That was when it happened.
She smiled at him and it didn’t have the affection she gave the crazy old lady.
But it had humor.
He felt it in his chest and his dick.
So it definitely worked.
Enough he put his hand in her belly and pushed in.
She let him, turning to the side so he could get all the way in.
Sadly, this meant his hand had to drop and was no longer connected to her warmth.
He’d deal.
For now.
She shut the door.
He looked around.
He did it remembering Hawk’s words.
Bohemian wasteland.
He wondered if Hawk, or whoever did his recon for him, had actually been inside or if this assessment had been made just from Essence’s pad and her run-amuck garden.
He was guessing from what he was seeing that was a yes, they’d been inside.
“Please tell me this place came furnished,” he begged.
“I’ve lived here six years. This is all mine,” she replied, on the move. “Want tea?”
Tea?
He followed her, trying not to slam his head into the low lintels.
The big house was probably built in the 1800s.
This place seemed like it was built in the 1500s.
“You do meditate, don’t you?”
“Yup,” she said, putting a butter-yellow kettle on the gas burner of a stove that had to have been crafted in 1932, and if he didn’t see her light it and hear the clicking of the flint to catch the gas, he might have thought it was wood burning.
He stood in the small kitchen with its cupboards painted in flamingo pink and sky blue with a few red drawers thrown in, had cobalt-blue tile on the walls, and a double window over the farm sink that was opened wide and filled with vases of all sizes containing cut wildflowers.
This was not a woman who directed porn films.
Doing that was probably slowly killing her.
Another reason to get her ass out.
“Essence told me you weren’t a hippie,” he said.
“I’m not,” she replied, pulling down mismatched coffee mugs. “I’m one with my Chi.”
He stared at her.
She stared back a beat before she busted out laughing, arms wrapped around her middle, doubled over, the whole bit.
Her head came up, even if her body didn’t, and she was still laughing.
He took in her face.
And oh yeah.
Fuck to the yeah.
He was keeping her for a long fucking time.
“Your face,” she spluttered.
He leaned his hip against a cabinet and crossed his arms, feeling his lips twitching.
She straightened, pulled her shit together, and admitted, “I’m not sure what Chi is. I still meditate. It’s relaxing and it clears the garbage out of your head.”
“Right.”
“You should try it,” she suggested.
“Not gonna happen.”
Her eyes twinkled and she shifted to another cupboard to grab some tea.
“Babe, I don’t drink tea,” he told her.
She held up a baggie of what looked like herb, the kind you smoked, except more colorful. “This is more caffeinated than Starbucks.”
“Rebel, baby,” he said low, “I do not drink tea.”
She took him in with a look on her face he liked, tipped her head to the side, causing her hair to glide over her bare shoulder and down her arm, something else he liked and felt in his dick, and she asked, “Coffee?”
“Sure.”
Her lips turned up and she turned back to the cupboard and came down with an aqua-colored ceramic French press.
He watched her move to a fridge that looked old fashioned, was the color of a tangerine, but he knew it wasn’t vintage to the house because it was shiny-new, very orange and had letters that spelled SMEG on it.
She came out of it with a flowered tin of what he hoped was coffee.
“You do know, even not strong arming, this convo is going to go the same as the other one,” she told him, not catching his eye now, the words coming out like she didn’t want to say them, but she had to.
“Still gonna try,” he said softly.
“Right,” she whispered.
He gave her a minute before he went on.
“And you know why I’m here taking another shot at that, Rebel.”
She looked at him then.
She started to open her mouth, but he beat her to it.
“And don’t deny it.”
She shut her mouth.
“You felt it,” he declared.
She turned back to the tin and wrested off the top.
While she was scooping coffee into the French press, he repeated, “Rebel, admit it, you felt it.”
“Felt what?” she asked the coffee.
“The need to jump my bones.”
Her head jerked his way.
“You think a lot of yourself, stud,” she snapped.
But there was pink in her cheeks.
Totally wanted to jump his bones.
“You shot outta your car and got right in my face, pissed as shit I’d put myself in danger, hijacking you on Speer. Not pissed we hijacked you and not putting you in danger, me,” he pointed out.
“Fuck,” she muttered, going back to the coffee.
Yeah, she’d given it all away with the first words she’d spoken to him.
“And what woman gets hijacked and lectures the man who hijacked her about precisely how to hijack, seein’ as she was not goin’ Thelma and Louise on his ass because it might hurt him and his brothers?”
She carefully put the top of the tin back on and said nothing.
“You knew you weren’t in danger from the start,” he continued. “You were worried about me. No woman worries about a man she just met, he hijacked her or not, if she doesn’t want to fuck him.”
“It was a stupid, strong man, biker stunt, Rush, when as you can see,” she said as she moved back to the fridge, “Essence would have led you right to my door and offered condoms.”
“I couldn’t know that.”
She opened the fridge door but looked around it to him. “So you forced me to go to Jason’s Lodge? I mean, it was at least thirty miles away. How could you be sure I had enough gas?”
