It was a funny thing about criminals…most of them were stupid.
Closing time was two and she settled back in her car seat to wait and watch. As always, a small kick of adrenaline filled her as she anticipated catching her quarry. The burst of adrenaline was as addictive as Godiva chocolate.
It had been her personal assistant, Harrah, who had gotten her into the bounty-hunting business. Harrah was a struggling jewelry designer who had come to work for Chantal a year ago as a stepping stone into the society she hoped to cultivate as clients.
Harrah had come up by way of the school of hard knocks. One of four children raised by an alcoholic mother and an absentee father, Harrah had big dreams and a willingness to work for success.
One day while she and Chantal were working together, Harrah confessed that her brother, Jimmy, had a court date in two days and had disappeared.
Harrah had gone through Big Joey’s Bail Bonds to secure her brother’s bond and was scared to death he didn’t intend to show at court and Big Joey would come looking for her.
On a lark, Chantal told Harrah not to worry, that she’d help her find her errant brother. For the next forty-eight hours Chantal and Harrah had pounded pavement, knocked on doors, and had finally located Jimmy two hours before court time.
It had taken every minute to talk him through his fear and convince him that it was in his best interest to show up and take his punishment.
In those forty-eight hours, a couple things happened that had changed Chantal’s life. She’d met Big Joey and she’d realized she loved the hunt.
Harrah’s brother had gone to prison to serve a three-year sentence on drug charges and Big Joey’s Bail Bonds had hired Chantal as a bail-enforcement agent.
She sat up straighter as she saw a tall young man approaching the bar. Despite the heat of the night he wore a jacket, the collar pulled up as if to hide his facial features from view. Dark hair, a lanky build and suspicious clothing. She had a feeling it was her man.
Adrenaline once again twisted in her gut as she grabbed her purse from the seat next to her. She peeked inside, making sure she had both her handcuffs and her pistol.
Even though she’d been watching Ruby’s for the past four nights, she’d never ventured inside. It definitely wasn’t the kind of place she’d choose for a night out.
As she got out of her car she wished she were wearing black leather instead of Valentino. She had a feeling she was going to stick out like a bad cubic zirconia among a scatter of Harry Winston diamonds.
She approached the entrance, her heels clicking against the pavement that still radiated the heat from the day. Raucous music and laughter poured from the opened doorway. She began her mantra.
“Prada handbags…sunny days…lunch with Mom…Chloe jeans.”
Whenever she was going into what might be a dangerous situation her habit was to list in her head all of her favorite things. That way she figured if something went wrong and she was killed, the last thing her mind would remember was something she loved.
“Facials at Mimi’s…sad movies…slumber parties with Belinda…” She stopped as she walked through the front door of Ruby’s.
The smoke was as thick as socialites at a Versace sale. The bar was to her left, a long expanse of scarred wood holding up a handful of drunken men and women. To her right were the biggest, meanest men she’d ever seen playing at two pool tables.
She scanned the people inside and spied Wesley Baker at the far end of the bar. He’d removed his jacket and looked at ease as he nursed a beer.
As she moved toward the empty stool next to him, she consciously made no eye contact with anyone. She didn’t want trouble. She just wanted to get Baker outside and into handcuffs.
“Hey, baby, slumming tonight?” a deep voice said from behind her.
“Get lost on the way to the prom?” a woman laughed.
Chantal ignored them and wove her way toward the empty stool, walking as if she was lit like a Christmas tree. She sat on the stool and slumped forward, elbows on the bar. “I think I’m lost,” she slurred. She offered Wesley a loopy, but friendly grin.
She knew from all the information she’d gathered on him that Baker considered himself a real ladies’ man. Maybe in a worm colony, she thought.
“Where are you supposed to be?” Wesley asked, then raised a finger for the bartender.
Chantal giggled. “I can’t remember the address. Maybe a little drink will help.” She grinned at the bartender, a bear of a man sporting more tattoos than hair. “How about a little top-shelf Scotch on the rocks?” She turned to look at Wesley, who had a cheap beer in front of him. “How about a Scotch on me?”
