Busting In (Busted Series Book 1)
Page 11
And the kids blond head bounced along, halfway down the block.
Fuck. Chase took off again. When he signed up to be a cop, he never thought “pursuit of justice” meant literally running up and down the Chicago streets.
Yet here he was, crossing Schubert Avenue and making chase down another back alley. Halfway down, a truck was wedged between two facing garages, maybe a foot of space on each side. Moving men sat on lawn chairs in one garage, eating their lunch. Boxes and appliances were piled next to the metal ramp sticking out of the truck bed.
The kid dodged a refrigerator and angled his body to slide past the truck. But it slowed him down.
Chase just had to use that to his advantage. As he slid his way past the truck, his shoulder holster snagged on a piece of metal.
Dammit. He’s getting away.
Maggie Lane drove her car past the alley entrance and parked on the side of the street. She wanted to drive down the alley, but there was a damn moving truck in the way. “How many garbage bags did you bring?”
“Three.” Jessica Xu unhooked her seatbelt and leaned into the back seat. “Is that enough?” This was Jessi’s first ride-along. She’d been working the front desk at Busted Detective Agency for the past year, hinting at her desire to be a PI the whole time. She’d proved her reliability—and her tenacity—dropping hint after hint about hitting the streets and leaving the horrible phone system that liked to hang up on customers behind. Maggie really needed to send that thing to the antique graveyard.
“Should be.” Maggie poked her head out the window. It was a beautiful day. Sunny. Warm. Not exactly what you expected in April, but she’d take it. Sifting through someone’s trash after an April shower wasn’t exactly high on her “fun things” list. Although, what part of sifting through trash was high on anyone’s list?
Three men carried boxes into the truck blocking the alley. Of course there’d be a truck in back of the house across the way on the day that Maggie and Jessi had to get in and out undetected. That had been the whole point of coming here at eleven AM on a Saturday, when Jillian Hendricks would be out scouring the antique universe for Hummel and Precious Moment figurines. Apparently, there was a whole club that did this every month. Go figure.
“So what are we going to do?” Jessi asked. “Can we make the exchange with the movers around?”
Could they? Yes. Should they? Probably not.
“Quieres almorzar?” a deep voice asked from near the truck. Lunch. Was he asking about lunch? Please let him be asking about lunch.
Another deep voice said, “Por que no? Esto tomará un rato.” She understood the first part—why not? The rest, she had no clue.
Maggie really needed them to stop for lunch. If she and Jessi didn’t exchange the bags now, they’d have to wait until sometime next week—or worse, next month, when Jillian went off to find porcelain children again. A whole month. Maggie had already put off this client one week due to Jillian’s hectic hospital schedule, and finding a day when Jillian would have a full can and wasn’t working had turned into a challenge. Even the boyfriend, Maggie’s client, didn’t know Jillian’s schedule—probably why he hired Busted in the first place.
The moving men removed lunch bags from the front of the truck and disappeared into the garage. Music immediately floated from inside, and Maggie figured this was as good as it was going to get.
“Grab the bags and come on.” She waited for a car to pass, and then opened her car door and slipped out, slamming it shut. Noise didn’t matter, not on the busy Chicago streets. The mission was speed.
Maggie walked along the right side of the alley, sticking close to the fences and garages. Jillian Hendricks lived on this side—across and over from the open garage with the mariachi music spilling out. The idea was to not let the moving men see them. Not to let anyone see them, actually.
Pausing at the corner of the garage next to Jillian’s, Maggie dragged Jessi closer. “Okay,” Maggie said under her breath, “give me those.” She took the stuffed garbage bags from Jessi and nodded at their target—Jillian Hendricks’ trash cans. “Here’s what we’re going to do. You open the garbage can and pick out the first three bags. I’ll dump these in to replace them.”
“Why? It’s not like she’ll notice.”
“The garbage men don’t come for a few hours or so. What if she brings out another bag? The goal is to catch her before she gets suspicious.” Maggie looked toward the open garage. Music. Male voices. Paper and plastic crinkling. It was time. “Let’s go.”
Jessi popped out and headed straight for the garbage can. Lifting the plastic lid, she heaved out three full bags, flattening against the wooden fence to give Maggie room to dump the proxy-bags without being seen.
Success!
The world shifted. Something or someone shoved Maggie forward, into Jessi. She righted herself with the help of two male hands covered in familiar crude fanged snakehead tattoos above the thumbs. Gang tattoos. The Vipers.
Once she was firmly on her feet, the blond teen turned and ran down the alley, yelling, “Sorry” over his shoulder.
