Eve flipped onto her stomach in time to see his Nikes disappear over the threshold.
Delilah had just saved her life...
But for how long?
Her head weighed a hundred pounds, but she still managed to lift it, fully expecting that when she did she"d be staring down the barrel of the first gunman"s weapon, but- Boom! A third blast from the shotgun.
This time, Delilah caught a piece of the first masked man"s leg, shredding his jeans and the flesh beneath. He howled in agony, grabbing at the wound with one hand and squeezing the trigger of his pistol with the other. Bullets exploded from the gun in quick, ear-shattering succession as the gangster wildly laid down covering fire, his limping retreat toward the door leaving a shower of blood droplets in his wake. A light fixture burst with a crash. The red vinyl cushion on an empty booth belched up a cloud of cotton stuffing after absorbing a round.
Eve once more covered her head, her blood rushing through her veins so hard and fast it sounded like a waterfall roaring between her ears. When she breathed, the acrid smell of cordite and the iron-like aroma of hemoglobin filled her nose, making her fight the urge to gag. A vehicle roared to life followed by the sound of tires squealing. Through the swinging front door, she caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a white van hauling b.u.t.t away from the place.
Then, silence reigned...
For one heartbeat, maybe two, the world stopped spinning, and Eve glanced up to find the bar set in a motionless tableau. Patrons littered the floor, hands over their heads, completely and totally frozen in fear. Then, an ear-piercing scream splintered the silence, and Eve turned to see Delilah scrambling over the bar, the bartender"s pretty face twisted with horror.
What...?
But then she saw it. The potbellied biker-Buzzard?-was slumped on his stool, a ghastly river of red dripping down his stomach and pants, pooling beneath his dangling black biker boots in a slick, gruesome puddle.
"No!" Delilah screamed, pressing a hand to the gushing wound in the center of Buzzard"s chest. "No, Buzzard! No!"
Eve was the first to jump to her feet, hurdling p.r.o.ne patrons as she raced toward her purse still sitting on the bar, digging frantically for her cell phone.
Where are you? Where the heck are- When she finally found it, she punched in 9-1-1 with shaky fingers and looked over at Buzzard-Delilah was sobbing hysterically and continuing to try to apply pressure to that gruesome wound. To her utter horror, she discovered the man"s eyes were open and vacant, staring at nothing but death.
Oh, sweet Lord, no...
"Nine, one, one. What"s your emergency?" a nasally voice sounded over the phone.
"I-I need an ambulance at..." she had to swallow the bile and tears burning up the back of her throat. "At Red Delilah"s biker bar." She gave the address. "A man has been sh-shot."
The emergency operator asked her a question, but she didn"t hear it as the phone slipped from her nerveless fingers.
There she is. That"s what the second gunman said before raising his weapon. Which meant they"d come here for her. To kill her. But instead...Buzzard was dead.
And that meant this was all her fault...
No G.o.d, no! She choked on a sob, her knees threatening to buckle beneath her, but she refused to give in to the grief and hysteria bubbling just beneath her surface. It might be too late to help Buzzard, but perhaps she could still help poor Delilah...
The Corner of Western and North Avenues 6:32 p.m.
"What in the world?" Bill heard Mac yell over the grumbling sound of dual V-twin engines. He gripped Phoenix"s handlebars tighter as he squinted up the block to where the red-blue-red flash of emergency vehicle lights bounced menacingly against the surrounding buildings.
They"d kinda, sorta, pseudo-fixed the Bat Cave door. But the thing was still acting sketchy as f.u.c.k, sometimes opening and closing of its own volition, so they"d decided to ditch the Hummer in exchange for the bikes. Especially considering that the tunnel was such a tight fit for the giant SUV that opening the doors of the vehicle once inside the sucker was nearly impossible.
Yeah, to say neither one of them had fancied the idea of getting stuck inside the Hummer down in the tunnel and having to pull the Holy Grail of all reverse maneuvers back out to the exit in the parking garage was putting it mildly. Bill just hoped Eve was okay with riding- "I think that"s Delilah"s!" Mac"s voice sliced into his thoughts.
He realized in that moment, as he twisted his wrist and blazed through the red light and cross traffic-heedless of the sound of squealing tires on either side of him and the fact that the silver b.u.mper on a Chevy half-ton pickup truck came within an inch of his biker boot-what it meant when people said their hearts froze. Because his stopped beating, turned to a hard fist of dry ice in his chest, and proceeded to burn a hole straight through his soul.
Eve...
He wasn"t thinking when he blasted into the little parking lot in front of Red Delilah"s, Phoenix"s fat rear tire bouncing over the curb until his teeth clacked together with brain-jostling force. He wasn"t thinking when he toed out the kickstand and jumped from the bike, switching off the growling engine. He wasn"t thinking when he ran toward the waiting ambulance and the body-bag-laden stretcher being loaded inside.
