Fire Me Up (27 page)

“Hey, boss! We need another warming tray of chicken over at the tent by the stage, we're already down a keg of summer ale at the big tasting station, and Annabelle said the line at the main entrance is starting to get pretty long. What're you thinking?”

Teagan's brain prioritized the information on autopilot as she dished up a pulled pork sandwich and a heaping scoop of coleslaw for the eagerly waiting teenager in front of her. “Here you go, Lucas. When you're done with that, come back for seconds, you hear?” She plucked the next ticket from the queue, turning toward Brennan without even breaking stride. “There are backup trays of food in the kitchen, but check with Adrian or Jesse before you dig into them. If we get low on kegs, Hunter said he'd bring more over—he's at the brewery today until five. And let's get another two volunteers at the door, one to take money and another with water and lemonade to keep everyone cool if there's a wait. Good?”

“I've gotta hand it to you,” Brennan said, after passing the directives on through one of the walkie-talkies they'd borrowed for the fair. “You're an event-planning force of nature. We're barely four hours in, and this thing is already going full throttle.”

“Tell me about it.” Teagan laughed, grabbing a red and white cardboard food tray and filling it with crisp-golden fries and a hot dog from the portable grill before passing it to the young teenaged girl making doe eyes at Lucas. “I haven't taken a breath since we opened the gates at noon.”

“Yeah, well, you might want to gear up. It looks like the local radio station in Riverside is playing the band's new single and telling everyone they're here today.” Brennan gestured to the stage across the parking lot, where a handful of guys in jeans and backward baseball hats were putting the finishing touches on a sound check.

“That and the Twitter blast that Sloane just did should hook us a nice second wave of people for the evening,” Teagan said, filling another ticket. She turned on her heel to keep her momentum going, but was met by a thick chest and a stoic frown.

“You needed this?” Adrian asked, dropping his eyes to the stainless steel warming tray in his grasp. Her heartbeat worked fast in her chest, radiating a solid ache outward from her breastbone at Adrian's closed-off expression.

“Oh yeah, thanks. Down at the tent by the stage. Looks like we're about to get a lot of people incoming. The radio station apparently just gave us a shout-out, so . . .” Teagan paused on purpose, nurturing a tiny glimmer of hope that maybe he'd at least give her a smile.

Negative on the smile, or on emotion of any kind. “Roger that. Jesse and I will turn over another batch of chicken and pork.”

And then he was gone.

“Great.” Gripping her spatula with tight fingers, Teagan reached for the next ticket in the queue, but Brennan's words stopped her cold.

“Gigantor's got his eye on the prize today, huh?” His voice was soft, but the last thing she was in the mood for was yet another man she knew telling her what an epically bad idea it was for her to go with her father tomorrow.

Teagan caged her thoughts, opting for a simple nod. “I guess.” Desperate for something to keep her hands occupied, she reached around him, but her too-hard yank tore the slip of paper curling out from the printer right down the middle. “Crap,” she muttered, fumbling for both halves.

“Okay.” Brennan rounded the corner of the makeshift workstation, turning his palm up to wave his fingers at the shredded ticket and her spatula in a
hand it over
motion. “Even forces of nature need to take a break, and we're about to get weeded. So go. I've got you covered for a few.”

“Come on, Brennan. I don't need a break,” she protested, but damn, he was quick on the draw. How had he moved into her spot so fast? And now he had her spatula, too?

He arched a dark brow in her direction, and wow. Who knew he had such a serious and-I-mean-it face? “I don't care what you do, as long as you don't do it here. I'll even go after you if it makes you feel better. But you need a break.”

“Fine.” Teagan's grumbling gave way to the sigh collapsing from her chest. She could stand to go check on the kitchen anyway, and truthfully, it was past time for her and Adrian to air out this distance between them. “I'll be back in fifteen.”

As Teagan moved through the crowd, she had to admit that despite her unease over Adrian, the rest of the day was a raging success. From the looks of the people spilling down the walkways, eating and laughing and eating some more, that success was only going to grow as the day turned into evening.

Brennan was right, she thought as her chest lightened with a shard of happiness. They
had
planned a hell of an event.

But every last scrap of percolating bliss screeched to a halt as Teagan caught sight of Adrian standing by the roped-off side entrance to the Double Shot. His body language was dialed up to its highest don't-fuck-with-me setting, fists jammed over his jeans-clad hips as if he were ready to use them for more than just posturing. The two guys in front of him looked equally joyless, one roughly the size of a lumberjack, the other half as big but twice as pissed as he pulled his broad shoulders down and back to answer Adrian's defensive stance gesture for gesture. Teagan narrowed her eyes as she peeled off from the crowd and got closer, sweeping the scene in a fast, critical assessment.

