Rock Chick 08 Revolution (17 page)

And I was steaming.

My apartment had exploded!

What the fuck was that?

And here I was, pacing in an office
across town, not knowing anything, and worse, not able
to do
anything, all because the macho alphas in my life deemed it
fit I should be carted away.

I had been, at the time,
semi-flipped out, seeing as my apartment had exploded, so I didn’t argue.

I made a mental note to delay flip
outs in future so I would not give the macho alphas in my life the opportunity
to treat me like
a girl.

After making this mental note, I
eyed Kevin and decided I’d given him enough time to control his freak out, or
get it together enough to converse with me (insofar as The Kevster could do
either, even when things weren’t exploding) so I moved to Lee’s desk. I rested
my hips against it and looked down at Kevin.

His wide eyes looked up at me.

Okay, maybe I hadn’t given it
enough time.

Still, I had to do
something.

“Kevin, do you feel like talking?”
I asked carefully.

“I nearly exploded,” he told me
instead of answering.

“I know. You may have saved Ren’s and
my life, and dude, I don’t know how to thank you for that. That was way cool.
I’ll try to figure out a way to express my gratitude, but now we need to talk.
I gotta know how you knew—”

The door opened before I could
finish and my eyes went there.

Lee was prowling in, but looking
behind him, arm raised, finger pointing at something or someone.

I watched him order angrily, “Keep
the Rock Chicks back and I don’t give a fuck what it takes to do it.”

Then his eyes came to me and coming
in behind him were first Ren then Hank, Eddie, Luke and Mace.

“What’s—?” I started but Lee jerked
his finger toward my face and interrupted me.

“You. Shut it,” he growled then
turned his attention to The Kevster and jerked his finger in Kevin’s face.
“You, tell us how you knew there was a bomb.”

I clenched my teeth and my eyes
flew to Ren.

He was looking at me and he looked
even less happy than me. But he jerked his head in a negative shake once and
looked to Kevin.

I did too and saw that The Kevster
was fidgeting, his eyes darting from me to Lee to different men in the room
then to Lee again and he said, “I, uh… dude, I—”

Lee leaned into him and roared, “
Tell me how you knew there was a bomb
planted in my sister’s apartment!
”

I pushed away from the desk. “Lee,”
I started cautiously. “He’s freaked. Give him a minute.”

Lee turned blazing brown eyes to
me. “Your best bet right now, Ally, is to keep your mouth shut. I’ll get to
you.”

He’d get to me?

I felt my eyes get big. “Excuse
me?”

Lee turned fully to me and planted
his hands on his hips. “One day, my sister gets up in the business of every
dirty power broker in a hundred mile radius of Aspen.
The next day her apartment explodes. You puttin’ these pieces together or do I
gotta do it for you?”

Oh I did not
think
so!

I leaned into him and started to
snap, “Don’t you—”

“It was Rosie.”

That was said by The Kevster, and
both Lee and my eyes shot to him.

“Say again?” Lee demanded.

“Rosie’s back,” The Kevster told
Lee, and then looked at me. “I mean, dudette, he didn’t plant the bomb. But he
may have, um… dropped your name, to some, uh…
people
and, uh… well, that didn’t go too good.”

What the hell?

“Rosie’s back?” I asked.

“Yeah. He’s back and he might have,
uh… brought some trouble with him.”

Lee dropped his head and looked at
his boots.

I stared at The Kevster.

I saw movement and turned to see it
was Ren who was the one moving.

Taking one look at his face,
belatedly I felt the weight of the air and I knew he was not just angrier than
me. He was livid.

I moved quickly, got in front of him,
put a hand on his chest and caught his eyes. “Let me, Ren. Please,” I asked
quietly.

“You got two minutes, babe. Then
it’s me,” he replied.

I stared into his eyes.

Yep. Livid.

Hmm. Better get a move on.

I nodded, turned my back to him and
looked down at The Kevster.

Kevin was looking up at us, so he
saw it when Ren’s arm curled around my upper chest.

Seeing that, his eyes lighted and
he cried, “Dudette! You two finally comin’ out?”

Jeez. Even The Kevster knew about
me and Ren.

“Maybe we can discuss my love life
over Cheetos and beer later. Right now, and fast, Kevin, you need to tell us
about Rosie, what he’s up to and how this concerns me.”

