Sweet Burn

by Anne Marsh

  That particular tattoo had made an impression on her. There had been something wrong about it, but she hadn’t been able to put her finger on what that something was and she’d definitely had the bills to pay. If the guy in her chair wanted a tattoo of a dead guy sprawled out on the floor of a convenience store, complete with name and date, she really wasn’t in any position to say no. Everyone remembered fallen friends differently. When Auntie Belle had passed and left her the bar, she’d inked a small black and yellow bumblebee on the inside of her wrist because the insect’s cheerful determination and nonstop chatter reminded her of her aunt. Maybe her client had moved on, maybe he’d regretted looking at the grisly reminder whenever he checked out his back. It wasn’t her business.

  “You did the cover up?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So where does the Oakland D.A. come into all this?”

  “I accidentally walked into the store.” She’d never gone into the place before, but she’d wanted a soda and chips and so she’d pushed open the door and been hit with the strongest sense of déjà vu. She hadn’t even had to ask. The store’s clerk had volunteered details about the shooting that had gone down two months before. The problem was, her walk-in had parked his ass in her chair before the cops had discovered the scene.

  “I did some asking,” she said, “and a few things became real clear, real fast. My client had come to me with his pictures before the cops had let anyone into the store, so he had to have been on the scene himself. These weren’t snapped over the shoulder of the cop. He had close ups and distance shots, a picture of a gun and then he had a picture of the store clerk before everything went down. I had assumed he’d known the guy, had taken the before shot well before the shooting. When I found myself in the store, I had to start questioning some of my assumptions and if I’d made them because it was easier than admitting the truth.”

  “So you went to the D.A.”

  “I did.” She’d kicked herself the whole way there and back, too. She’d gone armed with her quick hand drawings for the guy’s tattoo and a video. What her walk-in hadn’t known was that she had video surveillance in her shop. Given her shop’s location, she’d had issues with break-ins and petty theft, so she’d kept a camera trained on the chair as well as the front. That camera meant she had dated before and after images. She’d made a phone call after finishing the cover up, because some things weren’t acceptable and her don’t get involved rule had to be suspended. Temporarily.

  “They convicted the guy and took him off the street in a big gang sting.” She shrugged. “He’d pretty much inked the proof that he’d been at the crime scene on his shoulder.”

  Mack cursed, a sentiment she shared, although probably for different reasons.

  “He got a life sentence.” She hadn’t been in the courtroom on the day the judge had handed down the sentence. She’d already been on the road to Strong and the bar that she’d inherited.

  Every time she imagined being forced to stay in one place for the rest of her life—and she wasn’t even the convicted guy, stuck in the eight feet by six feet of a jail cell—she got itchy feet. She’d never liked staying put. No. Scratch that. She’d always had a case of the wanders. She’d been the toddler who wandered off from the family picnic and who was happily exploring terra incognita when the frantic nanny found her, the teenager who took her car on joy rides that spanned a state and a half. When she’d had a working credit card, she’d gone to the airport once and bought a ticket on the next flight out to somewhere warm and tropical.

  The where hadn’t mattered, as long as it was not here and all aboard now.

  “He earned it.” Rough surety filled Mack’s voice. His world was a lot more black and white than hers. In fact, his world was all black and white. She was fairly certain he wouldn’t approve of many of the things she’d done. Where he saw two choices (right or wrong), she saw fifty shades of gray.

  She reached for her bag and her keys. She needed to go for a ride now, needed the Harley’s power beneath her, eating up the road. The problem was, she’d painted herself into a corner, hadn’t she? She could take the bike out, but she was like a hamster on a wheel, spinning endlessly in place despite all the forward motion.

  Mack’s big hand came down on hers, covering her fingers. That was a gentle stop sign right there if she’d ever seen one. Mack redefined inexorable.

  “I’m going for a ride.” She made the words a statement of intent, because she didn’t ask anyone for permission. Not anymore.

