Colorado 03 Lady Luck (4 page)

Yeah, Lexie Berry was a miracle.

Her shades hit him, her head tilting back
for them to do so and when she got close, she asked, “Ready?”

As answer, he beeped the locks, opened the
door and folded into her sweet ride.

Be Happy

“Mr. and Mrs. Walker, king-size bed, not by
an elevator or any fuckin’ vending machines.”

I pressed my lips together to keep
quiet.

We were in Vegas, the slot and video poker
machines ringing behind us as we stood at the reception desk and
Walker checked us in.

It was very early morning. The sun was
shining and it was already so hot out there, I broke into an
instant sweat the minute I unfolded out of my Charger and this
happened even though we were under an awning so the sun wasn’t
directly hitting me. Luckily, we only stood out there for long
enough for Walker to grab the huge-ass, black duffle Shift had put
in my trunk and warned me not to open or “hell would be paid” and
then heft out my roller bag and drop it to its wheels on the
pavement. He walked away, leaving my bag where he put it. I yanked
up the handle, followed him to the valet rolling my bag behind me,
he exchanged keys for ticket, pocketed the ticket and entered,
destination: reception desk.

We drove all night. For some reason, since
our destination was obviously Vegas, Walker took what turned out to
be a circuitous route that added hours onto our travel time. He did
not explain his to me, any of it, where we were going or why we
took that route. Conversation was non-existent. I listened to my
iPod and slept a bit.

Now he was checking us into
one
room with a king-size bed. And
he was doing it under Mr. and Mrs. Walker.

I did not think this was good.

“How many nights will you be staying, sir?”
the desk clerk asked.

“Three,” Walker answered.

Oh shit. Three? Three nights?

What were we going to do in Vegas for three
nights?

“Excellent,” he picked up a form and put it
on the counter. “If you could fill that in and give me a credit
card –”

“Cash,” Walker rumbled and the clerk looked
from his computer to Walker.

“That’s fine, sir, but we like to have a
credit card on file just in case you use the mini-bar, should you
like a movie –”

“Cash,” Walker repeated.

The clerk blinked up at him clearly having
been lost in a fog of customer service and seeing just about
everything in Vegas, he was used to blocking it out. Now, he was
fully taking in Walker and processing what he saw, all of what he
saw and just how much of it there was.

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing then
he started, “It’s policy, sir, to –”

I stepped in mainly to move this along
because I knew Ty Walker would repeat the word “cash” until we were
physically ejected or the clerk gave up and I needed to, first, see
what the hell was up with him getting us one room, second, attempt
again to figure out what was happening and my part in it, third,
take a shower and fourth, sleep in a bed or, better yet, buy a
swimsuit and sleep by a pool.

I dug in my purse saying, “I’ll give you my
card. You can have it on file but when we check out, we’ll pay in
cash. Cool with you?”

The clerk’s relieved eyes slid to me and he
nodded.

“Room safe,” Walker stated at this
point.

“Of course,” the clerk murmured on a bow of
his head toward Walker. “All our rooms have safes. We’ll set that
up for you.”

Walker stared at him half a second then his
eyes did a sweep of the immediate area.

I handed the clerk my card, filled out the
registration form, took my card back and the clerk handed Walker
our little envelope with its keycards, wisely not noting that my
credit card said Alexa Berry and not Alexa Walker. After I filled
out the form, as he processed us, I tried not to think where Ty
Walker would get cash to pay for a swanky Vegas hotel room
considering he walked out of prison not twenty-four hours ago with
nothing (that I knew of) but the clothes on his back. He didn’t
even have one of those big plastic Ziploc baggies in his hand
holding his belongings that recently released prisoners on TV shows
were given.

Nothing.

But that duffle.

A duffle packed by Shift.

Shit.

“Room six twenty-three. You’ll find the
elevators over there.” He pointed to his left but Walker was
already walking that way.

I smiled at the clerk, expressed mumbled
words of gratitude, grasped the handle on my bag and followed
Walker.

