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“I can’t ask that.”
“You’re not. I’m offering. Hopefully, between the four of us, we can come up with something, so your life can get back on track.”
“It’s killing me to have the shop closed,” I admitted.
“As a fellow workaholic, I understand,” she said, grabbing cups and pouring the coffee. “So how did you get involved with Junior?”
I resisted the urge to say we weren’t involved.
We were, in more than one way.
“He’s been, like, my only regular at the shop since I opened,” I admitted. “He noticed I was… off. And he kind of browbeat me until I told him what was going on.”
“Then jumped to action to fix it. Typical for these guys.”
“What guys?” I asked.
“Oh, just the whole lot of them in this town. The bikers, the mafia guys, the loansharks. This is kind of their M.O. They are always taking over situations.”
“I don’t mind in this case. I was kind of just waiting for someone to kidnap and murder me before he stepped in.”
“Yeah, well, we can’t let that happen,” she said, shaking her head, then moving toward the back door to open it when there was a scratching sound.
In rushed three dogs.
All of whom were covered in mud.
“Oh, Jesus,” she said, sighing. “I have to deal with this,” she said, giving me an apologetic head shake as she demanded the dogs go upstairs.
I was alone in the kitchen for a few minutes, listening to the sounds of the men speaking in low voices in the other room, before Junior came to find me.
“Where’s Hope?”
“Muddy dogs,” I said, gesturing toward the stairs. “Everything okay?” I asked, not seeing Andrés anywhere.
“Yeah. Let’s head out,” he said. “We’ll talk about it in the car,” he added, voice low.
He didn’t speak again until we were out of the gates.
“A might not seem like it,” he started, “but he’s fucking pissed. Andrés has this outer cool that can make it seem like nothing bothers him, but he doesn’t take it lightly when people are disrespecting him. He just recently had to deal with some dissent in his ranks, so having more shit like this going on is pissing him off.”
“I guess, if he’s on our side, having him pissed off is a good thing.”
“He’s on his side, make no mistake about that. But his side and our side happen to be the same on this issue. So we’re lucky to have him.”
“Hope seems nice.”
“She can be,” he agreed.
“Sounds like there’s a story there.”
“Hope is just a badass. If she’s not happy with you, you will know it. We grew up around the same crews, so there were definitely times she chewed my ass out over shit when I was young and stupid.”
“I somehow like her even more now,” I said, getting a smirk out of him. “So… now… we wait?” I asked.
“No. There’s still shit to work on,” he said.
“Like?”