Oh God. Was that a gun holstered beneath the big guy's open jacket?

“Sorry to interrupt, gentlemen. I came to check on my kitchen,” Teagan said, not caring one bit that she'd ripped their conversation to a thudding halt from ten paces away. All three men jerked toward her, the two she didn't recognize taking a wary step back at the same time Adrian surged forward, and Teagan's gut twisted with a hard yank.

Both
guys were wearing gun holsters, and neither of the freaking things was just for show.

“Kitchen's fine. Everything's right on schedule,” Adrian said, his voice matching his expression in the perfectly unreadable department. But then he backed it up with nothing but dead air, and
oh hell no
. Something was very wrong.

The smaller of the two men shifted toward her, a polite smile suddenly taking shape on his classically handsome face. “I'm Detective Shawn Winston, Bealetown PD. This is my partner, Detective Brett Allen.” He flipped his badge from the back pocket of his jeans while Teagan's pulse went ballistic in her veins, and it took every molecule of calm she could muster to offer up a pair of steady handshakes.

“Teagan O'Malley. My father owns the bar, and I'm in charge of the street fair. Anything I can do for you?”

“Actually, yes, ma'am, there is. I'd like to ask you a few questions, if you've got a minute.” The detective gestured to the door leading to the Double Shot's kitchen, but Teagan had watched enough cop shows to know the divide-and-conquer routine when she saw it. Until she could figure out what these guys knew and what they were after, she wasn't letting Adrian out of her sight.

Even if he was still impersonating a poker-faced statue.

“Sure thing, Detective,” Teagan said, matching the man's businesslike smile without budging from the pavement. “What do you need to know?”

He hesitated, but thankfully didn't push the issue of going inside. “Detective Allen and I are following up on a phone call we received from the New York Department of Corrections a couple of days ago. From an Officer Ed Piazi?”

Adrian flinched from his post by the side door, so slightly that if she hadn't been standing right next to him, Teagan likely would've missed it.

“Ed Piazi?” she repeated, her brows snapping together for a brief second until her brain slammed to a stop in both recognition and understanding.

Big Ed was calling in the cavalry.

Teagan swallowed past the sandstorm in her throat, zeroing her gaze specifically on the two detectives, because damn it, if she looked at Adrian now, her composure would topple. “I've never met anyone by that name.”

“Mr. Piazi is Mr. Holt's parole officer,” Detective Winston replied, his bluer-than-blue eyes sharpening over her as he took a step closer. “You are aware that Mr. Holt is on parole in the state of New York.”

Teagan's spine snapped to attention at the same time she felt Adrian coil tightly next to her, but she refused to step back in response to the detective's advance. Cop or not, no way was she going to let this walking, talking male-model knockoff intimidate her. Even if he did have a Glock strapped to his rib cage.

Her tone came out nice and fluid, although she deserved an Academy Award for the performance. “I'd imagine there are thousands of people in that situation, Detective.”

“Is that a yes, Ms. O'Malley?”

“Yes,” Teagan agreed after a pause. “I know he's on parole.” As much as she wasn't going to be strong-armed by the guy, going evasive would only rouse suspicion.

Detective Winston nodded at his partner, retracing his steps to give both Teagan and Adrian some space to breathe. “We're checking in with Mr. Holt here as a courtesy to Mr. Piazi. Just to make sure everything's been going as . . . expected since Mr. Holt's injury. He's been working for you in an advisory capacity, is that correct?”

“No.”

“No?” The detective's magazine-cover mouth parted in surprise, and Teagan took full advantage of the chance to scrape together her equilibrium. If Adrian's parole officer was sniffing around for violations, he was going to have to go somewhere else.

“No. Adrian and I are involved on a personal level. He's been giving me advice while I take care of the restaurant on a temporary basis for my father, but I'm not paying him.” She capped off her words with a deep breath and a look dead-center into the detective's eyes. “Adrian doesn't work for me or my father, and he never has. So if Mr. Piazi is questioning the integrity of his work release status, I can assure you, those concerns are baseless. Anyone on my staff will tell you the same thing.”

An interminable minute dragged itself from the clock, then another before Detective Winston finally took a step back. “I see. Well, it looks as if you were right, Mr. Holt. This does change things.”

