Then that whole crew will lay waste to Denver.”
In that moment, Mo was feeling the need to lay waste to something.
The woman was standing in front of him terrified and crying.
“I don’t even want to think about what Tex’ll do,” she went on.
Well, hell.
He forgot Tex MacMillan was part of that posse.
Not only part of that posse but married to a woman named Nancy.
Lottie’s mother.
Fuck.
“They won’t know,” he assured her. “Hawk’s all over it. It’ll be done before MacMillan can get his duffle bag of grenades out.”
“I hope so,” she muttered, turning her head away.
Mo noted she didn’t deny her stepfather had a duffle bag of grenades.
Mistake number one.
He watched her dance.
Mistake number two.
He left her sightline when she was exposed and needed to know he had her.
Mistake number three.
He let it slip his mind she was tangled up with the Rock Chicks.
Mistake number four.
He also forgot her stepfather was a lunatic.
He usually didn’t even make it to mistake number one.
It was time to get his shit together.
“I need to get ready for my next set,” she mumbled, beginning to walk to the mirror she’d used both the other times he was in this room with her.
“Lottie,” he called.
She turned back.
“Nothing’s gonna hurt you,” he promised.
She looked him head to toe.
Mo knew what she saw.
Nothing she wanted to see.
He knew he was one ugly motherfucker and she could get any guy she wanted. Didn’t even have to crook a finger. Just give a man a look and he’d follow her like a hungry stray.
But she also saw what she needed to see.
It’d take something to get through him to get to her.
And they both knew the man behind that letter didn’t have dick (maybe literally).
Then she surprised him again.
She showed him vulnerability.
Oh yeah.
This was going to be a challenge.
“Don’t leave me again, Mo,” she said softly. “Please.”
And oh yeah.
That letter had freaked her.
Fuck yeah.
Mo wanted to lay waste to something.
“I won’t…” he trailed off because it was on the tip of his tongue to call her baby. He finished with, “I promise.”
She stared into his eyes a beat.
After she did that, she nodded and moved to her mirror.
* * * *
“So what do you do the other four hours?”
Mo was fully clothed on his back on her couch that was a decent-sized couch, but it wasn’t long enough for him.
No surprise. Most couches weren’t.
His eyes were on the dark ceiling.
It was nearing on two.
Lottie went on at nine thirty, eleven and one.
She danced for ten to twelve minutes each set. Customers weren’t allowed to touch her to tip, but even if they could, they wouldn’t be able to reach her with the way she worked the stage. The other girls ran out and gathered the bills that drifted onto the stage for her.
The rest of the time, she sipped watermelon Perrier out of little cans from a pink paper straw with white chevrons on it, got ready for her next set and gabbed with whatever dancer was in the room with her.
And if there weren’t any, she gabbed with Mo.
She was a talker.
This was Mo’s lot in life. Being surrounded by women who were talkers.
“What?” he asked.
“You said you sleep for four hours a night. What do you do for the other four?”
He wanted her to go to sleep.
He wanted her to go to sleep so maybe he could go to sleep (though he didn’t hold a ton of hope for that) and therefore stop thinking about her in that tiny, green satin nightie with all the cream lace she’d come out of her bathroom wearing.
Or the fact she wasn’t ten feet away from him, that hot little body alone in that big bed.
He did not want to talk about what he did with the extra four hours he had that others didn’t.
In fact, Mo wasn’t a big fan of talking at all.
“I work out,” he said.
“For four hours?” she asked.
“Havin’ a job with Hawk isn’t nine to five. I also work missions.”
“Missions?”
“Yeah.”
“You call them ‘missions,’ not ‘cases?’”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
Lord save him from chatty women.
“Because we’re all former soldiers, not ex-cops,” he shared.
“All of you?”
“Yeah.”
“How many of you are there?”
Good Christ.
“Lottie, go to sleep.”
He heard her loud sigh and then, “I can’t. I’m always jazzed after a night on.”
She should be exhausted.
She only worked at most thirty-six minutes in the four and a half hours she was at Smithie’s (not counting the hour and a half she needed to be there before her first set to get ready), but when she was