2. We Doin’ This?
2
WE DOIN’ THIS?
Diana
I drove home from Dad’s office pretending I wasn’t being tailed.
Mortifying Fact : One could say I’d been overly emotional when I decided to wade into the whole Suzette Snyder / Imran Babi? situation.
Or , perhaps, highly delusional.
I’d read in the Arizona Republic about the woman who’d all but dragged herself into a hospital emergency room after a brutal attack.
At the time, I couldn’t say I had much of a reaction to it, except vague distress, considering the appalling fact it wasn’t a rare occurrence, and as such, I , along with the rest of society, was inured to that kind of thing.
I’d then heard she’d named her attacker, he’d been arrested, and it was big news, because he was reportedly some Tony Soprano -esque player in Phoenix , and due to that fact, his arrest was a big win for law enforcement.
After that, I’d read my father was taking his case.
I’d successfully avoided my father for a long time.
The only thing that leaked in was when he defended Rogan Kirk after he stole all those people’s pensions a few years ago, and that, too, was big news, so Dad was in front of the cameras a lot.
But I could ignore that, because Rogan Kirk was just a greedy jerk who stole from people.
Not a sexual predator who stole even more precious things from people.
So Dad taking this particular case was when things got overly emotional (or delusional, take your pick).
Alas , yes, I knew I was not only regularly tailed, they’d had eyes on my condo since I’d moved Suzette into it (don’t ask how that happened, it involved some Google sleuthing that wasn’t all that appropriate, some fancy dancing with hospital staff, some girl-to-girl conversations that might, on my part, have been mildly manipulative, and some angry cops who felt it was their responsibility to provide protective custody for Suzette —one in particular, Detective Rayne Scott , was not over it and frequently phoned me in an effort to change this situation).
I didn’t lie to Dad about the security in my building.
I had a great job, even if it would never make me a millionaire. Still , it was a niche market that served rich people who paid for the care and conservation of stuff that mattered to them, and they paid a lot for it.
Experiencing a rare wild hair, a few years ago, I’d let some video poker winnings ride on thirteen black on a roulette wheel at Talking Stick Casino , and to my shock, when the little ball dipped down into that particular slot, I won a crazy amount of money.
Immediately after, I cashed out. And as one who had learned not to push her luck (except for when, say, I got another wild hair and decided to stick my nose into the dangerous situation of a woman I’d never met), I walked away from the casino, never to return to it, or any casino, again.
This , along with the nice, but not outlandish, inheritance Gramps left me, gave me a down payment that would make the mortgage (and ridiculous HOA fees) manageable in a really nice condo complex close to Fashion Square Mall in Scottsdale .
There was security in the form of actual security guards patrolling the premises.
Also , you had to have a key fob to get into any complex elevator vestibules, not to mention to get the elevator to take you to your floor (and your fob only worked for your floor) or into a stairwell.
So there was that.
Moreover , the place was lousy with cameras, and I had a security system in my unit.
And after Suzette moved in, I’d had one of those steel bars installed on my door, the kind with two thick plates, and when you hit a button on the center knob, they slid into anchors on either side of the door. It wasn’t pretty, but considering my door was heavy-duty anyway, it would make it hard work to get through.
This was no lock-picking situation. You could only open that thing from the inside or with a remote.
This did not make us impenetrable.
What it did was demand a good deal of effort from someone who was trying to break in, and that effort would need to be noisy and violent. This would give Suzette or me a definitive heads-up and the chance to call the cops before they were able to get through.
As such, Suzette hadn’t left my condo since she moved in. Not even to sit on one of my two balconies (one off the living room, one off my bedroom), each having views to the massive courtyard.
This was because the lower level of the complex was all businesses open to the public. There was a sandwich shop, a nice restaurant, a brunch café, a coffee bar, a neighborhood pub, a cocktail lounge, a hot-yoga studio, a Pilates place, a cute boutique, a hair salon and a day spa, among other things.
Some of this had outdoor seating.
