Rock Chick 08 Revolution (26 page)

“You’re in the biz, so
you
could vouch for me with the
Licensing Board.”

That expression I did not like
crossed his face before he hid it and replied, “Ally, I’m not licensed, and I’m
not gonna be. Workin’ with Lee, I don’t gotta be. But still, it isn’t going to
happen.”

I didn’t get this.

Sure, he had a rap sheet, but as
many times as he got arrested, nothing ever stuck. He’d never done time.

And it wasn’t like he was the only
human being who did wrong and turned his life around.
    

I wasn’t certain how the Colorado
Licensing Bureau felt about it, but he’d been working under Lee now for over a
year. He was on the crime-free wagon and hadn’t once even teetered, much less
fallen off.

I could tell by his face that this
wasn’t the time he was going to share, and I wondered if there would be a time
he would do that voluntarily.

I suspected there would not.

So that meant it was soon going to
be
my
time to get out the tequila and
have a sit down with my brother of another color. He lived. He breathed. He
worked. He even smiled and sometimes laughed.

But something about him made me
feel he was on hold. Waiting.

For what, I didn’t know.

But it was becoming clear it was
time I did what I could so Darius Tucker would stop existing on pause and hit
play.

“I’ll talk with Sylvie,” he
offered.

“That’d be cool, Darius,” I
accepted.

Darius changed subjects.

“Now, you know both Hank and Lee
have been in my face to keep you out of this Rosie shit, but I know if I tried,
you’d lose your mind and you’d get in it. So I’m gonna keep you briefed.”

Seriously.

I loved Darius.

I grinned.

He kept talking.

“He’s smoke. His shit was good shit
and he’s still got fans here, so I’m workin’ my way through who I knew was
partial to his product. The boys from New
Mexico have no ties here. This is not good. No known
associates, nothin’ to go on. Brody’s workin’ that book thing and he’s also
workin’ hotel/motel registrations for me. I’m takin’ this on two angles,
shuttin’ down Rosie and shuttin’ down the source of danger by findin’ those
guys. It’s not gonna be easy so Lee has also assigned Hector to work with me.”

I nodded.

Darius carried on. “Because of
their relationships with you, Hank and Eddie can’t work this case officially.
They’ve assigned it to Jimmy Marker. Jimmy’s keepin’ them briefed, they’re
briefin’ me.”

Poor Jimmy.

A colleague of my dad’s, I’d known
Jimmy Marker since I was a little girl. And Jimmy was batting a thousand. That
would mean he’d picked up every Rock Chick case, now including mine.

“You got Santo and Lucky on your
ass,” Darius continued. “You still carry, keep your stun gun and pepper spray
on you. Vigilance, Ally.”

“Always, honey.”

This time, he nodded.

“Shit to do,” he muttered, which
meant we were done.

“Darius?” I called, even though he
was looking at me.

“Right here, Ally.”

“I love what I do. I’m going to
love doing it for a living. But the thing I love most is that you always
believed in me.”

Darius held my eyes a beat before
he looked down to the seat.

When he lifted his eyes again, I
took in a hissed breath at the unconcealed pain there.

“And I love it that you always
believed in me,” he whispered.

Oh God.

I leaned toward him. “Darius—”

“Get outta my truck, Ally.”

“Darius—”

“Out, sweetheart.”

It was him calling me sweetheart
and
doing it in a voice that was rough
with emotion that made me nod and exit his vehicle immediately.

I stood on the sidewalk and watched
him drive away.

Definitely time for tequila and a
sit down between Darius and me.

I looked across the street and gave
a wave to Lucky who was standing outside a sedan and leaning into his forearms
on its roof.

He lifted a hand and gave me a
salute.

I gave him a chin lift that was
probably not macho badass and walked into Fortnum’s.

It was a hair after opening, which
meant the place was packed.

Duke was behind the book counter,
and when I caught his eyes, he scowled at me, turned and disappeared into the rows
of shelves behind him.

Okay, so, tequila with Darius. And
also beer with Duke.

