Rock Chick

Chapter Twenty-Seven Where the Hell Was Lee?

After I’d locked my doors and windows, closed my blinds and stopped myself from hyperventilating, my phone rang.

I ran to it hoping it was Lee, falling on the phone like a crazed woman who’d been on the Atkins Diet one day too long and just entered a bakery.

It was Ally.

“Do you know what’s going on?” she asked.

“Escalated hostilities, on both sides,” I answered, wanting to talk to Lee, see Lee, hear from someone that Lee was okay even if it was a disembodied communication from a higher deity.

“What does that mean?” Ally went on.

“Hell if I know.”

And I didn’t want to know. I was deep in my Denial Fortress, way deep.

“Do you want me to come over?” Ally asked.

“I’m not allowed to open the door to anyone but Lee, Mace or Vance,” I told her.

“Says who?”

“Says Vance.”

“Since when do you do what you’re told?”

“Since the words ‘escalated’ and ‘hostilities’ entered my vocabulary and I finally told your brother I love him and he’s living with me and I might be pregnant with his child and I haven’t seen his cabin in Grand Lake yet and his office is not safe anymore and –”

“All right, all right, I get it,” Ally cut me off. “Call me when you know something.”

“Gotcha.”

I hung up and stood in my living room and stared at the weapons on my dining room table.

Shit.

Shit, shit, shit.

This was all my fault.

Well, maybe not all my fault, it was mostly Rosie’s fault but if something went wrong, I’d feel responsible. This wasn’t the kind of something that could go wrong like jumping in a car with ten dollars in your pocket and a half a tank of gas and driving to Colorado Springs in hopes of going to a bar, not getting carded, and meeting hot, soon-to-be-fighter-pilot cadets from the Air Force Academy, an endeavor doomed to fail (and I would know as I was the voice of experience on that kind of thing, how do you think I got my t-shirt?). This kind of something meant guns and bullets and Brody in the surveillance room where, outside the door, grunts of pain could be heard.

I wasn’t really good at doing nothing, I was kind of an action girl and sitting around waiting was not my style.

Nevertheless, I pulled my cop’s daughter shroud around me, not impenetrable but it would do the trick in a pinch. I sat on my couch, pulled my heels up on the seat, rested my cheek on my knees and waited.

Looking back, it was kind of an idiotic thing to do.

Not that I should blame myself too much, it wasn’t like cars exploded in front of my house every day. Not to mention, I was a little wired, what, with the love of my life who I’d finally hooked up with, done the deed with and started living with, out there escalating hostilities.

In my defense, Vance didn’t say anything about not going outside if there was an explosion that shook your house, made your windows buckle and was so loud, it made you think your ears were bleeding.

I wasn’t totally stupid. I did look outside first. There was a car on fire in the middle of the street, burning debris everywhere. The car didn’t explode, it exploded and bits of it were all over the road, the sidewalk, even in my front yard, wrecking Stevie’s beautifully tended legacy. There were people shouting and running around. And anyway, what kind of neighbor would I be if I hid in the house if someone was out there, hurt, burned, whatever.

Not to mention, that someone could be Lee.

I thought, with all those people, I’d be safe.

I was wrong.

I nabbed the stun gun (my premier choice in weaponry), unlocked the door, unlocked the security door, did a scanning sweep of my porch and stepped outside.

I got to the edge of my porch, which was where they took me down.

This kidnapping was entirely different from the one before and the one before that.

I came to in the backseat of a car, legs bound at the ankles, wrists bound behind my back with the added dimension this time of being gagged.

With hindsight, and a lot of time to lie in the back of the car thinking, the explosion was not a very ingenious tactic of getting me to expose myself. In fact, it was kind of crude.

I’d fallen for it though so what did that say about me?

We drove for a long time, I couldn’t see much and I didn’t try. Cherry had been nearly exploded the day before so the minute a call came into dispatch about a car going up in flames in front of my house, the Denver Police Department, and Lee and his boys, would be all over it like flies on doo doo.

I couldn’t imagine someone hadn’t seen me being carted away, seemingly unconscious.

I couldn’t imagine they’d be far behind.

I couldn’t imagine they wouldn’t rescue me.

You live, you learn, unfortunately, all my life, I’d always learned the hard way.

It seemed like we were driving forever, maybe it was half an hour, maybe longer, when we finally started to do some turns, obviously coming off the highway. The car slowed, there were streetlights then there were none. Then, we hit a gravel road, drove for a few minutes and we stopped.

