“You’re staring at me,” she said and didn’t sound happy about it. “I mean, really staring. Chill.”
“Uh…” He felt like a teenager who’d been busted. “Your dad said to – ”
“Well, he’s not here and you’re freaking my customers out.”
“Hey, Lis.” Eddie’s voice drew both their attentions. “You alright? ‘Cause I was thinking…” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder and Drew followed it with his eyes to see Leopard Dress heading toward the dance floor, wineglass in hand.
He was disappointed in the guy. You didn’t take payment for a job you were going to flake off on. You just didn’t.
But Lisa rolled her eyes and nodded. “I think the newbie’s got it covered. Go.”
Newbie? He waited for it, and it came: her condescending stare. She was on edge tonight, more so than usual. At the shop, she’d seemed in control of her attitude, but here, tonight, she wasn’t trying to hide her dislike for him. There were daggers in her eyes tonight.
“I was serious about the staring,” she said, and turned her back to him, off to tend to another customer.
Humoring her, he made a slow, visual sweep of the rest of the bar, his eyes feeling overstimulated. The place was a circus. The music – a strange playlist of rock, pop and hip-hop – was so loud the foot rail on the bar vibrated beneath his sneakers, and still he could hear shrieks of laughter and a tumbling swell of voices above it. There were so many people, too many to properly make out anyone’s face, or to see if there were any questionable figures lurking in corners. At least, Drew assumed he was supposed to be looking for lurkers.
Ray had been vague, apparently, and Sly probably more so. All he’d been told was that he was supposed to not let anything happened to Lisa. Only, what constituted “anything?” And was this anything going to be a big enough problem that he would need Eddie’s help? He hoped not, because the guy had vanished into the press of humanity and likely wouldn’t be back.
When he looked at Lisa again, he picked up on her defensive posture immediately. The bar was a long rectangle and she stood in the far corner of it, as far away from him as she could be, and was squared off from two male customers. Both looked around her age. One was a half head taller than the other and skinny in an awkward sort of way. The other was tan, dark-haired and had one of those obnoxious male model-type faces, white teeth flashing as he smiled a false, predatory smile. Drew had no hope of knowing what was said, and he couldn’t read lips. But Lisa’s demeanor had changed completely. Stress lines crimped the corners of her eyes and her arms were folded over her chest. He’d seen her do the lean-and-squeeze all evening in between eye rolls and sighs in an effort to rake in tips, but whoever these guys were, she wasn’t willing to play the game with them.
This definitely counted as “anything.”
Against his better judgment, he waited until she came back his way to take two beers out of the cooler. “Lisa.”
Her green eyes were wide and almost startled as her head swiveled in his direction. She was definitely jumpier than she had been. But she schooled her features. “What?”
“Who are those guys down there?”
She pulled two Coors Lights and popped the tops off along the edge of the bar. “Just some assholes I know.” Her tone was clipped. “It’s fine.”
“Your dad – ” he started to protest.
“Fine,” she cut him off and walked away with a look that was meant as a warning.
Except that it wasn’t. No one had ever mistaken him for intelligent – he’d been told the opposite was true his whole life – but there was a difference between smart and dumb. He wasn’t dumb. He watched Lisa set the beers in front of the two men and saw the tremor in her hands, interpreted the look on her face as pure revulsion.
The guys – Mr. White Teeth and Mr. Adam’s Apple – leaned their heads together and shared a laugh, their eyes on Lisa’s retreating back.
When she passed in front of Drew again a few minutes later, he snaked a hand across the bar and caught her wrist. His fingers went all the way around her delicate little bones and overlapped one another, so he didn’t squeeze, but held. Whatever pink cocktail was in the martini glass she held slopped out over the side, running down his hand.
“What?” she snapped, eyes flashing.
He didn’t back down. “Who are those guys? I’m not here to drink. I’m supposed to be watching you.”
He hadn’t intended to shout, but he must have, because the men sitting on either side of him were suddenly staring, curious, their beer bottles hovering in front of their faces.