“I told you.” Adrian's voice sounded rusty from lack of use, but the words panged through Teagan all the same.

“We'll adjust things on our end,” Detective Winston continued over a clipped nod, his cross-trainers scuffing the sun-bleached asphalt as he turned toward his partner. “Just do us a favor, and don't do anything stupid. Thanks for your time, Ms. O'Malley. You two have a nice afternoon.”

Teagan watched the detectives retreat into the street fair crowd, not daring to move an inch until they were both entirely out of sight.

“Adrian,” she breathed, her knees threatening to go on strike as she turned toward the spot where he stood in the doorframe, but he shut her down with one tight shake of his head.

“I need to get back to the kitchen,” he said, the words perfectly modulated and devoid of emotion, but she grabbed his arm to halt him. She'd watched him grow more and more distant over the last handful of days. No way was she letting him cram something like this down. Not when he'd promised they'd get through this together.

“Screw the kitchen. Talk to me.” Teagan stepped into Adrian's path, her palms making a soft landing on the hard plane of his chest. “Look, I know you're still mad at me about tomorrow, but don't keep shutting me out. I—”

Adrian's eyes snapped over hers, and the steel-gray intensity of his stare knocked the breath from her lungs. “You can't go with your father tomorrow, Red.”

“We've been over this. I'm not letting him go do this payoff alone.”

“We
have
been over this,” he ground out, his heart kicking a faster rhythm against her hand from beneath his T-shirt. “Let me go instead so we can end this whole thing once and for all.”

Shock burst out of her mouth in a hard chirp. “Are you kidding me? Adrian, your parole officer sent local detectives to find you,
out here,
to poke around for dirt on your work release. They're begging for a reason to drag you in, and they're clearly watching. I'm not serving you up on a silver platter. I told you . . .” God damn the traitorous waver in her voice. “I won't lose you. I can't.”

For just a breath, Adrian's expression went utterly soft, the hard lines that had bracketed his eyes for the last week straight disappearing as he looked all the way into her.

But then he took a step back, letting Teagan's hands slip from his chest. “Then I guess we have nothing to talk about.”

And as she watched him retreat to the kitchen, the truth hit her like a ten-ton wrecking ball.

Sometimes you could lose someone even when they were standing right in front of you.

Every muscle in Teagan's body throbbed with the burn of complete overuse, but even as she slumped over the end of the bar from her favorite perch, she had to let out a bittersweet smile.

They'd done it.

The street fair had gone well past dark, with the over-twenty-one crowd enjoying the beer and the band until the last song played at around ten
P.M.
Their crew of staff and volunteers had managed to break down the outdoor food service areas with efficiency while the party flowed on. Brennan and Jackson and Shane had taken care of the crowd, while Jesse and Adrian handled the kitchen so she could do the books with her father.

Sixteen thousand, one hundred and forty-seven dollars later, Teagan had finally let out the first honest to God breath of relief she'd felt in over a month. With the cash bundled nice and tight in the office safe and the meeting with Lonnie set, the only thing Teagan could do now was wait out the rest of the night.

And hope that Adrian would start speaking to her again when everything was over.

“Hey.” Jesse's quiet greeting startled her from her reverie, and she shot upright over her bar stool.

“Hey. Is everything okay in the kitchen?”

“Yeah, of course.” Jesse skimmed a hand over his barely there military skull trim, shaking his head as he moved behind the bar. “You ever going to stop trying to take care of all of us?”

“Probably not,” Teagan admitted, her smile as worn thin as she felt.

Jesse fished two bottles of beer from the cooler, liberating the caps with a fast snick of his wrist. “Thank you.”

Huh? “For what?”

“For taking care of all of us. I know everybody gives you a hard time about it. But it . . . means a lot to me. So thanks.”

“Oh.” It was the only word she could manage past the sudden burst of surprise taking over her brain. “I, uh. You're welcome.”

Jesse nodded once, passing one beer over the bar while lifting the other in her direction. “Guess we've earned this, huh? Brennan hit the kitchen a little while ago and told us we'd made enough to pay Lonnie off.”

“Yeah. My father refused to go home and rest until we were sure, but Bellamy was nice enough to stick around and give him a ride.” The sheer exhaustion on her father's face had been plain, in spite of his obvious happiness and relief. He'd agreed to start looking for someone to work full-time in the kitchen in order to lighten his workload, and within a week or two, she'd be back at the station, jawing with her partner, Evan, and driving the ambulance like she'd never been away.

