100 Proof Stud (The Darcy Walker Series) (36 page)

Direct hit.

Straight to the heart.

My voice was small, embarrassed. He was right on all counts. “Of course, I have your back, D.” Silence on his end. “I didn’t like what Ben said, but you don’t always leave room to insert dialogue. I’m sorry if looked like I didn’t care when he was goading you.”

“Seriously, I didn’t need the assist,” he snorted, rolling his eyes.

Now I was confused. “But you just said—”

He cut me off. “I know what I said, Darcy, but actions are an indication of how someone feels. Sometimes I feel so unbelievably close to you, and others I feel like you have a gun trained on my heart, and you’ve pulled the trigger.”

“I’d never hurt you,” I said quickly.

“Not intentionally,” he amended, “but we’re off, Darc. How do I get back in there, honey? Tell me.”

I dumbly said, “I don’t know.” Dylan didn’t say anything, just kept up with the quiet church mouse routine. “Why are you being so quiet?”

He closed his eyes. Opened them. “I’m wondering how patient I am.”

For those of you who are idiots, allow me to translate. Dylan was growing tired of this gig. Once again, he shot his gaze through the rearview mirror. This time with an accompanying frown. This was an emotionally charged conversation, and it grated on my last nerve that he only halfway listened. “You’re not even paying attention to me!” I snapped.

He gave me a split second of his amber eyes. “I
am
paying attention, Darcy. I’m just trying to figure out why this guy has been tailing us for the last three miles.”

“Maybe he’s just going in the same direction.”

“Perhaps, but that car was parked outside of Belinski’s when I arrived and also when we left. A guy was sitting in the passenger seat, texting on his phone. I didn’t pay much attention at the time. When leaving, the car was empty.”

“Do you make it a habit of casing the place?” I mockingly laughed.

He gave me his eyes for another beat and glanced back up into the mirror. “When I’m with you, yeah. I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you don’t exactly behave like your average girl. And frankly, I’m getting a bad vibe.”

Pivoting in my seat, I tried to get a bead on the automobile behind us. The silhouette of a male illuminated its cab, but mix its headlights with the Beemer’s taillights, and I couldn’t make out anything more. Others might have been in the car, and the reason I assume that is because Dylan had witnessed someone sitting in the passenger side beforehand. That meant the passenger merely waited for the driver to return. Let’s theorize they
did
mean us harm. More bodies meant Dylan could be double or triple-teamed. I didn’t like those odds. My eyes snagged a partial license plate number—CBH4 something-something-something.

While I committed it to memory, Dylan swung a left onto a side street, speeding up and taking a sharp right onto another road. The car behind us…
followed
. My stomach suddenly jumped to my mouth. If Dylan’s gut was right, a good possibility existed this was Brantley McCoy. He didn’t know me as Darcy Walker, but if the theory of crooks was true…that they all knew one another…then he’d be aware Vinnie Vecchione was the one who’d almost killed him. It’s plausible he saw us driving away from his home, and it was common knowledge Vinnie and I were BFFs. Thing was, Vinnie was just Vinnie. A guy who grew up hard, but his heart was always in the right place even if his actions were questionable. Brantley was different. According to Vinnie, he was only one breath away from insane.

“Did you get a good look at him?” I whispered.

“Not good enough.”

Okay, Dylan was borrowing trouble. We were good. Nothing was wrong. We needed to rebound back to the conversation. Ben Ryan. Me. Science project. “D—”

He uncharacteristically interrupted when he stopped at a red light, his eyes still riveted behind us. “Listen, sweetheart,” he said tenderly but with a mulish determination. “I
know
how this is going to go down between us in the end. Do I like what happens in the meantime? No. But I agreed to it. What I’m saying to you doesn’t come from jealousy, although a little bit admittedly does. It comes from me worrying about you. I will worry about you until the last breath leaves my body.”

M’kay. That statement burned all kinds of HOT.

I fought the overwhelming desire to launch myself across the seat and have my wicked way with him. Rip his clothes off. Maybe some hair. Anything I could get my stinking hands on sounded good. Holy cow, I didn’t have the chance because next thing I knew, the car behind us tapped the bumper. That’s right…tapped it. I gasped and shakily turned around. Yup. Still one guy. When I settled back in my seat, Dylan’s face and body hadn’t change. He merely leaned forward on the steering wheel, not tearing his eyes from the mirror.

