She gave him a big smile and brushed a piece of lint off his jacket. “Thanks. And you look very handsome.”
His tuxedo was a real Armani, and only a few years old. He’d learned to never travel without it, or risk having to buy another or rent one.
He finished his water and they left the apartment. Walking to the car, Brack saw the sun beginning to set, but the air was still hot.
As he opened the passenger door for her, he asked, “Do you want me to put the top up?”
“Are you kidding?” She slid onto the hot leather seat. “I’d kill for a convertible.”
His kind of woman.
They drove to a large mansion located in a part of Atlanta he hadn’t seen before. The valet handed him a ticket and drove his cherished car away. Brack was relieved to see how skillfully he backed the Porsche into a spot out front between a Ferrari and a Range Rover.
Tara took Brack’s arm. He escorted her inside and couldn’t help but notice all the men stealing glances at her.
The ballroom floor had black tile alternating with squares of white. A very high ceiling with globe lighting made the women’s jewelry sparkle. Tara chose a flute of champagne from a tray presented by a uniformed server. Brack scanned the room and found Atlanta’s elite to be a little younger and a little more ethnic than Charleston’s. The vibe he got added at least one zero to the net worth of the average donor here compared with his home base. Though Uncle Reggie’s will had made him extremely comfortable, in this sea of money here he was but a small fish.
The orchestra played a slow waltz and several couples moved gracefully across the tiled dance floor.
Brack asked, “So how did you end up working at Mutt’s Bar?”
His date grinned. “How do you think?”
A thought came to mind. “Cassie.”
“We’re friends.”
Of course they were. That confirmed Cassie hadn’t quite told him the whole truth. If Cassie knew Tara, then she definitely knew about the bar, and everything else Mutt had been hiding. Brack didn’t hold it against her. She was only trying to protect Mutt and get her sister back.
Tara finished her champagne and gave the glass to a passing server. Then she asked, “Would you like to dance?”
“That was supposed to be my line,” he said.
“Convention was never my strong suit.”
He wasn’t about to comment on that. Instead, he took her hand and led her to the dance floor. Thanks to lessons he had taken a decade ago with Jo, his deceased wife, he knew what to do, and slid his free hand behind her back. Tara rested hers on his shoulder. They moved around well together, Brack thought. She smiled, showing off her very nice teeth. He forgot for a moment why they were here and simply enjoyed her company.
The music changed to a mild salsa number. He led Tara through a few spins. She backed into him, their arms crossed in front of her and they swayed to the beat.
And then as the song ended, Brack caught sight of Darcy in the arms of another man and his stomach tightened.
He and Tara exited the dance floor and she excused herself to head for the restroom. Brack watched Darcy dance with her fiancé to another song. When they turned and her date’s back was toward Brack, she spotted him and lifted her hand in a slight wave.
Brack nodded.
Then her eyes grew wide as she looked past his shoulder.
Brack heard from behind him Kelvin Vito’s voice. “I could have you thrown out.”
“You’d have to,” he said, turning to face Vito. “You certainly couldn’t do it by yourself.”
Vito smirked. “You know, it’s a shame they let anyone in here.”
“Present company included,” Brack said.
Vito turned to watch the couples dancing and his slicked-back hair reflected the overhead lights. “Mr. Pelton, if I were you I’d watch my step while I was in town. Accidents happen all the time here.” He walked off.
Tara returned and they started toward an empty table in a corner. It would give him a good vantage point, since he’d been advised to watch his step.
En route to their destination, Darcy stepped into their path.
With her came the man Brack assumed was her fiancé. She turned to Tara and said, “It’s good to see you again. That’s a lovely dress.”
Tara smiled. “Thanks. Yours is gorgeous. Versace?”
Nodding, Darcy said, “Good guess.”
Brack held out his hand to the peckerwood, whose name he’d learned through some internet sleuthing: Justin Welcott the third. “I’m Brack Pelton.”
First impression: a few inches shorter, brown hair going thin at the temples, thick-framed stylish glasses hiding brown eyes, small mouth, weak smile. A real peckerwood.
Welcott took the outstretched hand. “So you’re the one who got my fiancée shot.”
His hand felt soft. No calluses, unlike Brack’s own. Before he let go, Justin turned to Darcy. “We really must be going, dear.”
She gave her fiancé a quick smile, then turned to Tara. “It was a pleasure seeing you again.”
Brack watched the soon-to-be newlyweds retreat and thought that the peckerwood really needed something bad to happen to him.
Tara interrupted his thoughts. “I wouldn’t mind another drink.”
His focus returned to her. “I’m sorry. A lot of water under the bridge there.”
“I could tell.” She gave him a friendly smile. “We all carry things with us. They make us who we are.”
Looking toward the floor-to-ceiling window, he said, “And sometimes who we turn into isn’t all that pleasant.”
Touching his cheek, she said, “You helped me and my brother. As far as I’m concerned, you’re Sir Galahad.”
“I’ve been called worse,” he said.
A male voice behind them said, “Excuse me.”
