Rock Chick 06 Reckoning (5 page)

They were close to something; Sid didn’t like it so Sid declared war by going after the girls. Lee knew this not only because it was obvious but also because he’d had a phone cal five minutes after the precisely timed shootings and drive-bys. The cal er informed him that he should take this as a warning. Either they backed off or Sid’s boys were going to pick off the Rock Chicks one by one.

Me getting shot was not planned, I was only supposed to get shot
at
. Again, I would take this opportunity to remind you I was the Queen of Super Shitty Bad Luck.

This information of certain death to the Rock Chicks was met with the vague murmur here and there. For myself, I was total y flipped out as threats of one by one kil ings of myself and my friends, hel , of
anyone
, was wont to do.

Everyone else acted like this was a smal bother, like getting a splinter, irritating but not much more.

Effing hel .

Lee told The Tribe that Daisy and Marcus would be our hosts for the evening and we’d get our orders the next day.

It was then my phone, which I was holding in my hand, rang.

“Sorry,” I muttered to the assemblage when al eyes swung to me.

I looked at the display; it said “Buzz Cal ing”. I flipped it open but before I could put it to my ear it was pul ed out of my hand.

My head shot up and I saw Mace, my phone to his ear, his back to me, walking away.

“Erm, excuse me?” I cal ed, getting up from my perch on the arm of a couch and fol owing him.

“Buzz, she’l talk to you tomorrow,” Mace told the phone.

“Yeah. She’s al right.” Then he flipped my phone shut.

Do something!
My brain ordered me.

I did something. I poked him in the back. The Tribe had melted from existence (not real y, as people can’t melt, except in movies like
Raiders of the Lost Ark
, they just melted from my mind) and my pissed off vibe came back with a vengeance.

“Excuse
me?
” I repeated to his back.

Mace turned. I put my hand out for my phone.

Mace shoved my phone in his back pocket. My eyes fol owed this action then narrowed and shot back to Mace’s face.

“Give me my phone,” I demanded.

“No,” Mace replied.

“Give it to me.”

“No.”

“Mace, give me my goddamned phone!” My voice was rising.

Mace leaned into me and responded calmly, “No.”

“I need to talk to Buzz,” I explained with rapidly waning patience. “He’s gonna need me. His girlfriend had her head blown off tonight, for God’s sake!”

“Lindsey’s head was blown off by Sid’s men. She’s the reason they were able to get close to you, watch you, figure you out, find a way to get to you. She’s the reason they knew Buzz would cal you and knew you’d come running when he did. Lindsey got herself kil ed so you could be target practice as a warning to me.”

My mouth snapped shut and I took a step back. I had not put this together but it made sense and the idea that I had anything to do with Lindsey’s death felt like the gut kick to end al gut kicks.

Mace took a step forward and his steps were longer than mine.

“Stel a, I’m not gonna let any of the members of that fuckin’ band of yours put you in harm’s way. No phone. No communication. Not until we know the lay of the land. Your band wants to talk to you, they do it through me.” Oh no. He did
not
just say what it seemed like he just said.

“Don’t cal them ‘that fuckin’ band’,” I snapped.

Mace was silent.

“And you can’t take my phone!”

Mace remained silent.

“And you aren’t going to order me around and stand between me and my boys!” I went on.

“Wanna bet?” Mace asked.

I stared at him. He stared at me.

He didn’t look blank and broody and that emotional flash didn’t cut through his eyes. He looked determined and angry and I got the weird impression that it didn’t have to do simply with Linnie being dead, me getting shot and us being sequestered at The Castle.

I changed tactics. “God! Were you this overbearing when we were together?”

“I should have been,” Mace fired his shot without hesitation.

My head jerked and my hands formed into fists. I couldn’t believe he just said that. I didn’t even know what he meant by that.

What
did
he mean by that?

“Girlie, hate to break this up, it’s great for entertainment value alone, but you
do
know you two have an audience,” Tod cal ed from somewhere behind me.

I sucked in breath through my nose, too angry to be embarrassed.

