The assailant scrambled to his feet, rammed his shoulder into Frankie’s belly and tackled him. Frankie’s body moved through the air, crashed to the ground and his head—no—bounced off the pavement, the cracking sound carrying like a splitting coconut.
Panic flicked at Lucie. She opened her mouth, but her chest froze and she stood there, gagging on trapped air. She loved this man and someone dared—dared—to put their hands on him. Bastard. She had to fight. Had to help Frankie.
The redheaded attacker looked no older than thirty years old. He was big, not fat big, but his frame carried extra weight in every available spot.
He could crush her.
A howling inside her head hammered. The bad guy stepped toward her just as Buddy lunged for the leg of his pants. Oh, no. Not the dog.
“No, Buddy.” The puppy clamped onto the guy’s calf.
“Argh! Get this dog off me.” He reached down and sent his beefy hand across the dog’s back. Buddy yelped. An immediate spewing of hate consumed Lucie. How could he hurt a defenseless puppy?
Buddy came surging back. The idiot attacker didn’t realize Buddy thought this was some sort of twisted game.
Frankie rolled to his side and levered himself up. Still on all fours, he kept his head low.
Stun gun.
Lucie reached into her bag for the device and flipped the juice switch.
The attacker hollered when Buddy clamped onto his hand.
That had to hurt. The feisty puppy wasn’t giving up. She only had a few seconds before the attacker struck Buddy again. But if she shot from this distance, the probes from the gun might hit the dog. She moved closer. God, please don’t let me miss.
She glanced at Frankie, about to stand tall. The attacker could have killed him. Anger swelled inside her and a guttural roar flew from her throat.
She jammed the device into the attacker’s back and pressed the trigger. The probes flew, but her hand stayed still. No recoil or kick. Amazing. A rat-a-tat-tat clacking noise filled the air and she flinched from the shock of it, but held tight to the gun.
The attacker arched back, his face a mass of agony. “AGGGHHHHHH!”
The shattering wail resembled a bad Chewbacca audition and he collapsed to the ground. Buddy, clearly wanting to join the fun, clamped onto his leg again.
Lucie slammed her eyes shut as the screaming inside her head raged on. No. She couldn’t waste time. The probe only lasted thirty seconds. She needed to move.
She opened her eyes. “Off, Buddy.” The dog backed away, tilting his adorable little head at her and she scooped him up. She swiveled to Frankie, now moving toward her with the steel-edged look of a warrior on the hunt. “In the house,” she yelled.
But Frankie beelined for the Chewie wannabe.
Lucie jumped between Frankie and Chewie. “Forget him. You’re hurt. Get in the house.”
Chewie grabbed her ankle, and Frankie gave him a solid kick to the ribs. “Hit him with the stun gun again.”
She still had the gun in hand, but she hadn’t reloaded the cartridge and didn’t want to take the time. “No. In the house.”
Frankie, being Frankie, gave the guy another kick. “Stay away from her. Got it?”
Grabbing his shirtsleeve, Lucie pulled him toward the house before Chewie got his second wind. Buddy yelped with glee over the excitement and nipped at her chin. “Stop, Buddy. No biting.”
With her heart banging around inside her, Lucie slammed the door behind them, threw the bolt and sent Frankie through the laundry room so she could barricade the dog.
Frankie rubbed the back of his head. “Call 9-1-1.”
She glanced out the door and saw the man get to his feet and take off down the alley. “Forget it. He’s already down the street.”
“Dammit.”
Lucie held up two fingers. “How many?”
He focused on her fingers, but said nothing.
“Wrong answer. You’re going to the hospital.”
“I’ll be fine. It’ll be another concussion.”
“Yeah, and what about all those people that don’t go to the hospital and wind up dead from one of those hematoma things?”
“It’s an epidural hematoma. Bleeding between the brain and the inside of the skull. Trust me. I know.”
“Yeah, well. You’re going to the hospital.”
* * *
“She blasted him?” Joey stood next to Frankie’s hospital bed doing his damndest to hide a smile. But when he looked over at her, Lucie saw the mischief in his eyes. Maybe, Lucie thought, she wasn’t a goodie-two-shoes after all.