Tex and Jet were behind the
espresso counter and I headed there, even though both of them being there left
little room for me. Not because there wasn’t enough room for three people. Just
that, with the addition of Jet’s seven month’s pregnant belly, it made it a
tight squeeze.

We got to work, but I knew I was
operating on borrowed time caused by the coffee rush and this was confirmed
when it slowed and immediately Tex turned to me.

“Not happy,” he boomed, even though
I was three feet away.

I was not surprised by this
announcement. Not because I ticked everyone off with my secrecy.

No, because Tex
was rarely happy.

“What now?” I asked.

“You’re hooked up with Zano.”

Shit.

Here we go.

“Tex—”
I started.

“That means you got Zano Family
protection. So that means no one’s gonna fuck with you. So that means you’re
gonna do whatever it is you’re gonna do, but still, shit’s gonna stay boring.”

I stared.

Tex kept booming. “That apartment
explosion was a fluke. Those New Mexicans get wind you’ve got family
protection, they’re gonna back off. Then where we gonna be?”

“Safe and happy?” Jet suggested,
and Tex turned a narrowed gaze and knitted bushy brows to her.

“What fun is that?” he asked.

“Just pointing out,” I entered the
conversation, “the other Rock Chicks had Nightingale and police protection, not
to mention Sloan and Zano protection in some cases, and shit happened to them.”

Was I assuring Tex of impending
danger and mayhem?

“You women burned your way through
anyone stupid enough to spit into the eye of those tigers. There’s no one
left,” Tex replied.

“Maybe those New Mexicans won’t get
wind of all that,” I proposed. “Out-of-towners with no local known associates,
they may be slow to cotton on.”

Yes, I was assuring Tex of
impending danger and mayhem.

“It’s thin,” Tex muttered. “But
it’s something.”

He turned back to the espresso
machine and jerked off a portafilter with such force, the entire machine (and
it was not small
or
light, not by a
long shot) moved sideways half an inch.

He also kept muttering.

“And we got that book thing. Those
badasses were beside themselves yesterday. Got a feeling that shit’s gonna get
interesting.”

I had a feeling he wasn’t wrong

I looked to Jet.

Jet rolled her eyes and shrugged.

I got close to her and asked, “How
are you feeling about the book thing?”

Her head tipped to the side before
she replied. “I can’t find it in me to get worked up about it. Sure, there’s more
detail in Indy’s book, but it isn’t like it wasn’t mostly all laid out in the
papers.” She righted her head and went on to inform me, “Eddie’s not pleased.”

That wasn’t a surprise.

“So I’m thinking I should probably
devote my attention to not getting wound up about it.” Her hand went to her
belly. “He’s not big on me getting worked up about stuff.”

I knew that. If Eddie adored Jet
before (and he adored her, in his macho badass way), he doted on her now. He
was ecstatic (again, in his macho badass way) that she was having his baby,
thus he treated her like porcelain. No Eddie Chats that pissed her off. No
being bossy. It was all about soft looks and sweet touches and handling her
with the utmost care.

It was pretty righteous.

Then again, Eddie had always been a
really good guy (in his macho badass way).

So that wasn’t a surprise, either.

I dipped my head to her belly.
“How’s preparations for the blessed event coming?” I asked, and she gave me her
knockout smile.

“The addition is done,” she told
me, referring to the new kickass laundry room Eddie and Hector added on to
their house so Jet didn’t have to walk down to the basement to do laundry. “The
nursery is done,” she went on. “Now he’s starting on refinishing the basement
so we can move number one out to a bedroom downstairs,” she patted her big
belly. “And move number two into the nursery upstairs when the time comes.”

“Forward planning,” I noted and got
another big smile.

It was safe to say Jet, as well as
Eddie, were looking forward to having a big happy family.

I pulled in a breath and got to the
hard part.

“Okay, so how are you doing with
me?” I asked, and her smile changed. It didn’t fade, but it grew softer.

“You’re Ally,” she answered.

I was.

“You do what you do,” she continued
then her smile re-brightened. “I’m just bummed out I didn’t get the chance to
tell you not to fight it.”

“I wouldn’t have listened,” I told
her.

“They never do,” she replied, and
that was so true, we both giggled.

