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The corners of her lips twitched in something pretty damn close to a smile. “If I wanted to be overseeing gun shipments, I’d be spending all my time working for the Lucianos with Vito.” She shrugged. “I get restless when I know there’s something that needs to be done and I’m… doingthis,” she said, motioning in a general arc that encompassed the truck parked in front of us in the motel’s parking lot.
I took a drag of my smoke and exhaled slowly, mulling over her words. Those didn’t really sound like the words of a crazy tornado. “It really matters to you—what you do, I mean.”
“Yeah, it does,” she said, nodding once.
I sighed and then smoked for a while. Not sure how I felt about the tornado having a deep side to her.
“I didn’t think you cared,” I admitted, looking up at the sky. There were about a million stars up there; sure as hell beat the motel ceiling. “I figured you for a badass adrenaline junkie, darling.”
“Takes one to know one, I guess,” she replied, her tone flat.
All right, she had fair reason to be pissed. Maybe it was time to muster a defense.
“Holding back information about Leeri—Valeria—I saw no harm in it. If I gave you that information and you tried to shut me out because I was too close… well, you’re crazy, but you’re a good girl, darling; I wouldn’t want to wish bad things for you.”
She nodded like she understood, but she still looked tense as hell, shoulders taut, jaw clenched.
I stood up and dropped the cigarette, crushing it beneath my boot. “Come with me,” I said, motioning toward our bikes.
She shook her head. “I can’t leave the truck. Someone has to have eyes on it twenty-four, seven.”
That was an easy enough problem to solve. I headed back past my motel room to a room a few doors down and banged on the door.
I could hear feet scrambling around inside before the door flew open and Cueball, the Old Dogs’ latest prospect, stuck his head out the door.
“You and Texas, get your asses out here and watch the truck. Your eyes never leave it, got it?”
“Sure thing, Pres,” he said, grabbing his cut off the hook by the door and throwing it on.
He was out the door three seconds later and banging on the door next to his. By the time I got back to Greta, the two prospects were following behind me, taking up watch on either side of the truck.
“I’ve got truck-watching covered. Now, come on.”
She looked up at me, but her ass wasn’t budging.
I heaved a sigh. “Look, you’re right, darling. I should have told you about Leeri, but nothing I can do will undo what I did. There’s no moving backward, only forward. So, move forward with me.”
She eyed me for a minute, but even if she was still pissed, curiosity sparked in her big hazel eyes and she heaved herself up onto her feet.
“This better be good,” she muttered as she headed for her bike.
I watched her for a few seconds—because bad idea or not, the girl had an ass that would make any man’s mouth water—then headed for my own bike and started it up.
She kept up easily as we pulled out of the lot and headed about ten miles back the way we’d come.
I signaled for her to pull off the road onto an extra-wide shoulder that kept the bikes better hidden than anywhere else on this stretch of road.
She eyed me curiously as we cut the engines and got off, but she followed without a word as I headed up a bit further along the shoulder on foot, then turned off into the brush a few yards from the nearest driveway.
There was a trailer on the other side of the brush. It pretty much looked like the poster child for trashy trailer parks everywhere, with rust stains running down from its flat roof, thick grime on the windows, and dents all over its body.
“Why, Brute,” she said, putting a hand over her heart and fluttering her lashes, “it’s better than the Four Seasons.”
Even so, she was eyeing the junk heap curiously.
I chuckled. The tornado was quite the character.
“The asshole in there,” I said, nodding to the trailer, “I’ve seen him hanging around the local school here. He gives his coke away to the kids there and gets them hooked. When they come looking for more, he makes them sell it.”