“Now you’re talking.” He shoved the beer aside as the bartender poured the two Scotches.
For the next few minutes Chantal small-talked with Wesley, who proved to be as charming as a Brazilian wax. Although anyone seeing the two of them interacting would assume her attention was focused solely on Baker, she was conscious of everything going on in the bar around them.
She needed to get Baker outside. There were too many men in the bar who looked as though they walked on the wrong side of the law, and if she tried to take him down inside she had a feeling she’d wind up wearing her own handcuffs, or worse.
She wasn’t just worried about the men she could see, but there were others hanging out in the hallway near the bathrooms and in the poolroom. Chantal didn’t mind taking risks, but she wasn’t suicidal.
“I just remembered where I’m supposed to be,” she said, after taking only two tiny sips of her drink. “At the Radisson Hotel.”
“Sweetcakes, you’re about two freeway exits off. You need to get back up on the interstate and take the Broadway exit.”
“Is that left or right?”
He stared at her blankly. “Where are you parked?”
“Out front.”
Wesley finished his drink. “What direction are you facing, north or south?”
“North…no, south.” Chantal released what she hoped sounded like a half-drunk giggle. “Wow, I’m so turned around I’m not sure.”
Wesley slid off his stool. “Come on, I’ll walk you out and we’ll see where you need to go.”
The taste of sweet success filled her mouth. This was going to be a piece of cake. Once she got him outside and away from the crowd, she’d slap the handcuffs on him and take him to Big Joey’s. From there he’d be taken to the police station.
The outside air smelled wonderful as they stepped outside of the smoky alcoholic haven. Chantal frowned as she saw a couple of men loitering by the row of motorcycles.
She’d hoped that nobody would be out front. The last thing she wanted was for anyone to try to get involved in her collar.
As they walked across the street, she opened her purse so she could gain access to her handcuffs. “Oh, wow, I can’t find my keys,” she said and pretended to rummage in the bottom of her purse.
“Maybe you left them in the car.” As Wesley reached the driver door he bent down to peer into the window.
Chantal yanked the cuffs from her purse and slapped one on Wesley’s wrist. It didn’t fasten. “Hey, what the hell?” He attempted to whirl around to face her, but she held his wrist and tried to get the damned handcuff to connect.
“What’s going on over there?” a deep voice yelled.
As Chantal and Wesley fell to the pavement, she was aware of the sound of running feet. It wasn’t exactly music to her ears, but she refused to release her death grip on Baker’s wrist.
“Everybody back off. This is official business,” a deep, familiar voice rang out.
A wave of dread swept through Chantal. Of all the men she wanted to see right now, Crazy Luke Coleman was the last. Just her luck that he would appear at the moment she suspected she was about to get her ass kicked.
With irritating ease, he grabbed Baker, yanked him up and cuffed him, then reached out a hand to help her up off the sidewalk. “Darlin’, you’re in way over your he
ad,” he murmured as he held out her cuffs.
She snatched the cuffs from him and jammed them back in her purse, aware that the group of men who had begun to advance had gone back to the opposite side of the street.
She eyed the tall man who now had control of her prisoner. “I could have managed on my own,” she exclaimed.
Luke Coleman, or Crazy Coleman as he was known in the bounty business, looked as if he belonged at a biker bar. His dark hair hung to his shoulders and his jaw was covered with more than a day’s dark stubble.
His sleeveless shirt exposed not only bulging biceps but also an intricate tattoo of an eagle. His jeans were worn and fit snugly on his long, muscular legs. He looked edgy, dangerous and more than capable of taking care of himself.
The other bounty hunters who worked for Big Joey spoke of him as if he was a demigod. In the time Chantal had worked for Joey she’d found Luke Coleman to be arrogant, irritating and unsettling. He was also the most successful bounty hunter in a four-state area.
“Wait! What are you doing?” she asked as he started to lead Wesley Baker away from her car.
“I’m taking my prisoner to my truck,” he said, then turned and proceeded to walk away from her.
