Rock Chick Reckoning

I decided it was time I gave in before I left the Demon Skirmish any more bloodied and beaten.

  Therefore I muttered, “Okay, whatever. I’ll mark your CDs.”

  I threw the Journey CD in, put my hands to the box but Mace was there too. He pulled the box out of my hands, twisted to the side and dropped it on the floor.

  I started to straighten on the word “Hey!” when he lifted in a squat, gripped me at the waist and yanked me to him. I grabbed onto his shoulders and hiked up my heels so the fronts of my calves wouldn’t slam into the coffee table. He had me on my back on the couch, him on top of me, before I could say a word.

  His face in my face, he said, “Kitten, you gotta know, that coffee cake didn’t smell so fuckin’ good and I didn’t enjoy watchin’ you wander the apartment, puttin’ away my shit while you’re wearin’ those cutoffs I like so goddamned much, you’d be a pain in the fuckin’ ass.”

  Okay, so his telling me he watched me walking around the apartment meant that maybe I was wrong about losing the skirmish. Maybe I won and didn’t even realize it.

  I didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t give anything away, so I said, “I’m so sure.”

  “Leave the CDs in the box,” he ordered. “Once this shit is done, I’ve decided you’re movin’ to my place.”

  My eyes grew round, I forgot about skirmishes and wars and demons and I breathed, “Am not.”

  “Yep, you are. I like your space but it’s too fuckin’ girlie and there isn’t enough room. I got a yard for Juno. I got a dining room table so we don’t have to eat standing up in the kitchen. We’ll move your bed, get rid of your other shit and you can mark the CDs all in one go.”

  Get rid of “my other shit”?

  I did not think so!

  I crossed my arms on my chest. This took some effort since I had to shove them between our bodies but I did it.

  “You seem to have everything figured out.”

  He grinned, completely ignoring the arm crossing move (which said “fight” far, far more than hands at your hips) and said, “Damn straight.”

  “Your house is modern,” I told him.

  “Yeah. And?”

  “I don’t mean to sound funny but modern’s not my gig.”

  And it wasn’t.

  His house was, like, three years old, situated in a modern development. No personality. All the houses one of three styles, all of them one of three colors.

  Boring.

  This hadn’t bothered me before since we spent most of our time at my place but it bothered me now. It bothered me because I knew that his house wasn’t his home. It was just a house. After this was over, I didn’t want Mace ever to live in a house. I wanted to make Mace’s house a home.

  “Then we’ll find another place,” he said, like it was all the same to him (and, it probably was).

  The fight went out of me.

  “Really?” I asked.

  He watched me a beat and then went back to grinning. “Really.” His head bent and he touched his mouth to mine. “But it’ll have rooms.”

  “I could do rooms,” I whispered.

  His face got soft and so did his eyes. “You set your music up in the bedroom though.”

  My body melted under his, I pulled my arms out from between us and wrapped them around his back.

  “I could do that too.” I was still whispering.

  His hand went to the side of my face, the tips of his fingers slid into my hair at the temple and went back. This made me do a happy shiver. He watched his hand move and his eyes came back to mine. I held my breath at the intensity behind them then something flashed in them, the demons came out, my breath hitched then the guard slammed down.

  Even though I thought I lost the moment, he proved me wrong by saying, “When I’m with you, sometimes, I forget.”

  I knew exactly what he was talking about.

  I wanted to get up, punch the air and shout with joy, take THAT demon scum!

  Instead, I put my hands on either side of his face, lifted up my head and kissed him.

  He kissed me back.

  It got heated.

  Some time later, the timer on the oven went off and, against my will, I had to roll him to the side and push away. I got to my feet and he got up to a sitting position. Before I went to the kitchen, standing between his legs in front of the couch, I leaned down, put my hands to his thighs, brushed my lips against his, kept my mouth there and whispered, “Every time I’m with you, I forget.”

  I saw another flash in his eyes before I quickly straightened and walked away.

  And I just stopped myself from licking my finger, pointing it high and slashing my score in the air.