And yes, I’d noticed from my balcony there were men enjoying lattes lounged in that seating, and they had eyes to my unit. Not all the time, but it wasn’t infrequent.
They weren’t making a show of it, but they weren’t hiding it.
They were watching.
What got into me to get involved in this tense situation, I wasn’t quite sure.
It had been a rocky road at first when I’d quit school and gone out on my own.
Gram and Gramps had helped, Mom had provided moral support from afar, but mostly, I was determined to make it under my own steam. It was multiple-jobs, burn-the-midnight-oil, get-so-exhausted-you-felt-you’d-never-be-refreshed-again, have-zero-days-off-from-work-school-or-study-for-an-entire-eighteen-months-at-one-point kind of determination.
I could not deny some of this was about Dad . About showing him, even if I was intent never to see him again. About proving not only myself, but something about Mom that I didn’t quite get, but I knew it was there.
He was a terrible father, but a great motivator.
This sitch with Suzette was something else entirely.
It was scary, stupid and dangerous.
But Suzette agreed with me. I was the wall she could hide behind that Babi? wouldn’t tear down. She’d been clear about what happened, and her many injuries corroborated those facts. There was DNA collected from under her fingernails along with seminal fluid (that had not yet been tested, but it would be incontrovertible when it was).
Because of this, Babi? really, really needed a very good attorney.
Last , Babi? really, really, really did not need any more problems with the law, or bad PR , and the death of his accuser, and anything happening to the woman who was offering her protection, would be pretty damned bad PR , and would lead to more pretty danged serious problems with the law.
In other words, Suzette was understandably being a little nuts because she’d been through hell and maybe wasn’t thinking straight.
As for me, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.
What I did know, and what troubled me greatly, was that I , too, was not thinking straight.
I parked my little, baby-blue Fiat 500 (satirically, but adorably, I’d named her “ Baby Shark ”) in my underground spot and grabbed my keys, primarily the hand-held Mace on my keychain. I flicked open the snap on the strap that kept the button covered, palmed the tube with my thumb on the button, took a look around through windows and mirrors, and only when I saw nothing, I got out.
I kept alert on the way to the parking level elevator lobby. I fobbed myself in. I called the elevator. I got on the elevator. I fobbed my floor.
And then I let out a sigh of relief as the doors started closing.
Only to have a man slip through.
Then another.
And another.
And a last.
Suddenly occupying the elevator with four large, rough-looking men, I opened my mouth to scream and lifted the Mace to press, but the second guy through, a very tall, brawny man with lots of wild, wavy, thick blond-brown hair and a massive beard, came at me.
Quick as a flash, he caught the wrist of the hand in which I was holding the Mace , and he redirected the aim away from him (or any of them). He then squeezed my wrist firmly, but not painfully, and yanked the canister out of my hand.
Well , that was humiliating.
And alarming.
He then bellied up to me, forcing me to the back of the elevator. He dipped his head down. His dark-brown eyes locked to mine, nothing touching me except his hand still at my wrist.
And he spoke.
“ You’re safe. We will not harm you. I’m Hugger . With me are Eight , Muzzle and Cruise . We share a Bosnian problem and we think we can help you out.”
Oh .
Well then.
The elevator doors closed and we started to ascend.
He let me go and stepped back.
I cast my eyes through the men.
Hugger was tall, but one of the others was taller, as in crazy-tall. The final two were also quite tall, one had a man-bun and a hint of a beer gut, the other one was just good-looking (as were Hugger and the crazy-tall dude).
They did not look like the shiny-golf-shirt-and-slacks-wearing gangsters who drank lattes and kept an insidious presence in the courtyard.
They looked like men who didn’t know what golf shirts were, and I would lay money down none of them owned a pair of slacks.
“ I’m a brother of the Chaos MC in Denver ,” Hugger carried on as the elevator went up. “ Eight and Muzzle are brothers of Resurrection MC . Also in Denver . Cruise is a local, and he’s Aces High .”
