“Of course,” Harley agreed.
Callum looked over at Da and studied his sculpture. “I have no friggin’ clue what that is.”
“It’s a bottle of whiskey.”
Callum smiled. “I should have known. Ma, please tell me that is a donut, you want a Department of Donuts.”
“I was going for that circle thing men wear around their you-know-whats.”
I hid my face.
“It’s called a cock ring, Colleen,” Harley informed her.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“I have no clue what the rest of you sculpted.” Callum passed the card off.
“Chicken,” Piper whispered.
“You bet your sweet ass I am. When your ma is shaping cock rings out of Play-Doh tell me how long you are going to play a game.”
“I’ll go.” Sadie grabbed the stack and lifted the top card. She got a huge smile and then read. “If you can’t be with the one you love, love blank.”
Harley set her dick down on the table, took another piece of Play-Doh, and rolled it super thin and long. I decided to go safe, and took two pieces and laid one over the other.
When time was up, we all set our creations down. “Let’s see, Harley is going to still love dick,” Sadie said. “Oh, wait, electrical, vibrator, got it.” We all laughed and then Sadie turned to Aiden. “Really? That’s easy, love your hand.”
“Of course you do. Lot of chaffing?” Harley asked. Aiden flipped her off.
Da smacked his forehead. “I’m going to handcuff the two of you together and leave you both for dead on the side of the road.”
Sadie just shook her head and then studied mine. “A cross, love God?”
I nodded. “Be a nun.” I crossed myself.
Sadie leaned back in the chair. “Patrick, am I seeing a pattern here?”
Da chuckled. “A bottle of whiskey.”
Sadie passed the cards to Piper. Piper tried, “During—” She cracked up laughing and we couldn’t understand her. “During sex, oh my god, no no.” Piper was laughing so hard tears were rolling down her face. She had to read the card three times before she got it all out. “Sorry, I’m already imagining the answers. Okay, let me try again. During sex, I like to think about blank.”
When neither Harley nor Da changed their answers, we decided that either the game was a bust or we were all seriously demented.
“New rule for the next game,” Kat said. “From now on, you can only use an answer one time. Once you make it, you have to mess it up.”
“I agree.” I nodded.
“Me, too,” Piper said.
I started putting the Play-Doh away, while Piper stacked the cards. Ma, Da, and my brothers said their goodbyes. Finally it was just me and the girls.
“Hey, I need to get a few sports bras. Anyone want to ride up to Wally World with me?” Harley asked.
“I’ll go.” I grabbed my house keys.
“Me, too, I need some more hair clips. And I don’t care what anyone says, scrunchies will never be back in fashion,” Sadie explained.
“Word,” Piper agreed.
Trips to Walmart were epic when we all went. The five of us walking in were a force—or rather, we were a scare tactic.
Unfortunately, Harley was one of those creatures that you couldn’t take anywhere. She walked into Walmart and took an immediate left turn. “No. You said bras. They are this way.”
“I know, I know. I just want to pick something up real quick.”
I shook my head, watching as she disappeared down an aisle and appeared a second later with three boxes of condoms. She had no intention of buying them or leaving the store with them.
As we made our way back through the store, Harley wandered up and down rows. When innocent, unsuspecting people stepped away from their carts, Harley dropped a box of condoms inside. She loved seeing if anyone got up to the counter before they realized they were in there, or if it caused some kind of drama with couples shopping together. It always created drama.
After she’d dropped the last box, I grabbed her arm and dragged her over to the lingerie section.
“What color?” Sadie asked as she flipped through hangers of sports bras.
“Nude, they’re for under my uniform,” Harley answered.
“Here you go.” Sadie handed Harley several bras.
“I need some dark socks while we’re here.” Kat left us and walked over to another area.
Harley headed off to the dressing room to try on her bras while we waited.
“Have you set a date for dinner with Eli yet?” Piper asked.
“What?” I acted as if I didn’t hear her. Piper raised one brow and gave me that perfected cop look. “Ugh, no, I haven’t.”
