by Chris Bostic
“We’re seriously doing this here?” I murmured, not that I’d have said no.
His eyes glimmered in the dull light. “Fuck yeah. I’m in charge.”
I held in a laugh and some sass while he reached down to pull off my underwear.
He sat up a second later, cursing again. It wasn’t from struggling to get my panties off, because those things slid straight off my hips like they wanted off too.
“Dude, you didn’t.” I looked toward his waist. “Not already.”
He mashed a finger to his lips to shush me, and I knew it had nothing to do with a premature happy ending.
There was nothing happy at that point.
Lee sat there crouched over me, eyes closed as he seemed intent on something.
Then I heard it.
The deep rumble of a motor. Tires crunching on gravel, clearly headed for the rack house.
Lee practically leaped off me, pulling at his pants as he rolled to the side. His pistol, at some point having been wisely taken out of the holster, clunked against the floor.
I sat up the second I could and found myself in total disarray.
I didn’t even know where to start, but it seemed prudent enough to go with panties first, then work my way up from there.
With sweat pouring off my brow, I got my head and arms back into my dress, which went on a whole lot harder than it came off.
“Who is it?” I whispered as I pulled my bra back together to fasten the clasp.
Lee shook his head, while eyeing me at the same time. I wanted to tell him to focus on the problem, but we didn’t have time for that.
The tires ceased crunching on the gravel. The engine shut off.
Evidently we were too far way to hear footsteps, which was sort of a good thing in that they weren’t close, but it didn’t keep me from freaking out when the far door rattled.
CHAPTER 18
I’d expected the door to creak open, but it held.
“Hurry,” Lee said, grabbing at the wad of picnic blanket trapped underneath me. “I locked it.”
With bra refastened, I wriggled the dress down before I rose to a crouch so he could get the last corner of the blanket out from under me.
“Who’d be down here?”
“I don’t have a clue.” Lee looked at his phone for the clock. “It’s after closing time now.”
Something heavy slammed against the door. The shudder seemed to ripple through the entire structure. Just the outside part of the building skeleton, though. All the internal ricks and flooring were built free standing from the walls so that they might not collapse if something happened to the exterior.
“Hurry,” he said, again borderline leering at the way I tucked my ass back into the bottom of the dress.
“Perv.” I shoved him aside to grab our water bottles from the floor, then stood there unsure. “What do we do?”
A pounding at the door answered him. Not a fist, more like a sledgehammer.
“Hide,” he said, tossing the blanket back into the rick where he’d hidden our anniversary stuff. “Better get back there. Now.”
I scampered in first, pushing my way back as far as I could go. Not very, since only three sets of barrels were missing out of the rick, but it was a better cubbyhole than nothing.
Lee followed as soon as I was nestled into the back. He felt behind him as he walked in backwards, retrieving his pistol from the holster at the same time.
Once we ran out of room, he turned around to face me. I still hadn’t straightened up the top of my dress, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care. He just handed the bigger pistol back to me and pulled his backup from his leg holster.
My heart rate beat a mile a minute—again. I don’t know that it had ever really calmed down from our earlier excitement, but that was a memory at that point, other than my boobs practically hanging out.
I panted, still completely winded. Sweat ran into the corners of my eyes, stinging them mercilessly. I rubbed my forehead into the arms of my shirt to try to staunch the flow, and sat back as the pounding continued on the door.
Then the lock broke loose.
I wondered if Lee would want to confront them before they got too far inside, but he seemed content to wait—and maybe pray that they didn’t come down as far as where we were at.
That’s what I was doing.
Lee’s jaw remained set in an unmoving, firm line. Nothing moved on him, not even his chest. I couldn’t even hear him breath while I was busy gasping and rasping.
The man was a rock, while I quivered in the corner like a scared child.
Damn, Hope. Suck it up.
He turned back to me to whisper, “Don’t move. Don’t talk. We see if they come to us.”
He spun back around, completely intent on the world beyond the two of us. Bodyguard mode, I called it, and I couldn’t have been more thankful than to have had him there in that moment.
I reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t even flinch. Then as the rack house stayed quiet, he tipped his head to the side and shrugged to press my fingers between his ear and shoulder. For just a second, then he was back to all business.
I forced a weak smile to myself and sucked in a deep breath, desperately trying to salvage a shred of my courage. To try to emulate my man in the slightest way, but it wasn’t something I’d ever been trained to do. I hadn’t worked the mean streets of Memphis like he had and lived to tell about it.
I hope we live to tell about this one.
I chided myself for thinking that. First off, we both had pistols, unlike last time. Also, we had no idea who was breaking in. It could have been some punk kids.
On second thought, Lee had told me that teenagers were more dangerous than the older folks. The younger ones had no respect for life and had been bred to hate cops.
Footsteps, heavy ones, pounded on the floorboards. My grip tightened around the pistol.
The steps seemed hefty enough to be Little Willie’s or the oversized battery stealer, but more like several Little Willie’s the way the footsteps had multiplied into a chorus.