  * * * * *

  Mid-morning, after Mace had been gone for an hour, the cell phone Hector gave me rang.

  I went to it, flipped it open and said, “Hello.”

  “Kitten.”

  I felt another happy shiver.

  “Hey,” I said softly.

  “Hector told me he gave you a clean phone.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When’d that happen?”

  Oh dear.

  “Erm, last night. When he took me home from Head West.” It wasn’t a lie unless it was lying by omission as to why he gave me the phone and that he stayed while I used the phone for the secret reason he gave it to me.

  “Not all fired up about this newfound closeness you got with Chavez,” Mace said in a low, unhappy voice.

  “Hector’s my manager.”

  Silence.

  “So are Daisy and Shirleen. I think the Rock Chicks on the whole are mini-managers too.”

  “Jesus,” Mace muttered.

  “It’s all good,” I said breezily, even though that was definitely a lie.

  Mace decided to move on.

  “You wanna come to the offices? Have lunch with me?”

  Fuck yes! My brain shouted.

  “Sure,” I said out loud.

  “We’ll call your Mom after lunch.”

  Shitsofuckit.

  “Erm…” I muttered.

  “Kitten, you gotta call her.” This was said softly.

  “I know,” I whispered, squeezed my eyes shut hard then said, “Fuck.”

  “I’ll be there. You’ll be fine.”

  At least that made me feel better. “Okay.”

  “One of the guys’ll pick you up.”

  “Okay.”

  “Around one.”

  “Sure.”

  “You got a list for the grocery store, bring it. I’ll swing by King Soopers on the way home.”

  Another happy shiver.

  “You want Belgian waffles tomorrow or leftover coffee cake?” I asked him.

  “Coffee cake.”

  “You gonna be home for dinner?”

  “I want to say yes, but we’ll see.”

  “Okay, I’ll plan flexible.”

  “Later, Kitten.” I heard the smile in his voice.

  “Later.” I hoped he heard the smile in mine.

  Disconnect.

  God, I loved him.

  * * * * *

  The cell phone Hector gave me rang at a quarter to noon.

  I went to it, thinking it would be Mace again and hoping he didn’t have to back out on lunch (or dinner) when I flipped it open and said, “Hello?”

  “Stella?”

  It was Lana.

  “Hey Lana. How’re you?”

  “I’m packing and freaking out. That’s how I am. Chloe and I’ll be in Denver tomorrow.”

  Oh my God!

  “That’s great!” I said to Lana.

  “I hope you’re right, sweetie. Chloe’s freaking out even more than me. Kai and her… Kai was bad after… he thought Chloe blamed him. He convinced himself of it. No matter what she said…” She trailed off then breathed, “Oh God.”

  “It’s all gonna be okay,” I said like I knew it was true but I knew no such thing.

  “She looks like Caitlin,” Lana told me.

  Oh man.


  Oh shit.

  Oh man.

  That was it.

  No matter what Mace said, I needed the Rock Chicks.

  No way in hell I was going to be able to pull this off without the Rock Chicks.

  “You’re gonna be good,” I promised. “Mace, I mean Kai, has a lot of friends. Good friends. Good people. We’ll take care of you and we’ll take care of him.”

  “If you say so.”

  Last night, during my planning, I realized that I had to keep Lana (and now Chloe) protected. Not only did we have Sidney Carter to worry about, we had Preston Mason and maybe that jerky George guy too.

  “Don’t book a hotel. You have to stay with friends,” I told Lana.

  “Oh, we couldn’t impose.”

  “You have to,” I said quickly. “Kai would never forgive me if I didn’t take steps to keep you safe.”

  Silence, then, “Oh.”

  “That’s okay too. Safe is these people’s middle name.” I was thinking about the Hot Bunch. They had other middle names like “Bossy” and “Scary” and “Badass” and “Hot” but I decided not to share those middle names with Lana. She was already freaking out.

  “Okay,” Lana said.

  “Let me know your flight numbers. I’ll send someone out to get you at DIA. Okay?”

