I nodded to Roam immediately, trying my damnedest not to look as happy and relieved as I was that whatever it was that had a hold of him, he’d let go.

I turned to take the boys out and stopped dead.

Everyone was watching us, including and especially Vance.

His eyes were on me and there was something in them I couldn’t read, something familiar, even precious, something I remembered from a long time ago but hadn’t seen in so long, I didn’t remember where I saw it in the first place. Before I could figure it out, the look disappeared.

I nodded in the general direction of everyone. “Nice to meet you all,” I said then started to shove through but Vance caught my bicep and stopped me.

“Your place, six thirty,” he said, his eyes serious.

I just gave him a look. He released me and the boys and I walked away.

“What was that about?” Sniff stage-whispered to me.

“They got a date,” Roam answered, too quick for his own good (and mine).

“No shit? You got a date with Crowe? Holy f**k!” Sniff yelled.

I rolled my eyes. Now this would be all over the street in an hour.

“Keep your voice down, Sniff. And don’t say shit or f**k. Don’t you boys ever listen to me?”

“No,” Roam said and grinned at me.

For the first time that day the sky of my life brightened and I grinned back at him.

Just as the door closed behind me, I could swear I heard, “Now I’m thinking Law’s the shit.” This was said in an unfamiliar man’s voice so it had to be Mace who hadn’t spoken.

“You ain’t wrong about that, Sugar,” this was obviously Daisy.

I ignored their words, got the kids in the Camaro and we went to get burgers.

It wasn’t until after we were sitting eating burgers that I tasted my latte and, even cold, it was the best flipping thing I’d ever tasted in my life.

Chapter Five

Nick’s Third Degree

At six thirty when I was supposed to be nervously anticipating Vance’s arrival at my duplex, I was in Heavy’s garage, wearing silvery-gray sweatpants with two black stripes running up the sides and a white t-shirt with the arms cut off with Gold’s Gym on the front in black. I was jabbing a punching bag and sweating like a pig.

“Jab, Jules, f**kin’ jab!” Heavy shouted at me, sitting on a bunch of boxes stacked at the side of his garage, working through his second double pack of Ding Dongs. “You jab like a girl. Keep your leg back, aim for the kidneys. Jab!”

“I’m jabbing, Heavy!” I shouted through my panting then quit jabbing and started roundhouse punching the sides of the bag then I quit doing that too, hugged the bag and stared at Heavy. “How long do I have to do this?” I asked.

“You only been at it an hour,” Heavy said and then shoved an entire Ding Dong in his mouth.

I glared at him. “Don’t you think an hour is enough?” I asked. “I’m not exactly going to be boxing with drug dealers for a whole fifteen rounds.”

“Don’t do fifteen rounds anymore, the sissies, only do twelve,” Heavy informed me.

“Well, I won’t be going twelve rounds with them either.”

“You gotta be in shape. ‘Specially now that you’re goin’ up against the Nightingale Boys. Fuck, girl, you… are… loco.”

I used my teeth to yank at the strings of my boxing gloves then shoved one under the pit of an arm and tugged it off. “I’m not up against the Nightingale Boys,” I said.

Heavy shook his head. “Got a friend, he’s a cop, says Hank Nightingale and Eddie Chavez pulled up all sorts of shit on you yesterday. Searchin’ your name and findin’ it all over your kids’ records.”

So that was how Vance knew everything.

I found this annoying. The whole bedroom interrogation that morning was bullshit. Vance knew the answers to most of his questions before he’d even asked them. This meant his “making me talk” was just an excuse to kiss me.

I didn’t know what to do with that so I didn’t do anything with it. I’d have time to think about it maybe when I was eighty.

Heavy was watching me closely as I tugged off the other glove.

“Unh-hunh,” he read my face correctly and went on. “Nightingale and Chavez searched you and Lee’s got a big nerd workin’ for him who could hack into the computers at the Pentagon. By now, they know everything about you, even your panty size.”

This gave me pause for reflection. I didn’t like the idea of Vance knowing everything about me. Though I didn’t care about my panty size unless he felt like buying me a present for my birthday which was only a few days away.

What was I thinking?

Vance was not going to be in my life, thus no birthday present. And certainly not panties.

I looked at Heavy. “My birthday is Thursday,” I told him.

“Well, happy f**kin’ birthday,” Heavy grinned, white cream and chocolate cake in his teeth.

I dropped my gloves to the floor, sat next to him on the boxes and pulled back some tendrils of hair that had come loose from my ponytail.

“Not today, Thursday,” I took a deep breath and then went for it. “You want to go out for a drink or something?”

Heavy stared at me. “Don’t you have girlfriends?” he asked.

I pulled in my lips and hit him in the shoulder. “Forget it,” I said and smiled. “I gotta stretch.”

I got up and walked over to a mat that Heavy had put out for when he showed me moves to defend myself against attack. I dropped down on it and started to stretch.

“You goin’ to the range after this?” Heavy asked, still staring at me.

“Yeah.”

“You goin’ out after that?” he went on and I knew what he meant, was I going out after bad guys.

I’d been giving it some thought especially after what Roam had done. I wasn’t exactly being the best role model.

Still, I was an adult. I was being smart and I was getting trained. I wasn’t a kid pelting a drug dealer with rocks (I had to admit, though I’d never tell Roam, that was a good one).

I looked at Heavy. “I’m going home for food and then, yeah, I’m going out.”

“Be safe,” he said, got up and went into the house.

I stretched and when I was finished I pulled on my black, zip-up sweatshirt and grabbed my bag. I walked into the house and I could see the back of Heavy’s blond head. He was sitting in front of Monday Night Football.