“ MC ?” I asked.
“ Motorcycle club,” he answered.
That explained the no-slacks-owning.
“ And what problem do you have with the Babi? ?” I asked.
The elevator doors opened.
The three other men filed out.
I stood in the elevator with Hugger .
The super tall one kept his hand on the door so it would remain open.
“ We doin’ this?” Hugger queried.
“ What does ‘this’ refer to?” I returned.
“ Talking , explaining, and us offering you and your girl protection because you by no means got that buttoned up,” Hugger replied. “ They’re casing you. They’re figuring shit out. They’re making plans. And they’re gonna put them in play when they think they can get the job done without blowback.”
Thus my need to layer concealer under my eyes due to missing sleep because I knew this exact thing was what was happening.
I stared at Hugger .
If he didn’t look so serious, he’d be cute.
There was a lot of handsome under all that hair.
So much of it, even all that hair couldn’t hide it. Straight , strong nose. Thick , curling, dark eyelashes. Full , ridged lips.
But with all that hair, and his big bulky body, he was the kind of guy you wanted to tease you while you pretended it annoyed you, but you secretly loved it. The kind of guy who would chop onions beside you while you seasoned the meat. The kind of guy who would open his arms in invitation so you could curl up on his lap and he’d make you feel better just by engulfing you in him after you had a bad day.
In other words, cute.
He might not be into excessive grooming (or any grooming at all), but he was fit. He was wearing a Rage Against the Machine black tee, faded blue jeans and black motorcycle boots, but they were all clean.
And he smelled of a hint of clove, a hint of sandalwood and the barest trace of citrus—warm, outdoorsy and fresh, which seemed to define him completely, even if I knew nothing about him.
A quick sweep of the other three said much the same thing ( sans the scent, they weren’t close enough I could smell them).
I made another important decision that day and stepped through the doors.
Hugger came out after me.
I stopped just outside and didn’t move.
Neither did they.
“ There are cameras everywhere,” I told him (or them, but I directed it at Hugger ).
“ We know,” he replied.
“ We’re having this chat here. I’m not letting you into my place until I understand what’s going on,” I shared.
“ Acceptable ,” Hugger grunted.
“ Okay then,” I continued. “ What’s going on?”
“ Babi? got a hankering for the president of the Aces High MC’s old lady. He kidnapped her to share this info,” Hugger stated.
That fucking guy.
“ Ugh ,” I muttered.
“ She was unimpressed with his attention, and that was communicated. He then began to fuck with other old ladies of Aces . Leaving notes on the windshields of their cars. Sending them flowers and gifts at their work and homes. Subtle shit that’s not illegal, but would mess with their heads,” Hugger continued. “ And it’s messing with their heads.”
“ Ugh again,” I said.
Hugger ignored my utterance.
“ Somehow , he got hooked up with a biker bunny who has a beef with Aces ,” he carried on. “ She’s cousin to an old lady of a brother of Resurrection .” Hugger tilted his head to the super tall guy and the one standing next to him who didn’t have a man-bun. “ And for some reason, this has translated to him having an interest not only in Aces , but Resurrection and Chaos . We don’t know why. We just know no good can come of it. That’s why me, Eight and Muzzle are down here. To work with Aces to find out.”
“ And Suzette factors into this…?” I trailed off in my prompt, and then I stiffened and fought taking a step back when he answered, but his tone had deteriorated significantly.
“ Suzette factors into this first, because we are not okay with any motherfucker doing what he did to any woman,” Hugger gritted. “ But he did, and that shit cannot go unanswered.”
Even if I agreed with him, I swallowed nervously, not only at his tone, but the sheer wrath that glittered in his dark eyes that accompanied it.
“ Side benie of that, she takes him out, it makes his operation vulnerable,” he continued. “ We can then neutralize it before they fuck up anyone else’s life. So she needs to stay healthy because she just needs to stay healthy. But also so she can testify and get his ass in a cage.”
“ As you obviously know, we share the same goal,” I told him.
