“Is my father still out in the alley?” Sherry asked, breaking into his thoughts.
Basil glanced to Lucian at her question and noted that he was staring at him with silent concentration. No doubt Lucian had been listening in on his revelations. He didn’t care. He would be happy to shout from the rooftops that he loved this woman.
“No,” Bricker answered when Lucian simply continued to stare at Basil. “Decker and Anders took him back to the Enforcer house with the others.”
“Oh no. We have to do something.” Sherry began to struggle to rise, and Basil again held on at first, but then he let her go and stood as well. He knew she wanted to find out her father’s last name. She’d probably hoped to ask him before he was taken away.
“Actually, at the moment she is more worried about his ding-dong than his last name,” Lucian growled, proving he had been not only in Basil’s thoughts, and still was, but in Sherry’s as well.
“His what?” Basil asked with a start.
“The punishment for interfering with a married woman,” Lucian reminded him. “They shred his ding-dong. Bricker’s term, not mine, if you’ll recall,” he added with dignity.
Basil glanced around, intending to soothe Sherry, but she’d somehow disappeared during the few seconds he had been distracted.
“Where the h.e.l.l did she go?” he muttered, moving to the landing between the stairs that led down to the store, and the ones leading down to the door to the alley. Both doors were closed and he had no idea which way she’d gone.
“She dragged Bricker out through the store,” Lucian said calmly, following Basil when he plunged down the stairs. “She intends for him to drive her to the Enforcer house.”
The store appeared empty when Basil came out into it, but he glanced around to be sure. He saw no one, though, so rushed out onto the sidewalk and peered first one way and then the other. Cursing when he didn’t see either Sherry or the young Enforcer, he spun back to the store impatiently and then hurried back to the door and opened it to shout, “Will you hurry up, dammit! Which way is the truck?”
“Relax,” Lucian said dryly. “Bricker will not leave without me. The SUV is—”
“What?” Basil asked when his brother paused with his arm half raised, shock crossing his features.
“The little s.h.i.t just drove away without me,” Lucian said with amazement.
Looking in the direction Lucian had started to point, Basil saw the black SUV that was even now merging with traffic. The word he used then was much worse than the little s.h.i.t Lucian had called Bricker.
Seventeen
“You know, Lucian is going to be seriously p.i.s.sed at our taking off like this,” Justin warned as he pulled into traffic.
“I don’t care,” Sherry a.s.sured him. “This is urgent. My father’s ding-dong is in my hands.”
“Yeahhhhh, that just sounds wrong,” Bricker drawled.
“What?” Sherry asked with bewilderment, then realized what she’d said and clucked her tongue impatiently. “You know what I mean.”
“Actually, I don’t,” he informed her. “The council decides these things, Sherry. His ding-dong is not in your hands at all.”
She bit her lip at this news and then asked, “Well, surely if I tell Mortimer that I don’t want them to shred his ding-dong a hundred times or whatever, he’ll let him go? I mean I am the victim here. Well, my mother was, but she’s dead, so that leaves only me to care one way or another. Besides, isn’t there a statute of limitations or something? It happened thirty-two years ago, for heaven’s sake.”
“Yeahhhh, I’ll just drive around the block and pick up Lucian and Basil now,” Bricker decided.
“What? Why?” Sherry asked with a frown. “I wanted to get back to the house before them to convince Mortimer to release my father to me.”
“Yeah, but it’s not going to work, honey pie,” Bricker informed her. “You can plead with Mortimer until you’re blue in the face and he won’t release your father without Lucian’s say so. And,” he added dryly, “all our leaving them behind would do is p.i.s.s off Lucian and make him less likely to listen to your pleas.”
Her eyes widened in dismay as she realized what he said was probably true. “Turn around. Go back.”
“I am,” Bricker said soothingly as he took the next corner.
Sherry bit her lip and began to wring her hands, worrying over whether the men had come out yet, and realized that they had left. As Bricker took the next corner, she muttered, “I wished you’d said that earlier. Why did you agree to leave them in the first place?”
“Because I wanted to know what you were up to, whether you planned to try to break your father out of jail or what,” he admitted with a shrug, and then paused as he negotiated the next corner before pointing out, “I’m an Enforcer. It’s my job to make sure you won’t be a problem.”
Sherry turned on him with dismay at this news.
Bricker caught her expression, grinned and admitted, “I also couldn’t resist seeing what Lucian’s expression would be when I pulled out and left him behind.” His grin widened into a full-blown savoring smile, and he a.s.sured her, “Believe me, that was priceless.”
Eyes narrowing, Sherry growled, “You’re a s.h.i.t disturber.”
“That I am,” he agreed easily.
“a.s.s,” she muttered with disgust.
“Oh, don’t be like that, Sherry. Look on the bright side, this way you can nag the h.e.l.l out of them all the way to the house,” he pointed out brightly as he took the next turn. “They’ll be captive listeners, unable to escape your arguments. See how this all works out so well?”
Sherry merely scowled again. It was pretty obvious that Bricker had a bit of a twisted sense of humor. It made her wonder just what kind of woman the nanos would pick out for him.
“I think Lucian wants the front seat,” Bricker said with amus.e.m.e.nt.
Sherry glanced around to see that they’d stopped in front of the store and Lucian now stood outside the pa.s.senger door, scowling unpleasantly. She considered locking the door and making him get in the back, but it didn’t seem the smart thing to do when she wanted something from the man.
Unsnapping her seat belt, she slid out of the seat and crawled into the back as Basil opened the door to get in beside her.