by C. L. Quinn
Margot was immediately ashamed of her unacceptable judgment. “I apologize. You’re right. I really do appreciate you accompanying me. I know it’s a bad idea, but I can’t stand by and know that Lipnicki is hurting another woman.”
“Ye’re a fine woman, to care for one ya don’t know.”
“I’m anything but. It appears, though, I might be learning a thing or two about myself tonight. I used to think that all I needed was a lot of disposable cash and I’d feel fulfilled and happy.”
“Money doesn’t buy those things.”
“I’m beginning to get that. Okay, I see the building, and Lucky’s right. There are two guards immediately apparent, but I think I’ve got it.”
“I’m with ya, pretty lady. Do what ya need to do.”
Her eyes lingered on him, standing ready to defend her, as powerful as a video-game hero.
Why was she having trouble taking her eyes off this big lout? The answer was obvious; he was too easy on them.
Not her type, though.
Stop it, Margot, her internal dialogue chastised her. Not like you’re going to survive this shit anyway.
“Okay, I’m going to try to convince them to let us through to speak to the fixerman. God, I wish I had a name. That is the stupidest bad-guy nickname ever.”
“Don’t open with that,” Xavier suggested.
Margot shot him an eat me look, and started across the street. The two guards noticed her and Xavier immediately, and although they didn’t bring up their rifles, they weren’t watching casually either.
“Hi,” Margot opened with, hoping that her looks might get her a smile. From one of the men, it did.
“Yeah, what can I do for you, gorgeous? And by that I mean what can I do for you?” His eyes went suggestively to the area between her legs.
Margot was no prude, but she was uncomfortable with the fact that this situation had already devolved to coarse sexual innuendo. She tried to keep her smile soft and inviting.
“Ah, nice, thanks, but I really need to speak with your boss. Is he here?”
That changed the atmosphere. The second guy, who hadn’t responded to her friendly smile, stepped forward, his gun raised just slightly, and pushed the other guy out of the way. “You got an appointment? Rodney don’t see anyone without an appointment.”
Rodney. Oh, thank God. “He’ll want to see me. It has to do with his business, and an imminent threat to it.”
The gun raised a little higher. “Is that a threat?”
“If it were, would it get me in faster?”
Now, pissed, and feeling his own power, the guy grabbed Margot by the hair and started to frisk her while the second guy backed up and drew down on Xavier.
Xavier had the guns in his hands before anyone knew what happened, the two guards shoved back against the brick wall, looking confused.
“What the fuck!” the aggressive guard spat out as he pushed away from the wall, ready to take Xavier on.
Xavier stared into his eyes, his intention was to intimidate him. “Don’t move,” he demanded.
And the guard stopped, frozen in place. The second guard stared at his associate, looked up at Xavier, and started to run. Xavier grabbed his arm and as the guy shot his eyes to Xavier, Xavier issued the same command.
“Don’t move,” he said, a simple quiet request this time.
In exactly the same way, the second man froze as well, the only thing moving were his eyes, bouncing back and forth, completely freaked out.
Watching the odd event, Margot looked up at Xavier, walked forward to gently poke one, and then the other, frozen man with her index finger.
“What the hell did you do?”
Stepping back, watching the two men as Margot was, Xavier shrugged. “I don’t know. This was gettin’ confrontational, so I wanted to stop him when he grabbed ya. I don’t have any idea why they stopped movin’ like this.”
“Huh. Well, whatever it is, it’s working for us. Let’s go.”
Still focused on her task, Margot let herself glance once again at her large companion as they entered the darkened stairway and began to descend into an even darker area. “Wish we had a flashlight,” she commented.
“I can see all right. Why don’t I lead?”
“No, it’s okay, I have good night vision.”
Actually, she couldn’t see shit. She kept her hand on the moist, slick wall all the way down, using her foot to carefully guide her off each step. But she didn’t want him to think she needed a man to rescue her. Women were just as capable as any man, and the attitude of “let me help you, little lady” pissed her off anytime she came upon it, which was often in her world.