“Well,” Jesse said with a smile. “Here's to good plans in bad situations.”

But before Teagan could get her beer halfway to her lips, Brennan appeared in the doorway from the kitchen, looking as serious as a five-alarm fire.

“You put the money upstairs, right? All of it?”

“Of course,” Teagan said, her palms going cold and slick over the bottle in her grasp. “My father and I put it in the safe about an hour ago, just before he left. Why?”

Brennan's eyes went pitch-black. “Because it's gone.”

“What?” She and Jesse let loose with the startled word at the same time. “That's impossible,” Teagan continued. “I locked the safe myself. Anyway, the side door's bolted and Adrian's in the kitchen. No one could've gotten past him.”

“Adrian's not in the kitchen.” Jesse's words burned a path all the way through Teagan's gut as he swung his gaze between her and Brennan. “He took off about twenty minutes ago, as soon as we were done with breakdown. Said he was beat and wanted to go home. He didn't tell you?”

“No.” Teagan's brain pitched hard as she grabbed for rational thought, for any explanation at all that would make sense.

Oh. My. God.

Teagan flew out of her chair, making it halfway across the floor before even registering her legs beneath her body.

“Jesse, I need you to stay here and finish closing everything down. Shane's still outside, so ask him if he'll stay with you. Brennan, I need you to make sure my father's safe at home. Don't argue!” she snapped as he opened his mouth. “Just do it. And call me the second you get there, do you hear me?”

“What're you going to do?” Brennan asked, but Teagan had already swiped her keys from behind the bar.

“I'm going to Adrian's apartment. He's got a lot of fucking explaining to do.”

Adrian pulled his cell phone from his back pocket, hitting
ignore
to kill the vibration even though the move took a serious potshot at his gut. Replacing the thing in the pocket of his jeans, he shifted the nylon strap of his gym bag over one leather-bound shoulder, doing his best to hide his cast and calm his nerves. The pool hall was exactly as seedy as his gut had told him it would be, and Adrian soaked in a good visual of the building from the neon-lit parking lot, memorizing every exit and each dark corner. No matter how well prepared he was, there were still a hundred ways this could go south—a cold, hard fact he'd known the instant he'd lifted Lonnie's phone number from Patrick O'Malley's cell phone at five thirty this morning. Even throwaway cell phones popped up in a person's call history, and as much as Adrian hated not just his actions but what they would get him for his trouble, he stood by what he'd done.

Teagan couldn't be here. Even if she'd never forgive him for this.

Well . . . if he lived through the night, anyway.

Bulldozing past the thought, Adrian kicked his boots into gear, the steady cadence of his footfall keeping time with his racing pulse. He paused for just a second on the crumbling threshold, closing his eyes and sending up his first prayer in almost a decade.

I get it now,
Nonna.
I love her with no regrets.

A wall of stale smoke and bad intentions hit Adrian in the face as he stepped into the ugly, narrow box of the main room, the muted
click
of the pool balls and the conversations hovering around the tables both halting at his presence. The hitch lasted less than five seconds, but there was no doubt in his mind that every eye in the place was on him, and on him hard. Luckily for Adrian, at two o'clock in the morning, even disreputable pool halls weren't that heavily populated.

“Can I help you?” The bartender crossed his arms over his dingy muscle shirt, his hard-edged expression suggesting that nothing on the planet could help Adrian now that he'd had the balls to walk into this place, but Adrian served up a look just as mean, along with a haphazard shrug.

“I'm looking for Lonnie Armstrong,” he said, angling both his hurt arm and the gym bag against the bar and out of sight.

The bartender's laugh was as oily as it was humorless. “This business?”

“No. I'm here because I like his winning personality.” Adrian pressed forward to cancel out the guy's menacing frown. “Tell him Adrian's here, and I've got what he's looking for.”

At the implication of either money or merchandise, the bartender's eyes narrowed to slits. He picked up a cell phone, swiping at the screen before putting it to his ear. After a minute's worth of muttering back and forth, the guy hung up and jerked his chin toward a narrow hallway lined with cheap, fake, wood paneling.

“Second door on the left. Knock unless you want to get shot.”

Fucking great.

Arian adjusted his leather jacket for maximum coverage before placing his fist dead center in the heavy steel door, and what do you know? It felt pretty good to give the thing a decent whack. He scanned the rest of the hallway, taking in the other two doors marked as restrooms, as well as the crooked exit sign at the very end of the corridor.