“D, just drive,” I begged, grabbing his leg.

Those words were futile. Dylan never backed down. He was born a fighter, whether right or wrong. His lips parted, but his words were drowned out by another, harder double tap on the bumper. All I kept thinking was this was a Beemer.
The Beemer
, I emphasized in my brain. That was like breaking one of the cardinal laws of the universe. You never mar a German-made car…
ever
.

After one more tap, Dylan leveled me with a seriously deadly stare, leaned over, and cupped my chin in his hand. Tugging me across the console, his head slanted across mine, and he pressed a hard kiss on my lips. Stunned. Seriously stunned. Add speechless to the mix too. This wasn’t the kind of passion I would’ve considered ideal, but the emotions in his car would no doubt paralyze a monk. I wasn’t sure I liked this type of kiss, but I sure as heck didn’t
not
like it either. It was angry and challenging, and he proved it when he pulled back and ordered, “No matter what, you
do not
get out of this car. You hear me? Call 911 and stay put, yeah?”

The tone of his voice was soft yet downright scary, but I still wondered if we were in the Twilight Zone. This stuff didn’t happen in Valley, but the file clerk in my brain reminded me I’d found a partially decomposed skeleton over the weekend. And you can add that Nico Drake got killed and then walked home. But you know what? That was
my
life. I wasn’t normal. Stuff like this happened to
me
…it wasn’t supposed to happen to
Dylan
. Before I could answer, he grabbed a baseball bat from the back seat and jumped out of the car, ready to beat the holy shiz out of the driver.

What the ever-lovin’ minion of Hell…

He thought I’d stay put?

I’m a verb, for God’s sake—not some whiny, teenage girl too stunned to move. I was his wingman, and I’d never leave him unguarded, even if it meant I might get my lights punched out while covering him. Not to mention he was in possession of a deadly weapon. Even if he’d been unprovoked, the law wouldn’t look too kindly on someone swinging a wooden bat.

I got my verb on and pushed the passenger side door wide. “No, Dylan!” I screamed.

Dylan had no sooner made it to the driver’s side window when the car backed up in a squeal, peeled out, and tore through the intersection.

After a few strained I’ll-see-you-in-the-mornings, I made my grand exit, blew out a sigh, and shuffled inside the house. Dylan wasn’t so fond of my newfound badassery. In fact, I got a glare that nearly melted the skin from my bones. To give him credit, he stopped at a glare. Believe me…I get it. Guys are bigger and stronger than girls, but I wasn’t the type to sit idly by and watch a fight happen in front of my eyes. He knew that…or at least, he used to know that.

Pretty freakin’ sad.

Earlier, when the cops came to the scene, we did the I-saw-this, they-did-that gig. Then I gave them the partial license plate, and we phoned our parents. It went better on Dylan’s end than mine. I might as well have called Baby Jesus a homegrown terrorist, but really…there were no words.

Murphy was sprawled out in the leather recliner, watching television. A can of Coke in one hand, a cloud of cigar smoke over his head with a bag of chips balanced on his gut. He didn’t acknowledge me when I walked inside.

Call me Albert Einstein, but that wasn’t good.

Throwing my purse and jacket on the couch, even though I was freaked way the heck out, I decided to forgo rehashing the we-were-attacked conversation and dive straight into Ben Ryan. I needed Dylan as far away from me as possible. Preferably in Alaska or another place surrounded by water. Until Brantley McCoy was found and brought to justice, Dylan could feasibly be carrying that baseball bat around.

I’d been categorically insane for considering us as a boyfriend/girlfriend unit—even though he conjured up conflicting emotions. At one point, he’d been in full snarl. I didn’t know whether to cry or ask him to strip me bare. Here lately, I’d been embracing that passion. Yup, Darcy Walker had become an embracer. Problem was, his soul was good. In fact, he went to Mass each week and confessed whatever little sin he
did
have. A priest would need notebook paper or the memory of an elephant to record all of mine.

I flopped onto the couch across from Murphy. “Other than the fact some moron hit the Beemer, I almost got kissed under the mistletoe tonight,” I said. “Don’t worry about any lip action. Dylan broke it up after he said he’d leave the guy crying for his mommy.”