“ Yeah , we know that,” he replied.
“ Though , I’m not sure what you can do to help,” I said.
He blinked.
Then he stared hard at me.
After that, his brown eyes swept me top to toe. Twice .
I knew what he saw.
I was in cropped, white jeans, muted gold pumps and a lightweight, pink, man-tailored shirt. I was also carrying a sleek, rose-leather tote.
Further , I was five six. I was an ice cream, frozen custard, pie and cookie aficionado, and I wore the evidence of that on my ass (also my tits, and okay, maybe my thighs and belly too).
Assisting that situation, I didn’t adhere to taco Tuesdays . Tacos for me were good any day of the week. And my stylist (who happened to have a chair in the salon in the forecourt of that very complex) was a master with the balayage, and as such, my dark hair had golden highlights added by the hand of an artist. But it was my hand that put the perfect, soft, beachy waves in the long tresses.
What could I say?
I could do good hair.
I also was a dab hand with makeup.
Neither were hobbies of mine.
Both were leftovers of being the daughter of a father who drilled into me that appearances meant everything, and furthermore, I reflected on him, and that reflection better be positive, so I got good at doing both.
Now , it was just habit.
What I did not look like was a badass bodyguard or kickass commando.
He didn’t look like those either.
He looked exactly like what he was, a biker (though, without the leather jacket or vest I saw club members wear on the streets of Phoenix , which was a biker haven, considering you could ride all year).
But seeing as he had to be at least six three, and the impressive bulges at his biceps and the sinews and distended veins on his forearms were clearly not just for show, I suspected he was far from a pushover.
Same with the other three dudes (though, man-bun guy appeared a little older, but not by much, and I wasn’t fooled by his mini beer belly for a second).
“ Not sure why you put yourself in this, Diana ,” Hugger spoke again, and I returned my attention to him when he did, and not only because he was talking.
Oh no.
It was because he said my name.
And it wasn’t because he knew my name, which was a little disconcerting, seeing as I hadn’t introduced myself.
It was that in his deep, masculine, attractive voice he said my name , and I was a little freaked I had a physical response to him doing it.
A highly pleasant one.
He was not at all my type.
So what was that?
“ And the security in this building is tight,” he went on. “ But I don’t think you understand the severity of what you’re dealing with.”
“ When I met her, she was two weeks out of the attack,” I said quietly, “and she still looked like she’d been dragged behind a truck for ten miles. I know the severity of what I’m dealing with.”
At receiving this knowledge, Hugger’s eyes got that scary glint again, but he quickly powered through it.
“ You gotta know you don’t have the resources to see this through,” Hugger rejoined.
“ And what resources are you offering?” I asked.
“ Safe house,” he responded.
I shook my head.
“ Not for you to decide,” he stated shortly.
“ You’re right. It’s Suzette’s ,” I agreed. “ But I can tell you, she feels safe with me, and I can’t go with her to a safe house. I have a mortgage to pay.”
At this juncture, the very tall dude joined our convo.
“ Maybe you can explain why she didn’t accept protective custody from the cops,” he suggested.
I looked to him. “ She thinks Babi? has someone, or someones plural, on the inside.”
This was true, and it was how I could manipulate her (mildly) into coming to stay with me.
Man -bun guy now spoke. “ Your father is Babi?’s attorney. Wanna explain that?”
Ah , so they pretty much knew everything, which obviously would include my name.
So I wasn’t being quick on the draw, sue me. I’d never been cornered by a pack of bikers before. I was learning that threw you off your game.
“ Until today, I haven’t spoken to my father in ten years,” I told them something they clearly didn’t know.
They all looked among each other at that.
“ It’d be good to know why you’re in this at all,” the last guy to speak, spoke.
“ I’d explain that if I knew myself,” I said honestly. “ I don’t. I heard about what happened. I knew nothing about Babi? , though I also heard he’d been arrested. But when I saw my father, who, I’ll warn you, is very good at what he does, was going to defend him, I felt compelled to…get involved.”
