Apart from my crappy waitressing job at the Barton Creek Diner, where I’d never considered “hanging out” with a soul who worked there, I hadn’t been around industry people. It never occurred to me it might be fun until Edge mentioned “camaraderie.” That’s exactly how I felt, sitting and listening to them all talk about their shifts.
The restaurant where we worked was busy all the time, which meant the wait staff made great tips, plus the kitchen staff was well-paid. It was nice to be around so many happy people. It was inexplicable, then, when a few minutes later, a feeling of foreboding settled over me. I tried my best to ignore it, and even thought about calling Edge. When I looked over my shoulder and Steel winked at me from his perch near the front door, I felt a little better.
Not ten minutes later, the bartender, Barney, walked over and motioned for me to come closer. “There’s a couple guys over there who said to buy Rebel a drink, and when I told them I didn’t know who that was, they pointed at you.”
I didn’t want to turn around and look to see who was there, but curiosity was killing me.
Barney wagged his finger at me again. “Look in the mirror over there. They can’t see you, but you can see them.”
The restaurant was dimly lit, so I couldn’t get a good look at their faces.
“Know who they are?” Barney asked.
“I’m not sure.”
He lowered his hand and made a circular motion with his index finger.
“What’s going on?” I asked Christy when the staff with us at the bar moved in closer.
“It’s what we do when one of us is getting unwanted attention,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to cause any problems.”
She rolled her eyes. “It happens all the time. Those cowboy types don’t like taking no for an answer. Don’t get me wrong, my daddy’s a cowboy, but not the same as the likes of them. You can kinda tell, ya know? The good ones from the assholes.”
I nodded, wishing I hadn’t agreed to have a drink. Whoever these guys were, they knew my name, and that made me feel sick to my stomach. For the second time, I thought about calling Edge, but when I saw them get up and leave, I decided I’d just tell him about them later.
By the time I finished the one drink I’d been nursing, half of the people who had been at the bar when I got there had already left. The rest waved me off when I thanked them and said goodnight.
It was a foreign feeling for me to be part of a group. I’d never been before. In high school, I was a loner, and at the ranch kitchen, Tee-Tee spent so much time with just me, I felt like an outsider with the rest of the staff. It was probably my imagination that they resented me. On the other hand, they never invited me to go to the Long Branch with them either.
When I got to the front door, Steel walked me out. “Edge will be here in a minute,” he said as we waited a few feet away.
“I can walk home on my own,” I told him when ten minutes went by without Edge showing up.
“You know I can’t let you do that, Rebel.”
“No one will know. You can tell Edge you walked me home.”
“I value my life too much for that.”
A few minutes later, Edge still hadn’t shown up, but Christy walked outside. “You’re still here?”
“Just waiting for my ride.”
She looked between Steel and me. “Okay, well, goodnight.” I watched her cross the street and go into one of the building’s doors.
“She lives on the second floor,” Steel explained, pointing when a light went on in one of the windows.
“Do you usually walk her over?”
He looked away, but I could see his cheeks flush. “Sometimes.”
“You like her, don’t you?”
The smile on his face shone through his eyes. “I do, but don’t you go tellin’ her that.”
I crossed my heart. “Your secret is safe with me.”
Edge’s car pulled up a minute later, and he jumped out. “Sorry it took me so long to get here.”
I didn’t ask why, and he didn’t offer.
Back at the house, we took a shower together and I crawled into bed. I knew I needed to tell him about the guys who came into the bar, but I was too exhausted to get into it. I would the next morning.
It wasn’t until I stepped inside the kitchen the next morning and the sous-chef, Ben, handed me a cup of coffee that I realized I’d forgotten again to tell Edge about the men.
“Gonna be a long one today, Miss Lucy,” he said, wiping his brow as I took the first sip of the best coffee I’d ever had. “You keep yourself hydrated now, ya hear?”
“I will, Ben. You know I always listen to you.”
He stepped closer. “I heard there were some unsavories at the bar last night, wantin’ to buy you a drink.”
I didn’t know what to say. That he knew, caught me off guard. “They thought I was someone else. It didn’t turn into anything.”
“That’s not what Barney said. He told me that after you left, they came back, askin’ all kinds of questions ’bout how long you’ve worked here, stuff like that.”
Great. And I hadn’t mentioned it to Edge. I thought about calling or sending him a text, but Susan walked in and I didn’t have time. In the back of my mind, I prayed that whoever they were, they didn’t show up again.
41
Edge
Last night, as I sat in my car waiting for Rebel, I watched two men who raised my hackles walk into her restaurant.
I thought about trying to get a photo for Decker to run, but I didn’t want to ruin her time with her new friends. Instead, I decided to ask Steel to see if he could get me the restaurant’s footage. If not, I’d have Decker hack in and get it anyway. There were times it was good to be a spy.
Just when I’d decided to get out of the car and make my way closer, the two men I’d seen earlier came back out and walked in my direction. I pulled my hat down farther on my forehead, zipped up my jacket, and then made my way off to the side and waited.