He controlled his smile at her “Jason’s Lodge” mention just like he had to do when he’d heard it before and shared, “We watched you fill your tank on the way home.”
She made an annoyed noise in her throat and disappeared behind the fridge door.
She reappeared and moved back to her spot at the counter, saying, “And so you were totally okay with the possibility of scaring the shit out of me?”
“Honey, I know you come from a family of bikers and you went undercover as the executive producer, exclusive director and cinematographer of a new line of porn that might be classy porn, but it’s still porn. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I figured you were made of tougher stuff.”
She made a “huh” noise that was really fucking cute.
To stay on target, he had to ignore the really fucking cute.
“We connected in that cabin, babe,” he reminded her.
She scooped tea in a narrow, cylindrical silver thing that had holes in it.
What she didn’t do was speak.
“Rebel, you know we connected at the cabin,” he said low.
“Okay, so maybe I felt a spark.”
A spark.
Twice he thought she’d rush him.
Or maybe it was three times.
That made him smile.
He doused it before he declared, “We’re exploring that spark.”
She turned her head his way again. “Not if you think you can tell me what to do.”
“Right, sweetheart, exploring that spark means talking, getting to know each other, and fucking. You think I’m gonna take a woman to bed and then let her get out of it to
go to work on a porn set?”
She turned fully his way, “Do you think I’m going to go to bed with a guy who thinks he can let me do anything?”
He added to his statement. “A porn set owned by a stone-cold criminal who will rape, torture and eventually kill her if he finds out what she’s up to?”
“Rush—”
“Rebel, put Molly where you are.”
She clapped her mouth shut.
“You’ve been investigated, I think you get that,” he told her.
She opened her mouth at that.
“Yeah, I talked with Hank and neither him nor Eddie or Jimmy gave you all of that, so we’ll also need to be talking about where you got it.”
“A man called Hawk gave it to me. I’ll explain him to you later. But first, I know who Molly is to you. I know what she means to you. I know she means more because your brother is head over heels in love with her and is going to spend the rest of his life with her. So she’s family. And I know if Molly lost someone she loved and went all in to find the killer in the way you are, you’d pull her shit out without taking a second to think about it.”
The kettle began to whistle so Rebel moved to it to turn it off.
Advantageously, it brought her closer to him.
So Rush reached out, caught her wrist, and pulled her even closer.
She didn’t fight it until she decided she was close enough, dug in, and he stopped pulling.
But he didn’t let her wrist go.
He held it and stroked the inside with his thumb as he said, “I know a lot about you, but you don’t know dick about me, and that isn’t fair. So let’s level that playing field, yeah?”
“Yeah,” she tried to snap but it came out breathy.
She liked his touch.
Good to know.
He fought back the smile that caused too.
“I told you about my mom,” he reminded her. “How she was a bitch to my dad. Well, he’s remarried.”
“Okay,” she said when he said nothing more.
“Her name is Tyra. She’s beautiful. She treats him like gold. Busts his chops but he loves it, and honest to Christ, never seen a woman love a man like she loves my dad.”
“That’s cool,” she said softly, relaxing into his words, his touch.
Rush liked that too.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Loved it that she gave him that after the shit he had to eat with my mom. Fell in love with her, she gave him that and just because she’s a lovable woman. She was good to my sis, treated her right after years of havin’ a mom who did her wrong. She made our family whole. Gave me two baby brothers. And Dad loves kids. She made him happy, just her, but she gave him even more happy, givin’ him Rider and Cutter.”
“Good,” she murmured, staring into his eyes.
“And some shit her friend was messed up in caught her up in it. She was kidnapped, tied to a chair and stabbed repeatedly. Almost bled out. It was a miracle she survived.”
Her body strung tight, her hand twisted in his grip, but he kept hold.
“I had to endure that,” he told her. “I had to watch Tabby wait hours for news of a woman who, after taking emotional abuse from our mom her whole life, treated her with love and kindness and even toughness and strength when Tab was doin’ stupid shit, but that was filled with love and kindness too. But worst of all that, I had to watch my father wait for word, it not lookin’ good, seein’ a man who never admitted defeat stand in defeat thinkin’ he’d lost the only woman in over forty years that he ever really loved.”
“Shit, Rush,” she whispered.
“It sucked,” he told her.
“She’s okay?” she asked.
“Totally okay,” he answered, but he didn’t let up on her. “Don’t put Diesel through that. Not Diesel or Maddox or Molly, those last two who love you like blood.”
She pulled at her wrist.
He let it go.
She moved to the kettle and took it to her place at the counter.
“Baby, I barely know you, but I know I like you,” he shared. “So don’t put me through that.”
She poured water into the French press, steam rising up into her face.
“Rebel, are you hearing me?” he called.
She poured water onto the steel thing in her tea cup.
“Rebel?”
