Joker Joker (The Deuces Wild Series Book 2)

by Irish Winters

  Winslow’s stomach squeezed a whopping dose of acid up her throat, threatening a projectile surprise at this latest indignity. Just when she’d thought she could endure the prom... this happened.

  No! Just no!

  “Honestly, I don’t know what’s taking that daughter of mine so long.” Mrs. Parrish stood at the hall, her back to Channel Thirteen’s camera crew and tapping her fingernails to her lips. “Must be first prom jitters. You think?”

  Miss Truborn smiled like the true professional she was, all white teeth and charm. She ran a quick hand down the trim thighs beneath her sleek tan skirt. “I’m sure she’s nervous, but trust me, this will be over in a few minutes. Then you’ll have the digital recording we promised and the memory of the night you’ve always wanted. Aren’t you excited?”

  Winslow’s mother turned on a matching dazzling smile. “Oh, yes! This is the best surprise ever. How’s my hair look?” She lifted a few silvery spikes for show.

  “You look fine!” A makeup artist appeared out of nowhere, fluffing Joyce’s hair and powdering her cheeks, and who the hell cared?

  Tate grunted quietly to himself, not wanting to offend anyone in this circus, but irked at Mrs. Parrish’s attention seeking, tonight of all nights. This prom seemed to be more about her, less about the girl. In his book, a cameo during the news didn’t compare to, say, her daughter living longer.

  Channel Thirteen’s crew had already hooked up lights, meters, and reflectors in the living room. His scant supply of patience for annoying people was long gone, replaced by an edgy need to survive the night. He clenched his fists. Tucker Chase was going to hear about this fiasco.

  Finally, the TV crew was ready for show time. Mrs. Parrish trotted down the hall and rapped on Winslow’s door, glancing over her shoulder at the camera, her eyes bright. “Oh, darling…” She paused to make sure the cameraman followed her. “Wakey-wakey! It’s time for your one and only prom. Don’t be shy. Bring that adorable Pepe with you.”

  “You’ll have to forgive her,” she winked, stage-whispering to her new friends in show biz. “But Winslow’s got the ugliest little dog in the world. Just wait ‘til you see it. I was thinking it’d make a real sweet picture, though, don’t you think? My poor little girl with her studly date and her ugly dog?”

  Studly? Make that migraine a solid twelve.

  Miss Truborn’s head bobbed, the mic in her hand extended forward to catch the drama as it unfolded. Joyce cocked one ear to the closed door and rapped harder, her brows furrowed, but her voice sugary. “Winslow? Do you need help getting dressed? Can you hear me, Princess?” With one crank of the knob, she fingered opened the door while she fluffed her spiked locks yet again.

  As a tiny tan bullet beelined past her high heels and headed straight for the front door, she ducked her head inside the room and shrieked, “My baby’s been kidnapped! She’s gone!”

  Chapter Four

  Like hell, she’s gone. She was just in there a minute ago. Tate jumped to his feet, fully aware he towered over everyone else in the room, and that unfortunately, he’d caught Miss Truborn’s attention. She shot him a ten thousand mega-watt smile, waved her cameraman to her side, and shoved her mic in Tate’s face. “And you would be?”

  “Busy,” he growled before he turned to Joyce. Something was off. She didn’t look as panicked as—coy. Pepe scratched furiously at the front door though. What was going on?

  “Where’s Winslow?” Miss TV-land asked the dumbest question ever. “She’s supposed to be here. We air in five minutes.”

  Guess your personal interest story had other plans. Tate rolled his shoulder, ready to take charge.

  With one hand splayed to the wall in the hallway, Joyce dropped her lashes and fanned her face. “I don’t know. This isn’t like my baby at all. Who would take her out of her room like this? Who would do such a thing to me? Why?”

  Wrong question. Tate shouldered around the cameraman and the equipment, not ready to assume that Winslow had been abducted, not yet. Why jump to that conclusion?

  Palming the girl’s bedroom door open, he took a step back in time. Whereas the furniture in the front room appeared new, at least newer, Winslow’s bedroom was nineteen eighties junkyard retro. Make that leftover. The repainted dresser didn’t match the pressed and chipped wooden headboard. Stains blotched the ratty carpet. The sheer drapes at her window sported runs and frayed edges. A tiny lamp with a pink polka dot shade sat crooked on the floor near the head of the bed. The light was still on. No nightstand. No closet. Cardboard shoeboxes were stacked everywhere. Even they looked ragged.