Murphy crossed his legs at the ankles and shoveled another chip in his mouth. “And that’s why I can sleep at night,” he chomped. “Remind me to upgrade his Christmas present tomorrow morning, kid.” Murphy’s temper was like a mile-wide hurricane. I expected more of a reaction. Heck, I thought he’d be screaming bloody murder after the night’s events, but the UK Wildcats were playing, and Murphy pretended he was the sixth man.

“Thing is, I’d like to have a date with him, Murphy. It’s Ben Ryan.”

Murphy’s head swiveled around like Linda Blair’s in
The Exorcist
when the demon was inside her. “The kid that hit you with his car?”

“I walked out in front of
him
, Murphy.”

“Well, yeah, but don’t you have any higher standards? I’d think number one on the list would be,
Don’t date someone that hit me with his car
.”

Put that way, it kind of made sense. “So can I?” I shrugged.

Another munch of chip. “And Dylan was okay with this?”

“He wasn’t exactly off his holy rocker, if that’s what you mean. In fact, he said…he said…”

I buried my face in my hands. “Aww, for the love of Pete,” Murphy grunted. “Spit it out, kid.”

“He said he’d wait on me.”

Murphy furrowed his brows, took a deep breath, and then barked out the laughter of a seal. He laughed so loud he bent over and wheezed, the cosmos reminding him he needed to cut back on the cigars.

“Bless him, Lord,” he chuckled, referring to Dylan, “but you’re a fool, kid, if you mess with that boy’s heart. Every man has his limits,” he finished as an aside.

After I kissed Marjorie goodnight, I creamed off my mascara and did a minimal amount of maintenance in the bathroom. Once I removed my contacts, I changed into blue Cookie Monster fleece bottoms, a black sweatshirt, and knee socks. Crawling into bed, I switched my sound machine to Ocean Waves and pondered how I’d gaslight Damon into giving up information about The Ghost. I also needed Tito back on the phone to see if he could find the owner of the white van at school. It might help with Coach’s case, which surprisingly had turned out rather difficult to crack in a school that loved to gossip. Oh yeah, and I hadn’t forgotten that Coach Wallace’s ex-wife might be guiltier of something other than being an ex.

My God, let us not forget I had a real science project due in days. Days, people, and it knocked at my door like the Big Bad Wolf.

When I’m depressed, I draw. I sketch the lines, shadows, and contours the way I see them. I can make everything the way I
want
it to be—to where the picture is alive from whatever angle you look at. I grabbed a scrap piece of paper and drew a picture of a rotting skeleton. Weird, but oh well. As I drew, it became clear the answer was simple: if you wanted information, you had to go after it yourself. Or better yet, draw out The Ghost and make him angry enough to mess up.

I made a few phone calls and waited…

Right when I counted thirty-eight sheep, my iPhone’s buzz startled me awake. Fumbling around on the nightstand, I squinted at the number and practically did a cartwheel midair. “So you’ll go?!” I almost screamed.

“I’ll be there bright and early, Dolce,” he murmured. “I finished up classes today.”

I’d risen early, searching for the perfect excuse. I ran my tongue up and down the escalator and caught a stomach virus; someone sneezed in my face and I came down with tuberculosis. Perhaps I contracted an incurable disease by exchanging money. Or something more practical like my resistance was down because I never got a full night’s sleep. My mind played through the lies with each nervous gait to Murphy’s room. All I had to do was stumble to his pillow, cough “I’m dying,” fake-sneeze a few times, and he grumbled, “Dang it, kid, cover your mouth.”

Simple.

This morning I beat Dylan to the punch. I texted him at half past five, telling him I had yellow fever, mosquitoes were everywhere, and to look for me in the morgue. I didn’t even receive a reply, and thankfully he never showed at his usual time.

The house was completely abandoned by eight o’clock. Murphy departed at his usual seven, and Claudia and Marjorie left early to hit Walmart before first grade started. Once I heard the front door close, I showered and pulled my hair back in a wet ponytail. I applied blush, mascara, and pink lip gloss. Standing in my underwear, I stared at my clothes and decided all black was the best route. On went a black turtleneck, skinny jeans with my new black leather ankle boots. Once I was satisfied with the look, I placed my lucky hat on my head. It was a menswear houndstooth bucket hat I’d bought last summer at The Gap. It made me look brainy with glasses.