“Hey!” Jessi yelled, as he disappeared around the corner, and picked up a dirty red backpack.
Maggie glared at her, raising her index finger to her lips in the universal shut-the-heck-up sign. They still had to get out of here without anyone seeing them—anyone else seeing them, anyway. She shook her head and leaned over to pick up the scattered garbage bags. The kid had been like a mini-tornado. It was time to get out of this alley.
Collision. Something or someone slammed into her.
Again.
This time, the air ripped from her lungs when instead of soft Jessi, she hit hard wood. Her feet tangled in the damn garbage bags. Her knees buckled. Nothing stopped her downward momentum. The ground flew up to meet her cheek. Yay, physics.
Someone—not Jessi—rested on top of her, making a very pissed-off Maggie and gravel sandwich. She tried to push up, but the body squashing her was large and male. The hand on her ass? Also not Jessi. Maggie bucked like she was doing the worm, and the five-finger encroacher disappeared.
“Shit,” a deep voice rumbled above her as the weight vanished.
Air hit her skin without the human blanket. Breathe. It was so much easier to breathe without the weight. She pushed onto her knees. Gravel dug into her palms. What the hell was wrong with everyone, running around knocking people over?
She glared at the man trying to dislodge his foot from one of the garbage bags. Serves you right. “What the hell?”
He only grunted. Why she was surprised by his less-than-stellar manners, she wasn’t sure.
Maggie stood up on wobbly legs. Her clothes were a mess—jeans covered in a thin layer of dust, black T-shirt now a hazy shade of gray. A few swipes of her hands down her body did nothing; she still looked like Pigpen. “What’s with you?”
The guy hopped from one foot to the other, and the garbage bag tore as he yanked his shoe through the neck of the bag. Apparently, it was too hard to answer her questions while being attacked by garbage bags.
“Why are you playing with garbage?” He kicked free and stood to his full height—a few inches taller than her, at least six feet—giving her the perfect view of his face.
That face.
She knew that face. That rugged face. His large nose and the scar curving along the left side toward his lip were the only indication that there might be flaws hiding behind those perfectly sculpted cheekbones. And there were flaws—smoldering brown eyes aside.
They’d fooled her once. Never again.
“Magpie?”
“Maggie.” Why was it so hard to remember to call her Maggie? She tried to beat the dust off her jeans. Anything to keep her hands busy, and her eyes from raking over that body of his.
“I’m sorry. Are you okay? Do you want a ride to the hospital?” He stared down the alley, probably hoping to see the teen he’d been chasing. But that kid was long gone.
“I’m fine.”
>
“Are you sure?”
“I’m fine.” She felt her eyes roll—of their own accord. It wasn’t her fault he was asking dumb questions and her body was responding. Too bad her body seemed to respond to everything he did.
“What are you doing here?” Chase’s eyes roamed over the scattered garbage bags and the backpack in Jessi’s hand.
“Working.”
“In garbage?” Judgement was all over his face. Bad enough she got that from her family.
“Why are you running through the alley like a bat out of hell?” she countered.
“Working.” The corner of his lip curled as he stepped away from her. That little curl of his mouth was so darn sexy. A tingle shot straight through her mutinous heart.
“I’m getting the bad guys, Magpie.” He leaned in, putting those lips inches from hers.
Gorgeous lips that looked delicious. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he smelled. Like man. God, she missed the smell of a man. Spicy. Dark. With a rich woody base. Or maybe that was just him.
He smirked. “Has it been so long since you’ve taken down the bad guys that you’ve forgotten what it looks like?” Jackass.
Maggie was still catching bad guys, just in the private sector. Not that any of the cops understood. “Don’t you have work to do?”
He ran a hand down the back of his neck—had she mentioned what nice hands they were? “I think he got away.” The great Chase Montgomery didn’t get his man. Must be why he looked mad—no, not mad—maybe upset. The crinkle in his brow couldn’t be worry. Chase didn’t get worried. He was way too arrogant for that.
Unless this bad guy had done something extra bad—and now he’d gotten away. The urge to make him feel better was both foreign…and unwanted.
He didn’t deserve to feel better after what he’d done to her. So why did she grab the backpack from Jessi and shove it into his chest? “Your bad guy dropped this.”
“Thanks.” Chase took the backpack, and those hands brushed hers.
“And, uh, isn’t he a Viper?” Maggie stepped away, wiping her fingers on her filthy jeans.
“Yeah.” He stared at her for a long second. “How do you know that?”
“The tattoo on his hand. Don’t they have a safe house a few blocks over, on Meade? Ten bucks says he’s heading over there.”
“Ten bucks, huh?”