She put the kettle back on the stove then took up the handle of the steel thing and made circles in the cup.
He was about to call her again, or go to her and get her attention another way, when she spoke.
“It’s too late. I’m in too deep.”
Thank Christ.
She’d been thinking about it.
“Just walk away.”
She turned her head to face him. “You don’t just walk away from Benito Valenzuela.”
Damn, but she had that right.
“Then we’ll strategize your out.”
“I’m close.”
“Close as in, this thing will break at eight o’clock tomorrow morning?” he asked.
“No,” she said shortly.
“Then not close enough.”
“I need him to admit it, on tape, and Harrietta is gonna get that for me.”
Now he was getting somewhere because this was shit he had to know, how deep she was in, so he could dig her out.
He crossed his arms on his chest and demanded, “Explain.”
She turned her body to face him and leaned a hip to the counter. “She was seeing two guys. Diane was. One was Arthur Lannigan. This Chew guy. One was another dickhead who came up in the system with prints and DNA all over her pad. His name is Wayne Benson.”
Rush felt a shiver trace down his spine.
He knew a Wayne Benson.
But he knew him by the name of Digger.
He had to be older than Rush’s dad.
And he was a member of Bounty.
“Apparently, he’s some older guy who lives in Aurora,” she continued.
Fuck.
Bounty ran in Aurora.
This was not a coincidence.
He didn’t share he knew about Benson. That might not be wise to keep it from Rebel, but he had to talk to his dad about this info before he got Rebel riled up about it.
Instead, he asked, “How do they know it’s not Benson?”
She shifted back to the counter to push down on the press. “He says he has an alibi. But since that alibi is someone Hank and Eddie don’t trust, they’re not buying it. Unfortunately, although they have both men’s DNA in her place, it’s known they were both seeing her and whoever raped her that night used a condom,” She gestured to the press. “You take cream or sugar?”
“Black,” he stated. “Now, babe, you know that Harrietta is Chew’s old lady.”
She nodded, pouring his coffee. “She comes around. She’s in with Valenzuela. Working both angles. Something I now don’t understand, considering you told me Valenzuela killed her daughter.”
Rush didn’t understand that either.
And he didn’t like it.
Rebel kept talking.
“Unless she doesn’t know that.”
Rush figured of all the players in this fucked-up game, Harrietta knew everything.
Rebel kept sharing.
“He’s paying her to do whatever it is he wants done because he isn’t a fan of Arthur’s either, but I’m getting he likes to play with his prey. I overheard some shit. Made an approach. Shared her old man was stepping out on her with Diane. She didn’t seem surprised. She also didn’t seem surprised he’s wanted in connection with her murder. But she’s also not feeling the love, and I felt that before I mentioned the murder. And this might be why she’s in with Valenzuela. Because by her not feeling the love, I mean she really doesn’t feel the love. So she said she’ll get him to admit it, confess, on tape, so I can give it to Hank and Eddie. And that’s why I think it’s Lannigan.”
She took the steel thing out of her tea, grabbed both the cups, and walked to him.
He took it, asking, “Why did you get in with Valenzuela?”
She shrugged, blew into her tea, and answered, “His name was in the file I read. I knew he was the man behind the porn and the man behind the drugs, the root of all evil that befell Diane, so he was my first target. It was just luck Harrietta was coming around and Valenzuela mentioned Lannigan’s name. I thought I’d hit the lottery.”
She took a sip.
Rush did not.
“You didn’t, sweetheart, you know that, right? This shit is all tangled and it’s totally fucked up. You stepped into a vipers’ den that also has a pissed-off lion.”
“If she gets me that confession on tape, I’ll Indiana Jones and Gladiator that crap until I can spring free.”
“This isn’t a movie.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot worse seeing a real-life person, one you know and love, with her neck broken. Have you ever seen that, Rush? It’s not a good look. Valentino won’t be asking his models to take that off for the ad campaign for his spring line.”
“Babe,” he said low. “I thought we were going to strategize your way out.”
“We are. I can get free from Valenzuela, and Harrietta can still get me that confession. He doesn’t know anything about that.”
Rush wasn’t so sure.
“How long you been workin’ this?” he asked.
She shut up and sipped tea.
He set his coffee aside. “How long, Rebel?”
She swallowed and demanded, “That Hawk guy’s file on me didn’t include that info?”
“Five months, he thinks.”
“Hmm . . .”
“It’s been longer,” he muttered, watching her closely.
She sipped more tea, aiming her eyes anywhere but him.
It had been longer.
“Babe.”
She took the cup from her mouth, swallowed and asked, “What?”
“This woman is stringing you along. She’s also tellin’ the cops, and Chaos, that she has no clue where Chew is.”
Her face lost some color. “What?”
“We think he’s bailed.”
Her eyes got big and her voice got louder on her repeat of, “What?”
“He’s wanted in connection with six murders, he has four cops working those cases, and except for Reb getting dead, there’s been no sign of him in Denver for months.”
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