“You don’t need caffeine, you need Valium,” I said.
“I’ve got Valium,” Ally put in.
Ally could generally find all different kinds of pharmaceuticals either in her personal medicine cabinet or through her network of contacts.
“I don’t want Valium. I want to get the bag back from Duke as soon as possible and go to San Salvador,” Rosie said, grabbing the remote and being a bit dramatic.
“He’s an artist with an artistic temperament,” I explained as I walked Ally to the door.
“He makes coffee,” Ally replied.
I ignored that. Ally didn’t understand the beauty of coffee. She preferred tequila.
“You sure Lee isn’t gonna come back?”
I didn’t want to be caught in Lee’s condo when Lee didn’t know I was here. I hadn’t been somewhat successfully avoiding him for ten years to be found in his condo in the middle of the night harboring a possible felon who had bad people after him. There was a good possibility Lee would frown on that.
“He’s in DC,” Ally replied. “I think you should take his bed.” Her eyes got big and happy when she said this and I sighed and rested my shoulder against the wall.
“Maybe you should call him,” I suggested.
“He doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s out-of-town on business. Only in emergencies.”
“This might be considered an emergency,” I explained unnecessarily as I’d called her only twenty minutes ago, hyperventilating, and telling her someone had shot at me and Rosie and we needed a safe house. Such things didn’t happen every day, in fact, they never happened, at least not to me.
Ally looked through the open plan kitchen to Rosie, who’d turned on the TV and was watching the Food Network.
“What bag is he talking about?” Ally whispered.
“I’ll explain it later. Just call Lee and warn him that we’re here, just in case.”
Ally swung her eyes back to me. “Was a time when you’d live for that kind of ‘just in case’?”
“I’ve told you, that time’s long gone.”
Ally studied me. She’d heard this for ten years and still didn’t believe it, the silly, stubborn bimbo.
“Right. I’ll call him. Still, I think if he was gonna come home, he’d rather come home to find you in his bed than Rosie.”
“I’ll sleep in the guest room.”
“Girl,” Ally smiled, “Lee doesn’t have a guest room. That second bedroom is locked up tight and no one gets into that room. Hank and I call it the Command Center but no one knows what’s in there.”
I turned to look at the three closed doors that opened off the hall and when I turned back Ally had the front door open.
“Later.” Then she was gone.
I grabbed the door and watched her sashay down the hall.
“Call him!” I shouted.
She gave me the peace sign and got on the elevator.
“She’s not gonna call him,” I said to the empty hallway.
Ally was right.
I did a wee bit of snooping (as you do).Two doors in Lee’s hall opened, one to the bathroom and one to Lee’s bedroom. The other one was locked up tight. I even walked along the wraparound balcony to check if I could see in but the French doors to the second bedroom had curtains and those curtains were firmly closed.
After what seemed like a lifetime of Food Network, I found Rosie a pillow and blanket and crawled, bleary-eyed and still a little scared (not only at the night’s events but at our accommodation) into Lee’s big bed.
I considered sleeping on the floor but I was too tired and anyway, Lee was busy these days and never in Denver unless it was someone’s birthday, a holiday or a weekend the Broncos were playing at home. I’d heard Kitty Sue lamenting that fact so often, if I had a dime for every time she said it, I’d be rich.
I’d taken off my jeans, boots, socks, and bra and found a wife beater t-shirt of Lee’s, luckily in the first drawer I opened. I didn’t want to be rifling through Lee’s drawers, he might not like it.
I had to borrow Lee’s tee because I was wearing my Guns ‘n’ Roses shirt that had rhinestones stitched in and they would snag at the sheets, not to mention it was one of my favorites and I didn’t want it to get misshapen while I slept.
I was not a light sleeper, I slept deep and I moved around a lot, as in a lot. I moved around so much that most of my boyfriends eventually opted for the couch (usually right before they opted for the door). I tried to sleep in attire that would not get me into trouble during my nocturnal twisting and turning, which usually meant I slept in underpants and nothing else. However, the thought of sleeping in Lee’s bed nearly naked was simply not to be entertained.
I tried not to think of crawling into Lee’s bed at all. It was just a bed. So it was Liam Nightingale’s bed. So it kinda smelled like him, like leather and tobacco and spice. So what?
The smell and the bed made me feel a little bit like I felt when I touched Joe Perry’s chest and I had this niggling inclination to do a little naughty activity but, thankfully, I fell asleep before I could do anything about it.
The next thing I knew, something was wrapped around my ankle and dragging me down the length of the bed, just like the heroine in a horror movie
When my knees slammed into the footboard, I whipped around to my back and gave a small yelp. I saw a big shadow looming over me in the dark and I opened my mouth to scream, knowing that whoever had shot at us had found us and this was the end.
My life was over, finished, and I’d never seen Pearl Jam play live.
Before I could scream, the hand left my ankle, two hands grabbed at my hips and yanked me out of bed in a way that my back arched painfully. My head snapped back and I swallowed my scream on a surprised gulp.
I was set down on my feet, both of my wrists were seized and pulled behind my back, making me give a whimper of pain and I was slammed against a hard body.
“Talk,” a deep voice demanded and I could smell tobacco, leather and spice.
It was Lee.
Shit, shit, shit.
Either I had really bad luck or Ally set me up.
Maybe Ally and Rosie set me up. Ally was really into the sister-in-law shit and maybe she was getting impatient enough to hire someone to shoot at me.
“Two seconds,” Lee warned.
“Lee, it’s me. Indy.”
The hands on my wrists loosened but didn’t let go.
“What the fuck?”
I took in a deep breath which pressed my breasts further into his chest.
This was the closest I’d ever been to him, we were full-frontal. Even in the days when I was throwing myself at him, I hadn’t made it this close.
I explained (hastily), “I’m in a bit of a bind and needed someplace safe to stay for a night. Ally let me in.”
Lee took a moment to let this sink in.
“Who’s the guy on the couch?”
“Rosie, my barista.”
“Your what?”
“He makes the coffee at my bookstore.”
“Shit.”
He hadn’t let me go until that point, but he released me, turned on his heel and walked out of the room.
Something about the way he did it made me follow him.
When I made it to the living room, Lee snapped on a light and Rosie was lying face down in the middle of the floor. His hands and feet were taped together behind his back with duct tape and there was tape on his mouth.
“Lee! Jesus! What’d you do to him?” I asked, running forward and going down on my knees by Rosie. Rosie eyes were rabid and shifting everywhere as he struggled against the tape.
I couldn’t believe it, I hadn’t heard a thing.
Man, Lee was good.
Lee already had his pocket knife out and was cutting through the tape.