There was some comfort, though, in knowing he was close behind in case she needed him. Her mind went back to the guards. “Scotsman, you know those men should have come after us by now.”
“Aye. I’m as surprised as ye are that they just complied with my command. Maybe they believed ya when ya told them that their boss needed to see ya.”
“Yeah, more likely they succumbed to the Sasquatch-sized man who told them to freeze. And that sexy accent.”
“Ya think my accent is sexy?”
“No, not me, it doesn’t do anything for me. Someone like those guys, yeah, who knows. Women like accents, I know that.”
He was quiet for a few moments, then said, thoughtfully, “Perhaps that’s why.”
“Why? Why what? What do you mean?”
“Ye’ll scoff, but I’ve had a little too much female attention since I started to work for Lucky.”
Margot nearly stopped in her steps. “You surely get why.”
“I don’t.”
“Big guy, you’re every woman’s…” No, don’t tell him that, he’ll think you’re coming on to him. “I mean, you’re most women’s dream guy. Huge, big muscles, foreign, exotic, hair down to your ass, you look like you could go all…” Stop. “I mean, you’re hot, most women like your kind.”
“But not you.”
“Sorry. I go for more polished, sophisticated men. I like my men dressed in a fine tux, not looking like they just lumberjacked a forest full of trees.”
It was too dark to see the big guy’s expression, but she heard him laugh softly. “Lass, I have a suspicion ye’ve never been lumberjacked. I kind of think ya’d like it.”
Arrogance, her least favorite masculine trait. And she had a lot of them, thanks to her formative years spent watching her mother do anything and everything to keep her man happy. Make that men, mum never really had much success at keeping them. But she’d never stopped trying! It had been one tragic romance after another.
“Just keep your ax in your pocket, mister. You come at me with that thing and the next thing you know is you’ll be whittling pencils.”
His voice traveled again through the darkness, a low amused laugh, as she stepped onto a solid concrete floor. Light made it through the large empty basement from a doorway some distance across the space.
“There. Scotsman, come with me.”
The woman did like to bark orders. “Lead and I’ll follow.”
When they ascended the stairs at the other end of the room, Margot remained increasingly shocked that the two guards weren’t on their asses. She assumed that at least one of them had to have alerted their boss, Rodney, that someone was on their way up.
“I expect we’ll have a welcoming party.” Margot glanced back at her quiet giant.
“Perhaps. Or maybe those two are still standin’ there like we left them.”
“Unlikely. I don’t understand what happened, but they didn’t just stand there after we left. Again, let me take point.”
Xavier didn’t answer because he didn’t expect that she required one. He was still smiling, though.
Just before they reached the top of the next stairwell, both Xavier and Margot heard raucous voices ahead. Something banged explosively, and someone with a sharp voice shrieked in uncontrolled laughter.
“Tommy, fucking stop that!�
�
“When you get your dick out of my mouth!”
“Quit messing around, you assholes, ain’t gonna help anyone you tear up this room.”
“He fucking started it!”
A door banged somewhere in the distance.
“Shit, Rodney’s back!”
Silence and rustling were followed by several voices speaking almost at once.
“S’up, bro?”
“Eh, Rod-man!”
“Hey, boss.”
Silence again, then a deep, quiet voice said, “I need J.D. on the rocks. Now, or sooner if you can challenge time.”
Quick footsteps followed, and let Margot and Xavier, hidden in the stairwell, know that someone was rushing to get the expected drink.
Damn, this guy was powerful to have three thugs terrified of him. With a quick glance back and up at Xavier, Margot screwed up her courage, and before she could back out, pushed herself from their hiding place, aware that Xavier was right behind her.
She scanned the room, taking special care to note everyone’s positions. Her eyes landed on a tall, well-built, tattooed man with long black hair who lounged sideways in an enormous black leather recliner.