Lisa’s mouth drew up in a tight, angry bow. “Watch any harder and your eyes are gonna pop outta your head.” When she yanked away from him, he let her go, getting showered with pink chick drink again.
The guy to his left, a middle-aged fan of leather bomber jackets and too much hair gel, snorted. “Maybe you shouldn’t let your girl work here.”
Drew didn’t correct his assumption. “No shit.” He picked up his beer again and wondered where the hell Eddie was.
15
Lisa had been sure that Tristan’s stranglehold on her life had ended the day she left him gaping after her on the altar. As it turned out, the egotistical jackass couldn’t stand the notion that a girl had left him, rather than the other way around, and insisted on harassing her when he felt like it. She wanted to say she’d grown accustomed to it, but she couldn’t – he was just too much of an asshole for his presence not to bother her.
Tonight, he’d brought his buddy Nick along. Nick who’d always been the gangliest, most awkward of the group of friends, and the one who, through no coincidence, always made Tristan look twice as handsome. He was a geek who had a laugh like the bray of a donkey, and he never missed a chance to hurl it in her direction.
“…I’m just saying,” Tristan continued as Lisa carried two pint glasses of Heineken to her next customers and forced a smile for them as she tried to ignore her ex. “We both know you’re gonna say ‘yes,’ so you might as well not say ‘no’ now.”
If she’d been a pot on the stove, her thermometer would have shattered by now. She felt red; hot and red and full of loathing. How had she ever held any affection for this man? She’d told him she’d loved him. She’d agreed to marry him! How? Just how? What a stupid, naïve little fool she’d been.
Now, she wasn’t even bitter, she was just tired. Her hatred for Tristan was not, she told herself with conviction, because she had any residual feelings for the prick, but because she had no room in her life for him or anyone like him.
“I’m not gonna say no,” she told him, sparing him her darkest of looks, “I’m gonna say hell no, and you’re gonna shut your damn face.”
Nick let loose with one of his donkey laughs, his skinny, pimply cheeks turning bright red.
Tristan’s smile tightened, but he persisted. “You know my mom always loved you – ”
“Your mother hated me!” Lisa halted, though she knew she shouldn’t have. She wiped beer and condensation off her hands onto her apron and glared at him. “She always did! So just stop it.”
“Don’t be sore at me,” he defended. “I just think it’d be good for you is all. You spend all your time with those…mechanics…of your dad’s and I think you need – ”
“I need for you to get the hell out of this bar,” she hissed, and hated the smug look that spread across his tan face.
“Only trying to help, Lis.”
She ground her teeth together and closed her eyes, willing herself to calm down. I’m at work, she reminded herself. Don’t make a scene.
“Miss?” someone inquired from down the bar and she headed that direction. Three women who looked like moms having a night out ordered appletinis and she walked the long way around the bar to fill their order.
Drew leaned forward to catch her attention as she passed him and she stopped, sighing, wanting to avoid him grabbing at her again. “I know,” she said in a defeated voice. “You’re tryi
ng to do your job.”
“I am.” He nodded and shot a pointed glance down the bar toward Tristan that was comical in its focus and gravity. He hadn’t enjoyed his evening for a second. Had only had half a beer. For a moment, he reminded her so much of her dog, Lisa felt a softening toward him.
Poor guy. “It’s fine,” she said again, and patted the top of his head before she could change her mind and before he could give her a curious glance. His hair was soft and spiky against her palm.
She was fine, but far from pleasant, because when she was forced to circle back around and check on Tristan and Nick – they were paying, after all – the two were whispering, laughing and staring at her in a show of childish gossip.
“Lis,” Tristan said when she was close enough to hear. “Stop being difficult. You and me, we’re friends.” Nick sniggered beside him. “And I want my friend – ”
“To come to your wife’s baby shower? Are you kidding me?” She controlled her anger and it was a tight ball of nastiness in her voice. “And news flash, dumbass, we’re not friends.”
Nick turned around on his stool and covered his mouth with his hand, presumably braying some more.