“And why not?”
“He’s Callum’s best friend, and he’s eight years older than I am. I’m practically his little sister.”
“You still didn’t answer my question.” Piper was watching every little micro expression I was trying to keep off my face, and I wished she would just stop.
“Hey, I need some toilet paper, there’s none in here.”
If I’d had a camera, I would have taken a picture of the look on the Walmart employee’s face. It was utterly priceless.
I covered my face and fought back my groan. “Why? Why does she do this?”
“She’s Harley,” Sadie answered.
“Miss, this is not a restroom,” the dressing room attendant said, and I lost my battle. I cracked up. Piper and Sadie doubled over laughing.
“She’s joking. She’s just joking.” I placed a hand on the poor attendant’s arm. She looked up at heaven and crossed herself. Once she walked away, I asked Piper and Sadie, “When people look up and ask for help, do you think they are looking for the same type of help as I am?”
“You mean from God or a higher being?” Piper asked.
“No. This is Harley we need help for. I’m thinking more along the lines of a sniper.”
“I say we leave her ass,” Sadie said.
“I heard that!” Harley shouted. “If you do it, you’ll regret it, I promise. I’m almost done.”
“Shit. You know that she has way better ideas than we do. I’m staying.” I let out a huff.
We headed up to the register. “Hey, Justin.” I waved to one of the detectives who worked with my brother. He gave us a head nod but kept walking.
“He is smarmy,” Kat commented.
“Maybe, but he sure is cute to look at,” Harley joked.
“Is that his girlfriend? She looks really young.” Sadie patted her cheeks as if checking for wrinkles.
I didn’t know who the girl was, but Sadie was right about her looking young, so I was going to say it was his sister. We went through the checkout so Harley and Kat could get their items as well as a drink and a snack. I grabbed a Diet Coke and pack of Starburst candies.
We climbed into Piper’s Jeep, cranked the air conditioner, and watched, not one of us commenting on why we weren’t leaving. All five of us kept our eyes peeled for people coming out of the store and appearing lost.
“There’s one.” I pointed to a woman walking down our row, popping up on her tiptoes. “Any minute, she’s going to do it.” And she did, she held up her key fob and squeezed, that was when Piper hit her horn and we all ducked. Yep, it was childish, but it kept us entertained. Really, people? Holding up your keys and hitting the alarm to find your car, that was just fucking lame, so we reserved the right to make fun of you.
“Has Eli called and invited you to dinner yet” Sadie asked.
I ignored her.
“Hello.” Kat waved her hand in front of my face. “Sadie asked you a question.”
I pretended to act stunned. “Oh, sorry. What?”
“Has Eli called you for dinner yet?” Sadie asked again.
“What is with you all? Piper just asked me the same thing. It’s like the Spanish Inquisition in here.”
“Thou doth protest too much,” Harley quoted. I flipped her off.
&nb
sp; “Now stop avoiding and answer the question,” Kat demanded.
“Nope,” I said, popping my P. “I haven’t seen or heard from him since my graduation.”
“I can’t get over how he showed up out of the blue and brought you a gift, and yet, you never really see him or talk with him?” Kat shook her head, for some reason she wasn’t believing me.
“Is it strange for someone you’ve known for years to give you a gift when you graduate?”
Kat narrowed her eyes. “Well, no, but—whoa, hold that thought. Piper, there’s another one. The guy in the Bermuda shorts.” We all looked out and saw the stereotypical tourist with shorts, socks, and sandals ambling down the row, totally lost. When he lifted his key fob in the air, Piper honked the horn and we ducked. The poor man started walking our way, thinking that was the direction of his car. “No, but you have to admit that it’s strange that he did it, right?” Kat returned everyone’s focus to me.
“I don’t know, I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“I want you to admit that you like the man. He’s hot, I get it.”
“Damn right he is,” Piper added. “But when the two of you are around each other, it’s like the rest of us disappear.”
