In Rides Trouble (Black Knights Inc. #2)(70)

“But I don’t want to dance,” Becky grumbled petulantly as she grabbed on to the edge of the bar, stubbornly anchoring herself there as Eve tried to pry her fingers away.

“We have to dance,” Eve insisted. “That’s why God gave us parts that jiggle.”

“What’s gotten into you?” Becky demanded, one eyelid drooping lower than the other.

“Whiskey.”

“Oh yeah.” Chuckling drunkenly, Becky hopped from the stool, and together the two of them stumbled out to the “dance floor.” For the next few minutes they danced, sang and laughed at the catcalls they received from the peanut gallery like they hadn’t a care in the world. Becky had to shoo away some guy named Buzzard when he came to grind up against Eve, his big beer belly pushing into her back until he almost knocked her over in his fervor.

Just when the song was about to end and she was digging in her pocket for more money to reload the tune, Becky suddenly raised her hands to her eyes, her shoulders trembling.

Thar she blows!

Okay, so they were finally going to get down to the business of what had brought them here, to this seedy bar in a bad part of town in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon.

When Becky called earlier, voice strangely tight, begging Eve to meet her here, she’d dropped everything. Because Becky didn’t ask for help unless the situation was dire, and although Becky’d been all smiles and laughing demands for shots up until this point, Eve knew it was only a matter of time before whatever was tearing her friend apart on the inside broke through to the surface.

It appeared the breakthrough was in full effect.

Finally.

Whew. One more shot and she was sure she’d find herself flat out on the peanut shell-strewn floor. And talk about one place in the world a girl would not want to end up. Especially if she didn’t fancy catching a terminal case of ptomaine or hepatitis.

“Shh.” She wrapped a comforting arm around Becky’s trembling back and started herding her toward the rear of the bar and the booth pressed far into a shadowy corner.

“I…I promised myself I,” hiccup, “wasn’t g-going to do this h-here,” Becky sobbed.

“It’s okay,” Eve assured her and tried to keep them both upright as they unsteadily wove their way around tables and chairs and the occasional five-gallon paint bucket filled with salted peanuts. “We’re almost home free.”

Just as she said it, they reached their destination, and she pushed Becky onto the red vinyl seat of the corner booth before throwing her purse on the table. Sliding in opposite, she was happy to be sitting because the blasted room suddenly decided it was a grand idea to do a slow tilt.

She should not have taken that last shot—or the previous four. She had to grab on to the table to keep from sliding under it.

“I can’t be-believe I’m crying in the middle of Red Delilah’s,” Becky sniffed as she looked around for something on which to wipe her nose. Finding nothing, she used the back of her hand, and Eve figured a good friend would make her way up to the bar and ask for a napkin, but right now she was doing her level best just to remain sitting upright.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, frowning when the second word came out sounding more like dushn’t. “Nobody’s paying us any attention except for maybe that guy.” She hooked her thumb at the man sitting in the booth opposite them. He was wearing a baseball cap that obscured his eyes and most of his face.

Becky swung her bleary gaze over, and something changed in her face, her eyes sharpened. “Hey, you—”

Just as she said it, the guy got up, grabbed his beer and ambled off in the direction of the men’s room.

“Hey!” Becky yelled at his broad back, and Eve shushed her.

“What are you doing? Leave that poor man alone.”

“I think I know ’im,” Becky said, shaking her head. “He’s ex-CIA, and he’s been hangin’ around here and…oh, what does it matter?” She moaned before planting her forehead on the table in front of her.

Ex-CIA? Mr. Baseball Cap? He certainly didn’t look like any government agent Eve’d ever seen. Where was the black suit? The dark shades? Of course, she’d recently learned a man’s appearance meant nothing when it came to his job, because Billy was apparently some sort of government agent and he looked more like a poster boy for the WWE so, like the saying went, there’s really no telling a book by its cover.

Billy. Oh, dang. She wasn’t going to think about him, because then they’d both be bawling their eyes out.

She reached across the table to pat Becky’s shoulder. “So, come on, spill. Why’d you invite me here?”

“We did it last night.”

“Huh?”

“It, it, it! Me and Frank.”

“Oohhhh.” Eve was strangely sober all of a sudden, or maybe she was just strangely somber. It was hard to tell…

“Yep. Oohhhh is right.”

Eve couldn’t imagine. The man was so big and…scary-looking and…big. “So, uh, how was it?”

Becky glanced up, her brown eyes bloodshot, her eyeliner smeared until she resembled a drunk raccoon. “Wonderful…awful!” She groaned again and replanted her forehead on the table.

“Well, which was it? Wonderful or awful?”