Frankie nodded. Very slowly. “Fried him good.”
Despite her best efforts, she grinned. Why not? She’d done well today. Gave that dognapper something to think about. “I zapped him once. Knocked him on his butt.”
Anticipating the ER doc’s return with Frankie’s CAT scan results, Lucie checked her watch. “You sure the dogs had a long enough walk?” she asked Joey.
“Everyone took a dump. Even Otis.”
“Really?”
“I’ve got the touch with him.”
Frankie scoffed.
“It’s true,” Lucie said. “I can spend an hour trying to get him to poop and Joey steps up and—boom—he just goes. It’s crazy. Even Mrs. Lutz is surprised.”
Joey shrugged. “It’s a dominance thing.”
Frankie laughed, but immediately brought his hand to his head. She kissed his forehead. “Just rest.”
The neckline of his hospital gown slipped and she gave it a light tug into place. She flattened her palm against his chest, felt the heat of his body through the gown and suddenly wanted to curl into bed with him, nurse him to health in her own way.
What was wrong with her? The poor man was injured and her mind was sliding into the gutter. But having him back in her life affected her, made her realize how much she’d missed him during their break-up and how much she didn’t want to lose him again. Somehow, they had to make it work.
She cleared her throat.
“Was Buddy wearing one of your collars?” Frankie asked.
He just wouldn’t give up. “Don’t worry about it now. You need rest.”
“I’m fine.”
Dug in. She knew it. Might as well not aggravate him. “No. He has one, but he didn’t have it on.”
“And yet, they still tried to boost him.”
Joey shrugged. “Seems to me these guys know who your accessory clients are. They’re picking them off one by one.”
How very comforting. “I think the dognappers took that spreadsheet that’s missing. That’s how they know my clients. They’re four for four with picking the right targets.”
She turned to Joey, her movements halted.
Equipped with excellent instincts, her brother drew his eyebrows together. “What?”
God, how to do this. He might tear the place apart, but she had to ask. “Remember I asked you about the spreadsheet?”
“So?”
“Did you have any friends over that would have taken it?”
Frankie blew out a breath and eased his head against the bed. He knew what was coming. He just didn’t have the strength to get into the middle of a Lucie-Joey smackdown.
“No.”
Joey’s big body filled the room with an energy that became cold and hateful and made her feel small, so small.
Frankie lifted his head. “She’s only asking.”
“Yeah, because my friends are the losers who would steal a dog to get a collar.”
“Knock it off,” Frankie said, getting a little loud.
“Why don’t you ask your boyfriend if he took the spreadsheet? He’s my friend. You trust him, but not your own brother? After I’ve busted my butt to help you? Well, find someone else to clean up your messes.”
“I was only asking. Anyone could have walked into the house and picked up that spreadsheet. Mom never turns the alarm on during the day.”
“That’s a thought,” Frankie added. �
��With your dad locked up, people are bound to cross the line. Nobody would have the balls to do this if your dad was out, but since he’s not, what’s gonna happen?”
Joey scoffed. “He could still fix this.”
“Yeah, but some of these lower level guys aren’t geniuses. They’re cocky and don’t give the respect the older guys do.”
Joey’s shoulder shrug indicated it wasn’t completely out of the question. “I’ll poke around. Maybe I’ll run up to see Dad one day, see if I can get anything out of him.”
“Don’t tell him about all this. He only knows about the first incident.” Lucie turned to Frankie. “You didn’t tell your father anything else, did you?”
“I told him about the Sammy Spaniel theft. That was the last thing. “
“Okay. So we know he wouldn’t have told my dad about the diamond, right?”
“It wouldn’t do him any good. He promised your father he’d take care of you. You having a stolen diamond doesn’t exactly leave a good impression.”
Joey immediately raised his hands. “I won’t let on. I’m not stupid.”
“I think my missing spreadsheet is part of the answer. Someone had to have taken it from the house. If we find that someone, we find the dognappers. I’m sure of it.”
