15. Icebox Cake

FIFTEEN

ICEBOX CAKE

I watched as Eric prowled around my tiny pad turning on lamps.

When he was done and focused on me, I asked, “Are you mad?”

He didn’t answer verbally.

He stalked to me, took my hand, lifted it, then rubbed his thumb lightly along the red marks there.

Okay, he was mad.

Truth, I’d been ignoring how my wrists stung from the zip ties, though, the good news was, none of the skin was broken.

“Yeah, my brother is a dick,” I agreed with his nonverbal assertion.

“He couldn’t approach you in the parking lot and say ‘hey’?”

I’d never heard Eric’s voice rumble like that. It was low. It was abrasive.

And it was hot.

“He was teaching me a lesson about my vulnerability as an Angel,” I informed him.

“He couldn’t let you be who you are, do what you need to do, and just look after your ass like my crew does?”

Right.

I parked my car in his garage. He proclaimed himself my “man.” He rolled out to rescue me.

But we were still only days in.

Even so.

I didn’t know the distinction. I already knew I was in love with him, in that first blush, he’s gorgeous, he’s a great kisser, he won’t let me reach too far for my wine, he’ll go out and spend his Sunday looking for my selfish, ungrateful brother, kind of way.

But I was still actively falling for this guy.

I wasn’t sure how that worked. Maybe, if Eric and I went the distance, I’d spend a lifetime constantly falling deeper and deeper for him.

And in that moment, that sounded like a good life plan to me.

“He thinks I’m over-protective,” I shared.

A muscle jumped up his cheek.

Mm.

That was hot too.

“I can’t say I enjoyed tonight’s activities,” I told him. “But at least I know he’s okay, I got confirmation Mountain is impressive, I know where I stand.” I lifted my mug. “And I got cocoa.”

“Where do you stand?”

“Far out of my brother’s space.”

“Jess,” he growled.

FYI: I was falling deeper and deeper in love with his growl too.

Even so, I sighed.

“On the one hand, I see how he thinks my looking after him infantilizes him. On the other, he could just tell me that, not disappear for months only to arrange for me to be kidnapped and act like a dick.”

That muscle jumped again (and yes, this sitch was running rampant, because I was falling in love with that muscle jumping as well, especially since it indicated how he felt about me being jacked around, something I obviously wasn’t a huge fan of, and it felt uber-freaking-nice to have someone I cared about so openly giving a shit about me).

“Tell me about Mountain,” he ordered.

“He’s taller than Mace, bigger than any of you, and it’s all muscle, and he didn’t talk much. And I’ll repeat, he impressed me, and that wasn’t entirely about his muscles.” I thought about it and said, “There were at least two guys with him when he snatched me, one who dealt with Harlow, one who drove the car. I think Mountain sat beside me. Also, there was Jeff, obviously, who I don’t think was with them, but I couldn’t tell, because I was hooded.”

His black eyes suddenly blazed hellfire.

Yikes!

Wrong thing to say.

To tamp down the blaze, I hurried it along, starting with a question. “Didn’t Harlow say anything about them?”

“She reported she didn’t even get a first look. He pulled her away, and then he was smoke. Vaporized into the shadows. She said it lasted maybe ten, fifteen seconds, and in that time, she was neutralized, he was gone, and so were you.”

Okay, so maybe the Shadow Soldiers did know what they were doing.

At the very least, they had clean kidnappings down pat.

I returned to my report.

“I didn’t see the car, or either of the other guys. Just Jeff and Javi. Though, important to remind you, somehow they know I’m an Angel. I also was involved in my convo with my brother, so I stupidly didn’t take time to check out the apartment they took me to.”

“That apartment is Javier Montoya’s ex-girlfriend’s place.”

My brows rose. “Javier Montoya?”