“ By putting yourself in the path of a criminally insane lunatic?” Man -bun guy demanded to know.
It was a good question, one with no good answer.
“ I will admit, I may not have been thinking clearly,” I confessed, not about to share it was more about being overly emotional . “ But I did it and we are where we are, so the reasons why we’re here don’t matter.”
I felt Hugger’s attention, so I turned to him, only to wish I didn’t because I suddenly felt naked. Like he could see every inch of me, not just on the outside, but deep down, places I didn’t even dwell, and by no means did I explore.
Therefore , I quickly turned my eyes away.
“ If she won’t do safe house, or protective custody,” the tall one said, “then it’s about security. A man in your place and patrol outside it.”
A man in my place?
“ You mean, a man staying in my place with Suzette and me?” I asked to clarify. “ Or a man to take my place?”
“ Although you bein’ nowhere near this shit would be optimal, if you won’t relocate, then you’re getting another roommate,” Hugger decreed.
Oh boy.
“ Listen —” I started.
“ No ,” Hugger bit out so sharply, it cut like a razor.
I felt that pain, so I shut my mouth.
He then laid it out.
And me while he was doing it.
“ You got no idea what you’re doin’. You don’t even have any idea why you’re doin’ it. We got muscle. We got guns. We got manpower. We got a stake in this. And we got experience. You either got an axe to grind or something to prove to your pops. You gotta work that out, but not at the expense of a woman who needs someone looking out for her, not whatever she’s workin’ out for herself. You got her to the point she feels safe with you, whatever. We’ll take your back too. Now you’re gonna walk us into your crib, introduce us to Suzette and tell her you recruited reinforcements. And we’re gonna take it from there.”
“ Excuse me, but this isn’t about me at all,” I snapped.
“ It isn’t?” he bit back.
That hit uncomfortably close to the bone.
“ Maybe why I started it, but it isn’t where it’s at now,” I retorted.
“ Bullshit ,” he shot back.
He was a little right and a lot wrong.
The wrong part pissed me off.
“ You’ve known me maybe five minutes,” I returned. “ You can’t make those judgments about me.”
“ Remember that part I said about experience?” he inquired sarcastically.
“ Yes , I do,” I replied. “ And maybe you’ll explain that, since you’ve shared only you’re members of motorcycle clubs, not top-notch security consultants or behavioral scientists.”
He leaned his strapping torso back, and asked, “ You think you got this?”
“ No , I do not. But tell me, if you were me and four dudes cornered you in an elevator and offered assistance, out of what apparently is the goodness of their hearts mixed with some vague camaraderie with the victim of a violent crime, and you’d promised a woman you’d do what you could to keep her safe, would you let those four guys waltz in and take over?”
He swung a long arm out to indicate the others and replied, “ They looked like us and were offering when you got nothin’ to offer, fuck yeah, I’d let them waltz in and take over.”
He had a point.
“ Again , it’s not this woman’s choice,” man-bun guy said. “ It’s Suzette’s .”
It was, damn it.
Don’t get me wrong, these men showing out of the blue was a gift from God . Especially if there were more of them.
I wasn’t a fan of the “we got guns” assertion, because I wasn’t a big fan of guns. Though , I suspected Babi? and his boys had them, so at least that evened those odds.
I also was a little confused about the “we got experience” portion of his litany.
But I’d texted Suzette when to expect me home. She was expecting me home. I didn’t want to worry her and this was waylaying me from getting to her so she wouldn’t worry.
I had another decision to make, and it was a big one.
I wasn’t really sure what was going on.
What I was sure of was, if Babi? made his play, I did not have the skills to counter it.
These guys might not either, but it was evident they’d be better equipped than me.
Shit .
“ Let’s go meet Suzette ,” I muttered.
Hugger glowered at me.
Man -bun grinned.
Tall guy looked to his boots.
Other guy let out an impatient breath.
I turned and led them down the hall to my door.