He stood slowly. “Who the fuck are you?” he asked, even more slowly.
The other three men in the room kept their positions, all so shocked by her sudden appearance, they hadn’t reacted immediately. Before too many seconds passed, though, they surrounded Margot and Xavier, weapons drawn.
Keeping her arms slightly raised, her fingers flexed, Margot walked closer to Rodney, but not too close.
“If you would allow me, I need to speak to you. It’s urgent and affects your business. I’m not here to cause any trouble for you. Neither is this big man behind me. He’s just here for my protection. I’m sure you understand.”
Rodney’s eyes shot to Xavier, and moved slowly over his bulk, the muscles that proved he was powerful, the fact that he didn’t seem to be aggressive. He lifted a hand to instruct his guards to keep their weapons on him.
“The woman is no threat,” he told his crew. “Come forth, blondie,” he demanded, already focused on Margot completely. “Tell me your tale.”
She threw a glance to Xavier for him to stay where he was, moved closer to the heavily tattooed man, and when he motioned for her to sit on a footstool in front of his chair, she carefully lowered herself onto it.
“Sing, pretty bird.”
“Thank you for letting me speak with you. Look, I’m not here for you. I mean, what I’m going to ask is going to be good for your business, that’s true, but I’m looking for one of your clients who is hurting your girls. If he brings attention to your business, that can’t be good for you.”
“And who might we be discussing?”
“A slick man you met tonight in a bar down the street. He’s an arrogant asshole, pasty skin, puffy hair, blue eyes. I don’t know if you do names, but his is Michael, if you do.”
“I know of whom you speak. This particular individual is a repeat customer. So tell me why I would give you information about him.”
“He beat and raped one of your girls.”
“Someone’s been telling tales out of school? That isn’t nice of her.”
Margot felt murderous rage rise. “So you are okay with your women, your merchandise, being abused?”
Sitting back, his pose regal, Rodney quietly regarded the woman who sat in front of him, probably aware of his resume, and watched every nuance of her body language. She should be shaking. She should be on her knees, working his dick, is what he thought, but she sat there like a fucking queen, asking something she had no right to know. He might have never seen a more beautiful woman.
She impressed him. Rodney would admit, only in the deepest recesses of his mind, that she was worlds away better than him and anyone he ever knew, except for one. With courage like she displayed, he thought that he might give her the stars. But he couldn’t be weak, couldn’t show favoritism, couldn’t let her know she got to him.
“So, you want what?”
“I want to know where he is. Did you send him to someone? Did you send someone to him? I need to stop him from hurting another woman. I know what you do, I know what you sell. I get that it’s a viable business in areas like this, but it can’t be good for you to have women who can’t work, right? How can a woman do what she needs to if she’s physically injured or emotionally traumatized? I’m asking for you to touch your humanity and protect your own workers. Doesn’t that make sense to you?”
Rodney’s eyes went to his men, still holding on this woman’s bodyguard. The bodyguard…fuck, what a bigass guy! How come he couldn’t find someone like that for his crew?
She made sense. He didn’t like it when his clients hurt his girls. He’d accepted that it was part of the culture…men who paid for sex were rarely upstanding citizens. Still, she brought his attention to this man, and that made the subject open, so he would deal with it.
“No. It doesn’t make for good business. Okay, and you plan to do what?”
“I plan to stop him. At least for the moment, to protect the woman he’s with. I’m an attorney and I’ll make sure he’s stopped permanently.”
“No law enforcement. Not anywhere near my business.”
“It won’t touch you. I promise, I’ll keep you out of it. But you can’t stand by and let this happen.”
Margot paused, her eyes locked on this man from the wrong side of the law, from the world she lived in. His eyes stayed on hers, too. Dark, shiny, liquid stillness, she saw something there, something that told her she wasn’t wrong that this man would care.