He tagged the button before I got there and
I stopped close to him.

“Hubby, we need to chat,” I said quietly,
his chin dipped into his neck to look down at me, his face still as
impassive as ever and then his head turned and he looked over his
shoulder.

When he kept looking, his eyes honing in on
something and staying there, I turned to look too.

He was looking at a man who was standing at
the reception desk. He was super slim and when I say that I mean
bag of bones thin. It was a wonder his clothes stayed on him, he
was so skinny. He had light brown hair with a hint of red in it but
he didn’t have much of it. It was thin everywhere, seriously light
on the top and clipped super short. He wore glasses. His features
were pointy. Considering he wasn’t much to look at, I was surprised
to see his clothing was of very good quality and suited him as best
they could given his stature.

And he was looking right at Ty Walker, as
bold as you please, checking in at the reception desk but staring
at Walker at the same time looking knowing in a way that made
something unpleasant crawl along my skin. If he sneered, I wouldn’t
have been surprised. But it did surprise me that this obvious
weakling was so bold considering he was a third of the man standing
at my side (and a third was being generous) and the man standing at
my side could easily break him in half.

But he was.

In your face bold.

How weird.

“Do you know him?” I asked as the elevator
chimed and then it happened.

Ty Walker touched me for the first time
(that was, the first time he touched me when he wasn’t looking for
needle tracks at the same time annoying me).

His fingertips went into the small of my
back and they pressed forward so I moved into the elevator rolling
my bag behind me. His hand dropped away, he turned to face front
and automatically I did too as he leaned to the side, tagging the
six button and after those few annoying seconds an elevator stays
open for whatever reason it does, the doors slid closed.

But I barely registered any of this.

Because I could feel five, hot marks burning
into the small of my back where he touched me. The touch was light
and it didn’t last long but I still felt them burning. They were
like a brand searing into my skin.

As the elevator went up, I waited for them
to fade, I wanted them to fade but they didn’t fade. They stayed
burning hot and deep and I’d never experienced anything like it. I
didn’t even know what it was. I just knew it was profound. I knew
it was life-altering. I knew somehow that, even if the burn was to
fade, I’d never forget that elevator ride my whole life.

The elevator stopped, the doors slid open
and, my mind still on the burn, I didn’t think as I followed him
out, down the hall to a room. He used the keycard and entered, not
holding the door open for me.

Mindlessly, I pushed the door open as it
started to close and followed.

The door closed behind me.

He dumped his duffle on the low, wide shelf
opposite the bed that was meant for luggage, one side of that shelf
going up with three drawers under it, a big, flat screen TV on top
of it, the other side doing the same with a cabinet under it
probably containing a mini-bar, an attractive leatherette holder on
top holding the TV remote.

Then he immediately zipped the duffle open.
I came to a halt at the mouth of the hall that led into the room
and righted my bag on the floor at my side.

My mind went off the slowly fading burn of
his touch at my back as it registered on me it was a nice room,
really,
really
nice. It
was large, larger than I expected, larger than I knew hotel rooms
could be. The furniture was stylish, the wood gleaming, all of it
obviously exceptionally clean. There was a downy comforter with an
attractive cover on the huge bed, not a thin bedspread. There were
even toss pillows. Two sweep-lined armchairs at either side of a
table at the back in one corner by the window, a standing lamp
rounding out the seating area, an elegant desk with a lamp on top
facing the room at a diagonal in the other corner

In fact, I’d never been in a nicer room.

Actually, I’d been in very few hotel rooms
at all in my thirty-four years.

Ronnie had promised a lot of good times in
fabulous places and, before he gave me his empty promises, there
was a time in our life when his future was so bright, this room
would have been a joke to us. Our future held travel all over and
everywhere we’d have the best of the best. The best rooms. The best
food. The best champagne. The finest clothes. Sweet rides. Big
houses. Cleaning ladies. We were going to live large. He told me I
would drip gold. He meant it. He loved me that much, I would drip
gold. He would make that happen for me.

