Colorado 03 Lady Luck (68 page)

And they were smiling.

And it wasn’t the only thing on Chace
Keaton’s face that was smiling.

So when I lost sight of him, it was my turn
to smile.

* * * * *

Angel

One and a half weeks later…

“You are fuckin’ shittin’ me,” Angel Peña
clipped to the DA.

“Nope, failure to appear. Jumped bond,” the
DA replied.

Angel shook his head.

Duane “Shift” Martinez. A pain in his
ass.

“Means your afternoon is free, Angel,” the
DA went on.

Angel didn’t want a free afternoon. He
wanted to sit in the courtroom and watch then testify at Martinez’s
preliminary hearing.

Shit.

“Head’s up, you need to make sure the
paperwork is processed so his bondsman knows real fuckin’ quick
that he’s FTA. He doesn’t get someone out on this guy’s ass right
away, he can kiss his bail money good-bye,” Angel advised.

“No bondsman posts bail without collateral,”
the DA returned.

“Martinez is known to fib about collateral.
The bondsman got dibs on Shift’s Momma’s house, he’s gonna learn
soon Shift has no Momma. I don’t know what he put up, I just know
there’s a twenty-eighty chance he don’t got it.”

“No bondsman is that dumb,” the DA
replied.

“The one who bonded out Martinez is. He’s
already kissin’ ten percent of his bond good-bye ‘cause he needs a
bounty hunter to round him up. Shift was a huge flight risk. He
took flight. This is not a surprise. Martinez perpetrated the
ultimate fuck to his best fuckin’ friend, you think he won’t fuck
his bondsman on collateral, you’re whacked. The longer this shit is
delayed; the more chance Martinez has to get to Mexico.”

Or Colorado but, pray God, Angel hoped
not.

He watched the DA’s mouth get tight.

Then he watched him pull out his phone.

Message received.

Angel jerked up his chin and walked on his
cowboy boots out of the courtroom and through the halls of the
courthouse automatically listing in his head who would get calls
and their priority.

First, Ty Walker.

He was pushing through the front doors of
the courthouse, pulling his phone from his inside jacket pocket
when the drive-by happened.

The automatic weapon fire took down three
innocent bystanders.

It also drilled four rounds into Detective
Angel Peña, the intended target.

He Took That Too

Ty

Ty stood, hip against the kitchen counter,
eating oatmeal and watching his wife shuffle around the kitchen
fixing her own oatmeal and a travel mug of coffee for him.

His eyes slid from her, his torso twisting,
his gaze moving to the latest addition in their house.

Next to the fireplace, a black frame, in it
two sheets of glass and pressed between that glass side by side
were two pieces of paper with the logo of the hotel in Vegas where
they’d stayed when they were married. The first was her note to him
and the second was his note to her the next day.

For reasons he didn’t know and didn’t
process mostly because they were obvious and didn’t need
processing, he carried her note with him every day, in the morning
with his wallet and phone, shoving it in his pocket so his was
ragged and worn. A little over a week ago, Lexie had discovered it.
He was taking a shower after coming back from the gym; she was
sorting out his gym bag after setting his protein shake on the
vanity.

She’d probably handled it numerous times but
his woman gave him privacy, one of the multitudes of things he
loved about her. When he was ready to share, she was there. Until
that time, she gave him space.

Why she unfolded it that night, he didn’t
know or ask. But when he came out of the shower with a towel around
his hips, she was sitting on their bed. Without delay or words, she
lifted up the unfolded note, words out and showed it to him.

Then her other hand came up and she lifted
up an identical piece of paper, this had folds in but it was not
worn and it was his much shorter message.

She’d kept his note too. It only had one
word and two letters on it but she’d kept it.

He felt the roots of that thing inside him
dig deeper. It was embedded in a way it would never go away but
that didn’t mean, frequently, it didn’t push deeper, swell and
spread.

His eyes went from the notes to her.

“I carry it in my wallet,” she whispered,
her head tipped back, her face soft and he knew in about five
seconds she would start bawling.