  “Got it.” He didn’t move his hand though. “You go to the D.A. by yourself?”

  “I’m going for a ride is English for let go of my hand.”

  He shook his head. “Anyone ever tell you you’re stubborn?”

  Mack somehow always managed to make her smile. “I think you’ve said that one way or another every day I’ve known you.”

  She tilted her head back to look up at him. He’d snuck up behind her while they were talking—maybe that kind of Ninja stealthiness was a skill the military taught—so her head banged into his chest, which was as hard and unyielding as the rest of him. Of course, she’d also enjoyed the hell out of certain hard and unyielding parts. So maybe hard went into the plus column after all.

  “I’m a grown woman. It wasn’t difficult,” she said, answering his previous question.

  He was silent and she wished she could get inside his head, figure out what he was thinking. Mack was stubborn as hell in his own way—he just dressed it up as being Mr. Strong, Dark and Silent.

  “I didn’t need a police escort to do the right thing,” she added when the silence stretched on too long. No. She was filling up the silence, something she’d vowed she’d stop doing. She didn’t have to explain herself.

  “That wasn’t what I meant.” His fingers curled around hers, lifting her hand from the counter, cupping it. His other hand scooped her keys up and dropped them into her palm. “Family can be a good thing,” he said quietly. “Friends. You don’t always have to go in alone, Mimi.”

  But she did.

  She’d made that bed, so there was no point in complaining now.

  “Go take your ride. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  And that was precisely what she was afraid of.

  Chapter Four

  Mimi had gone upstairs to her apartment, thrown on jeans and boots and grabbed her jacket. Riding in shorts would be a dumb move, even for her. Road rash had nothing to do with rebellion and everything to do with an expensive prescription for painkillers. She’d spent the rest of the afternoon throwing the bike around the curves and racing down the straight parts of the road. Fortunately, the California Highway Patrol hadn’t spotted her. Strong’s new sheriff also took an equally dim view on speeding, although the last time Sheriff Hernandez had ticketed her, the woman had muttered Darwinian under her breath. Sheriff Hernandez and Mack should probably date, because they both had a fine appreciation for the rules and a different definition of survival from Mimi herself.

  And also they both clearly thought Mimi was going to kill herself.

  Not a chance. She liked living too much, even if she did all that living on the edge. She’d be fine. She always was.

  Strong rose up to meet her and, like always, she pretended the place didn’t give her a funny pang. Strong was a little place with a big heart and she could have done far worse than end up here. Sure, there were days—and nights—when the place was too small, its cozy handful of buildings closing in on her, but most times, it was home and she was grateful that Auntie Belle had brought her here. In addition to the historic firehouse, a general store, and Faye Donovan’s spanking new art gallery, the place hosted more antique shops than any one town needed. It was pretty and came with a history. Just like her, or so she liked to think.

  Yeah, right. She snorted at that one.

  The art gallery’s parking lot up ahead was full. Of course, full was relative in Strong. A quick count yielded ten vehicles, six of them no-nonsense pic
k-ups. Faye must be having some kind of get together. Mimi was fairly certain her invite to Faye’s wedding had been a courtesy invite. After all, the other woman had invited all the rest of Strong to watch her exchange her I dos with Evan Donovan. Leaving Mimi out would have been too pointed. And it wasn’t as if they were enemies. It was just that they weren’t friends.

  Mimi didn’t have girlfriends.

  “And that’s just fine,” she said, mentally kicking herself. Talking out loud was a definite sign of the crazies. She probably didn’t have girlfriends because she was friends with their guys. Or sleeping with them. Once.

  That was definitely not the kind of behavior that would endear her to the locals. She should probably make an effort to make friends, but she had no idea how she would do that. Since she wasn’t planning on sticking around long-term anyhow, it didn’t matter. She’d gotten the bar back on its feet and, in another six months, she could hire a manager to oversee it in her absence. She’d be out of here and back on the road.

