Disconnect.

Shit.

Indy Savage and Ally Nightingale were Rock Chicks like Sissy and me. Those two were hilarious, crazier by far than Sissy and me or at least Sissy recently, for sure. We’d met at a concert years ago and went to dozens of them together. Sissy and I usually never missed one of Indy’s kickass parties, she had a lot of them and she always had bowls of cashews and everyone knew bowls of cashews meant kickass party. Sissy and I also used to hang out at the used bookstore on Broadway that Indy owned called Fortnum’s. I hadn’t been in ages, at least eight months, maybe longer, since before Indy hooked up with Lee Nightingale. Indy had had a crush on Lee since practically birth, Indy and Lee’s parents were best friends and she and Lee and Ally and Lee’s brother, Hank had grown up together. It was super-fucking-fly that they were finally together, it made you think the world wasn’t shit.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go to Fortnum’s or see Indy and Ally (Ally worked there on occasion). It was just that Noah had cleaned out my bank accounts. I’d felt the need to score a couple more accounts for my at-home graphic design business to make up for the money he stole so, unusually, I was busy.

See, with Aunt Ella’s money and a barely-there mortgage, I didn’t have to work that hard. I’d bought the house dirt cheap, mainly because it was a nightmare when I bought it, but I’d fixed it up, mostly myself, not the electricity or the plumbing, just refinished the floors, re-skimmed the walls, did the tile work, painted, shit like that. I had a couple of business clients that kept me relatively busy, out of trouble and in plentiful amounts of my sliver. However, when your rat-bastard ex-boyfriend steals over five thousand dollars from you, it pushes you to put your nose to the grindstone.

I decided to call Ally tomorrow, after I searched Dom’s house and figured out what I’d tell her about Luke.

I went to my Range Rover, backed it out, hit the button for the garage door to close and headed to Sissy and Dom’s. They had a very nice, popped-top bungalow in Washington Park. Sissy loved it and I liked it too. I hoped she got it in the divorce settlement.

I did a drive by, checking for lights and to see if Dom’s BMW was parked in their back drive off the alley. It wasn’t, so I parked around the corner, hoofed it up to the house, went around the side to the back and found Sissy’s fake rock by their outdoor Jacuzzi which held the key. I opened it with the combination she gave me, put the rock back where I found it, went to the door and let myself in.

I didn’t bother with gloves, my prints were likely all over the house anyway.

I also didn’t turn on the lights. I knew the house like the back of my hand. I’d partied in it, had Christmas dinner in it, had crashed there on many occasions (normally drunk) and even helped Sissy clean it a number of times.

I didn’t know what I was looking for, shirts with lipstick on the collar? Love letters?

I had the bad feeling that I was going to have to follow Dom with a camera and take pictures of him while he was doing the nasty with some bimbo. I didn’t relish that idea so I hoped Dom was a love-letter-keeping type of guy.

I went to the kitchen drawer where I knew Sissy kept her small Maglite and I decided to start in the bedroom.

I’d seen enough movies and television to do a decent search. I started at his nightstand and found an industrial-sized box of condoms he had to have bought at some warehouse retail store (I didn’t even know they made boxes of condoms that big). I made note of this, knowing that Sissy was on the pill therefore Dom didn’t need condoms. Sissy and I had both gone on the pill together, me for friendship’s sake at the time since I’d been a virgin. I lost my virginity at twenty-three to a sweet, goofy, geeky guy named George (it wasn’t awful, but it also wasn’t great, by the way) but I’d been on the pill for two years before that for no reason at all.

I shrugged off thoughts of my contraception history, checked the bottom and insides of the drawer, the back and bottom of the nightstand but nothing going.

I was moving to the closet, intent on my task when, suddenly, a steel-band-like arm wrapped around my waist, a hand went over my mouth and I was lifted clean off my feet.

Freaked out, legs pumping and screaming under the hand, I was carried out of the bedroom and into the living room like a weighed as much as a rag doll.

I planted a well-aimed, savage elbow to the side of who I suspected was Dom, someone who I not only didn’t want to catch me snooping. I also didn’t want to be alone with him, at all, ever.

I heard a grunt when my elbow connected and I was dropped. Heart pumping, mind flying from thought to thought, I caught only one and that one thought was go.

I started to run but was caught by the back of my shirt. It went way tight against my chest and I was yanked back, again off my feet. My shoulders slammed against something hard right before I was whirled around and the arm went around me tight, pulling me against a solid torso just as the hand went back over my mouth.

“Quiet,” Luke Stark clipped.

Ho-ly crap.

I went still and stared, though I couldn’t see much of anything. I’d dropped the Maglite somewhere in the bedroom.

What in the hell was he doing there?

“You gonna stay quiet?” Luke asked.

I nodded. His hand went away.

“What the f**k are you doing here?” I whispered, not knowing what to think, or feel, just shocked out of my mind.

Was he following me? And, if so, why?

“Could ask you the same thing,” he said to me, cutting into my thoughts.

“I’m visiting a friend,” I lied quickly.

His body tensed and I felt something fill the room, something crackling and dangerous. I couldn’t see it in the dark but I could feel it. I could feel it because his arm got tight and it hauled me even deeper into his body so we were pressed close, chest to crotch.

Fuckity, f**k, f**k, f**k.

“Stop lying to me Ava,” I could tell by his tone that he was not happy, so not happy that I had to admit I was a little scared of him.

“I’m not lying,” I lied.

“You’re tellin’ me that Dom Vincetti is a friend of yours?”

“No, Sissy Vincetti is.”

He knew Sissy, he’d met her way back in the day. This was likely why his arm relaxed enough for me to pull away and put a foot of space between us which was a far more comfortable position, believe you me.

“Sissy isn’t here,” Luke said to me.

“Well, I know that now,” I said, like I’d expected her to be there, in other words, I lied, again.