He pushed up against me with his hand, body and the blade. “You hear me, bitch?”
I nodded, to both of his questions.
“You know where he is?”
I stared at him; my breath caught in my lungs and my heart was beating so hard I thought it’d jump out of my chest.
Instead of pushing for an answer, his head shot around and he looked over his shoulder.
Then he came back to me.
“Tel him Slick wants what’s owed him. Got it?” Then he pushed against my chest, hard, which hurt because I was already against the wal and had nowhere to go. Then he took off, got in a car and peeled out.
The next thing I knew, Vance was there, like he’d formed out of thin air.
Vance worked for Lee. He had black hair ( n o t dyed, definitely the real thing), long and straight and he pul ed it back in a ponytail. He was tal , lean, soft-spoken, Native American and hot.
I didn’t know if I was more surprised to be held at knife point or to have Vance materialize just afterward.
“You okay?” he asked, his hand on my shoulder, his dark eyes intense.
I was not okay. I was so far from okay that I might never be okay again but I nodded anyway.
“What’d he say?” Vance asked.
“He wanted to know where my Dad was.”
Vance made no comment to this because he was busy shifting as Lenny came out of the club toward us.
“Hands off,” Lenny warned, morphing into bouncer mode.
“It’s okay, Lenny. I know him,” I said.
An SUV came screeching up to us, another one of Lee’s boys, Matt, was behind the wheel. Regardless of this, neither Vance nor Lenny moved. They were in a face-off.
“Lenny’s taking me home,” I told Vance.
Vance looked from Lenny to me and nodded. Once.
Then his eyes moved back to Lenny.
“Walk her to her door,” Vance said, moved to the SUV, swung his body in and Matt took off.
Chapter Three
Then Life Got Really Interesting
Tips were so good at Smithie’s, the next morning, instead of the bus, I treated myself to a taxi. Before going to Fortnum’s, I went by LaMarr’s and bought enough donuts to feed an army. I couldn’t exactly get them for Dad and me without getting them for everyone else.
I walked into work at 7:15 am, carrying my donut box and hoping Vance and Matt had kept themselves to themselves and hadn’t shared last night’s incident with anyone—
namely Lee, who might tel Indy, who might tel everyone.
On the way home last night, I told Lenny what happened and he got al tight around the mouth. We got into a discussion about cal ing the police (no way, no how, not when my Dad was involved) then cal ing Smithie (worse than cal ing the police, Smithie would have a shit hemmorrhage). Final y, Lenny walked me to my front door and made sure I was safe inside.
I got approximately seven seconds of sleep because I was either reliving having a knife at my throat (which was not fun) or worried about what in the heck my father was caught up in now.
Dad was a bit of a bum; never had any money, never had a job that I could tel and I pretty much figured (and some of the comments Mom made confirmed it) he had a chequered past, present and future.