“Stop!” She hurried after him and grabbed him by the arm. “What do you mean your prisoner? He’s my prisoner.”
Coleman turned to look at her once again, a glint of amusement in his dark eyes. “My cuffs, my collar.”
She watched in outrage as he continued toward his truck, her prisoner in tow. “Bastard,” she hissed. He had the audacity to turn and salute her.
She remained on the sidewalk, cursing a blue streak as Crazy Luke Coleman drove away with Wesley Baker.
Chapter 2
“That bastard will never take another one of my collars,” Chantal exclaimed to her assistant as she gripped her handcuffs in her hand. “Come on, let’s try it again. Pretend you’re just walking along and I’ll grab your wrist and handcuff it.”
It was late Monday morning and the two women were in Chantal’s living room where, for the past hour, Chantal had been practicing slapping cuffs on Harrah’s wrists.
“You don’t pay me enough for this,” Harrah grumbled.
“Nonsense, I pay you three times what you’re worth. Now, come on, just one more time.”
“I go home with black-and-blue wrists and Lena will think I’m seeing somebody who’s into bondage,” Harrah exclaimed.
“Lena knows you’re devoted to her, now stop bitching and walk like a criminal.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Harrah walked in front of Chantal. Chantal grabbed one of her wrists and slapped the handcuff over Harrah’s smooth mahogany skin. Harrah twisted her wrist and the cuffs dropped to the ground.
“Damn,” Chantal muttered. She picked up the cuffs and threw herself onto the overstuffed burgundy sofa. “You know, they make it look easy in the movies, but apparently there’s a finesse to handcuffs that I still haven’t figured out.”
She frowned with irritation as she thought of how easily Coleman had cuffed Baker on Saturday night. “I still can’t believe he walked away with my prisoner. He’s the most irritating, arrogant man I’ve ever known.”
Harrah didn’t have to ask who she was talking about. Her full lips curved into a smile as she sank into the wing chair opposite the sofa. “He might be arrogant, but that bad boy is sexy enough to make me rethink my sexual preference.” Harrah was a self-proclaimed lipstick lesbian who had been in a relationship with her partner for over five years.
Chantal scowled. “He looks as disreputable as the people he hunts.”
“I hate to change the subject while you’re nursing a grudge, but I need to get those invitations in the mail today.”
“Invitations?” Chantal looked at her blankly.
“You know, the dinner party you promised your mother you’re giving next week for Mr. Barnes? They’re already going to be sinfully late. I’m going to have to overnight them. I’ve got Enrique catering and he’s also taking care of the cake.”
The dinner party was for Jeffrey Barnes, financial advisor and close friend of both Chantal and her mother. Jeffrey was turning sixty next week and Katherine had thought it would be nice if Chantal put together an intimate dinner party as a birthday celebration.
“I’ve got the list for you in my office. I’ll get it so you can get started.” Chantal got up and left the living room to go into her office off the kitchen.
The first thing that greeted her was the view, a stunning panorama of an exclusive golf course. Chantal didn’t play, but when she’d house-hunted a year ago she’d fallen in love with the four-bedroom, story-and-a-half home and the pleasant surroundings.
Besides, there was nothing better than sitting in her office on a hot summer day and watching sweaty, well-built men swing a golf club.
In addition to the floor-to-ceiling windows across one wall, the room sported a wall of bookcases that held her favorite novels and knickknacks, a massive desk and a computer with all the latest bells and whistles that money could buy.
It was in this room that she did not only her work for various charities and organizations, but also much of her bounty-hunting work. Most people thought bounty hunting was all about bursting through doors and hopping over fences in pursuit of a bail jumper, but that wasn’t reality.
Reality was long hours on the phone, using the Internet as a tool, talking to snitches and watching a particular location while fighting off sleep. The rush of a capture was the payoff for all the boring, tedious hours it took to get to that point.
She sat at the desk and opened a drawer to pull out the guest list she’d written out several days earlier. Thank God for Harrah, who managed to keep her life organized.
