I swung into the black Explorer next to Luke.
Luke stared at me.
“Ready,” I informed him, buckling in.
“You wearin’ purple pants to a takedown?” he asked, eyes on my thighs.
I looked down at my cords. They weren’t purple, as such. They were more like a lavender-ish gray. I also had on my black cowboy boots, a black belt, a dusty gray, thick knit, long-sleeved tee with a hood and my black leather blazer. The hood of my tee was over the back collar of my blazer.
I thought my outfit was kickass, especially putting it together after two in the morning with only five minutes to do it.
One look at Luke said he didn’t agree.
“Just drive,” I said.
He drove but he drove with a grin on his face.
We went to the old Stapleton airport area. Not the ritzy part that had been redone, the shitty part that hadn’t.
“What’s the deal?” I asked on the way.
“Skip. High bond, means the bondsman’s out a whack if we don’t pull him in. Name’s Warren. Total scum. He’s a dealer and a pimp. More the second, keeps his girls high and workin’ for him doin’ the first. You know him?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said.
“I got a taser for you,” Luke told me. “Please tell me you got your gun somewhere in those purple pants.”
I pulled it out of my back waistband and showed it to him.
“You need a holster,” he said to me.
I nodded thinking of going shopping at Zip’s tomorrow night. A holster would be dead cool.
“Ike’s on him. Says he went into a house and hasn’t come out. Called backup. Warren’s a mean motherfucker and usually not far from his gun.”
I nodded again, rethinking my excitement at a ride-along for a takedown.
We stopped in a not-so-good neighborhood. The second Luke cut his lights, my door was thrown open. I jumped and twisted in my seat.
“Calm, Law,” the man said and since Luke didn’t shoot him or anything I figured he was one of the good guys.
He was Vance’s height, bald, lean and wiry and from what I could tell in the dark, black with light skin. He had a killer tattoo slithering up his neck from the collar of his black tee.
“I like your tattoo,” I told him.
“You haven’t seen it all yet,” he told me.
He’d said “yet”.
Hmm.
“Do all of you guys flirt rather than just talking like normal people?” I asked who I assumed was Ike.
“Mace doesn’t flirt,” Ike told me, stepping out of my way so I could get down.
“I don’t flirt either,” Luke added coming around the back of the Explorer, attaching a fully loaded gunbelt to his hips.
I whirled on Luke. “You’re the King of Flirt! You flirt all the time.”