So he walked to her, carefully pulled the
pieces of paper out of her hand, set them on the nightstand, bent
deep, wrapped his arms around his wife picking her up, planting her
deeper in the bed and then he pulled off his towel.

Then he took his time fucking her.

This was his means to the end of stopping
his woman from crying. It was also, as it usually was, fucking
brilliant.

She didn’t tell him she was taking it to the
frame shop but he came home the night before to see it mounted on
the wall. No one would get it and most would probably look at it
and think it was whacked.

He didn’t give a fuck.

When she wrote her note to him, she was
already falling in love with him. When he’d written hers, he was
already gone. They’d known each other days but, keeping those
notes, they knew. And that frame was a reminder of what they knew
and when they knew it.

Ty fucking loved it.

He didn’t use words to tell her that because
he didn’t need to. He’d frozen when he saw it and when his body was
at his command again, his eyes found hers. He said nothing but held
her eyes until she smiled. He smiled back. Then he went up the
stairs to take a shower and she went to the blender.

“Okay,” she said and he twisted back to see
her screwing the lid on his travel mug, “your assignment today is
to think about something.”

Ty made no response, just shoveled in more
oatmeal.

She grabbed his mug, picked up her bowl of
oatmeal and moved to him, standing close, smack in his space, as
she always did, setting his mug by his hip, as she always did and
lifting her bowl up in front of her, which was new. He didn’t know
if his baby inside her was changing her program or the onset of
winter was. She was eating more. Most nights, she stretched out
beside him to watch TV and crashed within minutes, that was to say,
around seven thirty. Instead of just pulling on her panties when
she’d cleaned up after they were done at night, she tugged on
drawstring shorts and a tee or a nightie and climbed in beside him.
She had on a nightie now and thick slouchy socks. It was November
and they’d already had snow that didn’t go away. She was from
Dallas. Dallas didn’t get snow and the temperatures rarely fell
below freezing. Her blood was thin. She wasn’t used to it. She also
didn’t complain. She knew she would get used to it.

She kept talking. “Supply is exceeding
demand for Dominic at the spa. He rents out his rooms in the back
to the massage therapist and skin technician. The massage therapist
only works part-time and her appointments are now six weeks out.
The skin technician is a little flaky and it isn’t unheard of that
she misses appointments and when she comes in, nearly every day,
she’s usually late so her appointments run late. That reflects on
Nic, not her and he’s not a big fan of that.”

She stopped talking; Ty swallowed the last
mouthful of oatmeal and set his bowl on the counter.

Then he prompted, “You’re telling me this
because…?”

“
I think I want to go to school to do one
or the other or maybe even both. They make three times as much as I
make, I’d never screw over Dominic and they have it sweet. It’s
like, the best job in the world. A woman looks forward to a massage
or a facial; it’s the highlight of her day so, in a way, you giving
it to her makes
you
the
highlight of her day. It’d be cool getting paid to do something
people look forward to, being the highlight of their day and, when
they leave you, they feel relaxed and peaceful. I think that would
be awesome.”

“Do it,” Tyr replied and Lexie blinked.

“Uh… maybe you should think about it. First,
it costs money to go to school. Second, it’ll mean me being away in
the evenings, third –”

Ty cut her off. “Babe, do it.”

“But, we have –”

He lifted a hand, wrapped it around the side
of her neck and asked, “You wanna do this?”

She nodded.

“Do it.”

His woman held his eyes. Then she
grinned.

Then she said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

He gave her neck a squeeze before he
released it but only to move his arm to slide around her waist and
bring her closer, muttering. “Payback is me gettin’ rubdowns from
my wife when I get back from the gym.”

She set her bowl aside, lifted her hands to
rest them on his chest, rolled her eyes and said to the ceiling.
“I’m not even enrolled in classes yet and he expects freebies.”

“God don’t care about me expecting
freebies.”

She rolled her eyes back and retorted, “God
cares about everything.”

That was the damned truth, fortunately.

“All right,” Ty changed the subject,
“somethin’ for you to think about today.”