"Eve!" He frantically tossed off the restraining hands of the police officers who leapt toward him, instinctively shoving an elbow into someone"s nose. "Eve! Eve!" His wailing, breathless cries howled from him like the wind blowing over the dunes in the desert. His lungs worked like bellows, but no oxygen got to his brain.
"Stand down, a.s.shole!" one of the officers shouted in his ear, snaking an arm around his throat as two, then three more uniformed CPD boys tried to wrestle him to the ground. He fought them like he was fighting for his life, hissing and biting, punching and kicking. He was a mindless beast, bent on only one thing: getting inside that ambulance and- "Billy!"
When he heard his name, when he heard her sweet voice, all the fight seeped out of him like air from a torn balloon. He choked on a hard, wet sob that lodged in the center of his chest. Then, the next thing he knew, he was kissing concrete, there were an unknown number of very pointy knees digging into his back, and his wrists were being secured by a cold, hard set of handcuffs.
He didn"t care. Because she was alive! The CPD could take out their billy clubs and pound the living s.h.i.t out of him for the rest of the evening if they wanted to, and he"d still be smiling.
"Get off him! Get off him!" From the corner of his eye-the one not being ground into the parking lot"s hot pavement-he could see Eve pushing officers aside. "He"s with me!"
Slowly, the restraining hands disappeared, as did the pointy knees. And after a ringing command from Eve that someone should help him up, two policemen grabbed his elbows and hauled him to his feet. The very next instant, Eve was pressed against him. Her arms were around his neck, her head was on his shoulder-the smell of her fruity shampoo obscured the more pungent aroma of car exhaust-and she was sobbing and squeezing him so tightly he could barely breathe.
Who cares? Oxygen is overrated anyway.
"Jesus, Eve..." Her name was a benediction and a prayer all rolled into one. He wasn"t a religious man, but he whispered a quick thanks skyward to anyone who might be listening and went to wrap his arms around her, to hold her close to his pounding heart. But the handcuffs stopped him with the bite of unyielding steel.
"Get these f.u.c.king things off me," he growled at the officer closest to him.
The man wiped a hand under his bleeding nose-apparently this was the one Bill"d clocked with his elbow-and glowered. Then the policeman took a deep breath, obviously deciding he might"ve done the same thing had he thought the body of someone he cared about was being loaded into a waiting ambulance, and moved to oblige Bill"s request.
Bill had just enough time to wonder uneasily at the direction of his thoughts-Someone he cared about?-when the handcuffs disappeared and his mind blanked because...heaven. She was safe in his arms, warm and alive and breathing his name into the s.p.a.ce where his T-shirt ended and his chest began.
"What happened here, Eve?" He dipped his chin to whisper against her ear, the delicate sh.e.l.l felt baby-soft against his lips, and the subtle smell of her lotion elicited an ill-timed response from the imbecile housed behind his zipper.
For the love of G.o.d, nuclear bombs could be exploding around me and being this close to Eve would still have me springing a chubby.
She pulled back, and he recognized the look on her tear-soaked face. He"d seen it plenty of times in the killing fields of this war or that conflict. It was a combination of shock and horror...and guilt. And it was enough to take the edge off his unrepentant libido.
"Th-that was s-s-supposed to be me." She nodded toward the ambulance, her expression caving in on itself, her slender form quaking like a rickety telephone pole on the edge of an immense fault line. "They c-came here for m-me."
Supposed to be her? What?
"What do you mean?" he demanded, instinctively thumbing away a glistening tear from her smooth cheek, growling when he noticed the circle of angry bruises darkening up around her neck making the white of her pearl pendant stand out in harsh contrast. He"d seen that before, too. Some sorry sonofab.i.t.c.h had tried to strangle Eve. Some sorry, dead sonofab.i.t.c.h should Bill ever find him and get his hands on him...
"Th-the men who killed Buzzard," she choked. Buzzard? He glanced toward the ambulance, then closed his eyes as a wedge of remorse briefly invaded his mounting rage. The rascally biker had been an annoying, charming, and licentious old fart by turns. But he"d been a decent fellow, all things considered. And he"d certainly deserved a s.h.i.tload better than whatever violent end he"d obviously met. "He caught a stray bullet," she went on, and once again his heart stopped cold because...bullet. There"d been f.u.c.king bullets involved? Jesus Christ. "But it was a bullet meant for...for me."
Her voice rose with each syllable, and he knew the sounds of hysteria and shock when he heard them. Soon, she was very likely to either completely lose it or go catatonic. He"d seen both, experienced both, and he wasn"t sure which was better. One allowed the horror to spill out in a vile, endless stream. The other allowed it to slowly simmer until the terror coagulated and hardened into something awful that you carried around inside yourself for life.