I was yanked out of the backseat by my ankles and thrown over a shoulder in a fireman’s hold. I didn’t see much, it was late, dark and we were well out of the city so dark meant dark. I could tell we were in the mountains though.

Shit.

I was carted into a cabin and thrown on the couch, then arranged in a seated position.

When the new goon moved away, I could see Terry Wilcox was sitting opposite me in an armchair.

It was a nice cabin, very swish, the kind of rental for upper, upper middle class Texans to hire when they felt like a change of scenery. Two guys were with us, both steroid-fuelled, like Goon Gary, Terrible Teddy and The Moron but I had never seen these guys.

“Take off her gag,” Wilcox ordered.

Both of the guys were dark-headed, one darker than the other and taller and maybe hitting the pharmaceutical websites a little too hard. He came forward and took off the gag. The minute he did, I realized how tight it was because my cheeks hurt. I opened and closed my mouth to exercise my cheek muscles.

Then I glared at Wilcox. “That hurt.”

“I’m sorry, India. Precautions. We can’t be too careful, can we?”

Was that a dig at my idiot act of walking out of my house and into the clutches of the villain?

My eyes narrowed.

I knew I was an idiot, I didn’t need this guy rubbing it in.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

He ignored me. “Don’t worry. We don’t have to wait too long. The plane will be ready soon and we’ll be leaving.”

Uh-oh.

Did he say “plane”?

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“You and I are going to disappear. We’re taking a long vacation.”

I stared at him.

I wasn’t getting a good feeling about this.

“I don’t want to go on vacation with you,” I informed him, I thought, unnecessarily.

“You’ll enjoy yourself.”

My eyes got wide. “Enjoy myself?”

“Shopping, eating in the finest restaurants. I’ll get you anything you want. We’ll go wherever you want. I’ll show you the world.”

Wow, Lee wasn’t wrong. This guy was nuts.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said, I don’t want to go on vacation with you.”

“We’ll spend time together. You get to know me, you’ll like me.”

Yep, totally nuts.

“You kill people,” I told him.

“I do what I have to do to get what I want.”

Holy crap.

“I don’t like people who kill people. They’re creepy. You’re creepy.”

Perhaps I should have been more careful with what I said but it was like he had selective hearing and he chose not to hear that part.

“We’ll have to stay out of sight for awhile. I have a friend who’s letting us use his lovely house, on the beach in Costa Rica.”

Oh my God.

This guy was talking about lovely beach houses to a woman he kidnapped.

Totally a nut.

“You’re creepy and icky,” I broke in, hoping to get through to him. “I don’t want to go to a beach house in Costa Rica with a creepy, icky guy who looks like Grandpa Munster.”

He continued to ignore me and my insults. “You can sunbathe every day. I’ll buy you two dozen bikinis. I think six months, maybe more. Then, perhaps, we’ll go to Paris.”

“I’m not going on vacation with you. I’m staying here,” I announced.

At this, he smiled his oily smile.

Serious euw.

Time to get down to it.

“Listen,” I said, changing tactics and leaning forward to show my sincerity, “I’m really um…” I was losing it, I couldn’t think of a suitable lie. I couldn’t remember the last time I couldn’t think of a suitable lie. I just went with the first word that popped in my head, no matter how hard it was to say it. “Honored that you like me and everything but I’m in love with Lee. I’ve been in love with Lee since I was five. We’re living together. We’re going to get married, eventually, when he asks me. He has it all planned out.”

“I’ll help you forget Nightingale,” Wilcox told me.

Okay, seriously, this guy was nuts. Even if he wasn’t a weird, creepy, icky, scary bad guy who killed people, there wasn’t a woman alive who would forget Liam Nightingale, especially if she’d seen him naked.

And what was taking Lee so long? He should have stormed in here and saved the day by now, surely. I was somewhat experienced with being kidnapped and now was about the time for a grenade or tear gas or Lee to saunter in looking badass and pissed off and scaring everyone into doing what he wanted.

“Perhaps you should be asleep for the first part of our journey.” Wilcox broke into my somewhat fevered thoughts.

I realized my mistake at once. I’d been spending so much time talking to Wilcox, I hadn’t paid attention to the Steroid Sidekicks. One was walking toward me, carrying a loaded syringe.

I stared at him coming toward me and I felt the chill of fear.

