Page 22 of Hard Hitter
He recited the license plate number out loud twice, then noticed his own pounding heart. He had fight night adrenaline coursing through his veins. He turned around and walked slowly back through the alley, noticing everything,looking up to check out the broken window above. Ari’s face wasn’t in it. So he went onward to the street just in time to see a cop car pass slowly by without stopping.
“Patrick,” someone gasped. He turned to see Ari in the doorway, her face pinched and white as a sheet.
“Hey,” he said, closing the distance in two paces and jumping up onto her stoop. Then he did something completely out of character. He wrapped an arm around Ari and pulled her to his chest. “He’s gone. Took off in a van.”
Her whole body was shaking. “Are you okay?” she stammered.
“Yeah. Sure I am.” His eyes scanned the street, looking for trouble. He was still locked into fight mode, hyperaware of everything.
“You’d tell me if you weren’t?” She sagged against him.
“I’m fine, I swear. But I think you need to sit down.” He lifted his gaze to see her living room just beyond the hallway. There was a comfortable-looking velvet sofa with big green pillows all along the back. It was very Ari. He steered her toward it. “Come on.”
She sat down heavily on the cushion in the center. “C-c-close the door?” she asked.
He did, and locked it, too, hoping to make her feel safe. Her front curtains were drawn, and he parted them slightly. But there was nobody out there. “He’s gone, sweetheart.” That word had never come out of his mouth before, but Ari looked so wrecked that the situation required that he treat her gently.
“That bouncer,” she said, swallowing roughly. “That guy is usually packing.”
Ah. “That might account for their allergic reaction to the cops cruising by. Did you happen to call 911?”
She shook her head violently. “Itried. But my phone wouldn’t log on. I almost threw it across the room I was so frustrated.”
Oh, fuck. “Ari, that’s my phone. We traded by accident at my appointment today.”
“What? Really?”
He pulled hers out of his pocket and held it up. “I’m sorry. We have the same case.” The blue and green one. They came in a dozen styles, so this had never happened to him before.
She took her phone out of his hand and unlocked it with her fingerprint. It flashed to life right away. “Jesus.” Her eyes snapped up to his. “You saw these texts?”
He nodded slowly.
Her face reddened, and she looked away. “Sorry.”
Sorry?“Shit. Don’t be sorry.” He slid closer to her on the couch and pulled her into his arms again. She came willingly. He took a deep breath of her lavender scent and sighed. “No landline?”
She shook her head against his shoulder. “Nope. My phone wouldn’t work, and I couldn’t think what to do. He started shouting, and I was upstairs trying to e-mail my neighbor from the laptop. Then he put the brick through the window right next to me. Scared me half to death.”
No wonder she was shaking like a leaf. Sitting there, no way to call anyone, a violent dickhead outside trying to blast his way inside in. “I think you need to do some of that yoga breathing you’re always forcing on us. In for a count of eight, and out for four.”
“If you’re trying to calm down, it’s the reverse.”
“My bad.”
She laughed shakily, her hair tickling his chin. “God, I’m sopissed offright now! My window is broken. And that asshole made me feel unsafe in my own house. And I can’t even fix it because we’re off to Montreal tomorrow.”
“One thing at a time, okay? There’s no reason to be afraid right now,” he said, hoping it was true.
She pulled back and gave him a look. “He’ll be back. I had the locks changed on the storage room, because I think he was using it for some kind of dodgy business.”
O’Doul kept the flinch off his face. He had a pretty good idea what dodgy business it could be. “Do you want to call the cops?”
She hesitated. “Maybe? Do I have to decide right now?”
“No. But why wouldn’t you? Are you keeping him out of trouble?”
“He canhangfor all I care. But if the cops arrest him, he’d get out on bail, pissed as hell at me. I’d rather find a way to just be rid of him. I shouldn’t have locked him out. That was stupid of me. But I needed a way to motivate him to leave for good!”
