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“Harley,” Dante grimaced. “For your information she’s hot as hell and she’s interesting.”
“Two for one?” Roman hummed, “You’ve never found a woman anything beyond hot as hell. Clearly you’ve slept with her.”
He touched the hairs on his chin. “I guess we did eventually fall asleep.”
“A cop though?”
Female officers got their respect. Dante thought all women had the right to serve and protect the same way as a man. There were certain women who served their country better than men. The problem with female cops was their intuition. “Don’t start comparing her to Makana Leonard.”
“Did you forget Makana tried to have our brother Elliott arrested on terrorists acts?”
“Of course not,” Dante shook the dark memory out of his head.
“You have so many women to choose from,” said Roman, “why not hang with one of them?”
As an agent for STB, Dante’s long hours—or at least his reasoning for being away so long—raised eyebrows on law enforcement women. Yes, he did have his choice in a bevy of women, but none had been as interesting as Harley. The model girlfriends cared more about their diets. The athletic girls who played professional sports wanted a visitor at a game or two. Women who worked in an office, romance came with set hours and at five they expected dinner and drinks. A cop? She had access to files, and when she used them on him and found information, all hell would break loose.
“I’m going to end things soon enough,” Dante’s thumb scrolled the annulment services for the State of Florida. This State allowed annulments in cases of religious reasons. Was she religious? Judging from the way she kept calling for her God, she was. A crooked smile etched across Dante’s face. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. He read further on. If either of them were in extreme intoxication the marriage could be annulled. They drank but weren’t totally shitfaced.
His finger stopped scrolling, his smile faded. If the marriage had been consummated then an annulment was out of the question for them. They’d have to get a divorce. A clamp gripped the tip of his heart. Strange, he thought, rubbing his chest. He’d never had indigestion like that before. Clearing his throat caused Roman to glance over with a raised brow. Was it the doughnuts he devoured this morning?
“You need a Tums or something, man?” asked Roman.
“Naw, I’m good. So how far are we from this place?”
As soon as the question came out, a mariachi band greeted them at the entrance of a neighborhood. If Dante didn’t know his neighborhood celebrated the same, only with banners and groups of people greeting the graduates, he would have laughed.
“We’re here. Now what does the blip on your tracker say?”
The red dot on his GPS flashed brighter and faster. “Up ahead on the left.”
The car made a slow crawl through the block party. Older men and women with time lines etched in their wrinkled faces smiled and mingled with the next generations of students dancing and playing in the streets. A group of teen-aged girls were huddled in a corner staring and whispering behind their painted fingers at a group of teenage boys.
Meat seared with a roar off a grill toward the end of the street. The drippings caused a flare up of flames, directing the attention of laughter from a set of men seated on overturned red milk crates. Corn husks burned on the open grills.
“Christopher Alfaro’s group,” Roman nodded his head in the direction of a group of men standing on each corner. Alfaro kept himself heavily guarded.
Dante’s eyes scanned the area for facial recognition of a child version of Harley. “So Hannah and Javier could be around here anywhere?”
“I don’t know what they look like,” said Roman.
“Here,” he shared the image on his cell phone.
In the process of showing the photograph, Roman reached for the phone. The photograph went to Harley’s photograph. The snapshot was of last night’s drunken duo holding out their ring fingers while trying to smile and stretch their lips toward each other as they smiled at Chet holding the camera. The white headband veil confirmed a wedding.
“What the fuck is this?” Roman held the phone up for Dante.
Dante opened his mouth to speak and a single shot rang throughout the air followed by a hail of gunfire outside the car. People screamed and ran in every direction. Once the smoke cleared, Dante caught a glimpse of a young male figure in clothes similar to those Javier wore running toward a waiting car. His eyes searched for a long raven-haired driver behind the wheel but the tinted windows obscured his view. Dante got out of the car in time as Javier dove into the backseat. The car peeled off and in its place, Harley’s mustang swerved half onto the curb. The fastback tail blocked the intersection from anyone coming down the street, especially when another car rammed her from behind.
A group of men followed. Machine guns fired away. Warped silver circles scarred the black metal. Harley jumped out from behind the wheel, guns blazing. While the last remnants of bullets flew toward her, Dante didn’t think he could take much more. He took off running toward the gunfire not realizing Roman already started rolling his car toward the action. A familiar face appeared through the crowd.
“Oh My God,” Harley screamed from her side of the vehicle. Fearlessly she stood her ground locking her elbows in place, her pistol resting comfortably between her palms, naturally like a third hand. “Seriously, my car.”
Through the crowd, a well-dressed man made his way toward her. Dante, still behind the group, made his way as well; his height gave him the advantage of seeing over the heads of the crowd. A shorter man than he expected parted the crowd like Moses did the Red Sea. He was dressed in a shark colored gray pinstriped suit. The street grew so quiet, the man’s shoes clicked against the sidewalk. Guns lifted from Harley’s direction by a wave of Alfaro’s hand.
“Brave chica,” Alfaro said, his voice laced with a thick Spanish accent and instant admiration. Dante didn’t blame him. “To what do I owe this pleasure, Miss?”
It’s Mrs. Dante thought bumping shoulders with another person. He looked down at the phone in his hand. The red dot flashed in one spot. His eyes scanned the crowd for Hannah’s face.