This was just like in those movies, where they tranquillized the heroine and she woke up lying on silk pillows wearing an I Dream of Jeannie outfit and finding herself a member of a harem where all the other girls hated her.

I didn’t want to be a member of Terry Wilcox’s harem, even if I was the only one.

My mind filled with colliding thoughts and I realized I had two choices, let him drug me and sleep through my (hopeful) rescue or, well, I didn’t know what my second choice was, considering my extremities were tied together.

I was fond of naps but only those I took myself or fell into naturally, not those induced by overdeveloped henchmen.

I watched him come at me and did the only thing I could do, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to go down without a fight.

I rolled to the floor, rolled into him and took him off his feet. He fell over and hit the deck with a grunt and an oath.

I kept rolling to get away from him and struggling to get out of my bounds.

This, surprisingly worked (almost). My hands must not have been tied very well because they started to come lose.

Once I dropped Bad Guy Number One, Bad Guy Number Two came at me, I rolled to my back, lifted my legs and as Tex and The Kevster suggested, I aimed right between his.

I missed, but nailed him in the thigh with a good deal of force and some seriously pissed off attitude. He staggered back and went down on a knee.

I kept struggling to get my hands free, reared up with a crunch of the abs that would do any personal trainer proud and found my feet. With my momentum and weight, feet and arms still bound, I toppled over and hit him, head to the chest and we both went down, rolling and struggling, him trying to get a hold of me and me squirming like crazy.

I was beginning to get ticked.

Where.

The hell.

Was Lee?

Finally, I freed one hand from the bounds and shook the other one free of the rope and started fighting in earnest.

This didn’t last long. Even though I had the use of my hands, he was stronger and he subdued me, humiliatingly quickly. He yanked me, still squirming, to my feet, whipped me around so my back was to his front and his hands held my wrists behind me.

“Give her the shot. Now,” Wilcox ordered.

He hadn’t even bothered coming out of his chair, the jerk. He was totally calm, eerily calm. Like he knew he was going to get away with this.

Bad Guy Number One came at me again with the syringe.

I felt a moment of total fear, no chill this time. This was so much fear, I was certain I’d pee my pants.

Instead, I screamed.

It was loud, it was shrill and even though I was the one screaming, it even freaked me out.

When I quit screaming, I started struggling, harder this time, desperate.

But it was no use.

Holy crap.

I was going on vacation with Creepy Grandpa Munster.

How did this happen?

I hadn’t even had a whole, complete day being out about my love for Lee and being able to enjoy that in all the shapes and forms that would take.

I had a sweet new t-shirt from Lucky Brand Jeans in a bag in the backseat of Willie’s Pathfinder that I’d never get to wear.

This meant, I might never see Lee’s cabin in Grand Lake.

This also meant I might never have his children and tell them bedtime stories about how there was never a time when their Mom and Dad hadn’t been together.

This… could not… happen.

As a last resort, I screamed, “No!”

But no one heard me scream.

This was because, at the same time, there was a gunshot.

Bad Guy Number One with the syringe shouted out a cry of pain, the syringe went flying, he buckled and went down.

When he did, I saw Eddie standing behind him, his gun in his hand and it was smoking.

Thank… you… God.

It might seem terrible that I was thanking the good Lord that someone got shot but if divine retribution came in the form of Eddie Chavez and his service revolver, I was not going to quibble.

Before I could react, or look around to see where Lee was, I heard from behind me in a voice I knew.

“Let her go.”

It wasn’t Lee.

It was Darius.

My wrists were let go and I turned my head and saw Darius, standing behind and partially beside Bad Guy Number Two, a gun to his temple.

Wow.

“Step back,” Darius said and Bad Guy Number Two and Darius moved back several steps.

Eddie came forward, gun pointed at the man on the floor who was rolling around, hands holding his thigh, blood seeping between his fingers.

I stared in horror. I wasn’t really good with blood and there seemed to be a lot of it.

“Move away, Indy,” Eddie ordered and without the ability to walk, I hopped several feet, then sat on the floor to untie the rope from around my ankles, eyes up and watching.

Eddie moved his gun to Wilcox, who finally had stood, and he snapped, “Sit.”

Wilcox’s gaze locked on Eddie the whole time, slowly, he sat. He still looked strangely calm, as if he had a secret. I didn’t like the idea of Wilcox having secrets. I also didn’t like the fact that Lee wasn’t there.

I got to my feet and Eddie unsnapped the cuffs on his belt and held them out to me.

“Cuff Wilcox,” Eddie said.