  In deference to Sheriff Hernandez’s new regime of filling in the budget holes by aggressively ticketing speeders, she slowed to a painfully slow twenty miles an hour as soon as she hit Main Street. In town, she was a reformed woman (plus her budget wouldn’t stretch to any more tickets this month).

  The beat-up dark blue sedan coming up on her ass was unfamiliar, although the driver was probably one of Faye’s invitees running late. She pulled over to let the car go by while she considered her next move. She wasn’t ready to go home, but she needed gas and it would be dark soon. It was also time to get ready to open the bar, which meant she needed to wrap up her playtime for now. Somewhere unseen but definitely overheard, crickets sang up a storm, and the nightly racket would only get louder as the weather warmed up more.

  The sedan drove toward Main Street, the driver riding the gas pedal a little too hard. Even if the idiot didn’t hit something or someone, he’d earn himself a personal meet-and-greet with the good sheriff. She turned to watch the car. She wasn’t sure what it said that her weeknight excitement was waiting to see if a speeder got what he had coming to him. Go me.

  The window on the driver’s side rolled down.

  She almost didn’t catch the glint of metal, but old habits died hard. She’d lived in inner city Oakland where drive-bys happened too often. You learned to keep an eye out for trouble, or you paid the price.

  She threw herself over the side of the bike, hitting the ground hard. Thank God for her riding gear. The sharp pop that sounded like a truck backfiring was followed by two more pops and then the sedan’s driver tore off in a self-advertising squeal of rubber. She laid there on the ground, stunned by what had just happened.

  Someone had shot at her.

  And she was prone on the ground like a dumbass. She needed to take cover and then she needed to call it in. Sheriff Hernandez might actually be a plus in this situation. As instincts honed by years in rough neighborhoods kicked in, she shoved to her feet and ran for the closest busy place—Strong’s art gallery. The sedan disappeared up the street. Maybe the driver wouldn’t come back around.

  Maybe.

  She wasn’t betting her life on a possibility.

  Her fingers curled around the art gallery door handle and pushed. The door opened all too easily and she stumbled into the gallery with an ear-deafening clang as the door bounced open and thudded into the wall. The blast of music explained why no one inside had heard the shots outside, although there were people inside—a group of women who all looked up at her dramatic entrance.

  Great.

  She looked back up the street. No sedan. Maybe she’d overreacted. Maybe that had been a truck and not gunshots.

  When she turned around, she found them all staring at her. She suddenly felt like an animal at the zoo. With a do not feed the animal sign attached to her forehead. She knew most of them by sight of course—Strong wasn’t large and she did run the only bar in town. Lily Donovan, Jack Donovan’s wife, was there of course, along with her mother-in-law. Katie Lawson, Laura Carpenter, and Abigail Donegan were also present and accounted for. That threesome of ladies usually made group appearances together, although maybe Katie’s engagement would change that some. There were a couple of other women Mimi didn’t recognize—so they didn’t do the bar scene—which brought the headcount in the room to twelve. Faye Donovan was also present and accounted for, of course, because the gallery was her place. The petite brown-haired woman jumped to her feet and came over.

  “Mimi!”

  Mimi had to hand it to her. Faye managed not to look surprised at her sudden entrance.

  She double-checked, but the street outside remained empty. See? She’d imagined it. If someone had been shooting at her, surely he would have round-tripped for a second chance at success.

  “I’m so glad you could make it.” Faye reached out and wrapped her arms around Mimi in a hug. Help. Mimi had done plenty of things, but she’d never been a hugger. Still, she patted Faye carefully on the back and waited for the other woman to let go.

  “Me too?” It wasn’t too late to mention the sounds—truck backfiring, she told herself, even though she couldn’t quite believe it was true—but she didn’t want to spoil the other woman’s good mood. Or have to deal with the fifty thousand questions that would follow. Faye loved asking questions and it pretty much came with the territory since the other woman worked as a freelance photojournalist. As long as the sedan didn’t double back, she could tell someone tomorrow.