“I didn’t connect with you this afternoon because we got a lock on someone who was willing to talk. Montoya is the product of an NFL offensive lineman’s affair with a woman who was not his wife. Because the man’s a motherfucker, he demanded a paternity test and probably breathed a sigh of a relief when the woman and her son started dropping on and off the grid when Montoya was six, and he no longer had an address to send child support to. Since the age of six, Montoya grew up either in shelters, or unhoused. CPS tried to take him from his mother several times, not only due to their living situation, but also because she has significant mental health issues. But he always ran away from his foster homes and found her. And twice, in his teens, he sprung her from state-run facilities that were nightmares and took care of her himself. In the end, they couldn’t find him, and it’s probably because he hid them both so they wouldn’t. Now his mother is in an expensive live-in facility with five-star amenities up in Flag courtesy of Montoya hunting down and then threatening his dad.”

I’d sensed I liked that guy. Good to know I had decent instincts.

Though, his life was heartbreaking.

“And he knows you’re an Angel because he knows everything that goes down on the street,” Eric finished.

Ah.

I slurped some cocoa.

Eric watched, and after I swallowed, he asked, “Have you eaten?

“Harlow and I shared some of Lucia’s nachos. Have you?”

“Grabbed a burger at Protein House.”

He was still holding my hand, but he’d stopped talking, I stopped talking, and this went on so long, it felt weird.

“Is something else up?” I asked.

“I didn’t connect with you because I was talking with an informant.”

“Okay.”

“Now’s the time when you share why you didn’t connect with me.”

Oh.

“Well, first, I was working. Then I was abducted.”

“Jessica,” he whispered.

“I thought you wanted space,” I said.

“If I want space, I’ll tell you I want space. If you want space, it’d be cool you return the favor.”

Hmm.

“Somewhere between gathering intel and getting a burger you could have dropped a line, Turner,” I pointed out. “We were both working that whole time.”

“I did drop a line. I texted you around the time you got off. That being five minutes before Harlow called Raye, who called Cap who was with me, and then we tracked your phone and went after you.”

“Whoops,” I muttered. “I haven’t had a sec to check my texts.”

“I gathered that.”

“What did you text?” I asked curiously.

“Did you want to come to mine, or did you want a night on your own? Also, that we got a lock on Mountain.”

“I would have gone to yours, because I had nachos, but I learned recently, as in, right about now, there’s always room for leftover pastitsio. But just to say, I was going to text you when I had the chance. However, my plan was to hit the grocery store because I’m making us mocha icebox cake next. It’s probably too late for that now, but even if it isn’t, I’m finding a kidnapping kills the cooking mood.”

That muscle jumped again.

So noted.

Don’t joke about the kidnapping.

Yet.

“Is Stella okay?” I asked. “Daisy says she’s having Rock Chick flashbacks.”

“It’s her opinion I should try to talk you out of being an Angel.”

Well!

From what I knew of them, that didn’t seem very Rock Chickian.

“She got shot in the beginning of her Rock Chick gig,” Eric explained. “A graze, but it was deep. She and Mace were then shot at onstage. That time, they missed. And I could go on. She thinks you women are cool, but she also thinks you’re nuts.”

Well, again!

Eric read my affront.

“In the end, her apartment exploded, and she was holed up in a warzone that was the house where her apartment was located while she, Mace and Mace’s dad were all under heavy fire. They survived that, only for Mace’s dad to be picked off by the bad guy right in front of her eyes. He took that bullet for her. Which meant he died for her, and he did it in her arms.”

Holy fuck .

“So, yeah, she thinks you women are nuts,” Eric concluded.

I’d let her have that.

And I decided again I wasn’t reading those books.

Because…

Cripes!

“We are nuts, just not the bad kind,” I told Eric just in case he was worried.

His gaze hyper-focused on me. “You okay about your brother?”

I was not.

“Jeff has never been a dick to me. He’s obviously been harboring shitty feelings for a long time. I think he’s transferring. He is what he’s always wanted to be now, and I don’t know. I’m not in his head. I’ve never done anything but care. Maybe how I did that was too much for him, but we both speak the English language, so I have no clue why he couldn’t just tell me to back off. But I honestly don’t think it’s that. I don’t know how this shit got twisted up for him, and why it all landed on me, but that’s not my problem.”

I took another sip of cocoa while I watched the banked fire continue to burn in Eric’s eyes.

Then I kept sharing.

