“This was … a special request. I’m very, very glad you were able to deliver … ‘Manny.’ “
“Yeah, well. Hooray for American ingenuity,” he mumbled. He didn’t like this. He didn’t like this at all. And of course he had no back up, no badge, no gun. All he had was Kat, and all she had was—well, she had plenty, but he didn’t think her jogging bra was bulletproof.
“If you and your … lady friend will just have a seat in my office, I’ll get your wages.” Boss Jack crossed the garage in three long-legged strides, grasped Kat’s elbow, and lifted her to her feet. Startled, she snapped her gum in his face. He grimaced, bloodshot brown eyes narrowing, but didn’t flinch.
“’S up?” she chewed.
“I owe your new friend some money, and then you two can dance the night away as far as I’m concerned.”
“Okey-dokey,” she said cheerfully. “Got somewhere I can freshen up?” She leaned toward Jack, snapped her gum in his ear even louder, ignored his flinch, then said, “I gotta pee something awful.”
Boss Jack managed to keep a companionable arm around her shoulders while leaning as far away from her as possible. “There’s a bathroom in my office. Manny, I believe you know the way.”
He did know the way. He could even point out the bloodstains on the floor, covered in carpet though they were. He sighed, took Kat by the hand, and led her to the abattoir.
Chapter 8
She bustled out of the small bathroom and plopped down on the couch beside Chess, who was chewing his lower lip and looking rather constipated.
“So, now what?”
He threw an arm around her shoulder, ignoring her squeak of surprise, and hauled her close enough so that his lips were tickling her ear. “The office is bugged.”
“Well, duh,” she whispered back.
“Audio and video. Don’t look around.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
She shifted her weight and slung a leg over his left thigh. He stiffened—she had no idea why, he certainly seemed like the touchy-feely type—and said, “What are you doing?”
“It’s not going well, is it?” she breathed into his ear.
“Uh, no. I’m usually in and out of this place in about two minutes.”
“Well. Better put on a good show.”
“Is that Grape Bubblicious? Because I’m about to pass out from the fumes.”
She stuck a finger in her mouth and pulled out the wad of gum. “Better?”
“No.” He eyed her be-gummed finger warily. “What are you going to do—Mmph!”
Kiss him until he practically fell off the couch, that’s what she was going to do. In half a second they were wrapped in each other’s arms and he forgot about the gum as her mouth opened beneath his, as her hands groped and touched and teased, as he did a little groping of his own, as they sighed and gasped and wriggled on the couch.
Kat wasn’t sure if the wild excitement she felt was because she was doing something extremely un-Wechter-like, because Chess was an amazing kisser, or because she knew someone—probably the tall creepy guy—was watching them. Whatever the reason, she’d gone from cool to flaming in five seconds, and was ready to rip Chester’s pants off and jump him on the office floor, and never mind that the room stank of motor oil, and had a picture of Miss February—it was fall—on the wall.
“This is an excellent plan,” Chester gasped, coming up for air, “but it’s not really getting us anywhere.”
“Shut up and kiss me some more.”
“What are you, the black sheep of your family or something?”
“I’m the super-nova of black sheep. The black hole of black sheep.”
He looked fascinated, trapped beneath her leg and twined in her arms as he was. “Why? What happened? Mix-up at the hospital?”
“It’s a long story, and I come off really bad in it. Shouldn’t we be making out more?”
“I was thinking of making for the back door,” he mumbled in her ear, leaning in so close it looked, to a casual observer, as if he were nibbling on her earlobe. “This was a mistake all the way around. Jack’s no one to fuck with.”
“Neither am I,” she said smugly. “You think my brother’s bad?”
“I think your brother’s a pussycat, comparably speaking.”
“Ooooh, that made me horny all over again.”
He laughed; he couldn’t help it. The laughing cut off as the office door opened and Boss Jack stood framed in the doorway.
“Dum-dum-dummmmmmm,” Kat hummed dramatically.