Tristan, full of pretend patience now that they were no longer together, made a tsk-ing sound. “Do you have any friends?” he asked, looking delighted with himself. “Not too many people out there who’d put up with that temper.”
In what alternate dimension would Missy want me at her baby shower? Was what she wanted to scream at him. Instead, she took a deep, somewhat steadying breath, averted her eyes up over his head…and saw that Drew was standing behind him. “Oh, God, no,” she said. “Do not.”
“Don’t what?” Tristan grumbled, and turned.
Though masterful when it came to false niceties, Tristan couldn’t conceal his sudden alarm. Lisa saw his body tense, registered the momentary shock she could see on the half of his face that was still visible to her.
“Do not,” Lisa repeated to Drew, and was rewarded with a brief touch of his eyes against hers in which he plainly told her to screw off.
“Dude.” Tristan looked the boxer up and down. “Ya mind?”
As much as Lisa might have enjoyed boxing as a sport – when it was contained within a ring with refs and gloves and rules – she had no desire to see it right here in the bar where she worked. “No, he doesn’t mind,” she said in a rush, but was ignored.
As she watched, Drew scowled. “Leave her alone.”
Lisa groaned. Where the hell was Eddie?
“Leave her alone?” Tristan repeated. He chuckled. “Are you serious right now?”
Drew’s face screwed up and Lisa didn’t know if it was because he was embarrassed, or because he was angry. Either seemed probable.
“What?” Tristan went on. “You like her?” He gestured toward Lisa with his beer bottle and laughed. “Trust me, bro, you don’t wanna bother.”
Had they been anywhere but her job site, Lisa would have backhanded him. She was done. Past done – with this farce of a conversation and everything about Tristan’s smirky face. But she was at work, which meant she had to swallow her loathing.
Drew, though…bless his heart, she thought in some small part of her very Southern brain that smacked of her mother…he was trying to be a good watch dog. Like Hektor, he had his hackles up and was smelling out a threat. Or, at least, what he thought was a threat. Maybe she should have explained who Tristan was. Maybe she should have allayed his fears with more tact…
Because suddenly Tristan was on his feet and trying to push Drew back away from him, Nick coming to lend assistance. You idiot, she thought of Tristan. What a stupid damn idiot. Because people who’d been raised and trained to fight had triggers. You did not push a boxer.
She was scrambling over the top of the bar, heedless of her skirt and heels and all the reasons she should not be climbing anything, yelling for them to move away from each other. But Drew’s fist was already in motion. When it collided with the side of Tristan’s face, Lisa didn’t know if the crack she heard was hand or cheek breaking. Or maybe both.
The night manager was a heavyset, thirty-something, balding man who would have looked more at home at a comic book convention. He walked ahead of them down a hall that, due to its utter plainness, could only have been meant for staff, his key card dangling from a pudgy hand by a Batman lanyard. “What room did you say you were in?” he asked, twisting his head around as far as he could manage on a thick neck.
“Two-oh-three,” Ray lied with ease. He had his hands in his pockets and had smoothed his face into a neutral expression. He was just a guy coming to look for his luggage.
The manager nodded and kept moving forward, panting as he waddled. “The housekeeping staff is supposed to bring down any recovered items and then label them according to room number.” He shrugged. “Here’s hoping, huh?”
The lost-and-found was at the end of the hall, behind a door whose marker proclaimed Staff Only. The manager slid his key card through the reader and the lock clicked open with an electronic beep. The lights were already on and at first glance, the room appeared to be a storage space for janitorial supplies – metal shelves full of industrial bottles of cleaner and spare mop heads lining the walls. But in the center, two cafeteria style tables were overflowing with personal effects, everything from shaving kits to briefcases to tubes of lipstick. Suitcases had been stuffed beneath.
