Chasing Thunder (29 page)

It was only half the battle. She had to be prepared to protect herself should anyone see through her disguise. When Snake had offered to teach her some self-defense moves, she’d jumped all over the opportunity. After a few nights, she could see where M.J. had learned some of her nifty little tricks.

“Step toward your attacker,” Snake instructed when she instinctively backed away from him as he grabbed her wrist. “They won’t expect it. Here. Grab my wrist.” He showed her what he meant by easily breaking her hold, much like M.J. had done with one of the gang members in the alley the first night they’d met.

Both he and Kid had tireless patience as they taught her what they knew, a mish-mash of all the things they had learned from their father, who had idolized Bruce Lee, and Joe Bennett, who had hand-to-hand combat training as a Green Beret in the Vietnam War. Her nightly workout with her guys became the best part of her day. Snake indulged her like any big brother would, but he generally allowed Kid to spar with her after he demonstrated a particular move. He could tell his little brother was crushing hard on their new roomie, and he did his part to play Cupid. It helped him ease his own bruised ego after M.J. disappeared, once again, deep underground. The way he figured it, at least one of the Scoggins boys should be happy.

Within a couple of weeks, Baby could easily throw Kid like a rag doll, but she assumed that had more to do with the fact that he clearly wasn’t giving these sparring matches his all. “Be serious!” she told him, irritated by the idea he might be taking it easy on her, like she was weak or couldn’t handle it. “I want to know how to handle myself if things like this happened for real.”

Realizing for the first time that she wanted to get better, she
needed
to get better, he flipped her end over end, and she never had to challenge him again.

Maddox became a nightly guest in Pasadena throughout the month of June. He was just as smitten with Baby as Kid was, and willingly stepped in to be her sparring partner as well. Even Jack got in on the fun. It wasn’t long until she no longer resembled the shrinking violet from just a month before.

She had two faces in her mind whenever they came at her, to motivate her to take her training seriously. One was that creep Isbecky, and the other was the repugnant face of her stepfather. She had one goal and one goal only: she was never going to be a victim again.

By the last week of June, she no longer shook in her shoes when that overhead bell jangled above the door. As a matter of fact, by then she had a good reason to look with expectation toward that front door. Every day, around four o’clock, Xavier brought Snake the paperwork from the Snake Pit so he could sign off on checks and deposits.

At first their interaction was limited to a smile or a nod. But within a week, he was making it a point to stop by the counter to say hello. She didn’t do much to encourage him, and she already knew that Snake had given him the “hands off” speech, but X was determined to make a connection with this unusual goth girl anyway. As her confidence grew, she finally let him.

She allowed him to treat her to lunch at the pier, despite Kid’s strong urging not to. He followed with Mad Dog, and Baby laughed it off when X mentioned it. “They’re my bodyguards,” she teased.

“I didn’t know I was in the presence of a celebrity,” he teased back with a whiter-than-white smile. He was so beautiful it nearly broke her heart. If only she had met him a year before, under different circumstances.

“Do you think they’d let you escape to a movie?” he asked as they walked back toward the shop.

“Doubtful,” she said. “Plus, I already told you. I don’t date.”

She jumped as he took her hand in his. “Shame,” he grinned down at her and she felt herself swoon a little. She didn’t have much experience with boys and had no idea how to proceed, especially when the touch of his hand didn’t scare her like it used to . . . like it should have.

It was one of the many times that she wished M.J. would come around. She desperately needed a female point of view, and despite the fact they were still total strangers who hadn’t spent a whole lot of time together, M.J. was as close to a sister—or mother—as she had ever had.

M.J., however, was holed up in her dinky Hollywood apartment night after night as she constructed a plan. Now that Tammy had been found and Baby was safely squared away under Snake’s watchful eye, she had a little room to strategize. She threw herself into gathering information, and she had tracked down the information regarding Stuart and Katherine Rothchild. That took up much of her time, as she tried to make sense of why a girl with her breeding and advantages had taken to the streets. M.J. had to dig deep into Baby’s untold story so that she could figure out if it was a safer alternative to send her back.

She hated the idea that Baby was at Wyndryder, and she already knew from Jimmy that it would take a nuclear blast to get her out again. She also knew how much Baby had done to keep herself disguised, and had M.J. not met Dominic Isbecky, she might have thought it was enough. But he was as cunning as he was powerful, which was how he’d been able to do the heinous things he had been doing for so long. M.J. knew she had to work quickly before he connected all the dots.

Meanwhile she was forced to keep a close watch on the situation from afar, using both Jimmy and her grandmother Susan, the other co-owner of Wyndryder, to keep her abreast of any changes. They were the ones who told her about Xavier’s interest in Baby, but it was the unexpected lunch date on June 26 that expanded her research even further. She began to secretly vet the newest member of their exclusive community.

She had just begun her background check when a knock at her door distracted her. She minimized the window before standing. She opened the door in time to help Kelly, who was juggling bags of Thai food in his arms.

They had formed a tentative alliance in the weeks following their workout session at the gym. The very next day, an abandoned warehouse in Hollywood, known to be a place where homeless kids took shelter, burned right to the ground. As predicted, M.J. was there before the fire department put out the last burning ember. Like the Roses N’ Palms, an accelerant was used to start the fire that killed five homeless kids, Billy Pruitt among them. Solving this crime again threw them together, and they’d fought like a couple of rabid honey badgers in a steel cage. He was quick to point out that it was clear neither of them was going anywhere, so it was in their best interest to work together and stop wasting time fighting about it.

Surprisingly, she offered him information about Tammy’s pimp, who was last seen at the warehouse. Given the link to Tammy and the same MO that was used at her friend’s motel, it was too coincidental to ignore. Kelly agreed. He used his position to dig a little deeper into previous ties Billy had with Dominic Isbecky.