  She gave me the flight numbers and I wrote them down on Mace’s tablet. Then I ripped the top sheet off, folded it up and put it in the back pocket of my cutoffs.

  While I was doing this, Lana called, “Stella?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Thank you.”

  I did another happy shiver, a different kind that didn’t involve Mace, his voice, eyes, hands or mouth. But it was happy all the same.

  “No, Lana, thank you,” I said back.

  * * * * *

  I programmed Lana’s number into the phone under “Bogey One” just in case Mace saw it. I wanted a warning if she phoned again.

  Then I sat on the couch and thought about my options.

  Then, because I couldn’t decide, I called Fortnum’s. I’d talk to whoever answered the phone.

  “Hello, Fortnum’s Used Books,” a woman said and I knew it was Jane, the super-thin, kind of weird, pathologically shy woman of indeterminate age that had worked there since before Indy inherited the store from her grandmother.

  “Jane?” I asked anyway, just to be sure.

  “Who’s this?” she sounded guarded.

  “It’s Stella.”

  Effing hell, now I had to pick someone.

  It hit me.

  Duke.

  Perfect.

  “Is Duke there?” I asked.

  “No,” Jane answered.

  Beautiful.

  Maybe my luck hadn’t changed.

  Plan B.

  “Okay, then, can I talk to Tex?” I blurted.

  “Sure,” I heard the muffled noises of a hand covering a mouthpiece, then, “Tex?”

  I also heard Tex’s muted, impatient boom. “What?”

  “Phone,” Jane told him.

  “I figured that, woman. I got, like, five hundred customers. Take a message.”

  “It’s Stella Gunn,” Jane informed him.

  “Shit. She’s not riddled with bullets, is she?”

  I rolled my eyes to the ceiling.

  “Are you injured in some way?” Jane asked me in all seriousness.

  “No,” I answered but Tex would be if he didn’t fall in line with my plan, pronto. “Just tell him it’s important.”

  More phone muffling then, “She says it’s important.”

  I heard incoherent grumbling then Tex came on the phone and instead of saying hello, he said, “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill whoever’s talkin’ to the papers. It’s a fuckin’ madhouse in here. And most of ‘em are new which means they don’t know the drill, like, what I say fuckin’ goes. They expect me to be nice or somethin’. One told me I needed a customer service trainin’ course. What the fuck is that?”

  “Tex –” I tried to cut in but it didn’t work.

  “Trainin’ courses! Yeah, we need trainin’ all right. These fuckers need to learn that I make coffee and they drink it. It doesn’t come with a ‘hi’, ‘how you doin’’ or ‘have a nice fuckin’ day’. They order, they move to the end of the counter, they get their coffee and they cease to exist for me. Fuck!” he finished on a boom.

  “Tex, stop saying ‘fuck’ so loud!” I heard Indy shout in the background.

  “Fuck!” Tex shouted back. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

  Oh dear.

  “Would it kill you to be a little nice?” I asked when he’d quit saying fuck.

  “Yes,” he answered immediately.

  Okay, I didn’t have time for this. We needed to move on.

  “Tex, I need a favor,” I told him.

  “Does it involve me kickin’ someone’s ass?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Great. Fuckin’ great. I need to kick someone’s ass. But do you need me to do that? No! You fuckin’ do not. Jesus Jones, what is it?”

  I told him about my strategy, Mace’s Mom and Stepmom’s imminent arrival and I needed the Rock Chicks in on it but sworn to secrecy under threat of certain death if they breathed a word.

  “I get to kill ‘em if they let the cat out of the bag?” Tex asked.

  “Knock yourself out,” I replied.

  “Leave it to me.”

  Disconnect without even a good-bye.

  I ticked that off my mental list.

  Onward.

  * * * * *

  Mace and I were sitting in Lee’s office. I was behind the desk in Lee’s chair. Mace was on the desk, sitting close. Next to his thigh were the wrappers from our spicy chicken tortilla wraps.

  I sucked on the straw, procrastinating by consuming the watery dregs of a long since dead Diet Coke. I was staring at the phone Mace placed in front of me next to the wrappers.