  “You’re bound to have all sorts of good ideas,” Faye said, finally letting go. She towed Mimi over towards the other women. Whatever they were doing, it involved a large tray of cupcakes and sparkling cider. Cupcakes she could handle. She accepted a purple-frosted cupcake on a napkin. Sugar was the perfect antidote to what had not just happened out there on Main Street, plus retreating now would be awkward.

  She sat.

  She’d make her escape in a few minutes.

  “So.” Faye looked at her expectantly. Shit. “You got any ideas for us?”

  “Why don’t you tell me how far you’ve gotten?” There. That was nicely ambiguous, if she did say so herself.

  “Gia’s due at the end of the month, but we’d like to have the shower before she pops the baby out. We’ve got a preliminary list of games.” The speaker was one of the unfamiliar faces, but she sported a pair of fantastic shoes, all black leather and dominatrix laces.

  Wow. She hadn’t seen that one coming. She pulled the paper off her cupcake while she plotted next steps that included getting the hell out of the gallery. Baby showers were absolutely not her area of expertise.

  “If you’re looking for a party planner, I’m not your gal.”

  Giggling, Lily ran her through the games list. Mimi played a mean game of quarters and she’d been the undisputed queen of beer pong during her one semester of college, but guessing baby food flavors, estimating tummy widths with string, and naming nursery rhyme lyrics? Not so much. Or…

  “Bobbing for nipples?” She couldn’t have heard that last one right.

  Lily’s impish grin lit up her face. “We’re hoping to rope some of the guys into staying. Otherwise, Rio’s going to run for the hills.”

  “You can count on it.” She tried to imagine sexy, hard-bodied Rio Donovan attending a baby shower and fishing for plastic bottle tops in a tub of water. Nope. That mental image just wasn’t in her repertoire. Of course, she’d never imagined him as married and expecting, either. When they’d hooked up last year, they’d both been looking for some quick fun. Now he was not only tied down, but he was happy about it. She’d stayed put in Strong too long and it was past time for her to get going.

  “We’ve got candy games as well.” Laura Carpenter was a paramedic and the only woman driver in the Strong unit. She was blunt and earthy, and Mimi had always felt they were kindred spirits because Laura was another woman who got along better with guys than gals. The bar always got livelier when she came in, although she was usually the
designated driver for the guys she worked with.

  “I’m afraid to ask,” she said dryly.

  “It’s better than the dirty diapers game,” someone muttered. Nope. Not asking.

  “It’s simple,” Faye said, passing Mimi a glass of sparkling cider. The cupcakes, however, didn’t make a second round. From the glow on the other woman’s face, Mimi wondered if she had some news of her own to share. “You match a pregnancy description with a candy.”

  She dutifully tried to imagine it and still drew a blank.

  Lily laughed, a happy sound rather than a mean one, like she was just glad someone else hadn’t gotten it. “You know, like breastfeeding is a Milky Way and contractions are Whoppers.”

  “Bobbing for nipples is not going to be enough to convince Rio to sit through this.” The mental image was great, though. She and Rio had parted as friends, so she probably should throw him a line on this one. She’d thought that walking into a roomful of chattering women with pink and blue on the brain was bad, but candy games (and she so did not want to know what the diaper game was) were worse. Way, way worse.

  Faye shrugged. “He’ll stay if Gia asks him to.”

  The other women nodded and Mimi suspected it was true. She’d seen them together and Rio was head over heels for his wife. He’d probably even pose for pictures with the nipples if that was what Gia wanted.

  After games, the talk turned to food. Cake—of course—and finger foods. Apparently baby showers required some kind of potluck thing. Mimi found herself signed up for chicken wings and celery sticks. She could do that. In fact, if she was being honest with herself, being included in the group felt… good.

  “Now all we need is a location.” Faye looked up from her list and eyeballed the group. “Who’s volunteering?”