  When the sheer drape billowed just barely, Tate knew what had happened. Winslow had taken off. Maybe the girl didn’t want to go to the prom. Wouldn’t that figure?

  By then, her frantic mother had sunk to the nearest living room chair, her hand fluttering up high on her chest while Channel Thirteen’s finest gathered around. “Someone’s taken my baby. She’s been kidnapped. My… my heart! It’s pounding in my chest like it’s going to explode. I’m just a poor, single mother trying to do what’s best for my only child. What will I do?”

  Stop assuming the worst, for one. “Where does Winslow usually go when she takes off like this?” Tate asked point blank.

  Mama Bear shook her head. “You don’t understand. My baby doesn’t take off. Ever! She wouldn’t do that to me. She loves me and I… I…” She arched her head to the back of the chair, her eyes closed and her long, tan legs on display. “This will kill me.”

  Pepe whined at the door, a plea only Tate seemed to hear.

  “There now,” Miss On-The-Spot-Reporter soothed, her cameraman peering around her, still documenting the drama. “We’ll help you find your little girl. Quick, Chuck, get her a glass of water before she passes out.”

  While Chuck hustled for the kitchen, Tate waited, his gut not buying what his eyes were seeing. Winslow had to have been the one who let Pepe into her room. If she’d run off, she couldn’t have gotten far, not if she was as close to death as her mother said.

  Pepe did a dust devil routine, spinning and whining. Tate left the hubbub, and in two long strides, he crouched at Winslow’s little dragon’s side. “You know where she is, don’t you, boy?”

  Pepe barked one shrill, short yap, his pink tongue flicking over his nose and his eyes wide.

  “You mind if I let your dog out?” Tate asked no one in particular, because at that moment, the hysterical Mrs. Parrish had let out an anguished wail any drama coach would’ve been proud of. Chuck stood waiting with her glass of water while the cameraman rolled sensational footage. But that was the press for you, the more drama, the bigger the audience. The story didn’t even have to be true.

  Tate bet on Pepe. He cracked the front door and man, that little guy could run. It was all Tate could do to keep up in his tux and squeaky dress shoes. “Boots,” he cussed under his breath. “I need my damned boots.”

  The stitch in his side told him he also needed to keep up with the disappearing backside of his new buddy. But just when Tate thought he’d lose sight of Pepe, the rascal looked over his shoulder and slowed. Pepe knew something. Tate took the hint and hurried.

  Man and dog headed east on Maple toward Dameron Drive. The Anacostia Tributary Trail System stretched beyond Dameron to the north and south, then rolled alongside Sligo Creek amidst plenty of trees. Damn. Winslow could be anywhere.

  Pepe never hesitated. After cutting a sharp right at Dameron and Maple, he kept to the sidewalk. At Sanford Road, he dodged traffic and hightailed it across Dameron, headed to Forest Grove Park. By then, Tate was sweating up a storm. His white shirt clung to his skin. He jerked the damned tie off and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. The night was dark and chilly. Downright clammy. He kept up with the dog, wondering what Pepe knew that he didn’t.

  And then he spotted the ghostly figure climbing the water tower northwest of his twenty. Had to be Winslow. What was she thinking?

  Tate jogged faster. A twenty-story crane towe
red over the tower, sporting an American flag at the top of its vertical boom. The concrete walls of the squat, silo-shaped tower hadn’t been painted yet. There was no roof Tate could see, but shit. The dark blur climbing steadily up the side of it was no fly.

  “She’s going to fall.” Ky and Eden would never believe this—him talking to a dog.

  Damned if Pepe didn’t whine as if he agreed though.

  “Why’s she going up there this time of night? In a dress? Do you know?”

  Pepe didn’t answer, a good thing because Tate was seriously worried Eden might be right about his ability to communicate with animals. Chihuahuas anyway.

  He all out ran the final half-mile, his heart in his throat at the thought of this woman tossed by the wind to her death. Falling. Screaming. Another woman had fallen some years ago. Tate never wanted to hear a scream like that again.

