One too many questions asked. Got it. “Thanks,” he said to the waitress and grabbed a handful of nuts from a bowl.
Watching the crowd through the mirror behind the bar, he estimated 75 percent of the patrons, including the man next to him, were cops. Either active or retired.
He nursed his bourbon while Charlie flirted and laughed and slammed back shots, throwing out stellar bait only a eunuch could resist.
A strange possessiveness roared through him. He’d never wanted any woman the way he wanted Charlie. In his bed, beneath him, above him, curled around him. In his life, beside him.
He put his jealousy in check as he’d done many times before, but the ache in his chest didn’t go away. He’d dared showing her his feelings, asked her not to do this, and she’d done it anyway.
Charlie took another shot. He wasn’t worried about her holding her liquor. She was able to drink a Russian under the table with his own vodka. He just didn’t want to watch her throw herself at another man, even if it was playing a role.
In thirty grueling minutes, she had McChatty hooked.
Charlie stood, leaned over the bar, arching her back, projecting her breasts, her tight, round butt high in the air, and whispered in Jeff’s ear.
The massive ball of tension inside Aiden burned hotter than a solar flare.
Every man in the vicinity checked her out, lust stamped on their faces, gleaming in their eyes. They were practically drooling. Aiden couldn’t blame them. With no makeup, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, Charlie was stunning. Truly something to behold.
Jeff spoke to the other bartender for a second, and she responded with a nod and a sly smile. Then he led Charlie through a door outside to the back.
His muscles tightened, but he resisted the urge to jump up and leave right away. With his hand clenched in a fist on his thigh, he finished his drink. When the stopwatch in his head hit two minutes, he spun off his stool, yawned for good measure and went out the front.
As soon as the door closed, he forced himself to walk slow and easy, like time wasn’t a factor, with his hands in his pockets, around the side of the building toward the back. A man running, especially one of color, drew unwanted attention and suspicion faster than one strolling along without a care in the world.
By the time he made his way to the dumpster, Charlie had Jeff pinned with his cheek pressed to the brick wall, his arm twisted behind his back at an angle meant to cause excruciating pain, with his pants down around his ankles.
From the blood on his face, she’d broken his nose first.
“Devlin and the others, who hired them?” she asked as Aiden came up alongside her.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s got quite a temper,” Aiden said, “and she’s short on patience. I suggest you start talking.”
“You’re both making a big mistake. Messing with the wrong people.”
Charlie gestured for Aiden to take over holding Jeff. He was more than happy to oblige.
After they swapped places, she snatched his right wrist and twisted until the knuckles were facing her. She grabbed his index finger. “The job in San Diego. Who hired him?”
Jeff called Charlie a bunch of foul names. In Aiden’s experience, she wasn’t going to respond well.
Without a word, she wrenched his finger back ninety degrees, snapping the first knuckle.
Jeff gasped and groaned in sheer shock and pain.
Impressive. He took it like a champ, without screaming.
“I tried to warn you,” Aiden said.
“Tell us who or I break another and another until you won’t be able to pour drinks with that hand, and then I’ll move on to the other.”
“Big Bill,” he grunted.
They exchanged a glance. “Yeah, we’re not from around here,” Aiden said. “We’re going to need a last name.”
“Walsh. Big Bill Walsh.”
“Why didn’t you go with your buddies?” she asked.
“I busted my knee a couple of years ago. Forced retirement. I’m no good to them anymore out there like this.”
“Why was Devlin hired for the job?”
She grabbed his middle finger when Jeff didn’t immediately answer her question.
“Because Big Bill wants Edgar Plinski. The guy’s a rat who killed his sister.”
Aiden hadn’t seen that coming. Most in WITSEC were some brand of criminal, but Edgar didn’t seem the murdering kind. The Department of Justice was certainly unaware of the allegation. If it was true, he’d be out of the program, since the immunity deal that he’d been given didn’t cover murder.
“Why is Big Bill offering so much money for any information Plinski might have in his possession?” Charlie asked, on a roll.
“Big Bill needs it. The other bosses are slowly squeezing him out. Enzo Romero already took half of his casino. It’s only a matter of time before he ends up floating in the river. No fingertips. No dental records. That’s if the FBI who’ve got him under surveillance don’t arrest him first.”
“Which casino?” Aiden asked.
“Which?” Jeff made it sound as if the answer should’ve been obvious. “The only real one in the city. Windfall.”
“Hey!” someone called from the street. “What are you doing? Jeff? Is that you?”
“Time to go,” Aiden said to Charlie.
Shots rang out as they took off down the alley.
Chapter Eleven
A second shot was fired somewhere behind them.
They rounded the corner, sprinted down the pavement and took another right turn, running side by side.
At the car, Aiden slid in behind the steering wheel and fired up the engine as Charlie dropped into the passenger seat. Without waiting for her to close the door, he swerved into traffic and peeled off down the street.
Pure adrenaline pumped in her blood and her head buzzed, but her thoughts circled around one thing.
Aiden Yazzie kissed me! Something she’d longed for and dreaded all at once.
And she had kissed him back. Without thinking, without choosing. It had been as necessary as breathing, and stopping hadn’t even been a whisper in her head.
His sexy mouth, his hot tongue... When they’d touched hers, everything had trembled. Her lips, her limbs, her bones, her heart. She would’ve sworn that the car had shaken.
He’d kissed her so deeply that she couldn’t tell where he ended and she began. She’d forgotten the rules, the boundaries, her name.