Rock Chick Renegade by Kristen Ashley, now you can read online.
Chapter One
Law
Well, I guessed eventually it would come to this. It wasn’t like I wasn’t expecting it. I knew when I started this crusade that something like this could happen, probably would happen, and here I was, in a dead end alley, facing down Vance Crowe.
Shit, Lee Nightingale’s tracker.
Of all the f**king bad luck.
Rumor on the street, Crowe was third in command at Nightingale Investigations, after Lee and Lee’s right hand man, Luke Stark.
This was saying a lot, considering all the men employed by Nightingale Investigations were the crème de la crème of private investigations, security, surveillance, bond skip tracing with a small dose of head-cracking thrown in for shits and giggles. In fact, Nightingale, Stark and Crowe had a guns-drawn, facedown with some low-life drug dealer at a society party just a month ago. Crowe had blown off the guy’s hand.
Rumor had a lot of things about Vance Crowe, in fact, I knew two women who’d had a couple of things from Crowe, by their reports, very good things, though he didn’t stick around to give them more than a couple very good things, much to their dismay.
“Put your gun down,” Crowe said to me.
“Back off,” I returned, keeping my gun aimed at him.
I wasn’t going to shoot him, of course. I was anti-violence that was one of the reasons why I was in this mess in the first place.
He kept walking toward me, unarmed and apparently unafraid.
I took aim at his Harley. It would kill me to harm the Harley but I’d do it.
“Shoot my bike, there’ll be consequences,” Crowe warned in a voice that said he meant it.
Fuck.
I aimed at him again.
“Back off,” I repeated as he kept advancing.
“You’re Law,” he told me.
Damn, he knew who I was.
“Stop moving,” I said, ignoring what he said.
He got about a foot away from the barrel of my gun, which was pointed at his chest, and he stopped.
“I work for Lee Nightingale.”
“I know who you work for and I know who you are,” I said to him.
Then I stared at him.
Damn, but he was good-looking. Native American coloring, straight, black hair pulled into a ponytail at the back of his neck. He was about three inches taller than me, fantastic body, dark brown eyes, thick lashes, unbelievable bone structure, high cheekbones, square jaw. It should be a crime to be that hot.
“Put the gun down, Law,” he said, using my street name.
My street name was kind of a joke; the kids gave it to me. My real name was Juliet Lawler. Most everyone called me Jules but the kids called me Law because, at the Shelter, what I said was “law”. It had taken on a life of its own these past four months and now I wished they’d never given it to me.
“Step back, Crowe. I’ll just get in the car and go. I have no argument with you.”
And I didn’t. I had a lot of arguments with a lot of people but not with anyone at Nightingale Investigations. From what I heard (which was a lot), they weren’t exactly lily white but any fool would be crazy to go head-to-head with a Nightingale Man. I was a fool but I was pretty sure I wasn’t crazy.
“I’ll say it one more time,” Crowe informed me quietly. “Put the gun down.”