by Amy Vansant
“Come inside with me?” she asked.
He shook his head. “I’ll wait.”
Damn.
She’d guessed right. He didn’t want to be seen with a potential victim.
She glanced at the bar with the most worried look she could manufacture. “Um...”
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing. There’s a bartender in there giving me a hard time. If he saw you...”
She reached through the window to feel his bicep, hard and bulgy.
He watched her hand on his arm and then looked up at her from beneath a lowered brow. Her request for protection had ignited something primal in him.
“I can hang in the back and look scary if you think that’ll do it?” His tone implied he’d do much more, if needed.
She squealed with delight as he cut the engine and joined her.
“Yer like a knight in shiny armor.”
His chest puffed as they walked to the entrance. Shee chanted in her head.
Please be there. Please be there...
Inside, she scanned the staff. All the bartenders were women dressed in Daisy Dukes and red-checkered midriff-tied shirts made out of what looked like picnic blankets.
All female staff. Figures.
Scotty’s dubious expression telegraphed he’d noticed the same thing.
“You got a dyke hitting on you?” he asked.
“No. He’s probably in the back. He’s more like a bouncer.”
She continued scanning until she spotted her father in a booth to the left.
Thank God.
In the mirror on the wall behind him, she clocked the reflection of his boothmate. Female, of course.
She motioned in Mick’s general direction. “I have to grab my check. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay.”
She walked toward Mick’s booth, slowly, willing him to look at her.
Look at me and recognize him. Look. Look, look, look—
She was nearly on him before Mick pulled his gaze off his ladyfriend and noticed her.
“Shee? What are you—?”
He was going to say wearing, of that she was sure. She didn’t usually expose her belly and roll up her shorts until the curve of her butt cheeks saw the sun. Hopefully, he’d surmise by her attire something was up.
“Grab my wrist,” she said, letting her arm swing wide and flashing her eyes to show she meant it.
“What?” Mick scowled, a string of emotions passing over his expression like clouds—confusion, embarrassment, concern—but his hand whipped out and caught her arm. They’d been working together for too long. Like a well-seasoned improv group, they knew how to read each other. How to listen.
“Jack,” she whined, pretending to pull away but grabbing his arm with her opposite hand to keep him from letting go.
She looked toward Scotty, pretending to panic. He saw. After a quick scan of the room to see if anyone else was watching, he strode toward her.
“Recognize him?” she said to her father bouncing her eyes in Scotty’s direction.
Mick watched Scotty approach. She saw the moment the boy’s face clicked in his brain.
“That kid you wanted to—”
“Is this the guy?” asked Scotty, bumping into the back of Shee in his eagerness to show strength.
A rapist trying to protect her from her father.
Score one for irony.
Mick released her arm and stood.
Scotty poked his shoulder. “Back off, old man.”
The dark-haired woman in the booth couldn’t have widened her eyes any farther without them dropping to the table like dice. Mick’s puffing chest apparently aroused her.
Ew.
Shee took a step back to position herself at Scotty’s side. She motioned to the angry young man threatening to hit her father.
“Remember Scotty Carson?” she asked.
Scotty’s focus swiveled to her. “Wha—”
Fear flashed in his eyes.
He turned to bolt, but she’d expected it and thrust out a leg. With little room to maneuver between the row of booths and the tables, he couldn’t avoid the trip. He stumbled, slowing his retreat long enough for Mick to grab his shirt and horse-collar him backwards.
Shee whipped the cuffs from her purse and handed them to Mick. He clamped them on Scotty’s right wrist. Scotty twisted, swinging with his left. Shee saw it coming a moment too late and her jaw shifted hard to the right.
He screamed.
“Bitch!”
Shee caught her balance against a lacquer-covered table, her jaw already aching. She refused to raise a hand to it. She didn’t want her mark to know he’d hurt her.
Scotty’s eyes grew white and wild. He seemed oblivious to Mick cuffing him, so intent was he to reach her. Mick had to kick his knees out to stop him from pulling toward her.
Shee smirked as he dropped to his knees. “Those grade-school girls must have been merciless for you to hate women this much.”
She’d practiced the line in her head for days.
Her father’s raven-haired date barked a laugh. She’d slid from the booth and taken a place behind Mick against the wall, safe, but close enough to watch the action.
Shee eyed her. She didn’t seem like her father’s usual passing conquest. A calm aura of confidence and intelligence surrounded her.
Give them five more minutes alone and he’ll be in love.
Shee looked away to find Scotty’s angry stare bearing down on her. Being duped by a woman seemed to infuriate him more than being captured. The photos of the black-eyed, bloodied-lipped women he’d abused at the Academy made sense now. It wasn’t enough to rape them. He wanted to hurt them. He’d probably loved that they’d fought so hard.
“Call the cops.” Mick tapped her arm and snapped her from her murderous thoughts.
Shee looked at him, her mind slow to shift gears.
“Cops?” she echoed.
“We need a place to keep him until the master-at-arms can get here. He wasn’t scheduled to come until tomorrow for our other case.”
Shee heard the annoyance in her father’s voice. There would be a reckoning for her freelancing. She sensed it was all he could do to keep from scolding her on the spot.