But Ray didn’t let his eyes linger on any of it, because in the corner of the room, sitting at a card table with a microwave on top of it, was Carl Shilling. He didn’t see them at first, was staring down into a Styrofoam cup of black coffee. He was thinner than Ray remembered. He’d lost that golden golf course tan and the sun streaks in his dark hair. Now he looked ten years older, gray at the temples, a haggard patchwork of silver stubble covering sunken cheeks. In a green jumpsuit, a mess of keys hooked to his belt, he looked anything but threatening…or even cunning.
But the hairy arms and wrists his folded-back sleeves revealed still looked strong. The hands that had broken his wife’s neck were still big and full of death.
“Two-oh-three, you said?” the manager asked. He leaned forward at the waist, his huge belly stopping him short, and began fumbling under the table to check tags. “It’d be under here if it’s been found.”
“I’ll help you look,” Mark offered, and Ray watched his brother position himself between the manager and the corner where Carl was sitting, giving Ray the briefest of windows. It wasn’t much help, but it was all the help he could offer. He was a good brother like that most of the time.
Ray was glad he’d had a chance to give the man a once-over before he was spotted, because Carl had lifted his head at the sound of Mark’s voice, and now his eyes went wide as they found and recognized his former attorney.
“A lotta help you were.”
“This isn’t my fault.” Eddie was so earnest and righteous about the whole thing, it was comical. Lisa might have laughed if she wasn’t digging for a first aid kit in the nightmarish clutter beneath the utility sink in the Double Vision break room. “How was I supposed to know he’s this big of a dumbass?”
Lisa twisted around – she was halfway inside the cabinet – and saw that Drew was still sitting on the bench between the two walls of lockers, staring at the toes of his sneakers, expressionless and silent. She almost felt sorry for him, for reasons she didn’t quite understand. All the tenacity he’d exhibited when he’d not only punched Tristan, but flattened the douchebag back over the bar, had bled out of him. Lisa’s manager had come charging in and bouncers had materialized…it had been a huge scene. It had taken no small amount of pleading to get the guys back here in the break room and keep Drew out of the backseat of a police cruiser.
“Whatever happened to leading by example?” she fired back.
A scowl darkened Eddie’s handsome face and for a moment, he looked less of a playboy and more the military man he’d once been. Unlike Sly, there were two sides to Eddie O�
�Dell, and Lisa didn’t think either of them were all that pretty, physical traits aside. If he didn’t work for her dad, if she hadn’t been given unspoken permission to act as his employer when Ray or Mark were absent, she might have bitten her tongue around him. Might have, but probably not.
“Nevermind,” she said, backing out from under the cabinet empty-handed. “Just go on and do whoever you need to do. I’ll bring him back to the house.”
Eddie held her gaze a moment, his eyes brimming with threats he knew he couldn’t and shouldn’t make, but then he backed down, leaving with a muttered curse. The door swung shut loudly behind him, the music like a wave as it crashed inside the room and then faded back to a dull thudding from the other side of the walls.
Drew was still a living statue on the bench, his right hand resting on his knee. His knuckles were red with the first kiss of a bruise that would probably turn purple later, and Lisa thought she could see swelling. Tristan’s left eye had been a watery slit when Nick had led him from the bar, the tissue around his eye socket broken and bleeding; she didn’t doubt his orbital was fractured.
“What happened to the ice I gave you?” she asked as she stepped up in front of him and knelt to look more closely at the damage.
He moved for the first time since sitting down, reaching over for the leaking Ziploc bag of half-melted ice that should have been on his knuckles.
Lisa waited, expecting him to look up at her, to say something, to insist he was fine or tell her to back off or brag or…something. But he kept his head down. She could see his lashes flutter as he blinked, but otherwise he remained motionless.
“Can you move your fingers?” she asked, and they drummed against his knee in response. She saw the tremor race up his arm though. Carefully, as if approaching a startled animal, she reached up and took his hand in both of hers. It was big and heavy and all bones and tendons. When she palpated his knuckles, she heard his breath catch, and she knew why when she felt what reminded her of shattered glass beneath his skin. “You need to go have this X-rayed.” Lisa dropped his hand, but stayed on her knees.
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