Brack’s gut told him trouble, but he’d already known there would be at some point. Precisely why Detective Nichols gave him the tickets—and why he’d shown up.
Tara and Brack turned to face a very tall and very stout Aryan. Even before Brack took in his blond flat-topped hair, he noticed the man’s height—a few inches taller than himself. He filled out a tuxedo jacket that obviously had been custom-tailored to show off his large shoulders and biceps and rather trim waist. Brack ordinarily didn’t cower from anyone, but his instincts told him not to mess with this guy. Professional was practically stamped across his forehead. Green Beret or Ranger or, worse, SEAL. Probably a high-paid mercenary now. Very lethal.
Brack decided all this in a split second.
“Yes?” he responded.
The giant’s blue crystalline eyes bore into Brack, and from his thin lips he heard, “Mr. Vito would like you to leave.”
Tara seemed to size up the situation pretty quickly. She squeezed Brack’s hand.
His better judgment slipped away from him. “Yeah, well, we’re busy right now.”
“Ignoring his request would be a mistake.”
“For whom?”
“It doesn’t have to go down this way,” he said. “You won’t get the drop on me.”
“I figured as much,” Brack said. “But you won’t do anything in front of all these witnesses.”
“There’s always another time.”
“While you’re basking in your apperception, I should probably tell you there won’t be any rules.”
The giant nodded. “Understood.”
“And one of us will not walk away.”
The giant’s mouth formed a slight grin, and his upper lip showed a minute tremor, which Brack took to mean the hulk couldn’t wait to throw down right here and now.
Brack put his arm around Tara’s waist and eased them both back a few steps. The giant did not take his eyes off Brack’s. A safe distance away, he and Tara turned and walked onto the
dance floor, where they danced until midnight.
The valet retrieved the Porsche in mint condition and Brack drove Tara back to her apartment, U2’s “The Unforgettable Fire” streaming through the sound system. The low-key tunes and Tara’s seemingly peaceful visage helped him keep his speed in check, although the muted growl of the boxer engine taunted his right foot for anything but restraint.
He managed to make it all the way back to her apartment complex without so much as one moving violation.
Brack walked his date up the stairs to her place, his thoughts focused more on the angles of getting at Vito than on the curves revealed by Tara’s dress.
At her door, she turned to him. “Thank you so much for a wonderful evening.”
He said, “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself. I did too.”
Closing the distance between them, she gently placed her hands on his chest and kissed him. “That’s for saving me and my brother.”
Startled, he put his arms around her.
She kissed him again. “And that’s for treating me so nice.”
“What do you mean?”
Resting her head on his shoulder, she said, “No one has ever invited me to a ball before. I felt like Cinderella.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Too bad the clock struck midnight.”
Giggling, she pulled away and looked at him. “You’re not going to turn into a pumpkin, are you?”
“I think I already did.”
She said, “I like you, Brack.”
He had nothing to say to that.
“But,” she said, “your heart belongs to someone else.”
As Brack returned to his car in the parking lot of Tara’s apartment complex, he thought about what she’d said. She was right. His heart did belong to someone else, and he couldn’t shake that, even if the object of his love was about to marry someone else.
Still five hundred feet from his car, his cell vibrated in his tuxedo pants pocket. He answered.
A disguised voice said, “Get out of town or the next time you won’t only be a witness.”
Brack stopped walking. “What?”
His Porsche exploded in front of his eyes.
Chapter Twelve
Monday, one a.m.
Kelvin Vito watched the carnage from the passenger seat of his Mercedes at the far end of the parking lot. The very nice Porsche convertible lit off like one big firecracker. The explosion shook the SUV. The whole thing made Vito smile.
Levin, his second in command, who’d been with Vito from almost the beginning of his empire, watched from the driver’s seat. “I still don’t understand why we don’t just kill him.”
Vito kept watching the fireball achieve maximum magnitude and then begin to taper off. “A guy like that can do a lot of damage. We just need to point him in the direction we want him to go.”
“You’re saying we’re going to use him?” Levin asked. “Personally, I think he’s a big dumb hero wannabe who’s bound to be killed sooner or later.”
“Exactly,” Vito said. “So why not take advantage of the opportunity?”
“But all this will do is rile him up and get him to come after us harder.”
Vito said, “Who is our biggest enemy right now?”
“Kualas, of course,” Levin said. “But you know that.”
“What would happen if my good friend Xavier Kualas got word there was a new gun in town aiming at us?”
“He might try to join forces.”
Vito smiled again. “And when Xavier comes out of his hole, we’re going to make sure he doesn’t crawl back in.”
Levin said, “We need to make sure Pelton doesn’t survive either. And then I think we need to deal with Regan. She caused this whole mess.”
Vito looked at Levin, “When I want your opinion, I’ll tell you what it is. Just so we’re clear, Regan is off limits to you or anyone else. Now, get us out of here.”
Levin started the SUV and slowly drove away.