I didn’t want to go anywhere near Terry Wilcox but I figured now was not the time to argue. I was still recovering from my freak out when I thought I wasn’t going to be saved, I didn’t have it in me to give Eddie any lip.

I took the cuffs and walked behind Wilcox’s chair.

“Lean forward,” I said and I could hear my voice was shaking.

In fact, I was shaking, full-body shakes, head-to-toe. I didn’t want to admit it, India Savage, Rock Chick and Scaredy Cat, but there it was.

Wilcox leaned forward obediently. I cuffed him and then took two (big) steps back.

Darius had Bad Guy Number Two on his knees on the floor, Darius standing over him pointing his gun to his head.

Everyone stood around watching Bad Guy Number One moaning on the floor and bleeding.

“What do we do now?” I asked no one in particular. I figured that Bad Guy Number One was, of course, a bad guy but I didn’t figure it was all right to let him bleed to death on the rather nice rug.

“We need to call an ambulance,” Eddie said, eyes still on the writhing sidekick.

“No ambulance,” Darius put in.

Eddie’s gaze cut to Darius and his mouth got tight. “Darius.”

“No ambulance, Ed. Got the word from Mace. Gino’s clean up.”

That’s when the air in the room changed.

Somehow, throughout my struggle and rescue, everything seemed to be normal. Well, at least kidnapping-and-rescue normal, so far as I knew it. Someone got shot (again) but the good news was, this time, it was a bad guy and this time there was no tear gas. I hadn’t worn any makeup that day so I wasn’t in fear of mascara smears but still, tear gas sucked.

Now, the atmosphere of the room was anything but normal.

“Gino?” Wilcox whispered.

The way he said it made me slide to the side to have a look at him and I saw he was looking at Darius.

Darius didn’t answer.

Instead, Darius grinned.

Somewhere along the line, the tables had turned. Now it was Darius who had a secret.

Wilcox surged to his feet, wrists behind his back, body tense.

“What do you mean, Gino’s clean up?” Wilcox screamed and I jumped back. His voice was hoarse and so terrified, I almost felt sorry for him. Bad Guy Number One had quit writhing and was lying, motionless and staring at Darius. Bad Guy Number Two had dropped his head, eyes to the floor, looking defeated.

Yikes.

What on earth was going on?

Who was Gino?

And where the fuck was Lee?

Eddie raised his gun and pointed it at Wilcox. “Sit down.”

Wilcox hesitated and Eddie’s body moved imperceptibly. Eddie had been relaxed, cool, in control. In a blink of an eye, he was tense, hostile and his eyes were glittering.

“Sit… the fuck… down,” Eddie commanded, slowly and seriously pissed off and I got the impression that it was not only Wilcox who was pissing him off but also something else.

Even crazy Wilcox sat at the tone of Eddie’s voice. Wilcox wasn’t calm anymore, he was scared out of what was left of his ever-lovin’ mind.

“For God’s sake, will someone tell me, where, in the hell, is Lee?” I finally asked.

“Here.”

My eyes swung to a door behind Darius.

Lee was standing there.

He stood tall and straight, no blood, no bruises, nothing to indicate he’d seen any escalation of hostilities. In fact, he looked great in a white long-sleeved, torso-hugging tee, jeans, black belt and his motorcycle boots, like he’d just jumped off the Ducati after taking a joy ride.

I wanted to run to him, throw my arms around him, do a lot of girlie, oh-my-god-I’m-glad-you’re-all-right and oh-my-god-I’m-glad-I’m-all-right stuff but his body language was not inviting that. This was badass Lee and hugs and cuddles were obviously not acceptable at this juncture. Therefore I kept my distance.

He looked at me and did his second body scan of the day, this time, a muscle leaping in his jaw.

“What happened?” he asked, eyes on Eddie.

Eddie walked to Lee and handed him his gun. Lee took it and shoved it in the waistband of his jeans while I stared. That wasn’t Eddie’s service pistol, it was a loaner. Eddie wasn’t here in any official capacity. Any bullet that Eddie put in another human being wasn’t going to be traced back to a weapon the police department had given him.

Holy shit.

“Brody tell you the story?” Eddie asked and Lee shook his head.

“He told me where to find you,” Lee answered.

Darius and Eddie looked at each other.

Then Eddie explained, “Darius heard something was goin’ down and headed over to watch Indy’s house. He’d barely got there when they dropped her outside after she left the house when the car exploded. Darius followed. Knowin’ you were busy, he called me to do back up. I went to your office, got a gun, talked to Brody and told him to get a message to you. Darius waited until I got here and we came in.”