She tried to help and all he heard was ten bucks. Jackass. She was so done playing his little game, but if she didn’t play nice it might get back to her father. So she forced a smile on her face and yanked one of the intact garbage bags off the ground. “Shouldn’t you go after him?”
He met her smile with one of his own and slung the backpack over one shoulder. The glare off his perfect white teeth gave off enough wattage to power a small country. “Are you sure you don’t need a ride to the hospital? I’m told I give great mouth to mouth.”
Maggie didn’t bother responding. Jerk. She took the garbage bags and walked toward her car.
“Should you be driving?” Those little lines of worry were back around his eyes again. And for a change, he sounded serious. He smiled at Jessi. “Can you drive?”
“I’m fine,” Maggie cut in. “Shouldn’t you be running?” She turned to him and deliberately rubbed her cheek, where she was sure a bruise was starting to form. He stared at her cheek for half a second before sighing and shaking his head. She was not going to read anything into that. She wasn’t.
“Good point.” He followed her down the alley toward the end of the block, where he hung a left toward Meade. “See you around, Magpie.”
She literally could not take her eyes off him as he made his way down the block and out of sight. Not that she cared. And she most certainly did not watch him walk away because the sight of his round ass in those jeans was an aphrodisiac.
There were an awful lot of not’s swirling around her head. And not one of them was good. Chase was no good. He’d led her on, and tried to destroy her career. He wasn’t the type of guy she should be caring about. Or watching. Perfect ass or not.
“Boss?” Jessi stood next to her holding garbage bags. Had she always been there?
This was why Chase was no good. He took Magpie’s—Maggie’s—focus. He left her mind a frazzled mess. She couldn’t even remember her own name. Not that anyone needed to know that.
Best way to show there was nothing going on here? Pretend nothing was going on here. “Ready? We need to get the bags to the office.” She made her way back to the car and clicked open the locks, dumping the garbage bag in the trunk. Jessi added the ones she was carrying before sliding next to Maggie in the front seat.
“After we get cleaned up,” Maggie told her, “we’ll run and pick up lunch.” Pretend. Pretend. Nothing happened back there.
“Thai? I have had the strongest craving for that Thai place in Humboldt Park, by the office.” Jessi smiled and leaned against the seat. That was almost too easy. The whole garbage can scene with Chase was obviously forgotten. Or maybe Jessi hadn’t noticed the sparks flying.
Not good sparks. Bad sparks.
Maggie started the car and merged into Chicago traffic. She wasn’t sure if she should even mention that she’d seen Chase to her partners. Leti and Danni would just get pissed off. In their eyes, he’d screwed her—without actually screwing her. But maybe she didn’t need to mention it. Especially if Jessi hadn’t noticed anything was off.
“Are we going to talk about it?” Jessi asked two blocks later.
Of course she’d noticed. It was one of the reasons Maggie thought it was a good idea to train her as a PI. Jessi noticed everything. “About what?”
“Magpie?”
“Nope.” She didn’t want to talk about Magpie, or the man who called her that. She didn’t want to discuss how she’d fallen in love with him and he had barely known she existed. She didn’t want to relive how when he finally noticed her, it was to steal the first case she’d ever been given as a detective—how he’d made her look like a bumbling fool. And she definitely didn’t want to talk about how her heart had broken when one minute he kissed her like his life depended on it and the next he didn’t want to see her again.
No. She didn’t want to talk about it. Any of it.
If you enjoyed this sneak peek into the second book of the Busted Series, pick up your copy today.
About the Author
Vanessa M. Knight has always enjoyed writing, and once she found romance, she was addicted. She props her laptop in the suburbs of Chicago with her husband, son and menagerie of four-pawed claw-babies (AKA cats and dogs.) That laptop has partnered-in-crime to write contemporary romances with a dash of humor and splash of snark.
When she has a few moments to spare, you can find her singing off-key (but she assures everyone it’s still considered singing), reading, kickboxing or killing a few brain cells as she stares at the many sitcoms and dramas available through the Internet and TV.
For more information on Vanessa, including her Internet haunts, contest updates, and details on her upcoming novels, please visit her website at www.vanessamknight.com.
Other Books by Vanessa
Contemporary Suspense
Busted Series (in order)
Busting In
Busting Out
Busting Through
Chicago’s Finest Series (in order)
Second Time’s the Charm
Stark Raving Mad
Stealing Vegas (Winter 2018)
Contemporary New Adult
Ritter University Series (in order)
Major Renovations
What Happens in College…
Christmas Breakdown
Rushing In
Sophomore Slump
The Makeup Test
Contemporary Romance
Falling Pines Series
Breaking the Fall