“Thank God we’re over,” I threw at Mace as my parting shot.

That’s when I saw the flash dart through his eyes again. It was there then gone before I could read it.

“I’m keeping your phone,” Mace informed me.

“Have at it.” I gave up and walked away.

“Have at it.” I gave up and walked away.

That was it. Daisy got busy getting everyone settled and we disbursed.

Juno put her front paws on the pul out bed, taking my mind from my thoughts.

“You can’t get up here. Momma’s got a gunshot wound and there isn’t enough room.”

Juno woofed.

“I know, baby. The floor is cold and hard but it’s al you’ve got tonight. We’l be home soon.”

Juno woofed again.

“Quiet, girl. It’s six o’clock in the morning and there’s a house ful of people trying to sleep.”

A soft woof then Juno plopped down. I heard her big dog groan as she stretched out on the floor. Then another big dog groan slash sigh as she fel to her side.

“You’re such a good dog,” I whispered and I meant it.

I heard an even softer woof and I felt my lips form a smal smile.

I punched my pil ows, rol ed to rest on my unwounded side and laid smack in the middle of the bed. The doctor said the painkil ers might make me drowsy. He was not wrong.

Within minutes, I was asleep.

* * * * *

For your information, I would have welcomed asleep/asleep dreams of Mace but I normal y dreamed of asleep/asleep dreams of Mace but I normal y dreamed of weird shit like mutant snakes terrorizing Denver or being on a road trip with Charo, her shouting, “Coochie Coochie,” at passing truckers. I didn’t know what these dreams said about me or the state of my unconscious mind and I didn’t want to know.

The awake/asleep dreams were always like this, part-conscious, part-unconscious, right when I woke up but before I was real y awake. It was then I would feel Mace’s imaginary heat behind me, his hard body pressed to mine, his arm tucked tight around my bel y, his breath against my neck.

I went with it as I always did, liking the memory. It was one of the seven hundred, twenty-five thousand things about him I missed most, waking up with him holding me, feeling safe, feeling wanted, feeling loved, al three of those feelings I’d never real y felt in my whole life.

I snuggled into his imaginary heat and hit something very solid and very real.

I froze.

“You’re awake,” Mace said.

Oh my God. What was going on?

“Mace?” I asked just to make sure.

“We need to talk.”

Yep, he was there al right.

Effing hel .

I tried to move away. The tight arm got tighter.

“Let me go.”

“No.”

Erm, excuse me?

“Let me go,” I repeated.

“We’re gonna talk.”

“Fine, great, wonderful. We can talk not lying in bed.” Then it hit me. “What are you doing in my bed?”

“I told you I wasn’t leavin’ you.”

Erm, excuse
me?

“Yeah, you said that right before you left me,” I reminded him.

“I didn’t leave you.”

“You walked out of the room!”

“I walked out of the room but I didn’t leave you.”

“You didn’t stay.”

“You were embarrassed, Luke was there. You needed the girls. You said it yourself.”

“You stil left.”

“Stel a, I didn’t leave.”

“You did.”

“For fuck’s sake,” he clipped. “End of topic. We’re talkin’

about something else now.”

Nunh-unh. No we bloody wel were not. We weren’t talking about
anything
.

I pushed against his arm again. He didn’t let go.

“Move your arm,” I demanded.

“Why didn’t you tel me you’d been shot?”

“Move your effing arm.”

The arm tightened and shook gently, shaking me gently with it.

“Answer my question,” Mace demanded.

“If you remember, you were a little busy. I was okay. No big deal.”

“Not fond of the idea of you calmly bleedin’ in the backseat of an SUV that I’m also in, Kitten. In fact, not fond of the idea of you bleedin’ at al .”

What he said shook me.

I had to ask again, what on
earth
was going on?

Nope, no, I didn’t care. Couldn’t care. I was over him.

Over. Him.

I shifted my focus. “Stop cal ing me Kitten.” He ignored me. “No tel in’ the way this is gonna go down.

You’re gonna have to get over your attitude and communicate with me.”

Erm, excuse me again?