  Finally at the base of the tower, his hands on his knees and his lungs screaming for oxygen, he paused long enough to suck in one good deep breath. “You gonna... be okay while I go up?” he asked Pepe.

  Pepe planted his tush, wagged his tail, and looked up anxiously to where the girl had disappeared over the top edge. His eyes bugged out in the way of tiny, squeaker dogs that thought they were dragons.

  Tate followed the dog’s gaze. This tower was taller than the older one it replaced, the one standing thirty yards to the north, maybe taller by half as much again. And wider. The older tower could’ve easily fit inside this newer version. Why couldn’t Winslow have climbed that one?

  The maintenance ladder she’d used beckoned. Cussing, Tate kicked his shoes off and latched onto the first metal rung, a good foot over his head. Pepe’s mistress had to have jumped to reach it, further proving how crazy she was. He’d read the file her mother had provided his boss when she’d applied for this prom. Winslow Parrish was a tiny thing, but she was damned strong for a dying woman, and she had a good head start.

  Curling his fingers under the rung, Tate pumped both biceps to get his heavy body off the ground, and—shit. The metal ladder was narrow and ice cold. Stretching, he grabbed the next rung, his body dead weight until he reached that first rung. Up he went. Hand over hand, his body swaying from sheer physical exertion. At the fifth rung, he had all fours on the ladder and climbing became easier. Step after step. Cussing all the way. At least the rungs were flat, not torturously round. The balls of his feet didn’t hurt with every foot upward.

  The wind blew harder the higher he climbed though, whipping beneath his tux jacket, chilling his sweaty body. He didn’t dare call out to the girl. He couldn’t take the chance. There’d be no way to catch a body hurtling past him on its way down, not unless he was suddenly lucky. Not likely.

  Do. Not. Jump.

  You know that thing they tell you when you’re climbing vertical, that thing about not looking down? Obey that rule. Fear ratcheted up Tate’s spine with every step. His heart pounded and his grip turned slick with sweat. Not good.

  At the halfway point, he paused, but stopping was just as bad. There he was with no harness, no safety ropes, no better sense, and too much time to think. It’d been a long time since he’d free climbed. It took every last nerve to not look down.

  He swallowed hard and kept going. At the top of the tower, the ladder came to a standing platform before the rungs wrapped up and over the top edge. Maybe eight-feet long by four-feet wide, the platform’s rails gave him a temporary sense of security. It also gave him extra handle grips to pull himself onto what he hoped was an actual roof, not just the top edge of hollow concrete walls. It was just possible the Parrish girl had only climbed this rig to throw herself over the other side to her death.

  Finally, he peered across a completed domed roof. The pitch wasn’t as steep as its predecessor’s, the reason he hadn’t seen it from ground level. But this son-of-a-bitchin’ tower was high. Maybe one hundred and fifty feet straight up.

  What was this lunatic woman thinking?

  It took a full minute to get his nerve up. Carefully, he took those last few steps off the ladder and onto the roof where there was no more rail to hold onto. He’d seen another ladder lying on the ground below on his mad rush to get to Winslow. It’d sure be nice to have it up here now.

  His socks snagged on the roof’s non-skid, painted finish, small relief when the wind buffeted his broad chest, challenging him to walk like a man. His mouth had gone dry as desert sand during the climb up, but if Winslow could do this, as sick as she was, so could he. Tate widened his stance, swallowed hard, and he straightened to his full height.

  Oblivious to him, the girl twirled at the center of the domed roof like an idiot, her arms spread wide, her chin tilted upward, and her black dress swirling around her. At least her clunky boots offered substantial traction on the wide domed dance floor.

  Ethereal. That’s what she was. Winslow Parrish was a ghost of a girl in a bit of black, lacy fluff the wind could easily carry over the edge and beyond. She was a being not of this world. One who very much looked like she wanted to leave Mother Earth. She hadn’t seen him yet, not with her face pointed at the sky. Not the way she was twirling and spinning.

  He saw them then. The tears shining high on her cheeks.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, his voice ragged from the climb and the fear that he might’ve come up here for nothing, that she could still jump and he wouldn’t be able to get to her fast enough. That he wouldn’t be able to save her, either.

