CHAPTER 9
Shane pulled briefly off the freeway into a public rest stop, drove between a van and an SUV, and got out of the car. Cecily followed him to the front of the car, looking impressed when he reached under his bumper and flipped his plates. She followed him to the back, and he did the same and then popped the trunk. She instinctively backed away.
“C’mere,” Shane said.
She peered inside. A wide grin spread over her face. “Oh!”
“Push this button.”
Cecily pushed a button on the inside of the trunk, and the bottom section opened to reveal what looked like a flat garment bag . . . but it kept going and raised vertically until it was a mini garment rack.
Through the plastic window of the top garment the black satin lapels of a tuxedo were visible.
“Seriously?” Cecily said, clearly delighted by the unexpected surprise. “I guess I’m just so used to you in jeans and boots. I’ll bet you look amazing in a tux.”
I’d like to see you looking at me in a tux.
“I thought it’d be some kind of arsenal,” she added, reaching toward a hairline crack in the bottom of the wardrobe platform.
Shane wrapped a hand around Cecily’s wrist and pulled her back. Playtime was over. “No. That stuff doesn’t touch you.”
She stood quietly next to him while he moved the garment bags around and then opened one and selected a navy-blue sweatshirt stained with white paint on the pocket and a worn-out Chicago Bears ball cap. His tattoo vanished under the sweatshirt; his face vanished under the hat. Didn’t matter how much or how little he changed his appearance. Just the act of putting on something different from his usual helped him get in the zone.
He got back into the car and started it up. Cecily stood frozen for a moment before she got in the passenger side, deep in thought.
She opened her mouth to express those thoughts, and Shane cut her off at the pass: “Next time we get off the freeway, we’re going to drive and park outside a coffee shop called Bernard’s. I’ll be across the street. Gonna point you out to Bernard and get you a snack. You’re gonna eat the snack until I come and get you.”
“I’m gonna,” Cecily said under her breath and then knee-jerked out with “I’m gonna eat the snack.”
Shane found himself getting irritated. He got that she wasn’t keen on being told what to do; he’d try to remember that, when it was shit that didn’t really matter. Like he warned, they parked in front of Bernard’s. Shane came around and opened the passenger door because she hadn’t gotten out.
He held out his wallet. She sat there some more, staring at money poking out the side, and then with a big huff, she exited the car and took the wallet with an expression that suggested he’d sprayed it with some kind of contaminant. “What snack would you like me to eat, Shane?”
“I thought you were cool with me doing a quick job, Cecily. Are you cool with that, or are you not cool with that? ’Cause this is me doing a quick job. I don’t have time for nineteenth-century pleasantries or whatever the fuck it is you expect from me. I don’t have brain space to spend making you feel whatever it is you want to feel. If you are cool with me doing a quick job, I need you to follow orders without sass and go buy yourself a fucking snack and entertain yourself until I get back without leaving the café. Do you think you can do that for me?”
The sass had leaked out of her expression by the time he was done with his speech. Cecily’s eyes widened, and then she mumbled, “I can do that for you.”
“Didn’t think it’d be that easy,” he muttered, indicating she needed to start walking toward Bernard’s.
“Sorry, Shane, it should be, shouldn’t it? You deserve more respect than that. I trust you. You’ve earned it from me. Sometimes I forget this isn’t a movie, because I don’t really understand what you and Dex have gotten yourselves into. But this is real, and you’ve got business to attend to. I didn’t mean to be bitchy.” She went straight up the stairs into Bernard’s and got into line, Shane staring after her.
He shook his head and then popped the glove compartment and took out a gun, which he stuck in his waistband. Then he went to the trunk, opened the compartment underneath the wardrobe module, and pushed aside the weapons and the ammunition to grab the duffel bag he’d stowed. All the while, his mind tried to process her words.
Earned it? Respect? An odd sensation swept through him. Sweetness. He was surprised he gave a shit, but there was something really special about having earned even a fragment of fucking-decent-Cecily’s trust or respect. A man made it far enough with Rothgar to be given a room and a job with the Hudson Kings, that man got a certain amount of respect, de facto. Any friend of Rothgar’s, and all that. Not the case with Cecily, and it was with a truly warm feeling inside that Shane confirmed Cecily was in line to get coffee before he popped into the back room to set up a guard for her with Bernard. Bernard would have Cecily’s seat on his video monitor and one of the “baristas” out front keeping tabs firsthand.
He didn’t acknowledge Cecily on the way out, though he could see her through the café window when he looked back. And then he put her out of his mind, because that’s what he always did. He never let anything that was bothering him in real life touch him on a job, and he never broke a sweat.
Shane hoisted the duffel bag on his back and headed across the street to the gym.
The front of the gym was buzzing with action. The serious guys were training in a ring lined with shiny red padding and watched over by posters of current world boxing champions. A bunch of wannabes punched bags along the sides.
The back of the building was another story. You had to walk past a set of offices to get to the old section of the gym. Here, the decor was rotting wood beams, a rusty bench press, and some abandoned exercise bicycles circa eighties Jane Fonda. There was nothing else here except Shane . . . and Shorty plus his merry band of fuckups.
