“They got two of them words right,” Danielle says.
“Someone got their keys? I’ll fix it. Should say Die Dirty Ass Whore.” Starla spits on the asphalt.
“What? Did you see me down the clinic when they were delousing your pussy, Starla?” Navaeh’s popping her neck and puffing her chest. Wall shifts uneasily as six or seven sweetbutts raise their voices and swarm closer.
I glance at Heavy. He reads my mind. “Ladies! Back up!”
It’s at that moment Nevaeh sees me. “You! Forty Nowicki! You gonna pay for this to get fixed?”
Her brown eyes spark, daring me. My dick twitches.
I break forward, gesturing to Wash over my shoulder. He jogs close. “Take the car to Big George’s.”
Then I’ve got her, close, in arm’s reach again, and I can smell her coconut shampoo. There’s a loosening in my chest. “Keys.”
She has to crane her neck to glare at me.
“Keys.”
She huffs and holds them up. Wash nips forward and grabs them.
“You come with me.” I grab her by the upper arm and march her through the crowd, glaring at anyone who dares to say shit. Everyone piles inside. No one wants to miss the show.
The sweetbutts are close on our heels, shit talking at the top of their lungs.
“Dumpster’s out back, Forty.”
“I can teach her some manners for you.”
“I say we make her face match the hood of that car.”
None of this is setting right. Wash didn’t mention anything about her car when he drove past this morning. That means this happened in the past few hours.
I grit my teeth and push her past the bar to the stairs.
“I better not get a bill for that, Forty,” Nevaeh shouts over her shoulder, pitching her voice as loud as she can to make sure everyone hears. I force her to take the stairs double time, but there’s no way anyone misses a word she says. “I don’t have anything to do with this sad little group of toothless bitches and mangy old fucks, and I do not appreciate your club’s bullshit spilling onto the hood of my car.”
“Shut up, Nevaeh,” I growl under my breath.
“If that car’s not pristine when I get it back, I’m gonna carve ‘limp dick energy’ into the seat of every hog out there!”
I slam my hand over her mouth. “Haven’t you got any sense of self-preservation?”
“Nope,” she mumbles against my palm.
I hustle her down the hall to my room, and it’s strange. Her free arm is flailing, and her mouth’s running a mile a minute, but she’s not fighting me. She’s falling into step beside me, keeping close. Like she used to do. Like she’s scared.
It’s like a signal to my body to fight, my muscles tensing even more. And it all hits me at once. The Renellis. The shit Heavy said. Porno and car theft. The death threat carved into the hood of her car.
She’s not leaving my sight again.
Fuck.
Panic sets my heart racing. She could have died. A dozen times over during the past ten years. She’s fuckin’ nuts, and she has no survival instincts.
She could have died. She hasn’t been out there in the world, getting lit and fucking guys, some party girl having a grand old time. She’s been playing chicken. I knew guys like that in the service. They had the craziest stories. They always ended up on the missions that went sideways. They weren’t mavericks; they had a death wish.
No matter that dated image I have of her in my head, this short-legged woman, half my weight, trying to keep up with me, she isn’t a femme fatale, a schemer with no moral compass who got off on crushing a man’s heart. She’s not the man-eating hellcat I got tattooed on my good arm when I mustered out.
Maybe she never was.
Maybe she’s always been this walking disaster, burning out of control. In over her head. Maybe she needed me, and I left. I can’t think about that.
We get to my room, and I unlock the door, flinging her forward maybe a bit too hard. She stumbles and lands on the bed, her hair springing and bobbing.
God, I love her hair. It gets everywhere. Until I traded in my old Ford Ranger, I’d find strands of it in the interior. For years.
She rolls until she’s upright, kneeling at the foot of my bed, her ass resting on her heels. She’s wearing cutoff jean shorts and a T-shirt with a picture of Rosie the Riveter that reads, “¡Sí, Se Puede!”
Her red polish is chipped, and her nails themselves are bitten to the quick. Her cuticles are torn up and red. So messy.
She shuffles forward to get off the bed.
“Stay.” I shut the door behind me firmly. She sinks back down and starts picking at her cutoffs, glancing up at me every so often. Each look sends a rush of blood to my cock. And a jolt to my chest.
She gnaws on her bottom lip. “So, what now?”
I don’t know. There’s something about her on my bed. She needs to stay there.
But this is all wrong. She’s all wrong. I shake my head to clear the static. This whole situation doesn’t make sense. She’s not Steel Bones. Why would she even be on the Rebel Raider’s radar?
“Where was your car parked?”
“In my driveway.”
Ice fills my veins. We didn’t check for a tail when we rolled out there last night. The club is on high alert. If a Raider was following any of us, we painted a target on her. I should have had a prospect watching the house twenty-four seven. Not just drive-bys. Careless.
“Did you hear the guys who did it?” Does she even have personal protection?
“Lou and I were both out. He found it when he came home from work.”
“You didn’t have your car with you? Who were you with?” I take a step forward, and she shrinks back.
“Shirlene.”
“What are you doing?” I know she’s been hanging with Shirlene. I’m also aware that my tone is uncalled for. Damned if I can help it.
Nevaeh flops back onto her ass, her legs sticking straight out, her feet ticking back and forth like windshield wipers. The dirt from her Chuck Taylors smudges my comforter.
“Oh, you know. Working the corners. Scoring meth. Betting on the ponies?” She scrunches her nose, her lips twitching. “Is it still trashy to bet on the ponies? Or is it classy if I wear, like, a really big hat?”
“You could try telling the truth.”
“You can’t handle the truth.” She says it in the worst Jack Nicholson voice I’ve ever heard. I have to grind down on my molars to keep my face straight.
“Fine,” she huffs. “I’m helping her with the old peeps. She’s showing me the ropes. Since I can’t seem to get a job in this town, she’s hooking me up. It’s called companion care.”
“Companion care?”
“Yeah. Help old people with chores. Make sure they’re taking their meds. Hang out and chat. Watch a lot of baseball with the volume turned all the way up.”
“You’re working with seniors?”
“Yup. Like I said, Shirlene’s hooking me up.”
I don’t know what to say. Heavy put the word out that anyone who wants to do business with Steel Bones would do well not to hire her. It’s clear she’s persona non grata.
Why would Shirlene pick this battle? She’s an old timer. Keeps her head down, helps with the cookouts, and spends her time with Boots and his crew, playing spades and talking about the glory days. She and Nevaeh were always tight, though. And Shirlene does what she wants.