Chances Are

  Chapter Two

  Every night…

  The problem with that, of course, was that it wasn't my name. My name was actually Aaron Dumont.

  I picked up the name Chance as a kid when my grandma kept telling me "Chances are you'll come to no good, just like your pa." She had said it so often, it just kind of stuck. I've been Chance ever since. When she passed away and left me the remains of her estate, I sold everything but a few special items then invested it all in a nest egg for a rainy day.

  I figured that's what she'd intended it for anyway. She'd said as soon as I joined the police force back in the eighties. "Chances are you'll come to no good there. It's a dangerous job and you're an accident waiting to happen."

  She was right too. That nest egg came in handy after the not-so-accidental shooting that ended my career. After my injuries healed and the physical therapy was done, I loafed around doing nothing for a bit, sinking into depression and dying slowly inside of sheer boredom. Then I found the bar, and Chances Are was born. I don't know if the name was a tribute to the woman who loved and understood me or a fuck you to the one who ruled my childhood with an iron fist. Since they're the same ruthless, gently bred Southern lady, I don't spend a lot of time dwelling on the motivation behind the name.

  Every night found me here, polishing glasses, pouring drinks, and soaking up the world. I got to talk shop with local law enforcement without being responsible for the paperwork. The neighborhood itself was eclectic and I got plenty of customers in on any given night who were prone to chat and flirt and sometimes, like the rookie, even a little more.

  He was still there, watching me when he thought I wasn't looking, taking the ribbing his buddies were dishing out with a flush and a faint smile. I was impressed. Rory Gaines had backbone. I liked that. It kind of made me want to test his limits, crush his spirit, just to see if he'd let me, but I knew that was the bitterness of lost love, and I'd never actually do it. I don't think.

  As I polished the shot glasses, I was giving serious thought to actually going back to my office and digging that business card he'd given me out of the trash can. When the front door burst open and smashed into the wall with a sound so akin to gunfire that several of the off duty cops in the room dropped to one knee and reached for weapons they weren't supposed to be carrying in my establishment, I forgot about everything else. I pretended not to see the service revolvers, just like they pretended not to see when the clock crept past the mandatory two-thirty am closing time.

  Yeah. My state senator father wasn't my only connection. Not even my most useful one.

  Gerry, my bartender, stumbled back through the doorway looking like shit. You have to know Gerry to understand that while his normal mode of presentation was disheveled frat boy, it was usually by design. This wasn't design. His eyes were wide and his face sported several bruises. A trickle of blood seeped from his hairline in a gruesome trail along his nose. His clothes were covered in fall debris: dead leaves, muck from the gutter. He appeared to have rolled around in the parking lot with a dozen rough jocks. Only he wasn't smiling, and the last time that happened, he'd smiled for a week.

  "Chance!" He headed in my direction and I met him halfway, helped him onto a stool while the customers went back to their business.

  "Fuck." One of the cops, Darrin Kelly, a plain clothes detective, threw back his whiskey and approached us. "I've got this, Chance. I’m on duty tonight."

  I zipped my lip and parked my ass next to Gerry. I had a bad feeling about this, and the fact that an on-duty cop was drinking in my bar for nearly two hours wasn't my business. Gerry and my bank deposit were my business. Darrin would quite likely face disciplinary action if word got back to his superiors, but I couldn't be responsible for him. He was adult who made his own choices, and like me, he'd have to live with the choices he'd made.

  Another longtime customer, one of the neighborhood guys, Frankie stepped behind the bar and helped himself to a refill then tossed a fiver on the bar by the register. Reminded me I had three hours and forty-five minutes of a business left to run. I thought briefly about closing early, but dismissed the idea. It wasn't a big deal. There hadn't been more than a few thousand in that deposit bag, and there wouldn't be much more before the end of the night.

  I made a snap decision. "Hey, Frankie, cover the bar for me for a bit and your drinks are on the house." He nodded, and leaned on the counter sipping his drink. The clients were all chatting, although some were still casting us strange or questioning looks, but the longer it appeared nothing was going on, the less attention they paid to me, Gerry, or Darrin.

  Except the rookie. His gaze was plastered to my back. I practically felt the emotions pouring off him when I laid a hand on Gerry to tilt his head into the light so I could peer into his eyes. When foot falls approached and a bulky warm presence stood a little too close behind me, I knew it was him. I hadn't decided what to do with him yet, so I ignored him.

  Gerry looked a little beat up, but I didn't see any signs of serious injury. Relief made me a little rougher than I maybe should have been, but fuck. You spend years teaching yourself not to care about people so you don't get hurt, and some fucking barely legal bartender manages to sneak under your radar in the disguise of being a cute employee? "What the fuck happened, Gerry?"

  Darrin kicked me. I glared at him. "What?"

  He rolled his eyes at the rookie behind me—Rory Gaines. Fuck that. He was staying the rookie until I knew where he belonged in my life. "He's the victim. There's laws about how you can treat people. Maybe they didn't have those back when you were on the force. But Jesus, couldn't you just ask if he's okay first?"

  "You've stayed too long."

  I looked Gerry over again to see if maybe Darrin had picked up on something I missed. He was grubby looking, a bit of blood from the head injury, but his eyes were clear, skin tone decent. "He's going to be fine."

  "Who did this to you, son?" Darrin's big beefy paw landed on Gerry's shoulder in what I assumed was supposed to be a gesture of comfort, but Gerry just flinched and his eyes darted around the room as though he were looking for someone.

  "There were three guys." He spoke into the corner. I glanced over to see what he was looking at. Nothing but an empty booth.

  Suspicion tingled at the back of my mind. My bullshit detector going off for some reason. "They jump you?"