  The wind stole his words, and Winslow kept spinning, those massive boots holding her down. Spinning and singing? It was the mournful tone in her voice, not the words that reached Tate. He recognized the notes of sorrow and loss. Of bottomless grief. Hell, he could write a song on grief if he ever wanted to sing.

  The tragedy in this woman triggered something down deep in his soul, something he recognized. An odd warmth unfurled inside his ribcage. His fist lifted to his sternum where that old loss still—hurt.

  Closing the distance, he clutched the hand flying by him, but ended up catching her wrist. Good enough. He grabbed hold, startling Winslow, but he held on tight, damn it. She wasn’t going over the edge on his watch.

  The girl turned and squealed, her eyes wide with shock. Taking a backward step, she cocked her arm and…

  SURPRISE! She nailed his jaw so hard that Tate saw stars. Stamping those clunky boots, she twisted away from him, screaming, “Let go! Help somebody! I’m being attacked. Help!”

  Enough! Tate jerked her into his chest with her back to his front, trapping her hands in his. “Settle down,” he ordered, his head against the side of hers, his heart pounding at the scary height of this volatile confrontation. All she had to do was struggle some more, and they’d both tumble over the edge. “Winslow, it’s me. Tate Higgins. I’m the guy who’s taking you to the prom, remember?”

  Her mouth snapped closed, but her chest heaved like she couldn’t catch her breath. She peered sideways at him, her eyes wild and—breathtaking. Green maybe? They were too big for her face, and they were so damned sad. Crystal tears clung to her dark lashes. “You… you scared me.”

  No shit. His gut screamed to get her down off this damned tower. To protect her. “Yeah, well, you scared me too. What the f—, I mean, what are you doing up here?”

  Her chest heaved under the black lace bodice, pushing against the insides of his arms. “I’m... I’m living as fast as I can, Mr. Higgins.”

  Chapter Five

  Just great. My nose is dripping, and heaven only knows what my mascara’s doing, probably running down both cheeks. I bet I look like Gene Simmons and… Wah! Just wah!

  Winslow didn’t pull free from Mr. Higgins’s big hands. She didn’t want to. His skin was rough, warm and strong over hers, and she fit inside his arms like a little kid. It was a different world in here, surrounded by warmth and gentleness like she was. She didn’t want him to let go. Not yet. She was too busy catching her breath. No one had ever joined her on this high perch before, much less held onto
her like he was. He wasn’t so much gripping her, but hugging her into the curve of his rugged body. The contact was incredible. Warm. Intoxicating.

  Her heart still pounded from fright, but she’d settled down like he’d asked. Not like she had a choice. This big man was Tate Higgins, the guy she was going to the prom with? Ahem, the guy she would’ve gone with before she found out about her mother’s latest despicable surprise.

  Never had she felt so—alive. Energy pulsed from the sheer size of his body to hers. Despite the clothes between them, she felt every part of him. Every muscle. And there was so much. He dwarfed her, his arms as thick as tree branches, big branches. She clung to his wrists, her arms curled over his arms, holding on. Maybe even hugging him back. A little.

  If this was God’s answer to her prayers, He’d sent the most fearsome, spine-tingling archangel in His army. Winslow swallowed hard, working her throat muscles to make that seemingly impossible physical function work. As if. Not with her tucked up snug against this formidable man like she was. Not with him smelling as good as he did, either. She’d expected some geeky guy with acne scars all over his oily prepubescent face for her prom date, not a god.

  He was a dark-haired version of Thor, if all that thunder in her heart meant anything. I mean, look at him. With tousled dark-hair trimmed at the neckline, the man who now had a solid grip on her was too good to be true. The tux made him James Bond drool-worthy, but his stocking feet made him cute in an adorable, tough-guy way. His shirt collar was open, revealing a thickly corded neck. He’d climbed that freezing cold ladder in his socks? Who did that for someone they didn’t know?

  “What are you doing up here?” he asked again, his voice deep and rumbling in his still heaving chest. Tempted to lean back and press her ear to that thick, masculine wall, she twisted around in his arms to face him. Her fingers landed on his chest. It wasn’t a difficult enough question, but she couldn’t seem to make her mouth work. Warm and, wow, strong, his pectoral muscles shuddered under her fingertips as if she’d just shocked him.