“And how you knew there was a bomb
in Ally’s apartment,” Hank butted in.

Kevin looked to Hank when he spoke
and got visibly
more
uncomfortable
(then again, Hank had had him arrested during the Premier Rock Chick Drama,
which would be Indy’s). When Hank was done speaking, Kevin’s eyes came to me.

“Right. Well. You know he grows.
Yeah?” he asked.

I nodded. “I know he grows.”

“And you know things got hot here
when he was growin’ in Denver,” The Kevster
went on.

I nodded again, lifting a hand and
rolling it because I knew that too. Intimately. I was the one who found his
ass, and I’d also been there when Hank had The Kevster arrested for trying to
save Rosie’s unattended pot farm—a pot farm unattended because Rosie was in
hiding.

“And I think I told you he’s the
maestro of pot,” Kevin continued.

“Skip to the parts we don’t know,”
Luke ordered, and Kevin fidgeted again in his seat as he looked to Luke then
back to me.

“He kind of recently moved to New Mexico,” The Kevster said.

Finally, something I didn’t know.

“And?” I prompted.

 
“Well, he started growing,” Kevin stated and I
closed my eyes.

Rosie.

All that trouble he had the last
time, and, I might add, brought down on Indy, and he was growing again?

What a fucking idiot.

I opened my eyes again when The
Kevster kept at it. “He established a fanbase, like,
real quick
. So some dudes wanted in on the action. As you know,
that’s history repeating.”

Oh, I knew this, too.

“Rosie was having flashbacks, not
the good kind, and he’d heard word you were establishing yourself as the Badass
Queen of Denver,” Kevin stated.

At this, Ren’s arm got tight and I
sighed.

The Kevster kept going. “And so,
you know, for protection, he dropped your name.”

Ren made a noise that sounded like
a growl and I was pretty certain I heard others, primarily from Lee and Hank.
But fortunately The Kevster had finally found his mojo and was on a roll.

“The dudes down there tryin’ to
horn in on his action don’t know you’re a badass with badass backup. They
apparently were unimpressed.”

Great.

Kevin went on.

“So they stopped tryin’ to horn in
and just did it. Rosie got pissed. Told them he was comin’ to get you to take
care of business and he hightailed it up here. They followed him. He came to me
because I knew where to find you. I didn’t get a good feeling about things,
because, you know, he was totally tweaked. And Rosie’s usually mellow. When
he’s tweaked, dudette, that means bad things.”

It
so
did.

Kevin carried on.

“I talked to him and got him to
bare all. This included the fact that one of those New Mexican dudes blows
stuff up in the New Mexico boonies all the time. So that Rosie didn’t, like,
lead them to you, I came to tell you this was all going down, and saw some dude
who I knew was not your style comin’ out of your apartment. I figured they
found you without Rosie. He didn’t see me, so I followed him and he was just
sittin’ in his car in your parking lot. But he had this little box in his
hand.”

“Fuck me,” Ren murmured.

Kevin talked over Ren. “I figured
he was waiting for you to get there so he could, you know…”

He trailed off. The room became
stifling, so I urged him to go on, saying, “I know.”

Kevin nodded. “So he wouldn’t see
me, I went in and kept an eye out. But you were takin’ a long time to come
home, so I went to the stairwell I thought you’d use and had myself a doobie to
smooth out the rough edges and pass the time.” His eyes went to Hank and he
stated quickly, “It’s legal now, you know.”

“I know,” Hank growled, his
thoughts on that matter not hidden even in those two words.

Again, I sighed.

“What I don’t know,” Hank stated.
“Is why you saw a strange man walking out of my sister’s apartment and sitting
in her parking lot, holding a box you knew was a detonator, and you didn’t
phone the police.”

“The police?” Kevin asked, like the
concept of law enforcement was foreign to him.

Hank said nothing, obviously
realizing this conversation would lead to nothing good. But I saw his jaw
clench.

The Kevster clearly also decided
conversing longer with Hank would lead to nothing good, so he gave up, looked
my way and kept going. “So, obviously, I missed you. Luckily I came up as you
were comin’ up and,” he flicked out his hands, “we’re all breathing.”