Lee leaned closer to the aisle. He went to all fours and inched farther out.
I wondered if I should follow him, but decided to stay back. He was better equipped to deal with a threat. I was backup. The last line of defense. The one who shot two dead when they tried to sneak up on him.
I shook my head to clear the old thoughts. It was time to focus on the present.
The toe of my shoe stirred at the pile of wadded up tablecloth at my feet, amazed at how pleasure could turn to pain in a millisecond.
Then I found the water bottle.
My throat was so dry I could barely talk. I felt like I might cramp up at any second from dehydration, but that could have been the overall tightness in my muscles talking. I stayed so tense I felt like I could barely move.
“This is insane,” I mumbled under my breath as the footsteps grew closer.
A familiar gruff voice carried back to me along with a rustle of papers. “This row here. It’s the good shit.”
Not again!
I cursed under my breath, finding it unfathomable that someone was robbing a rack house again, and this time we were inside it.
Lee had stretched out to the point that it looked like he was lying on the floor. He kept crawling forward, painfully slowly as he kept his pistol at the ready.
Just short of the aisle, he stretched out like a turtle coming out of his shell, then pulled back abruptly.
I eased my way forward, meeting up with Lee as he retreated.
“Stick with the bottom rows,” the gruff man told someone else. “That’s good enough.”
Lee turned back to me and broke his rule about no talking. “It’s a barrel crew.”
“One of ours?” I whispered back the obviously dumb question.
Lee nodded.
“Weapons?” I asked.
“Dunno. Can’t be sure.”
I was going to ask if he wanted to surpris
e them when the gruff voice boomed, “These fuckers deserve it, making us work overtime for stupid shit.”
“Hell yeah, bro,” a higher-pitched voice replied. “Fuck them cheap bastards.”
I picked up on the sound of a barrel rolling out of the rick and into the aisle. It was so heavy a slight shudder ran through the floorboards all the way back to us.
I stretched out on the floor next to Lee, mimicking the way he held his pistol in his hand, but stayed farther back inside our rick.
“How many guys?” I whispered.
He held up three fingers.
“Little Willie or Bowling Ball?”
“Both, and a skinny dude that kinda looks like Collins.” Lee scooted back a little, as barrels continued to rumble as they rolled out into the aisle. “I don’t see any weapons. It’s like they’re actually working.”
“But why would they break a lock to work? And why now?”
There was hardly ever a reason for the crews to work late, yet they were talking about overtime.
It made no sense. Barrels aged for years. Another day or two wasn’t going to hurt them.
Lee didn’t offer much of an opinion beyond saying, “Guess it’s partly the vandalism thing. They hate this place enough not to give a shit about breaking stuff.”
I agreed but didn’t think that was the real answer.
“Are we bottling tomorrow?” I asked him.
“Probably…but nobody tells me that stuff.” He slid back even with me and scratched at his head. “We bottle almost every day, so-”
“Take those,” the gruff voice called out, interrupting my thoughts. Now that I knew names, I was sure it sounded like Little Willie. “That’s the better ones.”
“How ‘bout this row?”
Footsteps clomped, followed by Little Willie saying, “Leave ‘em. We don’t need ‘em.”
“You sure?” the higher-pitched guy asked.
“We take the best, not that young shit.”
I glanced over at Lee. He stared off into space, seemingly focused on listening over seeing.
“So if they’re actually working,” I whispered, “doesn’t Tim pick out the barrels for bottling? Not them?”
“I think, but I don’t really know.” He shrugged. “Maybe he gives ‘em a list to pull.”
I remembered hearing papers rustling at one point among all the nonstop rolling and pounding, along with a fair amount of grunting mixed in. No wonder most of the barrel crew guys were in decent shape. Those things were heavy.
“Go open the tailgate and get the ramps out,” Little Willie commanded. “We need to load up.”
“What about Dipshit?” the other prominent talker asked. “Anybody seen him around?”
“His truck’s gone,” a new man with a thick southern accent said. “He done left.”
I wondered who Dipshit could be. It didn’t take long for Little Willie to give me a solid clue.
“Fuck him,” he bellowed. “He’s a damn rent-a-cop anyway.”
He had to have meant Lee. Obviously they didn’t know that I’d brought him to work that morning, because we took turns driving sometimes.
I turned to Lee, and instantly felt bad about having called him a mall cop so many times. He didn’t show any reaction to any of their bluster. If anything, he probably expected as much from the crew. They didn’t respect anyone.
“Fuckin’ rent-a-cop,” the more recent talker replied. “Dude’s prolly off banging that marketing chick.”
Lee turned at that remark and smirked at me. I put my head in my hands and stifled a groan.
“Wouldn’t you?” came the high-pitched voice from farther down the hall.
“Fuck yeah. She’s a total banger.”
I didn’t feel particularly happy with their assessment.
Lee just grinned.
CHAPTER 19
“Now quit yer yappin’,” Little Willie yelled. “We need to get this shit over with.”