“Get over my attitude?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Let me get this straight,” I started, my voice showing my barely control ed patience, no longer pushing against his arm, I rol ed toward him. He shifted. I fel to my back and he got up on his elbow. I glared up at him and tried to ignore how fucking gorgeous he was in the morning. His eyes alone were enough to make you want to wake up and face a new day. “A year ago…” it wasn’t a year ago, it was one year, three weeks and three days, not that I was counting,

“you broke up with me, walked out of my life. Now someone is shooting at me, using my band to get to you, kil ing people because of shit you’re involved in and you want me to ‘get over my attitude’?”

“Yeah,” he replied, unaffected by the damning statement I just made.

I got up on both my elbows, which brought me closer to him. He didn’t move.

Then I shouted, “You’ve lost your mind!”

“Calm down,” he ordered.

“Calm? Calm? I was shot last night!”

His jaw got tight. “I haven’t forgotten that, Kitten, in fact, that’s what we’re fuckin’ talkin’ about.” Then something else hit me, something important, something I wanted an answer to right away. “Why was I shot last night? Why am I involved at al ? We aren’t together. I’m not your woman. I’m not Indy to your Lee, Jet to your Eddie, Roxie to your –”

“Yeah, you are.”

My elbows went out from under me and I fel back to the bed. A weight hit my chest, it felt like it weighed a ton and it took my breath away.

Move!
My brain demanded.

I rol ed and tried to escape. I had no idea where I was going but I was going there.

Mace’s arm grabbed me around the waist; he threw me back to the bed flat on my back. Before I could do a thing about it, he shifted, both his hands came either side of me, he did a semi-push up and landed on top of me but his weight was slightly skewed to my healthy side.

Okay, so maybe I wasn’t going “there”.

“
Get off me!
” I screamed, shoving at his shoulders.

“Stel a, listen.”

“No! Get off!”

“No! Get off!”

“Listen to me, God damn it!” he yel ed.

For your information, Mace had a short fuse. We argued when we were together, quite a lot. He was a passionate guy but also, like I said, he had a short fuse. It wasn’t always happiness and light. Then again, the make up sex was magnificent.

“Piss off!” I yel ed back.

“Sid’s boys were there that night you sang Hank Wil iams to me.”

Oh no. I just
knew
that’d come back to haunt me.

I thought back and remembered Linnie was there that night too, with her bad dudes. Now I knew they were Sid’s bad dudes.

Shitsofuckit!

“I didn’t sing Hank to you,” I lied.

“You did.”

“I did not.”

“You did, everyone knew it, everyone saw it. Even Sid’s boys.”

“You’re a big guy. The bar was dark. You were just a shadow that I focused on. And anyway, I was lost in the song.”

“Bul shit.”

“Get over yourself, Mace. You broke up with me, I’ve moved on,” I told him.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You got another man?”

Oh dear. Wel , there we were.

“Yes,” I told him and this was not a lie. I was semi-dating a guy named Eric. He was very good-looking, he was into me and he was clear he wanted to be
more
into me if you catch my drift. I was holding back because, first off, he wasn’t Mace and second, I wasn’t sure about him, there was something about him that I thought wasn’t quite right.

I saw Mace’s eyes flash again. This was a different kind of flash, an unhappy flash.

“Don’t lie to me, Stel a.”

“I’m not lying. His name is Eric. We’ve been dating for about a month. We’re considering taking it to the next level.” Eric was considering it. I wasn’t so sure but Mace didn’t need to know this.

Mace stared at me as if trying to assess the validity of my statement.

Then he spoke. “Your relationship progression with Eric just stal ed.”

I felt my eyes get wide. “Erm, excuse me?”

“He’s out of the picture.”

At that, I felt my eyes narrow. “He is not.”

“He is.”

“Who do you think you are?”

“In our current scenario, I’m the guy who’s gonna keep you safe. I’m the guy who’s gonna keep you alive. And I’m gonna do it however I need to do it and while I’m doin’ it, I don’t need to have to deal with any of your groupies.” My
groupies?