Chapter Thirteen
A loud scrape jolted Frankie from sleep and his breath came in one shuddering gasp. What the hell? He opened his eyes. Moonlight squeezed through the closed blinds and threw an angular shadow against the far wall. The ceiling fan spun in slow circles while the screech against his bedroom window blasted through his already battered head. He needed to trim that pain-in-the-ass tree before the wind sent one of the branches into his bed.
He inhaled and ever so slowly turned toward the bedside clock. Four-thirty. Way too early for any normal person to be awake. At least in his opinion.
The throbbing in his head went ballistic and his vision blurred. He needed a few more hours of sleep and then he’d get with his father about the dognapping problem. Lucie would skin him, but he’d live with it. His father had all sorts of connections and, even if someone close to Joey were behind swiping that spreadsheet, his father or Jimmy would have heard about it.
Wait.
Could his father have mentioned to Jimmy that Lucie found the diamond? What about Lemon? If Jimmy knew, so did Lemon. A sickness unrelated to Frankie’s pounding head whirled in his stomach.
If Jimmy and Lemon knew about the diamond, could they be trusted to keep it quiet? Hell, they could have told any number of lowlifes.
Frankie shifted sideways and dry heaved into the bucket by his bed. Dammit. He could be the cause of all this.
He rolled out of bed, made his way to the bathroom, raised his forearm over his eyes and flipped the light. After a second, he lowered his arms and pried one eye open to locate his painkillers.
Two hours. That’s what he needed to kill. By then his father would be up and reading the morning paper, perusing the sports section and checking out Frankie’s column, as he always did. Frankie swallowed two pills, looked in the mirror and scared the crap out of himself. His eyes held that shiny, unfocused look that came with concussions.
Rest. That’s what he needed now. Maybe the meds would kick in and by six, he’d be moving enough to get the four blocks to his folks’ house.
A sleepy Lucie stumbled into the bathroom. She’d insisted on sleeping on the couch. “Are you okay?”
“Needed the painkillers. Go back to sleep.” He eyed her in his beat up Cubs shirt. “In my bed.”
She rolled her eyes. “Even with a concussion? Unbelievable.”
“Still a guy, Luce. And that part of my brain is intact.”
“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll stick with the couch, for now. Do you need anything?”
“You just shot down the only thing I need.” This said as he crawled into his bed alone. He’d be no good to her now anyway. She’d have to do all the work. He pulled the sheet up and prayed for the peace of mind he needed to sleep. At least then he would stop thinking he’d put Lucie in danger.
Two hours later, after a raging battle for sleep, Frankie used his key to unlock his parents’ front door and slipped in.
“Pop?” His voice was somewhere between a whisper and his regular tone. No sense giving anyone cardiac arrest by sneaking up on them.
An eerie darkness enveloped the newly painted room. His mother had finally gotten rid of the fuzzy wallpaper, but a shaft of light filtered from the kitchen as Pop swung around the corner, still wearing his navy pinstripe pajamas.
“Frankie?”
“Morning.”
“What are you doing here so early? You okay?”
“I gotta talk to you.”
Dad put a hand on his back. “How’s your head?”
Lucie’s mother must have called his mother. Luce had warned him about that. He wasn’t the only one flapping gums with a parent.
“Could be worse,” Frankie said. “The meds help.”
“Jeez, Frankie, with your history, you gotta be more careful.”
Getting knocked to the ground by a would-be dognapper wasn’t exactly his fault, but his father didn’t know that. Not wanting to terrify her mother, Lucie had told her Frankie slipped and hit his head. Not exactly heroic, but it worked for their purposes. “Yeah. I know.”
“Come in. Your mother isn’t up yet. In a little while, she’ll make you a good breakfast. You hungry?”
“Not so much.”
Frankie wasn’t a breakfast guy, especially with a swollen brain, but his mother’s ham and eggs might relieve the ache a bit. If he could keep the food in place.
His father led him into the kitchen and poured a second cup of coffee. The Herald sat open on the table. Pop read every article, every day, no exceptions.
