While Serenity retrieves her bag, I run upstairs to the kitchen to work out her sleeping arrangements with Annie and Mia. Annie is overjoyed to hear that she’ll be staying with us—Mia, less so.
“With Mom coming in Sunday night, you guys will have to double up, and the biggest room is the old master bedroom on this floor. Are you okay with that?”
“Yeah!” Annie says, not even looking at Mia, whose mouth has tightened. “Tee’s probably going to need the bodyguards. Especially if she picks up where Keisha left off.”
“Mia?” I ask. “I know that’s asking a lot, you giving up your privacy. You could use the sofa bed in my office in the basement.”
“With the security guys on cots down there?” Annie asks. “No way.”
“That old master bedroom is plenty big enough for Annie and me,” Mia says, covering her displeasure so that Annie won’t pick up on it. “Where will you put Serenity? The upstairs guest room at the end of the hall? By your room?”
“Gram needs that one,” Annie says. “It’s closest to the hall bathroom.”
“Serenity can take the small room on the other side,” I decide. “Hell, she’d probably be happy with the basement. She lived in a tent in Iraq.”
Annie laughs. “We need to put sheets on that bed upstairs. I’ll do it.” She slaps Mia on the arm and runs into the hall.
“Right behind you,” calls Mia, who continues to stand at the counter, watching me, as the drumbeat of Annie’s feet on the stairs resounds in the hallway.
“What is it?” I ask, a little uncomfortably. “You need your own room?”
“No. I’m such an ass. I can’t believe I was staring at Serenity like that. Because of the skin color thing.”
“It’s okay. Seriously. I was staring, too.”
“Did she say anything?”
“About that? No.”
Mia’s eyes narrow. “Bullshit. I can tell you’re lying. What did she say?”
“You really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“She said you have a thing for me.”
“She—did not.” Mia blushes deeply again.
“She implied it.”
An angry sigh escapes her mouth. “Well, she’s definitely not a genius. That’s a relief.” Mia walks to the kitchen door, then looks back at me. “By the way, I’m not buying that whole ‘paper bag test’ suffering shtick. Any woman as hot as she is didn’t suffer too much exclusion in high school or college.”
I think about this. “That’s the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”
“I’m just making an observation.”
“Would you have guessed a woman as pretty as she is would have joined the army? As a private?”
“No. That stumps me, I’ll admit. That’s why I’m going to read her book.”
“I’ll be interested to hear your conclusion.” I raise my hand in farewell.
Mia gives me a fake smile, then disappears into the hall.
Chapter 13
In the dark sprawl between Vidalia and Ferriday, Louisiana, two men wearing black leather chaps and jackets staggered out of the Steel Tiger bar and headed into the oyster-shell parking lot. Stump Seyfarth had been drinking enough that he listed to starboard as he scanned the lot for his hog.
“Where’s our bikes?” he bellowed indignantly. “Didn’t we park right there by the sign?”
“Goddamn, son,” said a laughing Jimmy Gunn, still reasonably sober. “You must have your beer goggles on.” Jimmy shielded his eyes against the lone streetlight, then bent his knees and peered into the mostly empty lot. “Motherfucker!” he shouted. “I’m gonna kill somebody.”
“What is it?” Stump cried. “Whassa matter?”
“Somebody tipped our bikes over!”
Jimmy ran clumsily to where the Harleys lay in the gravel and dirt, looking like chromed black rhinos felled by a game hunter’s rifle.
“They scratched my Road King to hell and gone!” he shouted, his ears pounding with rage. “Looks like they beat in the tank with a wrench or something. I’m gonna waste the fuckers that done this, I swear.”
Stump finally caught up. He stood panting over the wrecked bikes, his hands on his big hips. “How you gonna find ’em?”
“Had to be local thugs,” Jimmy reasoned. “Unless Cage and his friends did it. Nobody else would have the balls.”
“Could have been some Bandidos or Vinlanders passin’ through, huh? Saw we were inside, so they kicked over our rides and split?”
“I seriously doubt it.”
“FBI, maybe?”
Jimmy considered the possibility, then dismissed it. “Naaah. This ain’t their style.” He bent over and took hold of his handlebars. “Help me pick this bastard up. Jesus Christ.”
He waited for Stump to get his hands beneath the seat, then heaved upward with all his strength. The two men grunted and strained until their lungs and bladders were near to bursting. They’d just about cleared the sixty-degree point when someone with a deep bass voice shouted, “Look out!” from the darkness behind them.
Stump lost his grip, backpedaled, then fell on his butt with a grunt and a curse. His hand shot into his leather jacket, but before he could grab the gun in the holster he wore against his ribs, a hand caught the collar of his jacket and snatched him to his feet. Another dug inside the jacket and yanked out his pistol.
Jimmy Gunn made the mistake of trying to hold the Harley erect by himself, which probably gave him a hernia before he let the eight hundred pounds of metal drop to the shell gravel. The ground shuddered from the impact. Jimmy, too, reached for a weapon—a butterfly knife in his boot—but before he could get it, someone caught him in a headlock from behind. Jimmy tried to twist, but the man behind him was too strong. He was black, though. Jimmy could tell by the smell. Not bad—just different.
“What the fuck?” gasped Stump, trying in vain to free himself from the giant who had grabbed him from behind.
Jimmy gaped in disbelief at the size of the forearm locked around Stump’s neck. The big head whose chin pinned the crown of Stump’s head was deep black, and the whites of its eyes shone with a bluish light. When the giant spoke, his voice was so deep and resonant that Jimmy felt the air in his own chest move.
“Ya’ll the ones messed up my li’l sister?” asked the giant.
Jimmy felt his face get hot. “What?”
“Don’t play, now. Ya’ll’s crew messed up my sister. She worked over in Natchez, at the newspaper.”
Stump’s eyes went wide. Jimmy prayed his friend wasn’t so drunk that he’d be unable to lie. Stump wasn’t the sharpest tool in the box when sober, and for the last hour he’d been laughing about the colored girl that Snake Knox’s bitch had splashed with acid.
Stump croaked, “We din’t have shit to do with that. We just heard about it on the radio.”
“Doc say she might not live,” said the giant.
The huge spade had the kind of face Jimmy could imagine smiling from ear to ear, his eyes twinkling with delight, his big belly shaking with joy. But he wasn’t smiling now. “Aw, come on now,” Jimmy said, watching Stump’s eyes. “That’s bullshit. I mean, we didn’t have nothing to do with it, but I know acid in the face don’t kill nobody.”