The bell over the door rang.

I turned and watched Daisy charge
in wearing a skintight baby pink Juicy Couture track suit with the hoodie
unzipped so far you could see the lace of the cups of her bra. This was not a
fashion option she chose while she zipped up that morning. This was a necessity
as the fabric didn’t stretch enough to zip over her bodacious ta-ta’s.

“Yo,” I called my greeting seeing
as her eyes were glued on me.

She didn’t reply, and I knew I was
getting it from Daisy when she kept up her charge right behind the espresso
counter, grabbed my hand and dragged me out toward the bookshelves.

Down the aisle we went and she
turned right at the W-X-Y-Z section.

She stopped us in the middle of the
row, turned and tipped her head back to me.

“I’m workin’ with you,” she
announced.

Fuck!

“Daisy—” I began.

She lifted a hand palm out,
pearl-painted, lethally-long fingernails pointed to the ceiling, and I could
see the tips were brushed with hot pink on the diagonal and every one had a
little heart of rhinestones affixed to it.

I didn’t usually allow people to shut
me up, especially giving me The Hand. And Daisy was not carrying a purse and
her tracksuit didn’t afford any opportunities to hide anything, but even
without a stun gun handy, Daisy found ways to get her way and I wasn’t in the
mood for a catfight in the W-X-Y-Z section.

So I shut up.

She dropped her hand.

“After you left, Indy told us on
the hush-hush you’re puttin’ out a shingle,” she declared and I took a calming
breath.

I hadn’t even told Ren. Or my
family.

But Indy had told the Rock Chicks.

I was seeing that I needed to be
far more thorough in my instructions in the future as Daisy kept talking.

“She explained we gotta keep our
traps zipped. And sugar, you know we will.”

I knew no such thing.

She kept going.

“She also said we gotta keep our
noses out of your business. We all agreed.”

I wasn’t certain I believed her,
especially since she just told me she was going to work with me. As for the
rest of them, that remained to be seen.

“But I’m workin’ with you,” she
repeated.

“Daisy, I can’t—”

Her hand went back up and she
immediately started talking.

“Not
with you,
with you, like, in the field. I’m gonna be Shirleen to
your Lee.”

I stared.

Then I felt that feeling I felt
earlier start to move through me and again it was far from bad.

This was because Daisy’s idea was
far from bad.

“You know,” she continued, “I tried
the society gig and the charity gig. Both of those did not work for me.”

I did know that. I also knew that
neither of those worked in a big way. The one and only charity function Daisy
gave ended up in a standoff complete with firearms. The crème de la crème of
Denver society wasn’t hankering for another such escapade, even if it was for a
good cause.

“And no one wants me to do their
hair for some reason, so the salon idea I had is out,” she stated.

At that, I tried (and failed) not
to look at her hair which made her four inches taller than she was, but she
still had two ponytails sticking out the back and they were both tied with baby
pink satin ribbons.

In other words, if big hair made
you closer to God, Daisy’s hair was touching the Pearly Gates.

And that was the only way Daisy
knew how to do hair. So if you weren’t up for the Southern Woman Style, you
were screwed. And let’s just say that the vast majority of women in Denver fit
in two groups. Those who mountain biked (and not with big hair). And those who
drank cosmos (and they might have big hair, but not Daisy big).

Thus no one championed her salon
idea.

“And sugar, I need to find a way to
spend my days,” she kept going. “The Rock Chicks are petering out. There’s no
hands to hold and no need for me to turn my home into a safe house. The other
day I noticed my stun gun had a cobweb on it. After I had a word with my
cleaning lady, it made me think. And what I think is, I can send an email
and
an invoice. So we’re teamin’ up.”

“Daisy, honestly, this isn’t a bad
idea,” I told her, and her blue eyes lit up. “But I don’t have any clients
yet.”

She waved her hand in front of her
face, dropped it and leaned in.

“To get clients, you gotta have
infrastructure,
” she stated
authoritatively. “So, that’s why I got Roxie on designin’ your website. And
Ava’s mockin’ up a couple ideas for a logo for you. She’s gonna do our business
cards and letterhead.”