Eddie and the man walked to us.

The man stopped, Eddie didn’t. His arm went around my waist; he leaned in and kissed the side of my head then, while I as recovering from that, he stepped back.

“This is Detective Jimmy Marker. He’s gonna take care of you. Bex Cusack called and said she’d be here in twenty minutes. We’ll start after she arrives,” Eddie told me.

I nodded.

“They weren’t jokin’, you do look like a fairy princess,” Detective Marker remarked.

I nodded again, now completely unfazed by this remark then I sighed. “I get that a lot.”

Detective Marker stared at me for a second then he spoke again. “Willie, Brian, Jorge and Tony just went out to pick up Ricky and Harvey. We already called the hospital and made appointments to get statements from the staff who took care of you. Got officers jumpin’ at the chance to nail those two jackasses so Luke, Jack, you’re up now. Luke, you’re with Melvin. Jack, you’re with Danny. Hector, I wanna talk to you.”

Without delay, Luke and Jack moved into the room, separated and went to different desks.

I didn’t even have a chance to take this in before Detective Marker kept talking. “Lee sent the photos of your apartment over this morning. I woulda liked to have had a chance to send the lab boys over after the incident but if someone will let us in now, we’ll comb the place, see if we can find anything that places Ricky there.”

“I can let you in,” Buddy volunteered.

Detective Marker looked over his shoulder and called, “Adam, we got access to Sadie’s apartment. Call the boys.”

A man across the room immediately picked up a phone.

I blinked.

Boy, these guys didn’t mess around.

Detective Marker’s eyes were on me again and he caught the blink. “We’re police. We don’t like crime,” he informed me.

“I don’t like it either,” I assured him, just in case he was wondering.

“I wasn’t finished,” Detective Marker said.

“Oh,” I murmured.

“I got a wife, three daughters. Rape’s on the top of the list of crimes I don’t like,” Detective Marker declared.

I swallowed then I moved closer to Hector. When my hand found his and his strong fingers closed around mine, I nodded.

“I know who you are,” Detective Marker said and I held my breath. “So I suppose, the way you grew up, you don’t get this so I’ll explain it to you now. You’re standin’ there holdin’ Hector Chavez’s hand. Hector’s Eddie’s brother, Eddie’s one of us. We don’t like crime but we really don’t like crime when it happens to one of us. You’re one of us now. Ricky Balducci is goin’ down, I don’t care how it happens but me and every man in this room is gonna do whatever the f**k we gotta do to make it happen. You with me?”

“I’m with you,” I whispered.

“All right then,” he nodded. Then he smiled (which made him a lot less scary) and he reached out and squeezed my arm. “Badass Cop Speech is over, let’s get this done.”

Without anything else to say, I said, “Okay.”

* * * * *

“V… I… fuckin’… P!” Tex boomed the minute Shirleen, Daisy, Hector and I walked into Fortnum’s Used Bookstore (Buddy was at my apartment with the “lab boys”).

We stopped several feet in front of the door and I took in the scene.

There was a large open space at the front of the store, a counter in front of rows of bookshelves, an espresso counter against the back side wall, tons of comfortable-looking chairs, couches, armchairs and tables littered the middle. It smelled musty, dusty but looked really cool in a lived-in, sit-back, stay-awhile kind of way.

Even though it was well beyond coffee hour, there were people everywhere. Most of the seats were taken, there were three customers waiting in line to order, two standing at the end of the espresso counter waiting for their coffees.

Indy and a big, gray-bearded, long-gray-hair-in-a-ponytailed man wearing a black T-shirt that demanded you “Ride the Range” and a black leather vest with a rolled red bandana on his forehead were standing behind the counter. Tex and Jet were behind the espresso counter. Ally was clearing coffee mugs from the seating area.

“You!” Tex boomed, pointing at the people innocently sitting on the couch in front of the big, glass window at the front of the store. “That’s VIP seating. Up! Move!”

Without a word, as if this had happened before and they had loads of practice, the people grabbed their mugs and laptops and scurried to the corner table.

“You!” Tex pointed to me. “Sit!”

“You better sit,” Shirleen whispered sideways to me. “Indy’s face is gettin’ red. She hates it when Tex bosses around the customers. She looks like she’s gonna blow.”

I didn’t want Indy to blow so I nodded to Shirleen and hurried to the couch.

“I’m makin’ you a special,” Tex shouted to me.

“Okay, Tex,” I thought it best to shout back. Then I sat down.

“You’re gonna hafta wait, that’s Sadie. She’s a VIP,” Tex informed the next person in line like they didn’t already know this fact really, really well.

Daisy sat down on one side of me, Shirleen on the other side. They sat close, like sentries.

I looked helplessly up at Hector. He was doing that fighting-a-grin thing again.

I narrowed my eyes at him. The grin grew into a glamorous, white smile.

My eyes un-narrowed and I stared at him. He shook his head and went to the counter where Indy was.

Ally bustled up, precariously balancing used coffee mugs.

“You okay?” she asked.

I nodded. “It wasn’t that bad. Detective Marker is nice,” I told her.

She smiled and her eyes danced in a mischievous Veronica Mars type of way. “I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about Hector taking you to Blanca’s for dinner last night. What is it with the Chavez men taking their women home to meet their Mama? They know better. Blanca’s a nut. First time Eddie took Jet home, Blanca had the whole family over plus half the neighborhood.”

I gasped, sorry for Jet but also thankful that I didn’t have to deal with half the neighborhood last night. What I had was enough!

All of a sudden, Jet was there. “It’s true,” she told me. “I got snockered on margaritas.”

“And Eddie threw your cell across the yard and shattered a margarita pitcher,” a newly arrived Indy shared.