  “Kitten,” Mace said softly.

  I didn’t take my eyes from the phone.

  “Fuck,” I muttered.

  “Do it fast. Get it over with,” Mace encouraged.

  I looked up at him. Then I set down my dead Diet Coke. Then I tossed my hair.

  “Right. Fast. Over with. Here I go.”

  I picked up the receiver, dialed the number to my childhood home that, even after years I hadn’t forgotten and sat and listened to it ring.

  “Hello,” my Mom said. She sounded seven hundred years old.

  My eyes flew to Mace. He leaned forward and put his hand on my neck right where it met my shoulder. Then he squeezed.

  Strength flowed though me.

  That may sound stupid but it was true.

  “Mom?” I called.

  Silence.

  “Mom? You there?”

  “Stella?”

  “Yeah, Mom. It’s Stella.”

  “Stella,” she breathed.

  “Hey. How’re you doin’?”

  Silence.

  Then I heard a hitch, like she was crying.

  Stupid.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  How’re you doin’? What kind of question is that? My brain asked.

  I ignored my brain.

  “Mom, I know what’s going on,” I told her.

  “You do? How do you know?” Mom asked.

  “I have a friend who… well, he’s more than a friend. He’s kind of my boyfriend.” I looked up at Mace. He wasn’t looking concerned anymore, his mouth was twitching.

  Effing hell.

  I kept going. “Well, we’re actually kind of living together. His name is Kai Mason. I call him Mace. Though, not just me. Everyone does. That is, everyone calls him Mace.”

  Why was I babbling?

  “Anyway, he’s nice and he’s cute. You’d like him.”

  Cute?

  I was still babbling!

  “How do you know what’s going on?” Mom got back to the subject.

  “Well, he’s also a private investigat
or.”

  Mom gasped.

  “No! No, he didn’t investigate you or anything. I mean, well, he did. After we found out from his Dad, who’s kind of a jerk…” My eyes skidded toward Mace’s face again but I couldn’t see it as his head was tilted down. His shoulders were shaking however and I knew it was with laughter. I forged ahead, “Anyway, it’s a long story. His Dad told me you were sick so Mace checked up on you and he told me you were in trouble. So –”

  “Did you pay the mortgage?”

  My hand went to Mace’s thigh, I squeezed and his head came up. I was right, he was smiling.

  The smile faded when I said, “No, I didn’t pay the mortgage. Mace did.”

  “Your Dad’s real mad about the mortgage. Went to the bank and told them to return the money but they won’t do it because we’re behind.”

  “He’s going to have to get over it,” I told her. “We’re sending more money, Mom. Our friends did a collection.”

  “Don’t do that Stella.”

  “Mom –”

  “Don’t you do it, girl,” she snapped.

  All of a sudden her voice had changed and I felt the blood run out of my face.

  She could be harsh but it was unusual. Mostly she was quiet, timid and did everything she could to be invisible.

  Mace saw me pale and his eyes narrowed on my face. He dropped his hand from my neck, sat straight and hit the button for the speakerphone.

  I still talked into the handset.

  “Mom, you have to take the money.”

  “My life’s been a livin’ hell since you left, girl.” I heard Mom over the speakerphone and her voice was sharp and ugly. “You left me to him. Didn’t think for a second about me, what I might go through with you gone. You were always so damned selfish. Then I got the cancer. We don’t hear word one from you for years. Now you think you can swoop in, big time rock star, in the papers, datin’ a famous athlete, make it all better.” She dragged out the “all” with acid sarcasm.

  I felt my heart lurch and my stomach clench as my mother delivered her gut kick.

  She sounded like Dad.

  And she’d seen the papers.

  Which meant she knew I was the target of a killer.

  And she didn’t care.

  “Mom.”

  “He’s on a tear about this money. You ain’t helpin’ things. I don’t need this. I need to rest.”

  “Mom, let me help.”

  “You can help by keepin’ your nose outta our business. You wanted to be gone, Stella, you’re gone. Let me die in peace.”

  “Mom.”