“Lee says you know how to use them,” he said.
I realized his statement was a question and I nodded.
“Lock all doors and windows after I leave. You don’t open the door to anyone unless it’s Lee, Mace or me. Even if you know them. Got me?” Vance asked.
I nodded, then he nodded.
“Where’s Lee? What’s happening?”
“This will all be over soon,” he said instead of answering. He went to the door, stopped and turned to me. “Close your blinds.”
“Hang on a second.” I went after him and grabbed his arm so he wouldn’t go. “What the f**k is happening?”
He looked at me a beat, likely trying to guess my reaction to whatever dire news he was about to impart.
Then he decided that he could share.
“Lee’s escalated hostilities, Wilcox has done the same.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
Again, he looked at me a beat.
Then a slow, arrogant, unbelievably handsome, shit-eating grin spread across his face.
“That means, tonight we’re gonna have fun.”
With that, he left.
I stood staring at the door thinking it didn’t sound fun at all.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Where the Hell Was Lee?
After I’d locked my doors and windows, closed my blinds and stopped myself from hyperventilating, my phone rang.
I ran to it hoping it was Lee, falling on the phone like a crazed woman who’d been on the Atkins Diet one day too long and just entered a bakery.
It was Ally.
“Do you know what’s going on?” she asked.
“Escalated hostilities, on both sides,” I answered, wanting to talk to Lee, see Lee, hear from someone that Lee was okay even if it was a disembodied communication from a higher deity.
“What does that mean?” Ally went on.
“Hell if I know.”
And I didn’t want to know. I was deep in my Denial Fortress, way deep.
“Do you want me to come over?” Ally asked.
“I’m not allowed to open the door to anyone but Lee, Mace or Vance,” I told her.
“Says who?”
“Says Vance.”