  "Yeah. One of them grabbed the money bag and ran. The other two tackled me to the ground. Knocked me out. Sorry, boss." He tried to look me in the eye, but his gaze skittered away again. What the fuck?

  "Gerry?" Darrin made a few notes on a sheet of paper in a little pocket size notebook.

  I smirked at him. "Can't remember shit, old man?"

  He gave me the finger before turning back to Gerry. "Now, son. Did anyone say anything to you during this assault? Any slurs, name calling?"

  Rory—the rookie, damn it—stepped in closer behind me. There's something about just the hint of a hate crime that makes you want to cling closer to people you know share your feelings. Some sort of combination of safety in numbers and birds of a feather flocking together made me lean back against him, just for a second. Then I caught some shifty little squint in Gerry's eyes.

  The rookie stiffened, and I was impressed that Rory had apparently seen the same thing I had. Then he fucked up my newfound admiration for his investigative ability with his announcement.

  "He's lying."

  Gerry started sputtering and clutching his head, Darrin scoffed and I stepped backward, making sure to let the heel of my boot land right on the rookie's toes. He hastily backed away, but didn't utter a sound. I refused to admire that. Stoicism was great, but it didn't outweigh idiocy. "You've stayed too long." I glared at him. Let him see how displeased I was by his behavior.

  A chastened puppy look crossed his handsome face, followed quickly by an indrawn breath and a determined expression. "I'm sorry. But I know he's lying and you know he's lying." A thumb jerked derisively in Darrin's direction. "He
may be too fucked up to notice that your bartender is lying, but I know the signs. He can't meet our eyes, his lip is twitching and he's nervous as hell. He's lying."

  I held Rory's gaze calmly, raised a brow and waited. He eventually stopped speaking, his cheeks flushed an attractive pink, and his gaze skittered away just like Gerry's had moments before. Fuck. What to do about Rory was quite obvious. He needed something from me, and it wasn't just sex. It was something I'd actually nearly been able to forget that I needed as well. "Go wait in my office. You aren't a part of this. is on duty. He'll take care of it. You aren't needed here."

  The protest nearly made it out, but he pressed his lips tight together, so hard that a thin white line formed around them, and stared at me. He was fuming…steam practically emanated from his body. But he stopped interfering, gave me a green-eyed glare full of import, and spun on his heel.

  I watched him walk away, so I saw him look back over his shoulder when he opened the door of the office. I let him see that I was watching, let a smile twist the corner of my mouth. He nodded again, and visibly relaxed.

  "You shouldn't be so hard on him, Chance." Darrin drew my attention from the door to my office and the man who waited for me behind it. "He's new on the job and just showing off the psychology the department taught him."

  "He needs to learn patience and a whole lot more before he becomes a good cop." But was I the one who was supposed to teach him? Or, as my friends said, was I just clutching at any straw that would keep my ties to the department alive? If that psycho babble was true, then this was a new low, even for me. I shrugged it off. Chances are the rookie won't hang around for long, anyway.

  I turned my attention from the office and Rory back to the bar stool and Gerry. Of course I knew he was lying. But about what? "Gerry? As Rory so helpfully pointed out, you're not being entirely truthful in your story here."

  Gerry's wandering gaze settled on Darrin, as though he expected support from that direction. An apologetic smile crossed Darrin's face. He gestured with his pen, made a jabbing motion at Gerry's face. "Your eyes keep wandering—you especially can't seem to meet Chance's gaze. Now that's not a hundred percent indicator that you're lying, and it doesn't tell us at all what you're lying about, but it is enough to make us want to ask you more questions."

  "I…there weren't three of them." He ducked his head and breathed heavily for a few seconds. Frankie shoved a glass of water, a wet rag, and a cup of ice at me over the bar. I passed the water to Gerry, and stared at the ice and the rag.

  "For his face." Frankie noted my perplexity.

  "Oh, we can't clean him up yet." Darrin tapped his phone. "Got to wait for the guys to get here. Take some crime scene photos, collect the debris off his clothes for evidence, a sample of that blood to make sure it's his. Forensics will have a fit if I mess with anything."

  Incredulity dragged my gaze from Gerry back to Darrin. "What happened to victim's rights?"

  He shrugged. "It's a fine line, Chance. Evidence is important if we ever catch these six guys who jumped Gerry here and verbally assaulted him with homophobic slurs. There could be all kinds of evidence on his clothes and his person."

  He was talking to me, but I noticed he was keeping a close eye on Gerry at the same time. My brain clicked out of friend-in-trouble mode and fell right back into the ten-year-old investigative patterns. What was Darrin seeing that I wasn't? I eyed Gerry closely, this time crushing any urge to sympathy. I know—you didn't notice them before, I’m subtle like that.

  Gerry jerked upright, his gaze intent on Darrin's face. "I never said that! No one made any homophobic slurs! They just took the money and ran."

  "All six of them?"

  "There were three. One of them grabbed the deposit bag and ran, the other two tackled me to the ground."

  "Okay, okay." Darrin made a show of correcting something in his book. "Three guys attacked you in the parking lot of a bar where gay men are known to hang out, but none of them assaulted you verbally, and none of them touched you inappropriately."

  "That's right." Gerry nodded enthusiastically and continued. "They wore ski masks and black jackets. I didn't see their faces."

  He turned to me and peered up through his sloppy, blood-soaked bangs. "I'm sorry about the money, boss, but I figured it wasn't much and you wouldn't want me to chase them down."

  I waved it off. Yeah it wasn't much. Losing a few thousand from a Wednesday night wasn't going to even make a dent in my pocket. "Don't worry about that, Gerry."