“Sugar, right?” his father asked.
“Right.” He handed him the sugar bowl and Frankie hoped the burn of coffee wouldn’t send his tender stomach into a boycott.
“What’s up, kid? Why aren’t you in bed?”
Asking questions without them sounding like accusations wouldn’t be the easiest thing Frankie had ever experienced. He ran his middle finger and thumb across his forehead, felt the pressure drive through his skull.
Say it.
“I don’t know how to ask you this, so I’m gonna lay it out.”
His father sat across from him, took off his reading glasses and dropped them on the table. His dark eyes held intensity, but Frankie recognized the look as being more concern than anything.
“You can ask me anything.”
Yeah, well, they’d see about that. “You know all this crap with Lucie and the dognappings?”
“She get hit again?”
“Almost. She zapped the guy with her stun gun.”
His father cracked a smile. “Is that a fact?”
Frankie couldn’t resist smiling. Nobody would ever expect Lucie to use a stun gun. He held up a hand. “Swear.”
“Maybe she’s got a little of her father in her after all.”
There was a scary freakin’ thought. “Anyway, we think someone swiped one of her reports from the house and that’s how they know who her accessory clients are.”
“Someone broke into the house?”
“We think so. She had a spreadsheet go missing. It never turned up.”
His father’s bottom lip poked out for a second. “Reasonable, I guess.”
“Pop?”
“What?”
“I told you about the diamond. Could Jimmy have overheard and told someone else. Maybe they’re going rogue?”
His father sat back, thought about it for a split second. If that.
“No. Some of these young guys, they’re a little…” Dad held his hand to his head and motioned like he was turning a screw, “…whacked. But Jimmy? No. Not with Joe’s daughter.”
Frankie slugged a gulp of coffee, set the mug down and waited for the impact. Nothing. So far, so good. “It sounds nuts, but it’
s the only thing I can come up with.”
His father leaned forward, smacked a hand on Frankie’s arm. “I’ll ask around. If it’s one of our guys, I’ll find out and take care of it.”
Frankie nodded. “Keep it low profile. Lucie doesn’t want Joe finding out. He climbed all over her when we saw him last. We’ve got enough problems without her being pissed at me. We need to figure out where this diamond came from so we can all get back to normal.”
His father held up two hands. “I’ll keep it quiet, but you can bet I’ll take care of it.”
* * *
“How’s it going?” Frankie asked Lucie when she came through his door carrying a white paper bag.
Grateful to see her, he rested his head back on the couch, and hoped there was a meatball sandwich in that sack. “Is that from Petey’s?”
“You bet. Thought you’d like some lunch.” She knelt beside him, ran her fingers through his hair and he enjoyed the comfort of the gesture. They were together again and he intended to enjoy it. “Do you need anything?”
“I need a lot of things, but they all require you naked.”
She rolled her eyes. “So, your brain still isn’t the only thing swelled?”
He laughed. “Come on, Luce, I’d want sex if my arms we’re hanging off and I was bleeding out.”
The sandwich came flying at him and he tore into the bag. “I guess I’ll settle for this. Hunger set in about an hour ago, but I was too lazy to move. I can’t believe you went to Petey’s for me. You hate Petey’s.”
“Which is why I had Ro go in.”
Frankie snorted. “Atta-girl. Always searching for the workaround.”
“You deserve a meatball sandwich.”
“Yes, I do. What are you up to the rest of the day?”
“Today is the interview for the bank job, so I need to go home and change. After the interview, I’ll finish the run with Joey and tonight I’m meeting with a web-designer. I might want a website for Coco Barknell. I could put the dog walking services on one page and the accessories on the other.”
“Sounds like you have a plan.”
“Yep. It’s the safety net if I don’t get a job.”
He unwrapped the foil and a bit of sauce dripped onto his T-shirt. Nice. It’d probably get a lot worse before he was done so he ignored the stain and bit into the sandwich. The sharpness of the garlic and cheese caused a riot with his taste buds and he closed his eyes. Heaven.
1 Dog Collar Crime Page 15