Footsteps tromped down the aisle, heading away from us. Lee holstered his weapon and inched out again for a quick peek. I sat back and kept my pistol in my lap, trying to remain confident that I wouldn’t actually need to point it at someone, much less use it.
Barrels rolled along the floor. I didn’t need Lee to tell me they were headed out the other way. He did anyway.
“We’ll sit tight ‘til they’re gone,” he said. “Then we follow ‘em.”
“We could just call the cops,” I suggested.
“I hear you…but what would we say? That actual workers are moving barrels on the property?”
“I guess that would sound silly, but I think they’re up to something.”
“So do I. Without a doubt, something’s up.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “Speaking of calling, I should have thought of this sooner.”
My eyes narrowed. I had no idea what he was talking about since he’d just said we weren’t calling the cops.
When he got back on all fours to crawl out to the aisle, I figured it out.
“Make sure your flash is off,” I whispered, though he certainly knew as much.
He gave me a thumbs up rather than a perturbed look, and extended the phone out into the aisle. He must have snapped a dozen pictures. Most with the normal setting but the last few zoomed.
Then, after quickly checking the pictures, he leaned back out and got a short video of the final barrel rolling out the far door.
“They took at least four barrels, maybe five,” he reported when the door banged shut.
“Seems like a weird number. That normal for a bottling run?” I did some quick math in my head to see if I could figure out their endgame. Depending on how long it had been aged, a barrel would typically yield from 150 to 250 bottles.
“Could be. Probably normal for single barrel runs, but that’s not really enough for one of Tim’s usual small batch blends.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, remembering my marketing notes on the new J. W. Forest product. “They blend at least ten barrels to make our new small batch.”
The motor on their truck started with a grumble that echoed through the rack house. Two doors clanked shut, and the driver applied the gas.
Lee sprung to his feet. “We need to see what truck that is…and where it’s going.”
He practically sprinted down the aisle toward the door as the motor revved. I took off after him, wishing I’d worn pants so I could shove my pistol into the waistband.
Wheels spun on gravel, easily drowning out our footsteps.
Lee reached the door first, pressing his face to a crack.
“It’s ours,” he said, which I took to mean a truck owned by the distillery.
I looked at the situation a couple different ways. Either they really were working, or they were just using the truck as cover for what seemed like illegal activity.
Even though they had a company truck, I thought there was still a decent chance the barrels were leaving the property. Either by driving that truck straight to one of their homes, or up to the parking lot to offload barrels into one of their own rides.
I went to the other side of the door, trying to find a similar crack, but the side with the hinges was much tighter than where they’d beaten at the lock.
“Watch out, Hope,” Lee said after having tried and failed at gently pushing the door open. “It’s kinda stuck. I don’t know what’s gonna fall off when I crack the door.”
I stepped back so he could give it a firmer push. Wood rubbed with a squeal. Once it popped free, I got my first look at where the door frame had been mangled by the crew’s pounding.
I scooted behind Lee. He crouched so I could look over his shoulder as the truck rolled off toward the visitors center.
“Why up there?” I noted, having not yet considered that they might want to clear the gift shop out of pricey bottles like the Bison Fork crew had done to us months earlier. “That’s not bottling or the parking lot.”
“Parking lot?” He tilted his head at my st
atement. A sudden flash of recognition shot across his face. “Oh, I see what you’re thinking. I could see ‘em-”
Lee pinched his mouth shut as the truck made a sharp turn to the right. He let the door close so they wouldn’t see us as the truck turned broadside to the rack house.
We listened to it rumble, shocks creaking under the load, as the pickup truck went off road to head behind the gift shop and over toward the Distillation Building.
“They are headed to bottling,” he said. “We need to get over there…in a minute.”
He kept the door closed, seeing how the truck wasn’t exactly flying across the property.
Once again, I gave serious consideration to bailing out on Lee, seeing how I wasn’t exactly an expert in corporate security, or detective work, or whatever the hell was going on.
Lee apparently never considered that an option. He just held the door shut and gave me the rundown.
“Let’s go out the other door,” he said, pointing to the far end. “We’ll leave our ride and just hoof it up the hill toward Distillation.”
I must have nodded in agreement, so he kept going.
“We can get in the lower door and come in by the still. Then creep up past fermenting to catch a peek through the windows at bottling.”
“Then we can call the cops?”
“If they actually start trying to bottle that themselves.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said, and sagged against the door frame.
“Watch the splinters. They did a number on that door.” Lee pointed to the mangled wood. “Wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”
“You sure about that?”
His brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
I held out the pistol at an arms length. “This isn’t my, uh…specialty.”
“You’re a good shot.”
“Not that.” I blew out an exasperated breath. “I mean this police work or whatever it is we’re doing.”
“Don’t worry, it’s my specialty.” He reached out to take the pistol back from me and holstered it. “Just stick with me, babe. I got you.”
“Babe?”
“Sorry. I forgot you don’t like that.” He winked. “You’re still a total babe, though.”