“Where’s Rosie now?” Eddie asked,
and Kevin looked at him.

“My place,” he answered.

“Mace, roll out,” Lee ordered, but
Mace was already moving to the door.

I looked back at Kevin. “Why would
Rosie think I’d help him?”

“’Cause you guys are buds,” The
Kevster informed me.

“Since when?” I asked.

The Kevster looked confused.
“You’re not buds?”

“He got my best friend in a
situation where she nearly got kidnapped to Costa Rica,” I replied. “No, we’re not
buds
.”

“Dudette, that was like,
years
ago. Forgiveness is divine,” Kevin
told me.

“Kicking ass feels better,” I
replied.

At my words his eyes got big and he
grinned a goofy grin. “You are so totally badass.” Then he threw his arms up in
the air and cried, “Rock Chicks rule!”

This was true, all of it, but I
didn’t get the chance to agree with him. Lee took over.

“There are uniforms in reception.
You’re goin’ with Eddie now and making your statement. Then, until this shit
blows over, you’re in my safe room.”

The Kevster’s eyes stayed big, but
for a different reason this time.

He bounced in his seat and cried,
“Dude! No! You have a no-smoking policy!”

“Man, you nearly got blown up
today,” Lee reminded him. “You can stay here and stay off the weed or you can
go out there and take your chances. Your choice. You got two seconds to make
it.”

“Can I crack a window?” Kevin
asked.

“No,” Lee answered.

Kevin slouched in his chair.
“Bummed, dude.”

“Are you accepting my protection?”
Lee pushed.

“Things get hairy when a Rock Chick
is under fire so… I guess,” The Kevster accepted ungraciously.

But at his words, Ren’s arm got
tight again.

Lee looked to Eddie, but Eddie was
looking at Kevin. “Up. Now. Let’s go.”

The Kevster pushed up and his eyes
came to me.

“Stay alive,” he advised as he
walked by me.

That got another tightening of
Ren’s arm and another sigh from me.

The door closed behind Eddie and
Kevin and all attention focused on me.

Or I should say Ren and me.

“Where’s Darius?” Lee asked me.

“He and Brody started down the
mountain before Ren and me so he should be in Denver,” I answered. “Listen,
Lee—”

He lifted a hand close to my face
and shifted his eyes to Ren.

My body strung tight.

“I take it you two are makin’ it
official,” Lee noted.

“Get your hand out of my woman’s
face,” Ren returned pretty unhappily.

Lee dropped his hand but his brows
rose as he remarked, “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“And I’ll say now, I know she’s
your sister, but don’t do that shit again,” Ren replied.

Oh crap.

“Ren—” I started.

Hank moved closer to Lee and noted,
“Not sure that’s the way to win your way into the family.”

“I pointed in Roxie’s face and told
her to shut it, what would you do?” Ren asked what I thought was a valid
question.

Hank held Ren’s eyes then he moved
his to Lee.

Lee was looking at Hank and he
shrugged.

Hank pressed his lips tight and
looked at Ren.

Lee returned his attention to Ren.

No one said anything. This lasted a
while. Long enough for me to lose patience.

“For God’s sake, yes!” I yelled.
“We’re making it official!”

Hank looked to the ceiling.

Lee looked to his boots.

“Explains why apartments are
exploding,” Luke commented. “A Rock Chick has set her sights on a hapless
male.”

I felt pressure in my head. A lot
of it. But I still managed to turn it Luke’s way and declare, “
He
set his sights on
me.
”

“Same thing,” Luke muttered, one
side of his mustachioed lips tipped up.

“Were
you
hapless?” I asked.

“Totally,” he replied immediately.

“You
do
know what hapless means,” I snapped.

“I didn’t say I was hapless
now,
” he corrected. “I was hapless then,
while she was running me through the ringer.”

“I’m thinking Ava saw it the other
way around,” I informed him.

“She’d be wrong,” Luke informed me
and his eyes went to Ren. “What’ve you had? A year? And the bombs are just
starting?” He shook his head, stating eloquently that Ren was fucked. However,
he did this without the half-grin thing going.

He was outright smiling.

Ren said nothing.

I glared at Luke then gave up and
looked to my brothers. “Are we done here? Because Ren and I have a date.”