Then he fucked it all up.

I didn’t need gold, I just needed him. But
still, he fucked it all up in the end; he fucked it up so badly, I
didn’t even have him.

I came out of my reverie when I heard
something hit surface and my eyes focused on Walker.

Then I felt them get wide.

He’d dug into the bag Shift packed for him
and he was currently putting fat rolls of crisp, fresh bills
wrapped tight in rubber bands on the wood above the mini-bar
cabinet attached to the luggage shelf. The first roll had a twenty
on the outside of it. The second, another twenty. The third, a
fifty.

At the fifty, my breath started sticking in
my throat.

The fourth, more twenties.

Then he came out with a gun clip and it
clattered on the wood by the bills as he dropped it there.

My breathing stopped.

Another gun clip. Another roll of fifties. A
box of ammo. Another roll of twenties.

Then a gun.

I sucked in air.

“Um, darling?” I called on the exhale. “I’m
thinking we need a family meeting.”

Just his head turned, his body stayed bent
over the bag and his light brown, almond-shaped, curly-lashed eyes
hit mine. As usual, he did not speak.

I tipped my head to the unit. “What’s with
the bank and the firepower?”

His eyes stayed on me. Then he straightened
and turned to me.

I braced in order not to flee though I
didn’t know why I didn’t attempt escape, probably because he’d
proved his hands were fast and I didn’t want to find out if his
legs were just as fast.

He still didn’t speak.

I carried on. “I mean, I’m no parole officer
but it’s my understanding ex-cons aren’t allowed to be armed.”

He finally spoke. “You don’t have a
record.”

I felt my head jerk at the same time I was
certain my eyes bugged out.

Then I breathed, “What?”

“Hit trouble, the .38 is yours.”

At this juncture, I felt it was time to
share.

I took two steps toward him and stopped.

“As I told you during our last and only
conversation, Shift knows my boundaries. Any trouble we could,” I
lifted up my hands and his beautiful eyes moved to them as I did
air quotation marks and said, “‘hit’,” then I dropped my hands and
his eyes came back to mine as I continued, “that would require a
.38 and a half a dozen wads of cash is not within my acceptable
boundaries.”

He stared at me.

Then he walked the four steps to me (that,
for my legs, would probably be around seven) and then I found my
purse being slid off my shoulder. I watched with no small amount of
concern as he dug in it and was somewhat relieved when he pulled
out my phone. He turned, tossed my bag across the room to the bed
then turned back to me, flipped the phone open, used his thumb then
put it to his ear.

I waited as it rang. So did he. Then he
flipped it closed, opened it again then hit more buttons and put it
to his ear.

I waited. So did he. Then he flipped it
closed, opened it and repeat.

I waited. So did he.

Finally, he spoke. “It ain’t Lexie, scum,
it’s Walker. What the fuck?”

I pressed my lips together because his face
might still be blank but his voice was low and rumbling. Or lower
and more rumbling than normal. I didn’t know him very well but I
felt this indicated extreme unhappiness.

“Yeah, with her, yeah,” he growled into the
phone confusingly (at least to me), paused then stated in a further
growl, “Yeah, the bag ain’t light.” Another pause then, “She don’t
know jack.” Another pause then, “Jesus Christ, you’re
worthless.”

Then he flipped the phone shut and tossed it
on the unit where it clattered. Then he looked at me.

“Family meeting,” he said.

I was suddenly not feeling like having a
family meeting.

I had no choice.

“He told you dick, didn’t he?” he asked.

I nodded and wished he’d take a step back
but still, I answered, “I’m sensing I didn’t get a full
briefing.”

“What’d that piece of shit tell you?”

“That I was to pick you up and take you
where you wanted to go.”

“That’s it?”

I thought about it. Then I amended, “Well,
actually, his words were that I was to pick you up at noon, call
him when you were out and then take further directions from
you.”