Kat tapped the tip of her nose. “Yeah, that’s it, Piper said it perfectly. If you like him, tell us. We will do whatever we can to help. Need us to tie him up and leave him for dead just so you can come along and rescue him? We’re your girls.”
“Need us to smack the shit out of him for being an arrogant asshole? We’re your girls for that as well,” Harley added. Everyone laughed except me.
“I don’t think it’s so much that he’s arrogant as it’s that he stands back and watches. When he’s around, I feel like I’m in the George Orwell novel 1984 and Big Brother is watching,” Sadie said, somewhat reserved. “Maybe it’s because I know that he’s FBI, he has access to information we can’t possibly imagine. But he’s so serious.”
“Um, hello?” I stared at her, she was calling Eli serious when she was in love with an ER doctor who was a widower and a single father. “Your fiancé? I’m not sure many people can get more serious than he is.”
“Ryan is fun, you know him. He’s a crack up, come on.” Sadie smacked my arm.
“And I don’t see Eli as Big Brother watching.”
“Well, I’m in love with Ryan, so does that make you in love with Eli?” Sadie stared at me, a challenge to see what I’d say.
“Um, guys, there’s another lost soul.” Harley pointed out the window.
“Not now,” Kat hissed.
“Shhh, I want to hear what Bridget has to say,” Piper whispered.
“I can’t break eye contact. They say don’t ever break eye contact or you let the other person gain the upper hand,” Sadie said, but she didn’t whisper it, and that was probably why she won, because I cracked up laughing and ended up looking away first.
“You bitch.”
Sadie shrugged. “Now spill.”
“I’ve been in love with Elijah Grey since I was a senior in high school. It was a Monday, and I drove over to Callum’s apartment since Ma was cooking. Callum had invited his new neighbor, a guy who’d just moved here from Virginia, a new special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He walked into Callum’s apartment, and I thought for a moment I was Greek.” I turned to Kat, who was Greek. “You know, because I was seeing a god? Well, at least a demigod . . . or maybe just Adonis.” I remembered it like it was yesterday. He was wearing dark blue jeans, black scuffed-up biker boots, and a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt.
“For what it’s worth, I think the guy has feelings for you, too,” Sadie commented, pulling me from my long-ago memory.
Chapter 4
Bridget
One hand gripped the steering wheel, the other tapped at keys on my mounted laptop as I sat in traffic. We called this Road Bingo. You never knew when you’d get a winner, but eventually one of these tags would come back stolen or belonging to a person with a warrant. This was how we found the random fugitives. Moving from one tag to the next, I entered the plate and then waited for information telling me whether it was valid, the type of car, and the owner’s arrest record.
The traffic light turned green, and I put both hands back on the steering wheel. As I wove through traffic, I glanced into the vehicles I passed, trying to get an idea of what was going on.
Rolling up to the next stop, in front of me and to my right was a white cargo van. When I was a kid, there was a conversion van that used to drive by our house and made me nervous. I had never liked vans since then, and for some reason this one was giving me the same creepy vibe. I was checking his tag when I spotted his rear taillight was out. Regardless of what the computer said, I had cause to pull him over. Trying to get a good look through his windows to see if he was alone, I noticed that he was also watching me out his side-view mirror. Sure, people got nervous all the time around law enforcement, but something about him didn’t sit right.
Calling into dispatch, I alerted them that I was going to make a traffic stop, “Thirteen-nineteen, copy ten-fifty.”
“Thirteen-nineteen, copy ten-fifty, go ahead.” I loved hearing my call numbers, thirteen-nineteen said across the air.
“Florida tag: Zulu, Whiskey, Tango, one, five, seven, Bravo. ZWT157B, I-4 and Michigan, on a white Ford cargo van, with unknown occupants,” I said, giving them the tag, location, make and model, and number of passengers.
“Orange County copies.”