He was the one who found the blueprints of Isbecky’s house in the hills, as well as a dozen other properties in Isbecky’s name, all of which had been extensively renovated since he’d purchased them, with different contractors used to complete the jobs. None they contacted had all the information, only bits and pieces. “You go in now, you’re going in blind,” Kelly had said. Both knew they had no choice but to research further.

It was then that Kelly Harris became a necessary evil. He had resources she needed, and oddly enough seemed willing to share them in exchange for a tidbit of information here and there. He was at her apartment almost every night, whether she wanted him to be or not. So she begrudgingly allowed him to stay as long as he helped her draw lines between Dominic Isbecky and the Hard Candy Killer, which seemed frustratingly tenuous at best.

Dominic had protected his past well. And his present was even more mysterious. It was though he lived two lives, or split into two people. There was the guy he presented to the world, and the monster she’d met in the office.

It was their job to reconcile the two.

If Richard Bennett knew how much information Kelly had shared with her, he would have likely canned his ass. But Kelly was beyond caring about his own career and his own hide. After seeing Tammy on that slab, knowing his own incompetence had put her there, he was ready to do anything to bring that monster to justice. If he had his way, he’d blow the Hard Candy Killer’s head off and spare everyone the time and expense of a trial. Los Angeles was a town living in fear for its daughters, and no court in the country would convict him for doing his civic duty to serve and protect.

But he knew he’d have to beat M.J. to it. If he carried guilt and regret, it was only a fraction of what M.J. was harboring. She said very little, refusing to budge even an inch to let him in.

It only made him want her more.

After that first workout session, he hadn’t been able to shake thoughts of her. He remembered in vivid detail what she looked like, how she felt, what she smelled like. Late at night when he was alone in his bed, he could still feel her in his arms. She was supple, yet strong. Holding her was like cuddling a cobra. She had coiled her body around him, but it had been a lethal hug. One wrong move and she’d strike to kill.

It didn’t take very long for him to realize that it would be one hell of a way to go. By the end of June, he was at her apartment every night for reasons other than the job.

It had been a hell of a long time since that had happened.

He even wore a smile as he entered her apartment that Thursday night. “I know you like it hot,” he said, taking their bags of food to the table. “I tried to order the spiciest level that they had, but she talked me down to the medium range. They still had to handle your share with rubber gloves and metal tongs, fair warning.”

“Righteous,” she said as she dug into one of the bags, taking out the container of spicy mint noodle.

He twisted off the cap of a beer and handed it to her. “May God have mercy on your soul.” He grinned.

“Too late for that.” She smirked and headed toward the threadbare sofa.

He opted to sit at the table instead. He glanced at her computer. “Any further news on the Rothchilds?”

“You tell me,” she said in between bites. “They’ve been in Los Angeles sucking up press time on every channel for weeks.” It was clear she wasn’t happy about it.

“They want to find their daughter,” he said and shrugged. “The only people who aren’t afraid for her are the people who know where she is.”

It was a pointed statement. She glanced up. “Is that your charming way of asking me, again, where I’ve stashed your key witness?”

He shrugged. “You keep telling me you sent her home. Clearly she didn’t make it.”

“I said I sent her back to North Carolina. I never said I sent her back home.” He said nothing as he waited. Finally she sighed. “When she got here, she was pretty badly beaten up. Old bruises. You’ve seen them yourself in that picture, which we both know was taken the minute she stepped off the bus.”

“You think they did it?” He was skeptical, though he knew from his tenure on the force that anything was possible. This was a high-profile family from North Carolina, balls-deep in regional politics and old money, and neither of the Rothchilds seemed foolish enough to visibly abuse their child, risking any kind of blight on their perfectly polished reputations.

It was her turn to shrug. “Whatever it was, it was bad enough to send her running clear across the country to get away from it.”

“And you sent her back.”

Her eyes met his. “She said she had a safe place to go.”

“Bullshit,” he said, just as directly. “If she had a safer place to go in North Carolina, she would have gone there in the first place.”

She smirked. “Spoken like a true detective.”

He sighed, rose from the table, and joined her on the couch. “Why lie to me, M.J.? What purpose does it serve?”

“I like to keep you on your toes.” She stabbed another forkful of mint noodle.

He chuckled. “You certainly do that.”

A silent moment passed between them before she had to avert her eyes. “She’s safe,” she said finally. “That’s all I can tell you.”

“That’s all you
will
tell me,” he corrected.

She shrugged. “Either way, I’m taking any details about her location to my grave.”

He took the container from her hands and placed it on the coffee table. “No one else has to die, M.J.”

She met his gaze. “Then how come they do?” He could say nothing. “What is the body count up to these days, Harris? Can’t you see that I can’t take any chances? Not after what happened with Todd and with Tammy. Hell, even Billy. These kids shouldn’t have to pay the price for my leaps of faith.”

Unconsciously he reached for her hand. “You shouldn’t have to, either,” he said softly. Their eyes locked and held for a long moment before his other hand captured a lock of her wild red hair. It felt like silk in his fingers. “I’ve never met anyone like you, M.J. Standing alone, trying to save the world. It doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to be this hard.”

Looking into her eyes, he could instantly see what terrified her most. It wasn’t being alone; it wasn’t facing killers or fighting for her street kids.

Getting close to anyone . . . feeling anything more than her righteous anger . . . those were the demons that chased her.

And yet, she was enticing as hell. From her bright green eyes to her full, tempting lips, she was all woman underneath that warrior exterior. And he burned for her with every single cell in his body. For once, he didn’t resist the urge to touch her face, or lose himself in her eyes.