Page 9 of Back in the Saddle

I glared at him.

Something shifted in the way he was looking at me as I did.

Something big and important and consuming.

So much of all of that, it made me stop glaring and start staring, at the same time trying to get a handle on just what that shift was.

He then muttered, like he was talking to himself, “Shit, I’m fucked.”

And he had to be talking to himself, because I sure didn’t know what he was on about.

He then bent, nabbed the sharps container and sauntered to his truck.

And one could say the man couldsaunter.

Whoa.

I shook my head to get myself together because I’d just learned, no matter how good he could saunter, Eric was a dick (yes, I was ignoring the fact he was out there to talk sense into me, because what I was doing, especially at that hour, truly wasn’t all that safe).

It was time to head home.

It was, because, in a few hours I had to get up, alone, and figure out how to roast a turkey breast, make some mashed potatoes and dump a can of soup into some green beans, then pick a movie I could watch that wouldn’t make me feel like a total loser because I was all by myself on Thanksgiving.

* * *

I pulledinto my parking spot at the Oasis, my apartment complex, and it was only then the SUV, which had Eric’s glorious ass in it that followed me all the way home, motored out of the parking lot of my apartment complex and turned right on Seventh.

“Overachiever,” I mumbled as I hauled my ass out of my car.

I went through the security gate, and even the courtyard of the Oasis, which was usually lit up with attractive string lights and the pool illuminated—always a cozy welcome home—due to the hour (and the fact the pool was being resurfaced) was dark and forbidding.

Like my mood.

I jogged up the steps, passed Raye and Cap’s place, then let myself into mine.

I switched on the light on the table by the door and then let out a small scream.

A very pretty Black woman about my age, wearing a pair of sandy-white satin parachute pants and a stark-white cashmere turtleneck, was sitting on my couch.

This outfit was the shit, and I instantly made a mental note to find those pants, at the same time I prayed they came in black.

I knew immediately who she was, even if, until that moment, I’d never met her.

Her name was Clarice, and she was the middleman for someone Raye and Luna referred to as Arthur.

She was also the wrangler of the Avenging Angels, of which, along with Raye, Luna and Harlow, I was one.

Whoever this Arthur was had given us three cars in three storage units and an array of equipment that ranged from Tasers to handcuffs to white boards in order to conduct our (yes, vigilante) investigations.

When Raye and Luna recruited us, I was all in, mostly because those two were crazy bitches, and they were trying to find missing women.

I honestly didn’t think much would come of it. But your girl goes on a mission, and that mission involves her navigating the seedy underbelly of Phoenix? You don’t ask questions, you take her back.

Then they actually figured out who took the women, and even found them.

Color me every shade of surprised.

But that was over two months ago, and since, we’d never used those cars, except to go visit our “informants” (who were more like friends we had a burger with every once in a while, who also happened to work the streets as sex workers).

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