“Yeah,” he finally said as he exhaled. “I can’t have my merchandise damaged. I’ll take care of him, though. You, go back to your white neighborhood of candy and cream. You don’t belong here.”
“But I need to…”
Rodney leaned forward. “Lady, we’re done here. I said I would take care of it, and I will. You don’t know me, but I am a man of my word. Now, unless you want to take a ride on the Rodman’s rod, you two follow my boys out the door and I don’t see you here again.”
He lifted a hand covered with a huge black spider with bright red eyes. One of the armed men walked up behind Margot.
“Now, sweetheart, I’m only gonna say this for edification and then things are gonna get tense. I don’t ask twice.”
Xavier stepped forward to help Margot as she tried to stand. Her stiletto heels were caught in between two rough boards that formed the floor. She pulled her arm free as soon as she was up. With a sharp glance at Xavier and then another at Rodney, she let his guard lead her through several turns and out into the night in front of the building that did indeed look abandoned. Not one window in the place was unbroken, every one of them boarded up, the boards covered with graffiti.
As they moved back towards Lucky’s place, Margot broke the silence with a low laugh. “I think that went well, don’t you?”
“We lived through it, that’s a start.”
“Aye,” she said, mimicking Xavier.
Nearly to the bar, Margot stopped him with a hand on his arm. The hard muscle and bulk felt good against her fingers, which, of their own volition, began to caress his warm skin. “Thank you, for coming with me. I don’t know if I would have had the same respect that I did with you there. Things might well have turned out differently if I’d been alone. I’m impetuous, and I shouldn’t have even considered going alone, but I was just so pissed off to think that Michael might be hurting someone, and that if I knew that, I was somehow culpable. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you.”
Frozen as still as the first two of the fixerman’s guards, Xavier tried to ignore Margot’s fingers as they moved up and down his wrist and slid into the palm of his hand. It was apparent to him that he intensely needed to get laid if just this casual caress turned him on, and oh, fuck, it did.
“Ah, sure, lass. I couldn’t in good conscience have let ya go alone.”
“I could s
ee that. I don’t say something like this too often, and if you knew my childhood, you’d understand, but I think you’re a good man. The world could use more of your kind.”
Your kind. Why did that phrase strike him as so familiar? Your kind? What did that mean to him?
“Anyway, I guess I’ll go see if my car is driveable at all. As long as it’s safe enough to get me home, I’ll get it out of here.”
“I’ll come with ya.”
“No, really, you’ve done enough.”
“It’s in a dark alley where it’s already been destroyed, I’m comin’ with ya.”
He followed Margot around the side of the building to the skeletonized car. Before tonight, it had been a nice sports car. Now, it was a stripped-down carcass that skilled people might be able to save…or not.
The tires were gone, the interior torn away, including the steering wheel, and the trunk open and empty.
“Ah, lass, I’m sorry about yer car.”
Margot looked at the keys in her hand and slipped them back into her satchel. “Crime fighting is supposed to have its rewards, but this really sucks. It was a good car. I guess I’ll call a taxi.”
“Come on inside with me, then.”
“Yeah…”
Sliding her cell phone from her bag, Margot hit #1 for the third time tonight. “Freddie,” she sighed into the phone.”
“Shit, Margot, I’ve left 3 text messages and 4 voice messages. Are you okay?”
“I am, but my car isn’t. Can you have a taxi pick me up? I’m at…”
She looked up at Xavier as he led her through the door into the bar. The music with a country western tone was too loud and she followed him through the swinging door into the kitchen again.
“Sorry, Fred, yeah, it’s the same bar I told you about before, The Blind Spot in the Smoke.”
“Are you sure you’re okay? Are you safe?”
“I’m good, really. Full report tomorrow, I promise. Just have him wait outside, I’ll come out. Thanks. Get some sleep now.”
After she dropped her phone back into her bag, Margot looked up at Xavier, and suddenly felt awkward. “You know, I think I’m going to wait outside the door for my ride. Do you think it’s safe?”