Lexie tipped her head to the side and asked,
“What?”

“We got a kid comin’, we got a shitload of
money in the bank and still not a small amount of cash in the safe.
The first one comes, we lose our guest room. The next one comes,
you lose your craft room. They get to the point where they can
cogitate, my woman is not gonna let me fuck her the way I like
anywhere but the bathroom. This does not work for me. We need a new
house.”

Her eyes got big and her lips parted before
she whispered, “But I love our house.”

“I do too but it isn’t gonna fit four kids,
us and our sex life.”

It was then her eyes slid to the side and
she murmured, “This is true.”

Ty pulled her closer, her eyes slid back and
her hands slid up to round his neck. “This does not have to happen
now but it has to happen. You need to think about what you want. We
do this; we do it once and settle. We don’t need to be movin’ our
brood all over Carnal as it grows so you find what you like in a
way that you’re gonna like it a good long while.”

“What about what you like?” Lexie asked.

“I got one condition and that is, your ass
in my bed every night. Since that’s gonna happen anywhere we’re
gonna be, the rest of it, I don’t give a fuck.”

That was when he got her soft face, warm
eyes and a sweet, quiet, “Ty.”

“We do it before the first one comes then we
do it soon. It’s your first, you advance, I want you worried about
our kid not movin’. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she whispered, her arms around his
neck getting tighter, her body moving up because she rolled up on
her toes.

“Now, I gotta get to work,” he said
quietly.

She nodded and, still whispering, replied,
“Okay, honey.”

He bent his neck and touched his mouth to
hers. Then he dropped his forehead and touched that to hers. Then
he released her, tagged his travel mug but wrapped his hand around
her hip and gave her a squeeze before he let her go again and
started moving away.

“Later, mama,” he said to the backdoor and
heard said to his back, “Later, baby.”

Then Ty walked out the backdoor, down the
stairs, got in his Cruiser and went to work.

* * * * *

Three and a half hours later…

Ty’s cell rang, he did the drill, looked at
the display, flipped it open and put it to his ear.

“Champ,” he greeted.

“Where are you?” Julius asked quickly, his
voice strange, urgent and Ty felt a whisper of dread snake up his
spine.

“At work,” he answered.

“You haven’t heard,” Julius stated.

“Heard what?”

Julius sucked in breath.

Then he told Ty, “Day before yesterday,
Shift was FTA at his prelim hearing.” Pause then, “My man, this
kicks me in the balls to tell you this shit because I know you got
a relationship with that cop but he was there, Peña, at the
courthouse. When the hearing was cancelled, he walked out right
into a drive-by. He took four. He’s alive but they are not thinkin’
good things and when I say that, he’s already received last rites.
Him still breathin’ is a miracle and that miracle is aided by a
machine.”

Ty was already on the move through the
garage to the office where Wood was in with Stella and Pop.

“Shift do it?” he barked into the phone.

“Was mayhem, the shooter took out three
other people, two survived, one got one right in the neck, bled out
before help arrived. Bystanders were freaked, it happened fast but
they said it was a black man though further descriptions aren’t
great. My guess is, Peña’s got more enemies than just Shift. But
you gotta have this head’s up.”

“Right,” Ty muttered, climbing the stairs to
the office.

“Sorry, brother, wish you and Lexie had a
longer run without shit news comin’ at you,” Julius said
quietly.

“Me too. Thanks for callin’ to tell me,
brother,” Ty replied, opening the door to the office.

“I’ll call, I get any more,” Julius told
him. “Later.”

“Later,” Ty said into the phone, flipped it
shut, looked through the office to see all eyes on him, his intent
to tell them he had to walk to the salon to deliver shit news to
his wife. Lexie’d be pissed if he waited until that night. Peña’s
position elevated significantly in Lexie’s mind since he’d gone all
out for Ty so that meant Lexie’d want their asses on a plane and
she wouldn’t want a delay in that.

But before he could open his mouth, his
phone rang in his hand. He looked at the display and felt his brows
draw together at a number that was local but one he didn’t
know.