“Did what he say hurt me? Yes. Was the abduction way over the top? Yes. Am I still worried about him? Yes. Am I going to back right the fuck off? Yes again. Something else to know about me in our deep sharing, you get to hurt me once. Then I’m done with you. I’ll always love him. And I might get over it. But right now, I’m done with him.”

“I sensed that about you with the unemotional kill shot you delivered your ex. He waited two very long seconds for you to stop him from leaving, and you just stared at him. Then he left and you didn’t even watch him go.”

“You were right. I wasn’t catching his vibe. I’m glad you pointed that out because he needs to move on.”

“And the way you laid into Luna’s sister.”

My lips turned down. “That was wrong.”

“So you know, both you and Luna were right about what I was communicating. I thought it was Luna’s battle, not yours, and you needed to butt out. But also, the woman was obviously begging for a confrontation. She dresses like a hippie, but she’s a drama queen. She feeds off negative attention. It’s her drug of choice. You were giving her her fix, so I was also telling you to chill out. She wasn’t worth it.”

“Whoa,” I breathed at this revelation. “She is a drama queen. How did I not see that? It’s always about the drama with Dream.”

“Shocked as shit that woman is Scott and Louise’s daughter, and Luna’s sister.”

“Do you have a take on that?” I asked.

“On what?”

“Why she’s so different from all of them? You’re also right about the negative attention. Which is weird. It’s not like Scott, Louise and Luna are always rays of sunshine like Harlow.” I reconsidered. “Well, Louise is. But none of them are like Dream.”

He shrugged. “Could be she feels left out because they’re tight. But she’s a grown-ass woman, so she should learn to deal with her feelings without lashing out.”

“No truer words spoken.”

And he had a point about Dream maybe feeling left out.

But I knew for certain Scott and Louise loved both their girls and showed it.

So I reckoned it was more about Dream being jealous of her sister.

“Going back,” Eric took me out of my reverie. “You weren’t wrong calling her on her shit. It’s never wrong to stand up for someone who’s getting beaten down by a bully.”

Aw.

I loved that he thought that.

I grinned at him.

Then I took another sip of my cocoa.

“What’s this about mocha icebox cake?” he asked.

“I’m not sure it’s an actual cake. It’s some mocha mascarpone cream thing sandwiched with chocolate chip cookies that you chill for a long-ass time then eat.”

Eric swiped my mug out of my hand and put it on the coffee table.

“Hey! I wasn’t done with that,” I snapped as he dragged me to the door. When we were out of it, I asked, “Where are we going?”

“To the grocery store.”

I grinned again.

So…totally…and perhaps it would be constantly… falling for this guy .

* * *

My hip was moving.

I opened my eyes.

Eric’s face was close to mine.

“Hey,” I mumbled. “Headed to work?”

“Yeah.”

Catching you up, we didn’t do it. Apparently, getting kidnapped and having your brother be an asshole to you killed your have-wild-sweaty-sex-for-the-first-time-with-your-new-hot-guy vibe.

But that was okay.

Eric and I made the icebox cake. Then I showed him the Barefoot Contessa episode where she made it. Then, although he didn’t confirm he shared this urge, we both struggled with not going and attacking the cake we made before it was fully chilled. I gave him a toothbrush head for my pad. He stripped to his boxer briefs. I took some time to recover from seeing his chest again before I put on my third sexiest nightie (I didn’t want to be a bitch), and we went to bed.

And that brings us to now.

“I’ll cook tonight,” he said.

Dig it!

We had plans!

That said…

“No. I’m on a roll. But in your day’s meanderings, if you run into truffle butter, give me a shout. I’m making mushroom, truffle fettucine.”

“I think my gut needs you to stop watching Ina Garten.”

Like he had a gut. I’d seen those ridges. And the hip dents.

Delicious.

And nice. My have-sex-for-the-first-time-with-your-new-hot-guy vibe was coming back.

He came in to brush his lips to mine, but when he moved away, he advised, “It was fucked up how they went about it, but the lesson to be learned is keep sharp. You women are out there. Get rid of that little bag and take your Taser with you.”