“I’ve got your wages,” Jack lied politely. “So you can collect them and be on your way.”
Neither of them moved. They just looked up at Jack from each other’s arms. Finally, Chess managed, “Uh, great.”
“Super great,” Kat chirped. “Did you know it’s not February anymore?”
He eyed her disheveled curls with distaste. “I prefer blondes.”
“Hey,” Chess said warningly.
“Both of you chill,” Kat said. “Are we going or are we going? I’m bored out of my tits.”
Both men made a concerted effort not to stare at her chest. “In just a few more moments. Follow me, please.”
They did.
Chapter 9
The first thing Chess noticed was how deserted the garage was. Most of the strippers/mechanics had left, leaving three thuglike gentlemen loitering near the Coke machine. As if enough alarm bells weren’t ringing in his head, he suddenly wanted an Advil. And his service revolver.
“Do you recognize me?” Boss Jack asked Kat with alarming pleasantness.
“No.”
“Something about the shape of my face? My mouth? The color of my eyes?”
“You look a little like my geometry teacher from tenth grade,” she suggested, sounding so uninterested that Chess almost hugged her.
“I look,” he said, “like my younger brother.”
She sucked the gum off her finger and began masticating. “That’s nice. Is he a tall weird skinny blond guy, too?”
“He’s in jail.”
“Uh-huh.” She blew a bubble, popped it. “So?”
“Yeah,” Chess said slowly, not liking this at all. “So?”
“So you testified against him. And they bitched him, so he’s going to be in Stillwater for a while.”
“Habitual offender,” Chess muttered.
“I know,” Kat snapped. “Oh. That brother.”
If Boss Jack was waiting for alarm, or fear, he wasn’t getting it. In fact, he sounded distinctly put out as he said, “It’s all your fault he’s locked up in a seventy-square-foot box.”
“Oh, just stop it,” Kat said, and Boss Jack jumped. Chess was keeping a wary eye on the thugs chugging Coke, but her tone made him snap his head around and stare at her. “Your brother? The innocent victim? My ass. He pulled me out of a party—pretended to be nice—and set me up to be gang-raped by his asshole buddies. That was almost ten years ago! If he’s still in jail, it’s not just for that and you know it. So, what? You figured out my license plate and sicced Chess on me?”
Chester silently groaned and fought the urge to slap his forehead. Manny, he mouthed.
She waved it away. “Forget it. He knows. The jig, as they say, is up. So, I’m here, Boss Jerk. What’s the plan? Sic your thugs on me? Get revenge for your stupid little brother, who was so fucking dumb he dragged me out of a bar in front of thirty witnesses?”
“Kat,” Chess growled, but he couldn’t help grinning.
“Tracking you down was easy,” Jack said, with the air of a man dying to tell his tale. “And you got reckless. Ever since you put my brother away, you take chances, you go your own way, you ignore good sense, and you think your shit doesn’t stink.” “No,” she said. “I just stopped being afraid.” “I knew if I sent Chester to get your car, you’d find a way to get it back. I assumed your cursed brother would help you, but I knew I’d see you again.”
“A regular Nostrafuckingdamus, that’s you.” ??
?I didn’t expect you to walk into my garage this very night, but that’s all right. The gods are finally smiling on my family for a change.”
“Wrong again, Jacko. Did you really think we came here alone?”
“You did. My men checked the perimeter.” “Oh, the idiots with a combined IQ of sixty? Those men?”
“You—” He took a step forward, and so did Kat. Chess got ready to jump between them—possibly losing an eye or a limb in the process—when the garage door began to beep and inch upward.
Boss Jack whirled on the men chugging pop. “I thought you locked it.”
“We did,” one of them said, and belched lightly. “The lock’s being bypassed,” Kat said. “Duh.” “But the cops can’t come in here without—” “Who said anything about cops?” Kat rolled her eyes. “How did you get to be the boss again? I know you didn’t have to take an intelligence test or anything.”
