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Startled awake by her ringing cell phone late the following morning, Sierra jerked upright—or tried to—before crying out as pain arced around her injured rib cage.
Blinking in her room, where she’d come to catch a few hours’ rest, she thought again of Ace’s surgery. Though the police had placed him under guard, refusing to let anyone see him, she’d at least been able to reach his sister Ainsley by phone before collapsing into bed and had gotten Ace’s sister to promise to let her know how he was doing...and whether he’s asking to see me.
Okay. That last part was pure fantasy. Ridiculous, considering the hurdles he was facing. Dealing with a deep slash across his upper chest from Ice Veins’s blade, what Sergeant Colton had indicated were looming criminal charges and a raft of complicated family issues, Ace surely had far more on his mind than the bounty hunter who’d dragged him from the relative safety of his hidden bunker to a near-death situation.
Before he could be transferred, she promised she would pull herself together and head back to the hospital, where she fully intended to plead her case to be allowed to see him.
Her phone’s Caller ID showed the name Brie Stratford, a fellow boxer with whom Sierra sometimes worked out at the gym or grabbed the occasional lunch or coffee when their schedules weren’t too hectic.
“Sorry, Brie. Can’t spar today. I’m out of town on a job,” Sierra told her, keeping the details to herself of how badly wrong the job had gone.
“So I’ve heard. At work.” Brie was using her cop voice, a sure sign that she was calling in her capacity as a detective with the Organized Crime Bureau of the Las Vegas Metropolitan PD.
“Oh?” Sierra said. Though she’d known plenty of officers over the years, and for the most part got on with them well, Sierra was a firm believer in maintaining personal space. With cops, with friends, with anyone she sensed who might get close enough to eventually want more than she was willing to give. Or to take too big a chunk of her when they eventually walked out of her life forever, the way her mom had the day before her seventh birthday.
“Word is you took down Ice Veins Harris,” Brie said flatly, “and two of his muscle.”
“It wasn’t me.” Sierra felt fear twisting through her. Because that was the kind of rumor that could prove hazardous to her health with the loan shark’s associates. “Ice Veins got tangled in his own feet, trying to slash his way out of a situation when the cops showed up. He ended up falling on his own knife.”
Sierra could still hear the moans, the gurgling and choking from before he’d mercifully gone silent. She shuddered with the memory, thankful beyond measure that she, Ace Colton and the young motel clerk, who’d regained consciousness as he was being loaded into an ambulance, had all left that bloody scene alive.
“Considering the kind of grief he’s caused so many people, that’s practically poetic justice,” Brie said of the loan shark.
“And the local cops took down his thug,” Sierra quickly added, deliberately leaving out Ace’s name out of the discussion. Because it was bad enough that her name was linked to the deaths. In custody and injured, Colton didn’t need more trouble coming his way.
“Well, nobody in the department’s taking up a collection to send flowers to any of the funerals for those three, I can tell you,” Brie said drily, clearly referring to the second goon found dead in the brush, as well. “But are you all right? I’ve heard...some things.”
Sierra sucked in a deep breath, triggering a flare of pain in her side. When she’d recovered, she quoted Brie’s response after the last time Sierra had popped her too hard during sparring. “All right, enough.”
Because in the tough, male-dominated worlds where each of them operated, it mattered, being a woman who could take a hit and stay on her feet. And nobody wanted to hear them whine about it, either.
Brie gave an irritated snort. “I’m not asking as an opponent, looking to find a weakness I can exploit the next time we’re in the ring. I’m asking as a friend here. Why didn’t you tell me you had trouble with that dirtbag, the kind of trouble that sends three men all the way to Mustang Valley, Arizona, of all places, looking for you?”
A cold chill had Sierra’s skin erupting into gooseflesh. Swallowing came hard, her throat so tight it felt as if she were trying to choke down a fistful of poker chips.
“Sierra? You still there?” Brie pressed after the delay grew awkward.
“Where did you hear that?” Sierra blurted, her pulse popping.
“From one of my CIs first,” Brie said, referring to the confidential informants used by the department. “And five minutes later from a colleague, who’d caught wind of it elsewhere. This is big news on the Strip, Sierra. Which leads me back to my question. Why didn’t you tell me you were tied up with that loan shark?”
Sierra’s tongue lay heavy in her mouth, the habit of her silence too powerful to break.
“I can’t help if you won’t tell me.” As Brie spoke, Sierra could picture her friend, who fought a couple of weight classes above her, staring down at her, her expression a mixture of concern and exasperation. “And I can never be a real friend if the sharing only runs one way.”
Sierra squeezed her eyes shut, knowing Brie was right. Whenever the two of them got together, the tall detective would blow off steam about her frustrations over what she saw as bureaucratic interference at work or her live-in boyfriend, Max, who imagined he could cook but always left her kitchen a disaster. Or she’d gripe about her mother, who wouldn’t quit trying to set her up with higher-earning prospects—even when poor, hapless Max was in the same room. All the while Sierra, whose own mother had never once checked in after skipping town on her and her father, remained locked up as tight as Fort Knox, her own problems far too complex, too dangerous to share.
But she was terrified of losing one of the few friends who’d stuck by her since her father had fallen ill. Terrified enough that she finally forced herself to admit, “It was my dad, his problem. His gambling debt. Not mine to share.”
“That’s some inheritance he left you.”
“Yeah...but Ice Veins wanted more from me than money. He wanted his nephew turned loose. You know that homicide where he—”
“I know the one. You brought him in. How that creep ever got bail in the first place...”
“I’m not sure what changed that caused Ice Veins to get mad enough to head down here in person, but—”