Good advice.

I nodded.

He did the lip brush again, and this time murmured, “Go back to sleep.”

Then he was out of my vision, and not long later, I heard the front door close, so I knew he was out of my apartment.

I was about to fall back to sleep when a thought occurred to me.

No.

An idea occurred to me.

No!

A brilliant idea occurred to me, so my eyes popped right open.

It was such a good one, I threw the covers back and hauled ass out of bed.

I hit the Nespresso, then I hit the toothbrush then I hit the shower.

AJ’s Fine Foods was probably already open. I’d get my shopping done. Then I’d get to work. There, I’d talk to the girls and get my plan in motion.

* * *

The white shoe polish said Tex’s special that day was Gingerbread Rum Raisin.

The drawing was a gingerbread man who looked very angry, and possibly homicidal.

Gingerbread, I could do.

Rum, I could also do (very much).

Raisin, I could do in an oatmeal cookie (maybe).

So I’d skip that today.

I swung into the back door, dropped my bag (my bigger one, with Taser, something Eric returned by leaving it on my kitchen counter that morning) in my locker and announced to the room at large when I hit the main area, “Angels Confab!”

Raye, serving someone a mug of coffee, looked at me.

Harlow, taking an order, looked at me.

Luna, at the espresso machine steaming milk, looked at me.

Tito glanced at me, then he returned to and poked at the screen of his iPad.

I headed behind the bar.

Raye and Harlow joined me and Luna.

I opened my mouth.

I shut it when Tex joined us, his bulk making the space back there, which wasn’t minimal, seem stifling.

“Hey, Tex,” I greeted.

“Yo,” he mini-boomed.

“Um…” I circled a finger among the girls. “We’re having confab.”

“Right,” he said and didn’t move.

Okay.

Tex was going to be in on our confab.

I looked to the chicks.

But Harlow spoke. “Are you okay after last night?”

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Where did you and Eric go after you went in and came out of your apartment?” Luna asked.

“To the grocery store for the ingredients to an icebox cake.”

The chicks stared at each other.

“Are we doin’ boy-girl stuff, ’cause I’m out if we are,” Tex announced.

Since he wasn’t an Angel, I considered lying and telling him we were.

Then I said, “No. I had a great idea this morning to catch whoever is grabbing people from the camps.”

“What’s that?” Raye asked, her eyes lighting.

She started this shit and was our unofficial ringleader, so they would.

“One of us go undercover in a camp,” I announced grandly.

All the women made faces, and I got that, because it wasn’t a super glamorous undercover mission, but Tex leaned back and shared, “Boys already thought a’ that. They’re gettin’ me kitted. And Duke’s flyin’ down. I’m goin’ in tomorrow at your camp, Duke’s going into another one where people have been snatched.”

I blinked at him, and my blink wasn’t about the fact I had no clue who this Duke person was.

Okay, bummed my bright idea was already thought of by the Hottie Squad.

But one could say Tex would definitely melt into that world a lot better than me or any of the girls.

And I’d really like to see what he’d do to someone who tried to snatch him.

Everybody gazed expectantly back at me.

I lifted my hands. “That’s all I had.”

“I have a thought,” Harlow said timidly.

We turned to her.

She bit her lip, took a big breath into her nose and said, “Okay. So, Jess has been hitting these encampments regularly for a while now. And, I mean, before you commit a crime somewhere, you case the joint. Yeah?”

How could she still be adorable when she said shit like “case the joint?”

It was just the way of Harlow O’Neill.

“Yes,” Raye encouraged her to go on.

“So, the bad guys probably keep an eye. They’ve probably seen Jess. They might not know what she’s doing, maybe they think she’s a do-gooder, like Mary did,” Harlow went on.

“Yeah?” Luna prompted.

“So, two things. One, the people in the camp trust Jess, and the baddies have maybe seen her, so they won’t think anything of Jess showing. So maybe she could go in, with us going with her, and ask a few questions. Even the Hottie Squad can’t get them to talk, but maybe Raye could, and maybe they’ve seen something. Something that will give us leads,” Harlow suggested.

And it was a good suggestion.

