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I gave her a blank look and continued tapping.
She rolled her eyes and then focused back on her computer.
I smiled at the back of her head, though I wasn’t using the figurine purely to piss her off; I may have had a little trouble keeping still.
It might have been time to cut myself off from the coffees for the day. A scary thought, but it was getting towards evening and my heart was getting close to palpitating.
“Manifest should be in your inbox right… now,” Wire informed me as the forceful tap of his finger on a keyboard echoed through the phone.
I clicked on my inbox. Indeed, there was an e-mail with a certain shipping manifest.
I grinned at it and then pressed Print. I would take it home with me. Then I could escape both Stephanie’s sideways glares and Heath at the same time. I reasoned that Keltan wouldn’t station him outside my apartment or anything along those lines. Even he wasn’t that crazy.
I hoped.
“You’re amazing. Thanks, Wire,” I said, clicking off the screen and standing from my chair.
“I know, but seriously, you don’t want me to hack into Bank of America, pay off your credit card with some Wall Street assholes’ stolen millions?” he asked hopefully.
I paused. The bill was high this month.
“No,” I said finally.
“Fine,” he sulked. “May I ask why you need shipping manifests of a jewelry designer who was found murdered three days ago by none other than the arsonist I’m currently on the phone with?” he added casually. “Great story, by the way. I could almost smell the blood; the writing was so good.”
I walked over to the printer, snatching my piece of paper and giving Carrie a finger wave.
She mimed the “call me” gesture with googly eyes. Obviously wanted a debrief of the whole finding a body situation. I nodded.
“Alleged arsonist,” I corrected. “Nothing has ever been proven, nor charges laid against me.”
I could almost see him roll his twitching eyes. “Yes. Because I’ve never been charged with taking a certain person off the FBI’s most wanted list it means I never did it.”
“Gage?” I guessed immediately.
“I told you, I never did it,” Wire replied innocently.
“It was totally Gage,” I muttered.
He was, hands-down, the most depraved of all the Sons of Templar patched members. There were no doubts in my mind that he had a huge number of skeletons in his closets. And under his floorboards. And in his red room of pain.
I paused at the elevator, a not-unattractive man waiting for it beside me. I glanced at him, then at his ill-tailored suit, resisting the urge to screw up my nose. It made his lean but muscled form less appealing, even with his expertly styled sandy blonde hair and boyish features that would have made him the perfect candidate for an Abercrombie & Fitch campaign.
He gave me a sideways glance, eyes flickering with interest.
I quickly looked to the glowing elevator button, not wanting to give him the wrong idea.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Wire probed.
“You didn’t answer mine,” I countered.
The doors opened, and I stepped in as the man tried to also.
I frowned at him slightly when he stopped. His mother did not teach him very well. I walked in when he found his manners and let me go first.
“I’ll never tell,” he said sweetly. “But I’m bound by my word and loyalty to the club, so I’ll take it to my no-doubt early grave.”
I pressed the button for the ground floor. “Maybe stop drinking three times the recommended dose of carbonated energy drinks, and you might make it to your thirtieth birthday,” I teased.
“If I stopped drinking those, I wouldn’t make it to my twenty-fifth,” he said with certainty. “And seriously, Lucy, you tangled up in shit up there? You need backup?”
I felt a little warmth in my belly at the gesture. If I said yes, I had no doubt there would be a large number of Harleys roaring into the parking lot of my apartment. Family was like that.
But it was time I started living without the Harley safety net.
“No, I’m fine,” I reassured him. I glanced to the man in the elevator, conscious of having any kind of conversation like this with someone listening. He didn’t appear to be listening, though. He seemed very intent on watching the journey of the numbers above the elevator doors.
Wire was silent.
“I’m fine,” I repeated.
“‘Fine’ from a woman means exactly the opposite,” he mumbled.
I smiled, rolling my eyes. “This time it means exactly that. Thanks for your help. I’ll credit you if the story breaks.”
“No, doing that wouldn’t be crediting, it would be testifying against my breaking federal law,” he replied with a grin in his voice.
“Okay, we’ll leave that out,” I said as the doors opened to the foyer, and I caught Heath’s shaggy head in the window of the coffee shop. “Got to go, got a story to write.”