She leaned back in her chair and smiled as she thought of the day almost a year before when Harrah had shown up to apply for the position of Chantal’s personal assistant.
“I’m black, gay and named after my mama’s favorite casino, but I’ll be the best damned personal assistant you’ll ever have,” she’d pronounced.
She hadn’t lied. There were days Chantal didn’t know how she’d functioned before Harrah. Harrah was tall and beautiful and the most efficient person Chantal had ever met. Harrah not only kept track of Chantal’s appointments and social engagements, she also kept the house clean and occasionally cooked.
As if conjured up by mere thought, the woman appeared in the office doorway. “Got it?”
Chantal nodded and handed her the list. “Do I have anything on my schedule for today?”
“Nothing,” Harrah replied.
“Once you get the invitations mailed off you can take the rest of the day off. I think I’ll head to the Plaza and work out in the Gym, then go to Mimi’s and get a facial and a massage. I’ve been tense since Saturday.”
Harrah grinned, exposing perfectly straight white teeth. “Kicking his ass would probably do you as much good as a trip to Mimi’s.”
Chantal laughed. “Yeah, but a trip to Mimi’s is a lot less dangerous.”
With plans made for the day, Chantal left her office and headed for her bedroom to change clothes. It had been the master suite that had ultimately sold Chantal on the house.
The room was huge with windows that overlooked the ninth hole. She’d chosen melon tones to decorate: lush cantaloupe and cool honeydew colors that she found sexy yet restful.
In the center of the king-size bed, a large gray cat raised its head and hissed as if to protest her very presence in the room.
She’d found the cat six months ago in a box near the Dumpster behind Big Joey’s Bail Bonds. It had been a miserably bitter January day with snow in the forecast. Chantal had brought the cat home and named it Sam, after her beloved father.
When she’d first found him she’d entertained fantasies of a warm purring fur ball against her chest, a little creature who would coil affectionately around her legs the minute she got home.
She’d obviously been delusional.
Savage Sam, as she liked to refer to her roommate, didn’t seem to have an affectionate bone in his body and she had yet to hear him purr.
It took her only minutes to change into workout clothes, pull her shoulder-length blond hair into a ponytail, then grab her gym bag and leave the house. It was a thirty-minute drive to the Plaza, a high-rent, beautiful shopping area of the city.
The gym where Chantal worked out wasn’t an exclusive one and catered only to the serious-minded exercise freaks. The Gym was as simple as its name, a place that smelled of sweat. It definitely wasn’t a place for social gatherings or chitchat.
Power shopping was as close as Chantal had gotten to exercise before going to work for Big Joey. But she’d realized that if she intended to be a successful bounty hunter, she needed to make sure she was in the best physical shape possible.
She worked out for a little over two hours, until her muscles were limp as linguini, then showered and dressed in clean clothes for a trip to one of her most favorite places in the whole world.
Mimi’s was an exclusive club with membership reserved for those people who had the right name, the right connections and the ability to pay exorbitant fees for massages, facials and tanning sessions.
Chantal decided to have a full-body massage. As Mary, the masseuse, worked her magic on her tense muscles, Chantal’s thoughts turned to Luke Coleman.
She still couldn’t believe what he had done Saturday night and wondered if he had been at Ruby’s to score Wesley Baker or if that was one of his usual hangouts?
She knew little about the man, only that he was a loner. He’d worked for Big Joey for the past five years and in that time had garnered a reputation for being tough and having the best street contacts in the business.
“You are one big bundle of tension,” Mary said as she kneaded Chantal’s shoulders. “What have you been doing to yourself?”
“The usual stresses. I’m giving a dinner party next week.”
“Oh honey, no wonder you’re tense. We all know how stressful entertaining can be.”
Chantal didn’t reply. Entertaining was nothing. Stress was watching a Neanderthal saunter away with the criminal she’d collared. It was as if she were a gold miner and had spent hours, days digging for gold. She’d finally uncovered a nugget and some other prospector had reached over her shoulder and stolen it away.
Hell on Heels Page 2