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This wasn’t exactly true. Ally and I had famously set off a couple dozen bottle rockets in Nina Evans’s front yard after Nina had started a nasty rumor that Ally had herpes.
Still, bottle rockets and car bombs didn’t exactly compare.
“Yeah, she spent most of the night with me and the cats, eatin’ chips and drinkin’ moonshine. She wasn’t out of my sight until you came and got her,” Tex threw in, looking at Lee.
Eddie stared at Tex, some of the intensity going out of his eyes at the thought of me, Tex and the cats eating chips and drinking hooch.
“Darius told me that one of his guys was at a strip club last night and heard Coxy’s boy Gary talkin’ about your cat fight with Cherry,” Lee said.
This wasn’t interesting news. I figured I’d been a prime topic of conversation on police band for at least a week. I probably had my own code by now, Indy-666 or something.
Anyone could listen to police band.
“And?” I asked.
“And Coxy’s already gone out of his way to eliminate what he might consider your problems.”
I dropped Lee’s hand and took a step back. “You think Wilcox tried to kill Cherry…for me?”
Eddie answered again, “Too early to know. Cherry didn’t have a lot of friends, but crisping her seems harsh retribution for bein’ a bitch.”
“This isn’t happening,” I mumbled.
I was reeling. I didn’t know what to do, what to think.
“You guys want coffee?” Tex asked Lee and Eddie.
“Sure, triple shot cappuccino,” Eddie replied.
“Yeah, Americano, black,” Lee put in his order.
Tex ambled off to the espresso counter while I continued my silent meltdown, searching the depths of my fried brain for Denial Zone.
Then Duke asked, his Sam Elliott voice low and serious, “Could we not talk about fuckin’ coffee and maybe talk about how you two badass motherfuckers are gonna protect Indy from this crazy fuck?”
I turned to look at him and noticed immediately that he was pissed.
Duke looked at Lee. “Isn’t it about fuckin’ time you quit fuckin’ around and took care of this fuckin’ guy?”
Uh-oh.
Duke wasn’t afraid to use the f-word, but he only dosed his vocabulary liberally with it when he was close to losing it.
Lee looked at him. “I’m workin’ on it.”
Duke took a step forward. “Work harder.”
This was not good.
I knew, because I had seen, that Lee could kick ass. Duke was no slouch. He might be an old guy, but he also knew how to handle himself through a fuckload of practice.
I wasn’t sure how Lee would take an accusation of “fuckin’ around” and I didn’t want two people I loved to go head-to-head in my bookstore.
“Duke—” I began.
Duke looked at me and the look in his eye made me move closer to Lee.
“We don’t know when this fuckin’ lunatic is gonna lose his patience and turn on you. Bullets are flyin’, cars explodin’, dead bodies everywhere. This has got to fuckin’ stop. Now,” Duke said to me.