Sweet Jesus, how he wished he could take it all away. Just pluck the experience from her psyche and take it into his own, lock it in the box where he kept all his unspeakable memories...
"H-he...he said," Eve stammered, and he could tell she was becoming more and more unstrung with each pa.s.sing second. "He said, there she is and pointed his gun at me. I dove for him. We...we struggled. So...so-" She couldn"t go on, and he did the only thing he could think to do. He pulled her against him again, holding her as tight as he could.
So, whoever wanted to kill her had found her here at Delilah"s? But how?
Confusion and rage warred inside him for supremacy. But he knew neither of those emotions was what Eve needed from him now. So tamping down his desire to ask more questions or just begin to arbitrarily kill everybody she knew for good measure, he cupped the back of her warm head in his palm and tried his best to hold her together because she felt like she was about to blow apart.
Then, she did something so shocking he could only stand there like a friggin" idiot.
She kissed him.
One second the woman"s nose was buried in the crook of his shoulder, and the next second she grabbed his ears and slammed her mouth-her open mouth-over the top of his.
And unlike that girl he"d known years ago, this one didn"t hesitate. There was no slow, tentative tasting, or gentle foray of her tongue into his mouth. h.e.l.l, no. This was the kiss equivalent of zero to sixty in less than a second, and all he could do was blink at her blurry face in cross-eyed confusion for a long moment during which time she kissed him so pa.s.sionately he was surprised he didn"t just melt into a puddle of l.u.s.t around his biker boots.
Eventually, however, instinct and bone-deep hunger took over, and he reached up to palm her tear-wet cheeks, angling her head so he could join in on the two-tongued fun fair they had going.
And, it was confession time again. Because, he didn"t give a rat"s a.s.s that this was undoubtedly one of those instances when a person had mistaken grief for l.u.s.t. He didn"t give a rat"s a.s.s that she"d likely regret this in about two seconds flat...that he"d likely regret it, too. Because for one blessedly pa.s.sionate moment, the past was forgotten. For one brilliant instant, it was just the two of them, locked together, giving in to the flame of desire that"d burned in them since the moment they first locked eyes on each other.
She moved against him, her whole body sinuously sliding, and she was sultry and hot when he pushed his thigh between her legs. And then sanity returned. For her, not for him. He"d have probably laid her down right there in the parking lot if she hadn"t suddenly pulled back, blinking up at him with over-bright eyes and an expression of...
What was that? Confusion? Regret? Horror?
He didn"t have time to figure it out, or to contemplate the ramifications of what it meant to have lost his control around her yet again, because movement out of the corner of his eye snagged his attention. He looked over to find Delilah standing in the doorway of the bar, dried blood streaked down her T-shirt.
She looked like an extra in a slasher film. Scratch that, she looked that the slasher in a slasher film, because her expression was straight-up, undiluted I"m-s.h.i.thouse-crazy-enough-to-kill-someone-right-now. Nostrils flaring, jaw grinding, fists clenching and unclenching, she stepped into the parking lot and started marching stiffly toward Mac.
Oh, d.a.m.n.
Bill knew what was coming before the loud smack of Delilah"s open palm meeting Mac"s hard jaw echoed around the block. The former FBI agent"s head snapped back and to the side, emphasizing the strength of the blow. But no sooner had he shaken off the harsh strike than Delilah was grabbing the collar of his light-weight motorcycle jacket and screaming into his face, "How dare you bring whatever bulls.h.i.t you"re involved in to my doorstep, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d!"
Chapter Twelve.
Eve pushed away from Billy"s warm, rea.s.suring, oh-so-deliciously-solid chest-she could not believe she"d just kissed him or, considering their talk this morning, that he"d actually kissed her back-when she heard Delilah"s words explode into the noisy city air. All the blood that"d been sizzling through her veins because of Billy"s scorching kiss instantly froze into solid red rivers of ice.
No. Oh, no! Delilah couldn"t blame this on Mac. She just couldn"t. This wasn"t Mac"s fault. It was her fault. All her fault...
Without a second thought, she turned and raced toward the tussling couple. Through her tears-was she crying?-she could see Mac dragging Delilah around the corner and into the alley where he wrapped her in a reverse bear hug, seizing her from behind by securing her wrists low across her waist as he bodily lifted her from the ground until all she could do was kick ineffectually as she screamed profanities hot enough to blister the ears off a sailor.
"Delilah," she breathed. Was that her voice? Why did it sound like that? Like it was being pushed through water. "It"s n-not Mac"s f-fault."
But her words were too hoa.r.s.e and too quiet for Delilah to hear, and before she could swallow and try again, Billy stopped a group of police officers from moving in to investigate the commotion. "Gentlemen, my friend back there doesn"t need any help. He"s man enough to handle what she"s dishing; don"t you worry."