“Eric and I are having truffle fettucine tonight, but I can be in to do that tomorrow night,” I said.

“Truffle fettucine?” Raye asked.

“It’s all in the truffle butter,” I told her like I knew what I was talking about, when I really didn’t, but I suspected it was a good guess.

“That sounds awesome. I need to share that with Cap. Do you have a recipe?” Raye asked.

“Sure,” I said.

“Focus,” Tex grunted.

Right.

Focus.

“Maybe we should wait for a weekend,” Luna remarked. “Do it during daylight hours. When are more of them around?” she asked me.

“At night.”

“Okay then, we do night,” Luna stated.

“What’s your other idea?” Raye asked Harlow.

“Well, it’ll be boring, but a stakeout.”

Oh yeah.

I liked this idea.

We could get corn nuts and corn dogs, and rounding out the theme, corn chips and salsa and drink lots of coffee to keep us awake and have concentrated girl time before we catch the bad guys in the act.

I was feeling this.

“Cap told me the Shadow Soldiers have cameras on the camp,” Raye noted.

Shit.

There went my corn-snack theme stakeout.

“Cameras aren’t being right there, seeing shit going down and being in a place to intervene,” Luna pointed out. “We don’t have to go up against these guys, but if they grab someone, we can follow them, so we know where they’re taking them, and call the Hottie Squad or the cops to move in. Or at least we could get license plate numbers, so we’ll have a lead.”

Right on!

My corn-snack theme stakeout was still on the table.

“We’d have to find a place, like high ground,” Harlow continued planning. “Where we could maybe watch the bad guys watching the camp. If something goes down, we might not be in position to follow, but if we see anything, maybe we could take pictures so we can show the Hottie Squad and the police, and of course, get license plate numbers. We’ll need to ask Arthur for stakeout equipment, but he’s never denied a request, so we should be set.”

We all jumped, Harlow especially for obvious reasons, when Tex dropped his big mitt on the top of her head and said, “I thought you were a grown-up cheerleader. Like, an airhead.”

I winced.

Raye winced.

Luna’s eyes narrowed on Tex.

Harlow stared up at Tex with his hand still on her head and her mouth hanging open.

“You aren’t. You got chops, Peewee,” Tex concluded.

Peewee?

She wasn’t short.

But she was the shortest of us, and way shorter than Tex, so I could see that.

He took his hand from her head and looked between all of us, ordering, “Go out in twos or more. Always. Get army knives and carry them in your back pockets. That way, you get zip tied, you can get it out and cut yourself loose. Then, you get the opportunity, run. You get in a physical skirmish, go for the gonads, hard as you can. You don’t got an opening, the instep or the butt of your hand to their windpipe. Then, again, run like hell. Fuck it. I’ll get you the knives.” He looked at Harlow. “They got ’em in pink. You want just pink, or pink camo?”

“Just pink,” she whispered.

“I’ll take pink camo,” Raye said.

“Do they have them in orange?” Luna asked.

“Fuck if I know,” Tex answered. “I’ll look. Second choice?”

“Camo, any camo, just not pink,” Luna told him.

Tex looked at me.

“Black,” I said.

He grinned.

I couldn’t tell if his grin was slightly terrifying, mostly lovable, or slightly lovable and mostly terrifying.

He trundled out from behind the bar before I could decide.

Raye closed in. “After our shifts, Luna and me will scout locations to see if we can find someplace where we can watch without people who might be watching the camp knowing we’re watching.”

That was kinda confusing, but I got her.

“Rad,” I said.

“We’ll reconvene tomorrow to figure out schedules,” Raye went on.

“Awesome,” Luna said.

Raye put her hand in the middle of our huddle.

Luna put hers on top.

I put mine on top of theirs.

Harlow came up the rear.

“Angels unite,” Harlow whispered excitedly.

I fought rolling my eyes.

We bounced our hands and broke.

“You women done with whatever the hell you’re up to now?” Byron asked from the other side of the bar.

“Dirty chai refill?” I asked back.

He gave me a Duh! expression and headed back to his booth.

I hit the espresso machine.