It didn’t matter.
I got him.
His date’s attention had shifted from Mick to Shee.
“You’re his daughter?” she asked as Mick jerked Scotty to his feet.
Shee nodded and the woman turned her gaze back to Mick.
“So you really are a bounty hunter?”
Mick’s eyebrows arched. “Yes. You thought I was lying?”
The woman shrugged. “You have to admit. Bounty hunter makes for a sexy pickup line.”
She reached into her purse and withdrew a man’s black leather wallet. Shee recognized it.
It was Mick’s.
Mick risked taking one hand off Scotty to snatch it from her hand.
“That’s mine,” he said, slipping it back into his back pocket. “You lifted it?”
She smiled, all teeth and ruby lips. “That’s what liars get.”
“But I wasn’t lying.”
She pointed a finger at him and clucked her tongue, as if her hand was a tiny gun. “That’s why you get it back.”
Mick grinned, noticed Shee watching, and cleared his throat, wiping away any lingering trace of amusement.
Already in rapture from her victory, Shee found herself in love with the woman playing her father like a fiddle.
“Who are you?” she asked.
The woman held out a hand to shake. “Angelina. Nice to meet you.”
“Shee.” Shee shook her hand before sensing the weight of her father’s stare.
“Can you go make the phone call please?” he asked, pressing a writhing Scotty to the wall as Angelina skittered out of the way.
“Oh, right. Sorry.”
Shee bounced toward the bar, unable to control her giddiness.
; &&&
Chapter Fifteen
Present Day
Bracco dragged Captain Rupert’s rug-wrapped body from the Cadillac’s trunk and hefted it over his shoulder before walking it to the edge of the grave. The body bent neatly, the rigor mortis having worn off.
As Bracco lowered him to the grass, the rug slipped from his tired fingers. The weight of the body spilled over the edge of the freshly dug grave unfurling the carpet like a flag. The old soldier’s body dropped on top of his wife’s exposed coffin with a hollow thud and a collective gasp from the crowd.
Angelina and Croix rose from the bench and scurried over. The four of them peered down at the dead man lying akimbo on his wife’s coffin, jaws slack.
Captain Rupert had landed face down, his skinny butt arched toward the moon as if he’d died in the act of making love to his wife’s corpse.
“We can’t leave him like that,” said Angelina.
“It’s a far cry from a twenty-one-gun salute,” agreed Shee.
Bracco grunted and lowered himself into the hole. With some difficulty and a collection of tools shepherded from the Cadillac by Croix, he opened the coffin and slipped Captain Rupert in with his wife’s bones, face up, like a gentleman.
The lid refused to reseal on the double-stuffed casket. Bracco pushed and groaned for over ten minutes until it snapped into place. Finished, he looked up, triumphant, only to realize he couldn’t climb back out of the grave.
“Pole isn’t sky,” he said in his gibberish, sounding defeated.
Croix picked up Bracco’s shovel and handed it to Shee.
“We’ll have to fill it in so he can climb out.”
Shee glowered at Angelina, who smiled before settling back on the bench.
“Isn’t it nice to be back?”
Croix started tossing dirt into the hole. Shee matched her shovel by shovel. Some primal part of her wanted to prove to the snot-nosed brat she wasn’t old.
Croix picked up speed.
Shee paralleled her effort.
The girl’s a machine.
By the time she’d finished, muscles screaming and soaked in sweat, Shee knew her pride had been a grave mistake.
Ha.
Not even her silent pun offered any joy.
They gathered to say a prayer and then shuffled back to the car. Lifting her shovel into the trunk, Shee groaned, and then tried to cover it by coughing.
She stared at the passenger-side back door as Croix and Angelina entered on the opposite side, unsure she could lift her arm to open the door.
Bracco opened it for her.
“Thank you,” she said, unsure of the last time she’d felt that grateful.
“Noodles,” he said.
Sliding into the car, Shee closed her eyes and fell back on the one thing that could distract her from her pain.
Obsessing about her father’s condition.
She’d left for years in order to protect him. In the end, it hadn’t mattered.
She couldn’t help feeling she was the reason he’d been shot.
An endless loop of regret and worry filled her stomach with sour acid until she could taste it rising toward her tongue. A clammy, prickly sensation broadcast across her cheeks and forehead. It took her a moment to recognize the sensation.
Oh no.
“Pull over.”
“What?” asked Angelina.
“Pull over.”
Angelina took one look at her before leaning forward to tap Bracco’s shoulder and echo her order.
“Pull over.”
Bracco guided his tank toward the shoulder of the road and Shee opened the door, spilling out before the car stopped.
She dropped to her hands and knees.
Back arching, she threw up.
Her gagging sounded like a jet engine in the silence of the night. Mortified, she fought a second wave.
Don’t do it. Don’t you do it—
Footsteps on the gravel approached.
Heels.
“Are you okay?” asked Angelina.
She nodded and spat. “I’m sorry.”
“You should have let Croix finish the grave.”
“Yup.”
“I saw you trying to beat her. You’re not twenty.”
“Nope.”
