annie’s coffee.

I pressed my lips together and looked at Indy, Jet and Annie who were
all pressing their lips together and doing the same thing.

This was because Tex just paid Barry the highest compliment he could
give a customer.

And we all knew why.

Because Tex already felt that lucky.

It was just that tomorrow, he was making it official.

* * * * *

“Enjoy the rest of your evening.”

It was post-Fortnum’s, post-stripper class and pre-going out with Vance
that night (an appointment that started very late, and one that Ren knew about
but luckily had no comment).

I was in a sexy, clingy, back and cleavage-baring, halter-neck LBD and
stilettos. Ren was in a suit. And we were on our first official date.

We not only had plenty of time to enjoy it, we had time to get home and
have sex before I had to go out and meet Vance.

And it had been perfect.

The whole night.

Perfection.

We were on the sun terrace at Plato’s, an upscale steak and seafood
joint on the second floor of a building on Sixteenth Street Mall. We had a
table tucked in the corner of the terrace by the railing and behind a big plant
that I was certain by the greeting the hostess gave Ren that included her using
a “Mr. Zano” in a familiar way, Ren had arranged for us.

It was private and romantic, but still, the lights and hustle and
bustle of Sixteenth Street mall made the air seem alive and our view was
amazing.

And it was awesome to sit there in the warm May air with Ren looking
hot, and knowing the way his eyes were hot on me, he thought I looked the same.

We were finished and the waitress had just slid the leather thingie
with his credit card on the table, which meant we were close to the highly
anticipated sex portion of the evening.

We’d eaten steak and lobster, shared a slice of rich dark chocolate
cheesecake, and drank champagne. The whole time we sat kitty corner to each
other.

Close.

This allowed Ren to touch my thigh, my hip, and me to wind my calf
around his. It also meant we could lean into each other, Ren holding my hand
high, our elbows on the table, my knuckles close to his lips, me having his full
attention.

We were living together, committed to each other and our future, and
this was our first official date.

That was weird.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t the best date I ever had.

Bar none.

Then again, maybe it was because we were living together and committed
to each other that made it that way.

Mostly, though, I figured it was because Ren was hot, sweet and so
totally into me.

And I was in love.

Ren let my hand go to deal with the bill, but the minute he was
finished tucking his wallet into his suit jacket that was slung on the back of
his chair, he grabbed my hand again and, both our elbows to the table, he
leaned in and put it to his lips.

His eyes came to mine.

“Ready to go home?”

I was.
So
ready.

I was also looking forward to doing the ride along with Vance. Still, I
was hoping it wouldn’t last long so I could come home, wake up Ren, and
continue the sex portion of the date.

I didn’t say this, though.

Instead I noted, “You didn’t get to Twenty Questions for Ally.”

Ren grinned. He rubbed my knuckles against his full lower lip, his eyes
warmed and my happy place convulsed.

“I decided against twenty questions, baby. Findin’ I’m likin’ the
surprises you give me.”

And I liked that.

I leaned closer. “Tonight was a great night, Ren. The best.” My voice
dipped quiet. “Thank you, baby.”

His eyes got even warmer when he replied, “You’re welcome, honey.”

That was when I got even closer and whispered, “And last night was
exactly what I needed. Thank you for that, too.”

“Anytime, Ally,” he whispered back.

“Ally?”

This came from behind us and we both turned our heads, Ren not letting
go of my hand, and I saw Zach Gilligan standing there.

Shit.