Jeez, I didn’t like Cherry. In fact, I hated her, but I also didn’t like the idea of her getting hit with flying debris from a car explosion. The only person I’d want that to happen to was Osama bin Laden but I would prefer for him to be in the car.
I looked at Lee, he was still looking grim. I realized that they may have parted badly but she had still been his girlfriend. Twice. I slipped my hand in his.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said, looking at me funny.
“She doesn’t understand,” Eddie said.
“Understand what?” I asked.
Then it hit me. Last night, I was rolling around in fried rice with Cherry, today she’d almost been blown up.
I looked at Eddie. “I have an alibi. Actually, I have two! And I don’t know anything about explosives.”
This wasn’t exactly true. Ally and I had famously set off a couple dozen bottle rockets in Nina Evans’s front yard after Nina had started a nasty rumor that Ally had herpes.
Still, bottle rockets and car bombs didn’t exactly compare.
“Yeah, she spent most of the night with me and the cats, eatin’ chips and drinkin’ moonshine. She wasn’t out of my sight until you came and got her,” Tex threw in, looking at Lee.
Eddie stared at Tex, some of the intensity going out of his eyes at the thought of me, Tex and the cats eating chips and drinking hooch.
“Darius told me that one of his guys was at a strip club last night and heard Coxy’s boy Gary talkin’ about your cat fight with Cherry,” Lee said.
This wasn’t interesting news. I figured I’d been a prime topic of conversation on police band for at least a week. I probably had my own code by now, Indy-666 or something.
Anyone could listen to police band.
“And?” I asked.
“And Coxy’s already gone out of his way to eliminate what he might consider your problems.”
I dropped Lee’s hand and took a step back. “You think Wilcox tried to kill Cherry… for me?”
Eddie answered again. “Too early to know. Cherry didn’t have a lot of friends but crisping her seems harsh retribution for bein’ a bitch.”
“This isn’t happening,” I said.
I was reeling. I didn’t know what to do, what to think.
“You guys want coffee?” Tex asked Lee and Eddie.
“Sure, triple shot cappuccino,” Eddie said.
“Yeah, Americano, black,” Lee said.
Tex ambled off to the espresso counter while I continued my silent meltdown searching the depths of my fried brain for Denial Zone.
Then Duke asked, his Sam Elliott voice low and serious, “Could we not talk about fuckin’ coffee and maybe talk about how you two badass motherfuckers are gonna protect Indy from this crazy fuck?”
I turned to look at him and noticed immediately that he was pissed.
Duke looked at Lee. “Isn’t it about fuckin’ time you quit fuckin’ around and took care of this fuckin’ guy?”
Uh-oh.
Duke wasn’t afraid to use the F-word but he only dosed his vocabulary liberally with it when he was close to losing it.
Lee looked at him. “I’m workin’ on it.”
Duke took a step forward. “Work harder.”
This was not good.
I knew, because I saw, that Lee could kick ass. Duke was no slouch. He might be an old guy but he also knew how to handle himself through a fuckload of practice.
I wasn’t sure how Lee would take an accusation of “fuckin’ around” and I didn’t want two people I loved to go head-to-head in my bookstore.
“Duke…” I said.
Duke looked at me and the look in his eye made me move closer to Lee.
“We don’t know when this fuckin’ lunatic is gonna lose his patience and turn on you. Bullets are flyin’, cars explodin’, dead bodies everywhere. This has got to fuckin’ stop. Now,” Duke said to me.
“He’s right,” Eddie agreed. “Indy needs to be protected. You got a safe house for her?”
“Yeah,” Lee answered.
Yikes!
“No! No, no, no,” I cried, beginning to panic. “I can’t go to a safe house. I can’t. I’d feel like a sitting duck.”
Lee’s arm came around me. “It won’t be for long.”
I pulled away from him. “No! I can’t do it. I’ll climb the walls. I swear, Lee, you lock me up and the minute I get out, I’m moving to Argentina.”
Either he didn’t believe me or he knew he could track me through the wilds of Argentina because he didn’t look like he was gonna cave.
“Lee, give me back the stun gun, I’ll carry it everywhere. Put a man on me. Anything, just don’t lock me up.”
“I’d put a man on you but if we’re gonna take Coxy down I gotta keep my boys on target.”
This wasn’t good, this was like being grounded but without the tree out your window to climb down when your Dad was asleep. I hadn’t been grounded in twelve years, I forgot how much I hated it, hated being penned in, hated my freedom restricted. I couldn’t stand it.
Surprisingly, Eddie caved first.
“We’ll take turns playin’ bodyguard,” Eddie said, staring into my deer-caught-in-headlights eyes. “I’ll talk to Hank, Willie, Carl. I’m off-duty. I’ll take the first shift.”
Shit.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
This did not sound good.
Lee slowly turned to Eddie. “I’m not sure I like that idea.”