The door slowly ratcheted up, revealing slim legs and hips in dark jeans, a dark sweatshirt, a blonde with a ponytail lying over her left shoulder, one so long it trailed almost to her waist, a beautiful woman holding the hand of a small boy who looked about four.
“This is a chop shop,” she explained like a schoolteacher, stepping into the garage. “It’s where bad guys cut up cars and sell them for scrap.”
“This is another thing not to tell Daddy about,” the boy said, “right?”
“You got it, kiddo.”
Boss Jack actually blanched. “You’re out of the business,” he said. “You’re a civilian now.”
“Yeah, well. I like to take tours on the wild side now and again. And the kid’s seen all the museums in town.”
“A.A.?” Chess gasped. “I thought you were an urban legend!”
“Hey,” one of the thugs whined. “Nobody said we had to go up against her.”
“So don’t,” the blonde said, eyeing them coldly.
“Everybody stay put,” Boss Jack ordered.
“Boss, she took down the Minnesota Mafia!”
“She did not, she only took down the head mobster. Stay.”
“I think you better go,” the little boy said, almost apologetically. He had his mother’s eyes, and brown hair which, under the fluorescents, showed deep red highlights. His nose was sprinkled with freckles. “Otherwise you’ll get beat up and it’ll just be a big mess.”
“Hush, David,” the blonde said absently, and the boy hushed.
Kat snapped her fingers with delight. “My brother called you! He’s been keeping in touch all this time.”
“He had this silly idea that you might rush headlong into trouble—again—and might need me to save your ass. Again.”
“Mom.”
“An ass is a donkey. It’s not a swear word.”
“Mom.”
“Cram it, kid.”
Boss Jack, the idiot, was actually rubbing his hands together, which made a rasping sound that set Chester’s teeth on edge. “Both of the twats who put my brother in a cell, here under my roof at the same time. You think she’s here for you? I tell you, she’s here for me.”
“Oh, blow me,” A.A. said indifferently.
“Mom!”
“Like a fan. You know, to cool off.”
David rolled his eyes, looking uncannily like his mother as he did so. “Mom, I hate it when you treat me like a kid.”
“You are a kid. Okay, granted, you’ve got twenty IQ points on me, but I’ve got three feet and a hundred pounds on you.”
“Might makes right?”
“Something like that.”
Boss Jack pointed a skeletal finger at them. “It was a mistake to bring your son here. The last thing he’ll see will be your blood puddling on the—”
The boy yawned. Then apologized “Sorry. It’s past my bedtime.”
“Don’t apologize to the bad guy,” A.A. ordered.
“You’ll do more than apologize.”
“Why do I have the feeling this isn’t the first lair of evil your mother’s brought you to?” Chess asked.
David shrugged. “She had a yucky childhood. She wants me to know what the bad guys look like.”
“If we could keep our attention on the matter at hand,” Boss Jack practically shouted, clearly annoyed. “When my men and I are through with you—”
“What men?” David asked.
Boss Jack looked. They all looked. The thugs, doubtless calculating the odds of an unfair fight in their favor, and disliking them, had crept out the back.
“Never mind,” Boss Jack said, going pale but recovering. “I can handle you myself. I’ve been waiting for years to—Yurrrgggghhhh!” He went paler—if possible—clutched himself between his legs, and dropped to the concrete floor like a sack of flour dropped from a great height.
Kat nudged him over on his back with her foot, and kicked him again, this time across the chin. Boss Jack’s eyes rolled up, but didn’t close.
“And there’s plenty more where that came from,” A.A. said. Then, to Kat, “I’m supposed to save you, honey.”
“Not this time. It’s very nice to see you again, by the way. You kind of vanished after the last time.”
“I kind of hid from your brother for a decade or so.”
“And who could blame you?” Kat said cheerily. “I could have told you he was just looking for a chance to help you out.”
“Oh, sure, now it comes out.”
David let go of his mother’s hand, crossed the room, and peered down at Jack’s pupils. “He’s out,” the boy announced.
“His eyes are open,” Chess said doubtfully.
