Then it became more like she was just coming home.
It was a huge fucking understatement to say he liked that.
Since her attack (and even before, if he’d been paying attention), it had become clear she was no fake gypsy princess. She was a straight-up gypsy, more at home in an Airstream with electricity running from a generator and not a single soul within miles than she was in her big house by a river.
And with that, as well as driving up to her house and seeing two police cruisers, a lot more had become clear to Deke because those cruisers extricated Deke’s head right out of his ass.
And he started paying attention.
Jussy was Justice Lonesome, the girl who’d inherited a lot of money and even more talent from her father, the girl who made her own mark on that world.
But that was what it was and it was only a small part of who she was.
In reality, she was just Jussy, even if being just Jussy said a fuckuva lot.
Deke had no idea if he could work with that.
What he did know was that he was going to try.
He also had no idea where Jussy’s head was at with that except she did not once balk at waking up with him, going to work with him, coming home with him and bedding down with him.
She gave him long looks occasionally and he knew it was on her mind to ask what the fuck was up with him…with them…because in the beginning, all the shit he was doing could be shit any friend would do.
It had long since gone past that.
But on Wednesday he’d noted she’d just settled into it. She dug him. They were tight. She needed him. Shit was extreme. She was taking what he had to give, all of it, because she wanted it that way.
He’d share later exactly all that entailed.
Right then, they had to get through that day.
And that night.
That day being the day Brendan Caswell said he was going to come back and finish the job he’d started a week before.
Decker had found out who Bianca Constantine owed a substantial amount of money, that motherfucker being a man named Brendan Caswell.
Deck had not found Bianca, but he’d found she was in deep shit with this Brendan guy, a dealer, low level, ambitious, wanting to make his mark and move up the ranks. But he’d gotten in heavy with Bianca, thinking with her pedigree of having a fading bombshell B-movie star of a mom and the lead guitar of a heavy metal band dad that she’d be good for it…or someone would.
Bianca was in the wind. Caswell was too.
Chace’s hands were tied to local investigations and they got nothing. No prints. No tire tracks. No one in town had seen the guy. DNA tests took weeks, sometimes months, but although Caswell had a record, he did not have DNA on file. They’d have to catch him and test him to put him there with Jussy because she couldn’t identify him since he’d been wearing a mask.
The only good news with this was that Decker had reported he had solid leads and felt he was closing in on Bianca, his priority (according to Jussy) if not Caswell.
“Wouldn’t say this, man, if I didn’t believe it but think we’ll have our hands on her in twenty-four hours. She proves even more slippery than she’s been, intel we got is still tight so the most it’ll be is forty-eight. So hang in,” Decker had told Deke the day before.
No one knew if Bianca had gotten her hands on the cake to pay Caswell and that was why he’d disappeared.
All they knew was that there was no sign of Caswell anywhere in the county and the BOLO on him hadn’t brought them anything.
And they knew that Bianca had burned through the huge trust fund her folks had set up for her, burned through more with friends she’d asked for loans she didn’t pay back, that had dried up and now she was broke. She was also not in contact with any friends or family, was addicted to partying in all its incarnations (booze and dope, however she could get them) and way the fuck out on a limb.
Decker reported directly to Deke and Thurston and they both made the decision together to give Jussy all this information.
She was not weak. She was the kind of woman who felt knowledge was power, not ignorance being bliss. The details on her friend were a hit that Deke delivered while they were on his couch and she was in his arms, but she did what he had come to know was the only thing Jussy knew how to do.
She absorbed them, felt the pain, sorted her shit and kept on going.
And today he had to help her keep on going.
He had a plan that would culminate in her behind the fortress of security Callahan gave her, Deke there with her, that night being the first night she spent back at her house.