One of the officers eyed him skeptically, and Billy made a face. "She"s hurt and grieving," he explained, and Eve knew all about that, didn"t she? "And she needs to take it out on someone. She"s decided to take it out on him." He pointed his chin toward the alley where Mac and Delilah had moved out of sight. "And like I said, he"s man enough to handle it."
The policeman nodded once before motioning for the rest of the officers to follow him to the ambulance.
The ambulance...
Eve winced when the loud thunk of its door slamming shut ricocheted around the parking lot. Holy moly, if there was ever a sound of absolute finality, then that was definitely it. Instantly, her blood thawed, rushing through her system and pooling in her head until she was dizzy.
Don"t look. Don"t look.
But she couldn"t help herself. Turning, she saw a medic hop into the pa.s.senger seat of the ambulance. A heartbeat later, the vehicle"s lights began flashing accompanied by...silence. Deafening, head-splitting, soul-shattering silence. There was no blaring siren or honking horn, just the sad rumble of a big engine turning over and the quiet crackling of tires rolling over rock-strewn pavement.
Which, dear G.o.d, was so much worse.
It emphasized the fact that this was no emergency. That the life this ambulance had raced in to rescue was beyond salvation. That the life had been cut short because somehow, in some way, she had done something to someone that was so horrible they were determined to see her dead.
This is all my fault...
Again, the sentence circled through her overwrought brain, and the shaking she thought she"d finally gotten under control returned with brutal, teeth-clacking force. The urge to scream her frustration and regret and guilt overwhelmed her. It built in her chest, burning like a jellyfish sting as it seared its way up her throat, singeing the tissue in its path until she wondered if she"d ever speak or swallow correctly again. But just before she opened her mouth to let loose with all the dark emotions bubbling and seething inside her, Billy was there, wrapping a steadying arm around her shoulders and bending to whisper in her ear.
"This isn"t your fault, sweetheart," he crooned in his deep, smooth baritone. "The men who did this are the ones to blame. No one but them, you understand me? No one killed Buzzard but them."
And more than his words, it was the feel of his warm breath against the side of her jaw, the smell of him, all b.u.t.tery leather and strong soap, that gave her enough strength to swallow down the scream burning at the back of her throat.
Keep it together, Eve, she coached herself as she rolled in her lips, the world around her nothing but a hazy kaleidoscope of colors through her tears. She wanted to believe Billy. Oh, how she wanted to believe him. Keep it together for Delilah"s sake...
And suddenly she remembered where she"d been heading before the police and the ambulance"s departure distracted her. "We have to go help Mac," she said.
"Like I told the police, Mac can-"
"No," she shook her head vehemently. "Delilah thinks this is Mac"s fault." And there was no way she could allow Mac to take the fall for something she"d done. Once upon a time she might have taken that coward"s way out. But not anymore. And if she had any say in it, never again. Eve Edens was done being a coward.
Grabbing Billy"s big hand, she stumbled across the lot and around the corner of the building to the shaded alley where a set of metal stairs led to a back door on the second story of the bar. The air smelled dank and musty, likely due to the four green trash bins pushed up against the building on the opposite side of the narrow s.p.a.ce. Mac was standing in front of the nearest one, still holding Delilah in a reverse bear hug, and the poor bartender was still whipping around like a sea snake caught by the tail.
"And you!" she shrieked the instant she saw Billy. "You"re as much to blame! Buzzard"s dead because-"
Billy dropped Eve"s hand in order to step up to Delilah. Gently, he placed a palm on each of her red, splotchy, tear-soaked cheeks.
"No," he told her quietly. Just that one word.
But it was that one word, spoken with absolute conviction, that had the fight abandoning Delilah. The kicking and the thrashing stopped, and she hung limp as a rag doll in Mac"s big arms, quietly sobbing.
"Delilah, I"m so sorry," Eve whispered quietly, stepping up to the woman, nodding at Mac to lower the poor creature to the ground. And though the words were heartfelt, they sounded hollow, even to her own ears. Because nothing she could say would ever accurately convey the depth of her remorse.
A man was dead from a bullet intended for her. It was that simple. And that horrible. She knew she"d always carry the guilt of it with her.
When Mac lowered Delilah to the ground, the grief-stricken woman crumpled into Eve"s arms, and Eve choked on the sobs she could no longer hold at bay. It didn"t matter. They were women, so they clung to each other and cried together, taking strength and lending it in the way only the females of the species could do.
Then, after a time, their tears slowed, and Eve blubbered out the truth, "It"s my fault. D-don"t blame Mac and...and Billy. It has nothing to do with them. I brought this to your doorstep. Th-those men came to your bar to k-kill me."
Delilah pushed out of her embrace, rubbing a forearm under her runny nose to blink at her blearily. "I know they did," she nodded, wiping away her tears with a perfunctory swipe of her hand. "I h-heard what that one said when he saw you."
There she is...The words were etched on the back of Eve"s brain with a carving knife.