“It doesn’t mean anything. My dad’s a doctor, and he says … Anyway, I don’t think he has a concussion, but that looked like a pretty hard kick to me. And the blow to the testes didn’t help, either.”
Chess stared wonderingly down at the kid. “How old are you?”
“Four.”
“Oh my God.”
“Uh-huh.” The boy nodded. “Mom says I’ll be formidable.” He hesitated, then smiled his mother’s smile, sweet and sunny. “Don’t tell Daddy, though.”
Chapter 10
“That was so …” Kat groped for the word. “Anticlimactic?” Chess suggested.
“Well, yeah. I mean, I still have nightmares about those guys. And if I’d ever thought that the guy’s big brother’s been thinking about how to get me all these years—Jesus, I probably would have slit my wrists ten years ago.”
Chester laughed.
“Well, okay, maybe not. Still. You worry about something and you take self-defense classes and you try to make yourself be brave even when you’re scared to death and then there’s this big showdown and it’s over in about ten seconds. I mean, jeez.” Pouting, she slouched back in the passenger seat. “I can’t believe my brother told her to come get me.”
“He was just looking out for you. I don’t think he could have sent a million cop cars in with screaming sirens. Somebody was bound to get shot.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She waved the prospect of imminent death away with a dainty hand. “So, now what?”
“Now I drive you home.”
“Oh.” She tried not to sound disappointed.
“And we’ll get married soon.”
“Oh?”
“Sure,” he said casually. “I sort of fell in love with you a couple hours ago.”
“You did? You did not. Really? You did?” Now she sounded like an idiot schoolgirl, delighted over a first crush, but she couldn’t help it. She liked everything about him. Shit, she had liked him when she thought he was a car thief.
“For crying out loud, Kat, what’s not to love? You waltzed into danger chewing grape bubble-gum, for God’s sake. You beat the shit out of the bad guy. The Avenging Angel came out of retirement to save your ass, not that you needed it, and you’ve obviously got some seriously powerful friends. Plus, you’ve got a killer bod and you kiss like the devil.”
“Kissed the devil, have you?” she teased.
“Only tonight.
” He breathed in. “God, I love the smell of leather. And your car. And you.”
“Pull over,” she said suddenly. They were driving past one of the lakes in Eagan, and with the fall chill in the air, the parking lots for the beaches were deserted.
Knowing exactly what she had in mind—and thanking God for it—he yanked the wheel to the left, not bothering with a turn signal, screeched to a halt, and slammed the car into first. Then shut it off and dropped the keys on the mat as she grabbed him around the collar and hurled them both—somehow; he outweighed her by forty pounds—into the backseat.
“I wouldn’t … exactly … call this … roomy,” he gasped, pulling and tugging and tearing at her clothes, as she groped and fought his shirt and jeans.
“Shut … up.”
“Just … saying.”
Her thighs were the color of alabaster under the harsh parking lot lights, and her black hair tumbled over his face, his throat, and he breathed deep of her perfume, her own special scent, and the leather—don’t forget the leather—and oh God, he loved cars and he loved women, especially this woman and this car, and oh God, she was touching him, no, grabbing him, tugging at him and stroking, and he snatched her hands away and said, “We’ll be done before we get started if you keep that up.”
“So?” she replied saucily, black eyes gleaming, and somehow she wriggled around so he was on top and she was bracing one foot on the passenger seat headrest and the other on the top of the backseat, and he was pushing into her, shoving into her, and she gasped and wriggled closer, and at first he was worried he was hurting her but she was squirming and groaning beneath him and it was a sound any man could recognize—the sound of wanting, the sound of urgent lust.
She pulled him closer, clung to him as he thrust, as she met his every stroke, as her ankles crossed behind his back to hold him closer, as she shivered beneath him and whispered his name, and that was it, that was all, he was done, and collapsed over her in an ungainly heap.
“Oh, that’s sexy,” she gasped, half her breath gone.
“Shut up,” he groaned.