I felt a weird warmth come over me.

Man, I owed these guys big time.

“She okay?” Lee asked, still not addressing me even though I was maybe six feet away.

Hmm.

The sudden warm gooey feeling of having good, badass friends looking out for you faded. I didn’t know what to make of Lee not addressing me, except I didn’t like it.

I figured it’d be best to talk about it later, say, after Yay, It’s Finally Over Sex.

“Bound. Gagged. Tossed around. She’s okay. Where’s Gino?” Darius answered Lee’s question as if I was bound and gagged every day, which, in the past two weeks wasn’t far from the truth (except the gagged part).

“Five minutes behind,” Lee said, then it was clear he was done with this particular conversation and his eyes locked on me. “Get in the car.”

I didn’t like that either, it was bossy. Way too bossy.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Wilcox moved, Lee’s eyes sliced to him and he didn’t answer me.

“If you’re waitin’ for the cavalry to arrive, then you should know your boys outside are neutralized,” Lee said and I felt my breath catch.

So that was Wilcox’s secret.

And that was where Lee had been.

I wondered what neutralized meant, for, like, a second. Then I decided I didn’t want to know.

“Relax Coxy,” Lee went on, “Gino will be here soon. He’s had an earful from Marcus. But I’m sure, since you’re blood, he’ll give you the chance to explain.”

Uh-oh.

Gino was Wilcox’s blood. And Gino’s name was “Gino” which was a mob boss name if I ever heard one.

That meant the mafia was descending to do “clean up”.

Okay, time for me to leave.

“I’ll just wait in the car,” I said

Lee looked back to me. “Good idea.”

I started walking to the door at a loss for what to say. I felt a parting line was called for but I didn’t have one.

I stopped at the door and looked at Darius.

“See you later?” I asked.

He stared at me a beat, maybe attempting to determine my sanity. Then he grinned while shaking his head, but he didn’t answer.

“Get to the car Indy,” Lee ordered.

I ignored Lee and turned to Eddie.

“Later, Eddie,” I said.

Eddie was smiling flat out but also shaking his head.

“Later, chica.”

“Indy, get to the fucking car,” Lee repeated.

“All right, jeez. I’m going,” I muttered and turned to the door then mumbled under my breath, “So damn bossy.”

Lee drove us home in his Crossfire.

He was silent.

I was silent.

I was feeling a good deal of relief. There was the distinct possibility that my life was going to go back to normal. I’d never been a fan of normal, in fact, I avoided it at all costs, but now it sounded really good to me.

I kind of wanted to ask Lee if it was truly all over but I could tell Lee didn’t feel in the mood to talk. I could tell this because there were scary “not now” vibes bouncing around inside the car so I figured later would be better.

He parked behind my, now our duplex and I didn’t see any flashing lights or hear anyone running around or shouting so I figured the whole exploding car thing had been cleaned up and life was back to normal on Bayaud Avenue.

We walked in, Lee locking the door behind us, me flipping on the kitchen light.

I turned to him.

“You want a beer?” I asked.

He tossed his car keys on the kitchen counter and looked at me.

“What did you just say?” he asked quietly, face a little scary.

Um.

Uh-oh.

“Um… I asked if you wanted a beer.”

“That’s what I thought you said.”

I decided maybe it was time to go back to silence.

He watched me for awhile.

Then he said, “You left the house, where you were safe, and got yourself kidnapped. Again.”

I gave a little wince. “Yeah… well –”

He interrupted me. “My boys were busy, you’re fucking lucky Darius came to watch the house or who knows what the fuck would have happened.”

“I realize it was kind of an idiotic thing to do,” I admitted.

“Kind of?”

Jeez.

“Okay, it was a really idiotic thing to do… but –”

“Indy, for Christ’s sake!” Lee exploded, body tight, face beyond a little scary straight to semi-demented.

I did the only thing I could do.

I ran to him, one step, two, three, then I threw myself at him bodily. Jumping up, my arms went around his neck, my legs went around his hips, I bent my head, put my mouth to his and I kissed him.

I took him off guard, which was good. He went back on a foot, his hands went to my ass holding me to him. He resisted for, like, a second, then he kissed me back, hot, deep, lots of tongue, full of relief and something else.

Something that felt like promise.

It was the best kiss I’d ever had.