After the longest minute of Adrian's life, Lonnie's brother, Trigger, cranked the steel door inward on its hinges. Holy shit, Trigger was still built like every inch of a double-wide trailer, and he stared down at Adrian with a big, fat nobody's-home in his eyes. But it was too late to fall back now, so Adrian jerked his chin to the open real estate over Trigger's massive shoulder and worked up some bark to go with his bite.

“I'm assuming you girls don't want to do this in the hallway.”

A sound that started as laughter but ended in something more like a smoker's hack echoed from behind The Great Wall of Trigger, who stepped back to reveal Lonnie in all his crooked, gun-running glory.

“Well, well. You are just a bad penny, aren't you, Mr. Holt?” Lonnie's hand dropped to the small of his back, just briefly enough to indicate the weapon surely concealed there. “Gotta say I was surprised to get your phone call a little while ago, what with already havin' set up a meetin' with Mr. O'Malley tomorrow.”

He pushed off from the flimsy particle board desk in the back of the office space, motioning Adrian inside as Trigger pulled the door shut with a heavy
bang
. The room barely exceeded storage closet status, topping out at maybe nine feet square and not a window or another exit in sight. Adrian stepped toward the desk, shifting so his back was to the wall rather than the door as he pegged Lonnie with a stare.

“That's me. Full of surprises,” he said, and Lonnie's smile became all teeth.

“I hate goddamn surprises. You're lucky yours involves money.”

Lonnie moved close enough for Adrian to smell the greasy stink of his skin, bringing them face-to-face in front of the desk, and Adrian fought the deep-down urge to lay him out clean. Instead, he loosened the bag from his shoulder and handed it over.

“It's all there. The whole fifteen large O'Malley owes you.”

“You won't mind if I don't trust you,” Lonnie said, pulling back to swing the bag to the desk. He jerked his chin at Trigger, who unzipped the bag and went to work with a cash counter as if it was just another day at the office. Adrian waited out the screamingly silent handful of minutes until the magic number flashed on the digital readout.

But Lonnie never moved his predatory stare from Adrian's face, not even when Trigger gave him the nod, and shit. This was the only time in his life Adrian had hated being right.

“Looks as if we've got a problem, Mr. Holt.”

“You got your money,” Adrian challenged, battening down the this-is-bad flying through his gut.

“Yes. But see, my meeting—my business—was with Mr. O'Malley. And he's not here.”

Trigger's cell phone sounded off in a loud buzz, and Adrian forced himself to stillness as he calculated his next step. “O'Malley's not coming, Lonnie. I told you on the phone—you want the money tonight, you get to deal with me.”

Lonnie's face bent into a frown, but whatever answer he was going to pop off was cut short by the low murmur Trigger put in his ear.

“Well! Turns out you ain't the only one full of surprises, Mr. Holt.” He gestured toward the door, and when a no-nonsense knock echoed through the room, all the air vanished from Adrian's lungs.

“Looks like your girlfriend came to represent the old man.” Lonnie's expression went from dark to deadly in less than a breath. “And if I can't have him, believe me, son, I
will
take her instead.”

 

 

Any hopes that Teagan had held on to for a simple cash exchange were demolished as soon as the flinty-eyed bartender pushed her through the door to Lonnie's office. The bare-bones space couldn't have seen a good cleaning in years, the grime coating the walls like a promissory note of what would happen if you stuck around the place long enough. But she was here to end this, once and for all, tonight.

Relief-tinged anger churned in her belly as Teagan caught sight of Adrian on the right side of her peripheral vision, although she forced her stare forward to the spot where Lonnie stood. Giving Adrian a full look would either blow what little composure she had or tempt her to murder him on the spot, and she couldn't afford either right now. As soon as Brennan had called her to say her father was safe at home and had no clue where Adrian was, she'd slapped the facts together fast enough. But she wasn't going to let Adrian throw his freedom on the line by making this payoff alone.

No matter what it would cost her.

“Aw, look! It's my favorite cherry!” Lonnie stood front and center at a desk by the back wall, wearing a jeans and T-shirt combo that had seen better days and a scummy I-own-you smile that made her want to knock him into next week. “Come on in and have a seat, sugar. You're just in time.”

Teagan took as few steps inside the office as possible, turning her back toward the wall even though it angled her face-to-face with Adrian. “I'll stand, thanks. Since this won't take long.” She gestured toward the stacks of money just behind Lonnie's position in front of the desk. “I see you got the money my father owes you. So we should be square.”