Once I had Orange County monitoring my time and knew that they would check in with me if they didn’t hear from me within three minutes, I flipped on my lights and gave a quick woot-woot with my siren to signal for the driver to pull over. I was happy to see that he was complying and pulling far enough over to remove both of us from traffic. I picked up my intercom and spoke. “Sir, please turn off the vehicle and put your hands out the window so that I can see them.” I hated these paneled vans, where I couldn’t see if the driver was moving for a gun. I was trained to have him put his hands on his steering wheel so I could see them, but at this angle, that was out of the question, so I had to ask him to put his hands out the window.
Feeling somewhat relieved when he did exactly as I asked and without haste, I approached the van and made sure to press my fingers firmly on the rear corner, not drag them, so I left a nice print. This way, if anything happened, my fingerprints could be identified.
“What seems to be the problem, Officer?”
“You have a broken taillight.”
“All of this”—he waved his hands as they extended over the windowsill—“for a broken taillight?”
“Sir, the law is the law and having a broken taillight is a traffic violation.” Once I was next to him and could clearly see what was within his reach, I relaxed a bit. “You can put your hands in but keep them where I can see them.”
“No one else, just me. You can check. I open for you.”
“Okay, thanks.” Major lesson we learned, always ask if you can look, and if they say yes, do it. Since he’d already offered, I wasn’t missing the chance. “Please open your door slowly.”
“Of course, Officer.” He did as requested, following each command. He was exceedingly polite.
“Where’re you headed?” I asked.
“Home.”
“From work?” It was only lunchtime, but people worked all sorts of shifts.
“Yes, Officer.”
“You mind if I have a look here first?” I pointed to the back of his van.
“Not at all.” He opened the back doors. One row of bench seats was missing, there were several eye hooks along the wall and ceiling, plus there were four or five paper bags filled with what appeared to be women’s clothes.
“What’s with all the clothes?”
“My girlfriend asked me to drop them off for donating.”
“I thought that you said you were going home.”
“I am. I have them back there for the next time I pass a
Goodwill.”
“Oh. Well, do you have your license and registration on you?”
“It’s up front, I’ll get it.”
My senses were telling me something wasn’t right, but I followed him to the driver’s door and watched him as he rummaged for his license and registration.
Lying on his console was a piece of paper. I studied it and tried to decipher the words: blonde, blue, one point, 5923-76-2343-98-02323, the next line said red, green, five point, 3412-23-6598-12-02011, brunette, green, two point five. That was all I got before the paper was swept out of my line of sight.
Trying not to let him know that I’d been paying attention to anything, I reached for his license and registration. Not wanting to go back to my car or turn my back on the man, I pressed my radio and called in his information, asking dispatch to run his license for any warrants. This was one of those times when my gut told me something wasn’t right, and I wished Orange County put us in pairs.
“Thirteen-nineteen, copy, twenty-nine P, Florida DL Oman Keith Matim, DOB, eight, four, eighty-nine.”
“Copy,” the dispatch operator said. While they ran the license, which could take a few minutes, I practiced my gift for gab and kept him going.
“So, how do you like driving this van? A friend of mine has seven kids.” Okay, I didn’t know anyone with seven kids, but I was winging it. “Her husband thinks they need a cargo van.”
“It’s fine,” he snapped.
“You said that I could look inside, mind if I see how the seats are positioned?”
“Go ahead.” Oman flung one arm out, his friendly demeanor from moments ago had melted into agitation I couldn’t figure out the source of.
“Thirteen-nineteen.” My call number was called out.
Pressing my radio, I said, “Go ahead.”
“Ten fifty-four on Oman Keith Matim.”
Dispatch had come back confirming the man was clean, and I had acknowledged I got the info. So, despite my nervous feelings, I had to let him go. “Ten-four.”
Oman had just swung the side doors open and was on some spiel about how he uses the van for work, and my stomach turned. There were several black nylon straps hooked around the base of the front seats, more metal eye hooks along the walls, and there were scratch marks around the legs of the seats, on the floors, and up the walls. Scratch marks in neat rows of four lines.
Book ‘Em Bridget: Iron Badges Page 4