Rock Chick Renegade (Rock Chick #4)(92)

“Indy, Jet and Roxie coming?” I asked.

“Negative, sister. They’re spending the day with their men.”

I felt a stomach twist.

“See you in ten,” she said in my ear.

I flipped the phone shut, beginning to get good at ignoring the stomach twist and I sat on the floor beside Heavy. He pulled at a lock of my hair. I looked up at him. He winked at me.

My stomach twist felt a little better at the wink but my eyes got blurry.

Then a knock came from the backdoor.

“Jules?” Nick called from there.

“We’re in the living room,” I called back.

* * * * *

I swung into the black Explorer next to Luke.

Luke stared at me.

“Ready,” I informed him, buckling in.

“You wearin’ purple pants to a takedown?” he asked, eyes on my thighs.

I looked down at my cords. They weren’t purple, as such. They were more like a lavender-ish gray. I also had on my black cowboy boots, a black belt, a dusty gray, thick knit, long-sleeved tee with a hood and my black leather blazer. The hood of my tee was over the back collar of my blazer.

I thought my outfit was kickass, especially putting it together after two in the morning with only five minutes to do it.

One look at Luke said he didn’t agree.

“Just drive,” I said.

He drove but he drove with a grin on his face.

We went to the old Stapleton airport area. Not the ritzy part that had been redone, the shitty part that hadn’t.

“What’s the deal?” I asked on the way.

“Skip. High bond, means the bondsman’s out a whack if we don’t pull him in. Name’s Warren. Total scum. He’s a dealer and a pimp. More the second, keeps his girls high and workin’ for him doin’ the first. You know him?”

I shook my head. “No,” I said.

“I got a taser for you,” Luke told me. “Please tell me you got your gun somewhere in those purple pants.”

I pulled it out of my back waistband and showed it to him.

“You need a holster,” he said to me.

I nodded thinking of going shopping at Zip’s tomorrow night. A holster would be dead cool.

“Ike’s on him. Says he went into a house and hasn’t come out. Called backup. Warren’s a mean motherf*cker and usually not far from his gun.”

I nodded again, rethinking my excitement at a ride-along for a takedown.

We stopped in a not-so-good neighborhood. The second Luke cut his lights, my door was thrown open. I jumped and twisted in my seat.

“Calm, Law,” the man said and since Luke didn’t shoot him or anything I figured he was one of the good guys.

He was Vance’s height, bald, lean and wiry and from what I could tell in the dark, black with light skin. He had a killer tattoo slithering up his neck from the collar of his black tee.

“I like your tattoo,” I told him.

“You haven’t seen it all yet,” he told me.

He’d said “yet”.

Hmm.

“Do all of you guys flirt rather than just talking like normal people?” I asked who I assumed was Ike.

“Mace doesn’t flirt,” Ike told me, stepping out of my way so I could get down.

“I don’t flirt either,” Luke added coming around the back of the Explorer, attaching a fully loaded gunbelt to his hips.

I whirled on Luke. “You’re the King of Flirt! You flirt all the time.”

Luke’s eyes sliced to me. I could feel them hot on me in the dark.

“Maybe you wanna call Warren. Tell him we’re waitin’ out here to take him down. Give him a good chance to load up his gun so he can blow our brains out?” Luke asked after my outburst.

Okay, so maybe I was a bit loud.

“Sorry,” I whispered.

I looked at Ike. Ike was smiling.

Damn.

I was screwing up my first takedown.

“He’s got a couple women in there and Barry White’s playin’. He can’t hear a thing,” Ike informed us.

Ike and Luke looked at each other. All of a sudden they seemed pleased about something.

Then Luke’s eyes cut back to me. “Keep quiet and stay behind me,” he ordered. I nodded and he handed me a taser. “We try for alive when we’re bringin’ ‘em in. Dead is a last resort,” Luke went on.

Yikes.

I nodded again. Then we moved in.

As we approached a house a couple doors down from where Luke parked, Ike disappeared, vanishing into the night. Luke walked right up to the door, bold as brass and something about the way he did it was way, f**king, cool.

I could hear Barry White crooning inside the house.

Luke shoved me to one side of the door. I had my gun stuck into my waistband at my left hip and the taser in my hand.

Luke pounded on the door and shouted, “Bond enforcement.”

Then after waiting about three seconds, Luke put the sole of a boot to the door by the handle and it popped open. Then he disappeared inside. I followed him.

It was dark and I could barely see but Luke moved through the house liked he’d been there hundreds of times before. I kept my eyes on his back and moved behind him.

There was dim light coming from a hallway, the source of Barry White. We went down the hallway and then into a room lit with candles and lamps with scarves over them. Luke stopped just inside the door silent, still, watching.