As we watched him leave the restaurant, a flash of bodies zoomed by one of the windows.
Fate looked at me. “Did I just see the Jinxes skating by?”
“Yep.”
Chapter Eight
“You’re scuffing the dash.”
I looked at my boots, where they were still sitting on the dash of the new work car Fate and I were sitting in. I thought they looked feminine yet assertive, with their modest heel and lace up front. They held my knives quite comfortably tucked into the side, too. When I wore leggings, sometimes a thigh holster was a little too Rambo for the look I was going for, even on an occasion such as this.
It had been a week since the truce and things hadn’t gotten any better. They hadn’t stayed the same either. They’d become progressively worse.
Fights were breaking out everywhere and businesses were becoming too scared to open their doors.
If one of the names from my list disappeared now, post truce, we needed to know. It would be the first signal that Malokin had broken his word and was recruiting again. They might not make it into my bucket, but they still made a list.
We’d been watching the apartment across the street for about an hour, waiting for one of the people I’d saved for Malokin to show up. This one had been a junkie who’d knocked off a jewelry store. The ones who were still human weren’t hard to locate. Flipping through possible suspect photos had led me to most. Not surprising that the majority of them had a criminal history.
It made my skin crawl that I’d ever been on his recruit list. It still didn’t make any sense. Had I been a saint? No. But I didn’t fit in with this gang.
Fate insisted on coming, and I didn’t mind having the backup even though I wasn’t doing anything risky other than criminal watching. Lately, simply leaving the house could be considered endangering your life.
“Your boots?” he asked, reminding me of their unwelcome position.
“Are quite comfortable where they are. If you hadn’t snuck off and picked this car without me, we wouldn’t have wood trim on the dashboard we needed to worry about, now would we? It would be aged and cracking plastic, as befitting a car for this type of job. I don’t believe I should have to be uncomfortable because of your poor choices.” I turned the dial down on the temperature-controlled seat.
His eyes shot to the control and then me. I was complaining but the amenities were quite nice, not that I’d admit it to him.
“You don’t look like you mind much. And it’s a used Audi. What would you have us drive? Should I have gotten something worse than the twenty-year-old Honda? Maybe you would prefer having to stick your foot out as you drive and pushing it along?”
I leaned over, acutely aware of exactly every inch of space his frame took up, which was way too much in the front seat of this car, and painstakingly avoided even an accidental brush. I tapped the spot above the odometer.
“Used? Demo at best. A couple trips around the block is far from what I’d had in mind.” I reclined back into chilled bliss.
“I know how you feel.” His voice had turned husky.
I knew that tone and it immediately set off a chain reaction in me. Just like that, he’d brought the discussion back to sex. He had a crazy ability to do that. Somehow, everything turned into a sexual innuendo with Fate these days.
“This was supposed to be a compromise?” I asked, playing tug of war with the conversation until the ribbon was back in safe territory.
“It was gently used. Not like it was ridden hard for hours on end and thoroughly abused, pushed to the very edge, until it gave over every ounce of soul it possessed to the feel of the ride.”
The air in my chest froze and it took a bit of conscious effort to get my diaphragm expanding again. Conversations with Fate had become like tiptoeing through a minefield and waiting to step on a trigger. It seemed like there was no subject that he couldn’t turn sexual.
I stretched out as much as I could in the car, which was more than if we’d gotten an automobile of my choosing. “Seeing as murder isn’t on the menu, I need to move around a bit and expend some energy.” And get a couple of deep breaths of fresh air in before he says something that sounds sexual again and I decide to throw caution to the wind.
His hand wrapped around my wrist as I went to leave. It was strange how when he touched me, my entire physical awareness shrank down to that one place where we touched, as if my entire body was running on a dead battery and he was feeding the current.
It was downright embarrassing how I reacted to him. He’d probably had so many women that nothing was a big deal and here I was, jumping at his touch. Another reason it wasn’t a good idea to go down…
Great, now I was turning everything into sex too. I wasn’t going to have many words left in my vocabulary soon.
He let go of me and held out the same hand, motioning for my notebook.
“You’re going to take notes?” My eyebrows would’ve touched my hairline if I raised them anymore.
“No,” he replied, confirming my impression. “I just want to see what you wrote.”
Yeah, now that was more like Fate, controlling to the core. I tucked the notebook in my purse, ignoring his request. And that was more like me, flaunting his demands. Plus, I didn’t think he’d get much out of my house and flowers doodle with the occasional heart accent. I could already hear the mockery.
“Fine. Keep your notebook. I’ll make my own.”
I shook my head as I got out of the car. Never, ever, would he keep a notebook.
“Don’t go far,” he yelled after me.
I nodded like I resented his watchful nature. I didn’t. I wasn’t sure why I acted as if I did. Maybe it was because to admit that I liked him worrying about me meant that I wanted him to care. That then reminded me that he didn’t care, at least not the way I wanted him to. Ta-da, it was better to not think of it at all. I was actually mad at myself for letting this train of thought take over in the first place. I was acting like a soft human again. Damn, it was hard to break that habit.
Tugging my purse higher on my shoulder, I pointed over to a convenience store that had somehow managed to stay in operation and not be looted. Only about thirty percent of businesses could boast such a thing. That percentage was dropping rapidly and on a daily basis. Soon it would be down below ten percent, the same rate as a new restaurant surviving its first year.
“You want a soda or something?” I yelled back to him, an afterthought as those southern manners I was still fighting reared their pretty little head like a game of Whack-A-Mole.
“Something.”
I could see his smile in the reflection of the rearview mirror.
Shaking my head, I pretended that I didn’t like the overtures. I was getting really good at all this pretending crap.
I walked away and headed toward the store.
Chapter Nine
The place was in relatively good shape, and I relished in the fact that I could still pick something off the shelf and not have to scavenge off the floor. It was a small perk but I’d always liked to think I was a smell the roses type, or as with this case, stop and taste the Ho Hos.
The large tattooed guy behind the register, with piercings from ear to nostril, watched me hesitantly as if I’d try and kick his ass at any moment. Even though he was twice my size, and assumed I was human, so many were carrying weapons at this point that no one was totally safe. I understood.
I gave him a smile and a wave, trying to put him at ease. He nodded and went back to flipping through last month’s issue of People magazine. I continued to peruse the offerings, unoffended.
I grabbed a pack of Twizzlers off the shelf and looked at the sticker. “Ten dollars? Are you people crazy?”
His left shoulder angled up toward his ear. “Supply and demand.”
“Oh, well thank you so much, Mr. Harvard Economics. You ever hear of ethics or price gauging in those classes?”