“You need me to repeat it?” Shorty asked, gesturing to the money. The duffel bag Shane had brought was zipped closed on the floor next to a patriotic-looking sports bag opened to reveal Shane’s client’s money; Shane’s cut was stacked on the bench.
“No. I want you to repeat it,” Shane said. Neutral tone, cold eyes. He figured he got his point across.
“I said, ‘You’re late, and we want a discount.’ That’s why it’s short.”
Shane watched a trickle of sweat slither down the side of Shorty’s nose. He felt his own pulse accelerate as the guy next to him reached down and pulled a knife from somewhere in a pair of voluminous sweatpants. He stared down at his portion of the money, which was definitely short, and raised his hand up to his jaw to scratch his stubble.
The move sent a wave of tension through the room.
“Well,” Shane said, his words light, his jaw tight. “This is highly unprofessional.”
He looked at the guy he was calling Shorty—for at least two reasons—and made a big, slow motion to pull out his phone. Eyes on Shorty, he dialed his Point A and let out a sigh while the phone rang once and the client picked up. “I’m standing here in a room that’s at least ninety degrees with a bunch of amateurs with sweaty hands who are giving me way too many clues about what I just dropped off. I’m seeing things I don’t wanna see and learning things I don’t wanna learn. They don’t have the money packed up and ready, and they’re asking for a discount, claiming I’m late. I had a window, and I’m inside that window. If this is not resolved, you and I have a problem. I don’t want us to have a problem. We’ve been doing happy business for a long time now. We clear?” Shane hung up the phone.
A second later Shorty’s phone rang. “Is that how it works?” he was saying too loud. “Yeah. I feel ya. Yeah . . . oh. No, didn’t do that.”
Shane tried to tune it all out. He pulled his knife from his ankle holster and cleaned a bit of dirt out from his thumbnail. Knowing more than he needed to put him in a bad mood, and there were too many other factors here already putting him in a bad mood. He should have been back with Cecily by now.
“Oh, shit,” Shorty said. “Really? Didn’t know that either.” Shane watched Shorty look around and gesture to a plastic drawstring shopping bag from the Gap sitting with some of the guys’ backpacks and workout bags. Still on the phone, Shorty snapped his fingers and said something Shane again tried really hard to tune out. All of sudden someone was dumping underwear and socks out of the Gap bag and using the bag to stash Shane’s cut of the cash.
“Jaysus,” Shane muttered, staring up at the ceiling. He practiced throwing his knife into a slim wood doorframe and hit the knotty eye he was aiming at square so many times the other guys in the room took a step back.
Shane paused, his knife in his hand, his gun in his waistband, and stared down at the money. He took a moment to count it all and then zipped up the sports bag. “I’m trying to be a nicer person,” he said and waited a moment to let that sink in. “The next guy will probably kill you for this bullshit.”
He grabbed his client’s cash bag and his own cash bag, and all of a sudden, the mood in the room changed. A couple of the guys couldn’t quit arguing over Shane’s cut. Two fuckers still wanted their “discount.”
One of them pulled a gun. In walked Cecily, and Shane lost his mind.
“You left your wallet with me. I worried you might need it.” The minute the words were out of Cecily’s mouth she realized he’d left it with her on purpose, and, no, Shane definitely didn’t need it. This was because at the same time she was speaking he was pulling his gun out of the back of his jeans and probably didn’t need a discount card for the grocery store at the moment.
He stared at her in disbelief, in one hand a knife and in the other hand a gun. Perhaps things were not going as smoothly as Shane had hoped. Cecily’s heart started beating as the six men looked at her, the old black duffel bag, a badly out-of-style sports bag plastered in stars and stripes, and a smaller Gap bag on the floor between them all.
Shane threw his knife into the doorframe, apparently to free up one hand, which he used to try to shepherd Cecily behind his back.
All of a sudden, the guy standing in front started grinning. “She why you were late?”
“Me? Oh, I’m definitely the reason,” Cecily answered for him.
“I wasn’t late,” Shane said, looking about as pissed as she’d ever seen him.
“Delayed?” Cecily suggested.
He looked like he was going to blow a fuse, but he merely cocked his head with a shrug that said he was willing to cop to “delayed.”
“Delayed.” She looked back at the grinning guy. “He was just delayed. Delayed is not late. It’s just later. Because of me. Yes. So, are we done here?”
The guy was giving her a once-over that felt like a hands-on airport inspection. Gross. She could feel herself blushing.
Shane made a sound. A dangerous sound. He looked at Cecily but apparently decided that he would play it her way.
He looked at the guy. “Are we?” Shane asked.
“Yeah, man,” the guy said with complete amusement, clearly forgoing the discount.
Shane grabbed his knife and stuck it back in his ankle holster, one hand on Cecily the whole time. Then he hoisted the sports bag and the Gap bag over one shoulder. He grabbed Cecily’s arm and moved her in front of his body, shielding her from the men as he marched her to the door.
He kept her pressed against him as they walked to the less creepy part of the gym where all the people were and then even still as he hustled her out of the building altogether. He was angry. Justifiably so. She could tell because his muscles were leaping and jerking and his body temperature felt like it had jumped to a hundred degrees. Or maybe it was her body temperature. Oh, god.
“On the plus side,” she whispered, her voice shaking with adrenaline, “I think I did a pretty good job of defusing the situation.”