Chapter Thirteen
In Brack’s engineering courses, he learned Newton’s second law: Force equals mass times acceleration. He was two hundred and ten pounds of force projected through the air by a tremendous amount of energy. The speed at which his body hit whatever it was that stopped its flight must have been pretty significant itself, because the world went black.
“Brack...”
Whoever called his name sounded far away.
“Brack.”
But getting closer.
“Brack!”
He coughed and opened his eyes.
The prettiest set of green eyes stared at him. He said, “Jo?”
“It’s Darcy.”
Using the back of his hand, he wiped his eyes. “Darcy?” The light surrounding him was blinding. He wanted it to stop. As more details came into focus, he realized he was in a white room. Fluorescent lighting above caused the brightness. “Where am I?”
“Atlanta Regional.”
Something soft held his hand. He blinked and realized it was Darcy’s hand.
“What’s going on?”
She gave his hand a squeeze and let go. “The doctors say you have a concussion, but otherwise you’re fine. Lucky, in fact.”
Brack coughed again to clear his throat.
“Someone blew up your car. Good thing you and Tara weren’t in it.”
The words of the phone call he’d received in her parking lot came to mind. “They planned it that way.”
His favorite reporter stared at him.
He said, “Whoever it was called me and gave me the good news seconds before they set it off.”
Tara came into view. “The explosion shook my apartment.”
Darcy said, “She dragged you to safety and called 911.”
Another voice in the room, a familiar one, said, “You one lucky soda cracker.”
“Not really,” Brack said to Mutt. “My insurance company wouldn’t let me have anything but liability.”
Darcy and Mutt laughed. Brack didn’t think it was all that funny. The sticker price on the Porsche was a cool one hundred and twenty-five thousand. And he didn’t think his agent was likely to call the explosion an accident.
Detective Nichols took Brack’s bedside statement and said explosions tended to pique the interest of the anti-terrorist factions of the government. But almost in the same breath he added that what they’d found so far was not much to go on.
Not wanting Mutt’s house to blow up next, as soon as the hospital released him Brack checked in to one of the only major hotels that accepted dogs. Then he did what he should have done about Shelby from the start and placed a phone call to Charleston. It was answered on the third ring.
“Hi, Trish,” he said.
“Hello, Brack,” she said. “How’s Shelby?”
“He’s fine. In fact...” He paused, gritted his teeth for a second, then said, “As usual, he’s the reason I’m calling.”
This was risky territory. Trish’s love affair with his dog went back two years. More than once, Brack had the feeling she would be pleased if he disappeared so she could adopt him herself. But she was the only person besides himself Shelby would eat for. If anyone else set a bowl of food in front of Shelby, he merely looked at it and walked away. So Trish, the wife of Brack’s attorney, Chauncey Connors, was his only option—until he resolved his situation.
She said, “You guys are in Atlanta, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Is he all right?”
“He is. I was, um, wondering—”
“You want me to come there and get him?” she interrupted.
“Do you think Chauncey would let you come for a few days?”
She said, “I’ll pack as soon as we hang up.”
That afternoon, Brack sat on a bench in front of the hotel w
ith Shelby sleeping at his feet. A Volvo pulled to the curb, Brack’s favorite pastor and friend Brother Thomas at the wheel. Trish, defying her sixty-plus years, leapt from the car and ran to Shelby. Brack’s dog, who seconds earlier was snoring away every care he’d ever had, jumped to full wakefulness and danced around the ever-ready dog sitter as if Trish were his favorite person in the whole world. Which couldn’t be, because Brack held that title. At least that’s the lie he kept telling himself as he stood to greet his Charleston rescuers.
“Thanks for coming, Trish. And for bringing Brother Thomas.”
Trish had already gotten down on the ground, ignoring the dust and grime and whatever a city sidewalk could do to her nice, no doubt expensive travel wear of linen walking shorts and matching polo shirt. She wrapped Shelby in a hug and spoke in a voice usually heard around babies. “Of course I’m going to come for my favorite sweetheart, yes I am.”
Brack left his four-legged Benedict Arnold in the arms of his new best friend and held out a hand to Brother Thomas. About the same height as Mutt at six three, Brother Thomas was three hundred and fifty pounds of presence. He wore his usual attire, a black suit and minister’s collar.
The preacher took Brack’s offered hand in both of his. “I sure am glad you called me to come and he’p you out, mm-hmm.”
“You’re welcome,” Brack said, knowing full well that he had not called him because he didn’t want another good friend anywhere near here. “Except you shouldn’t be here. This place is a ticking time bomb.”
“All the more reason, mm-hmm. How’s Mutt and Cassie?”
“Holding it together,” Brack said.
“Yeah. Well, I did hear you got your car blown up already. How many does this make?”
Ignoring the question, “Needless to say, Brother Thomas, things have gotten a little out of hand.”
Brack felt his shoulder grasped by a warm hand.
“Obviously, Brother Brack. Otherwise you would not have called Ms. Trish to guard your companion, mm-hmm.”
“Trish has a reservation here,” Brack said. “I can arrange for you to have a room as well, or if you prefer you can stay with Mutt, who has plenty of room.”
Big City Heat Page 9