As they walked past, I heard one of the men say, “Fuckin’ Rebel.” His voice sounded so much like Possum’s, I went on high alert.
I walked in the opposite direction and then circled back when they went into another bar. I waited just outside the entrance; a vantage point that allowed me to see where they were seated.
After they’d finished their beers, paid their tab in cash, came outside, and walked south on Congress, farther away from me and, more importantly, from Rebel, I sneaked into the bar, hurried over, snatched one of the beer bottles, and took it into the men’s room. Once there, I put it in a plastic bag. If facial recognition didn’t turn up a hit on these guys, at least I’d have DNA from one of them.
I walked out of the men’s room and then out of the bar without anyone appearing to have noticed me.
Since I knew Rebel would be waiting outside with Steel, I went around the block back to my car. On the way, I rang Deck, who said he’d come into Austin tomorrow morning after Rebel left for work, and get the bottle. I rang off and immediately called Grinder.
“You want backup?” he asked after I explained what I’d seen and heard.
“Appreciate it, mate.” Something in my gut told me I was going to need it.
When Rebel didn’t mention the men either in the car or after we got back to the rental, I assumed she hadn’t noticed them.
I found out differently this morning when Grinder and I met Steel for coffee like I did every day.
“Dude seems more British than you,” Steel said as we waited for Grinder, who’d ordered tea. I’d gotten so I much preferred coffee.
“Thank you.”
Steel laughed and, when Grinder sat down, began to talk. He told us the bartender said the two men had first offered to buy Rebel a drink. “She goes by Lucy at the restaurant, so Barney had no idea who they were talking about. When he quietly asked her if she knew who they were, she told him she didn’t recognize either of them.”
“She knew, then?”
/>
When Steel confirmed she did, my blood began to heat. Why in the bloody hell hadn’t she mentioned it?
“They came back in later. Pretty near closing time. Asked Barney, that’s the bartender who was on last night, a lot of questions about her.”
“What did he tell them?” Grinder asked.
Steel glared at him. “Jack shit.”
Grinder smiled and then turned to me. “I like him.”
“He’s a good bloke.”
“This morning, Ben, one of the sous-chefs, told Lucy that they’d come back. He said she was ‘nervous as a chicken who saw a fox in the hen house.’ His words, not mine. He also said she tried hard to hide it.”
“Anything else?”
“Yep. A little later, Ben said he saw her looking something up on her phone. He sneaked a peek and said she was looking at the public defender profiles.”
My eyes met Grinder’s. Since it was Saturday night, Rebel would be working through the dinner hour. If these assholes came back, I wanted to be ready.
“We’re gonna need more backup,” he said as though he’d read my mind.
I agreed.
“I’ll see who’s close.”
“Hey, Grind—preferably Jagger and Rage.”
“Right. Rebel doesn’t know either of them.”
By sundown, Grinder and I were both in position, surveilling the perimeter outside the restaurant; Jagger and Rage were on their way inside.
“Something’s about to go down,” I said through the mouthpiece on my headset. “I can feel it.”
“I can feel it too,” Grinder answered.
Two hours later, it did.
42
Rebel
“You okay?” asked Christy when she came to pick up the desserts I’d just plated for her table.
“Yeah, just busy.”
She raised a brow.
We were busy. It was a Saturday night, and every seat had been full all night long. I’d lost track, but I heard someone say the tables had already turned three times and there was still a crowd waiting to be seated.
I’d been jumpy all day, and as hard as I tried to hide it, it was obvious my coworkers noticed. At least some of them.
“Are the two guys from last night what’s worrying you?” she asked. Neither of us had time for this conversation, but if I didn’t admit my fear to someone, I was going to break down.
“I think I might’ve recognized one of them,” I said, making sure no one could hear us. Both men wore hats pulled down far enough that it had been hard to see their faces, but there was something familiar about the way one of them carried himself. I’d gone online earlier when Susan was on the phone, and pulled up the Hays County public defender page. One of the men who had been here the night before could very well have been John Lynch.
That alone was enough to make me lose my shit, but the fact that I hadn’t told Edge about it, worried me even more.
“Lucy, a little help,” one of the chefs hollered over to me and pointed to two bags of trash. The busboys and dishwashers were all busy, frantically trying to keep up. I was the next lowest on the “totem pole.”
Christy squeezed my hand. “We’ll talk later, but everyone out front is on the lookout for them.”
I grabbed the bags and walked out the back door. The minute I did, every nerve ending on my body fired up. “You’re getting yourself worked up about nothing,” I muttered as I ran over to the dumpster and threw the trash bags in. My eyes surveyed the parking lot as I raced back to the door.
Just as I grabbed the handle to open it, I felt a hand go over my mouth.
“Make a sound, and I’ll kill you right here and throw you in with the rest of the garbage.” Something was poking me in the side, but it didn’t feel like a gun. Maybe it was a knife, although it didn’t feel like that either. Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to risk trying to get away.