Shee wiped her mouth and stood, waving away Angelina’s offer to help her to her feet. She closed her eyes.
Think about the work, not the worry. Think about what you can change. What you can do. Think about—shit, my arms hurt.
Her eyes opened again.
“Are you okay?” asked Angelina.
Shee nodded and clambered back into the car. Angelina rounded the vehicle and reentered on her side.
Bracco pulled back onto the road. They rode in silence for another twenty minutes until they pulled into the Inn’s parking lot.
Angelina put a hand on Shee’s leg.
“Come with me.”
Shee followed. She had to—she couldn’t open doors without help. Her shoulders throbbed, a muscle against her right rib felt detached, and somehow, her hand had blistered, even through borrowed gloves. She felt less like she’d dug a grave and more like she’d clawed out of one.
Croix bolted through the front door before anyone else could reach the stairs and disappeared inside. She didn’t seem sore.
Bitch.
Angelina watched the girl go and then looked at Shee. “This has been hard on her.”
Shee grunted.
Angelina opened the screen door. “Having her here was a little like having you back—”
“I got it.”
She walked inside before she had to touch the door. All she wanted to do was go to sleep for a week.
Outside, Bracco pulled away. Bouncing Harley appeared, yapping and twirling, clearly thrilled to see Mommy had returned. Angelina scooped her up.
She kissed the dog and looked at Shee. “Follow me.”
Shee trailed into the elevator. Angelina pulled a key on a long silver chain from between her bosom, took a moment to untangle the squiggling dog from it, and unlocked the penthouse button on the elevator’s panel.
The elevator lurched upward. Thirty seconds later, the metal doors split, revealing a long left-right hallway and a door directly across from them. Angelina knocked on the door and then opened it with another key from the same chain.
Shee’s mind flooded with memories at the sight of her father’s apartment,. As she’d suspected from what she’d seen through the drone camera, little had changed. Dark leather furniture crowded around a television almost big enough to mount in Times Square. The TV was a new addition. Televisions didn’t come bigger than a barn wall back when last she’d visited.
The walls had been repainted a neutral gray, a modern twist on the neutral cream they’d been fifteen-odd years ago. Nothing had frills, soft edges or pastels.
Clearly, her father had remained a bachelor. Shee was surprised to find no sign Angelina had moved in. She could tick off forty reasons why their relationship would have ended with one or both of them dead or incarcerated—their on-again, off-again was the stuff of legends. But still, with them both getting older, she’d thought maybe...
The dark-skinned woman she’d seen on the sofa that day with the drone sat in the same spot, back to the window, a Kindle reader in her lap and a bag of what looked like knitting beside her.
She awoke as the two entered.
“Still here?” asked Angelina.
The woman nodded and gathered her things. “Mi fall asleep,” she said with a deep Jamaican accent.
Angelina motioned from the nurse to Shee and back. “Martisha, this is Mick’s daughter, Siofra.”
Shee nodded. “You can call me Shee.”
The woman grinned. “Nice fi meet yuh.”
Angelina tugged Shee’s arm toward the next room and, with an apologetic smile to the nurse, moved into her father’s bedroom.
The room smelled of antiseptic. Shee recoiled at the memory of every hospital
she’d ever had the misfortune of visiting.
Her father occupied a metal-trimmed adjustable bed, lying in the same supine position she’d noted through the drone. From what she could tell, he hadn’t moved a finger.
“You can talk to him,” said Angelina, urging her forward.
Shee fought against Angelina’s prodding. “Can he hear me?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I talk to him as if he can. I read somewhere it helps. I dunno.”
Shee took another step and then stopped again, her gaze tracing the white sheets outlining her father’s body.
“I assume you’re staying here tonight?” asked Angelina.
Shee pointed to the floor. “Here?”
“In the hotel.”
Shee thought about the suitcase in her car. She’d packed and checked out of her hotel room before coming to the Loggerhead, though at the time, she wasn’t sure if she’d been planning on staying or running.
She nodded. “Yes. If you have room?”
Angelina laughed. “Mick doesn’t advertise just so he always has rooms free for his pet projects. I swear he gives himself bad reviews online just to keep us empty.” She sat in a chair against the wall. “Your room down the hall is ready to go.” She paused and then added, “It has been for years.”
Shee returned her attention to her father.
Mick looked ashen and frail, nothing like the larger-than-life creature she’d left. She touched his hand and found it cool, his skin thin.
Her eye traveled to his neck. She pulled down the collar of his pajamas.
“Does it look like his throat is bruised to you?”
Angelina stood and flipped on the overhead lights before joining her bedside. Shee pushed the collar of her father’s pajamas aside to get a better look.
“Almost looks like finger marks,” said Angelina, peering over her shoulder.
“It does, doesn’t it?” Shee pulled down the blankets and unbuttoned the pajama top. There were no other marks on his upper torso. She lifted his arm and pulled up his sleeves.
“Here.” She pointed to scratch marks on the back of his arm. “These look fresh.”
Angelina’s brow knitted. “Maybe he fell out of bed?”
“In a coma?”
“Maybe she dropped him trying to change the sheets?”
Shee frowned. “Does that happen?”