A split second later, I heard the distinct sound of a gun being cocked. When I squeezed my eyes closed, my first thought was of Edge and how I was about to die and I hadn’t gotten the nerve to tell him I loved him.
“Let her go, arsehole, or I’ll blow your brains out!” I heard an English-accented voice shout. It didn’t sound like Edge. Who was it?
I stumbled to the ground when the man who’d had a hold of me let me go and took off running.
“Go, go, go!” I heard more voices shouting as another arm went around my waist and pulled me to my feet.
“I’ve got you, sweetness.” Edge. He was here. I spun around and wrapped my arms around his neck as words began spilling out of me.
“Oh my God, I was so scared. I meant to tell you, and I forgot, and then we got so busy, and then…how did you know?”
“Come on, let’s get you inside and out of the cold.”
I looked behind us. “What’s happening?”
Edge put a finger near his ear and opened the door with his other hand, escorting me back into the kitchen. “They’ve got ’em.”
I took a deep breath, looked up, and saw the entire kitchen staff, and most of the wait staff too, staring at me with their mouths hanging open. When I left to take the trash out, it had been chaos. Now it was dead silent.
Christy was the first to come out of shock and raced over to me. “Oh my God, what happened?”
Before I could answer, the back door opened and a uniformed policeman came inside. “We took two into custody, and I’ve got transport waiting for you out back.”
“We don’t have much time before the team and the other police officers arrive and all hell breaks loose,” Edge said as he rushed me into the house after our ride over in the squad car.
Once we were past the doorway, he grabbed me by the back of the neck, pushed me up against the wall, and kissed me—long and deep and hard.
“I was so fucking worried about you.” He looked into my eyes. “And you are in so much fucking trouble.”
“Wait.” I gripped his chin and looked into his eyes. “There’s something else I have to tell you.”
“Out with it.”
“I love you, Edge.”
He rested his forehead against mine. “How can I stay mad at you when you say that?” He winked and then brought his lips to mine, stopping right before they touched. “I love you too, my little Rebel.”
Epilogue
Edge
I rolled over on the cabana bed and kissed Rebel’s shoulder. “Getting hungry?”
“A little. I don’t feel like moving, though.”
“I’ll go. Fancy Mexican?”
My beautiful little Rebel shook her head and answered the same way she always did. “I fancy English.”
I kissed my way down her bare back, stopping at the edge of her bikini bottoms, and noticed her empty glass.
“Ready for another cocktail too?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
I walked over to the bar on the other side of the pool and looked out at the blue water of the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t easy to convince Rebel to take some time off, but after three long months, she’d finally agreed. But only after Susan threatened to fire her if she didn’t. “Your apprenticeship is over, and your job will be waiting whenever you get back,” she’d promised.
The man who had originally been assigned as Rebel’s public defender, John Lynch, and his brother were in Hays County Jail, awaiting trial on a myriad of charges, including attempted kidnapping and attempted murder. I knew if Mac had anything to say about it, and he did, there’d be countless more charges added. I still didn’t know what their motive had been. If I knew, I’d have to tell Rebel, and from the day we left Texas for our seaside getaway, we vowed never to talk about Lynch or Possum again.
Two days after we arrived, we stood on the beach at sunrise, held hands, and Lucy “Rebel” Marks became my wife.
We’d been at our beach-side bungalow for three weeks so far, and if we could stay another three, or longer, I’d be in heaven.
As I waited for the bartender to
make us two more margaritas, I watched Rebel turn onto her back. I pulled out my mobile and rang hers. From where I stood, I could hear the ringtone I’d programmed in the day I gave it to her—Avici’s “Addicted to You.” She smiled and brought the mobile to her ear.
“Have I told you I love your tits, Mrs. Edgemon?”
“I think it’s been at least an hour since you have.”
“I do. I love the rest of you too.”
As I watched, she raised her arms over her head.
“You’re giving me naughty ideas.”
“That was my intention.”
“You know what to do, sweetness.”
I signed for the drinks, placed an order for food to be delivered in an hour, and walked to the entrance of our bungalow where I knew my wife would be waiting on the bed, arms over her head, and legs spread.
Keep reading for a sneak peek
at the third book in
Heather Slade’s newest series,
The Invincibles,
Grinded
Grinded
It had been twelve years since it last snowed in the hills outside of Austin, Texas. Twelve years. The number was significant to me. It had also been twelve years since I first met Pia Deltetto—the woman I once thought was the love of my life. The woman I believed would one day be my wife, the mother of my children.
I lived a lot of life in the years between then and now. Most of which I’d prefer to forget. There were days, weeks, and months when I wished I could forget Pia too, but she was too stubborn to let me do so. Her fiery spirit would force itself out of my subconscious until she was once again the star of my dreams—both awake and asleep.
Invariably, that meant I’d soon hear from her, as though my own spirit was connected to hers no matter where we were in the world.
Edged (The Invincibles Book 2) Page 20
