“I haven’t done anything to you. Just let me be on my way,” I said.
He got closer. If you’d asked me the second before if he could, I would have said no. But his face came within an inch of mine and his body pressed deeper into me.
“This is a dangerous game you’re playin’, Law. Vigilante justice,” he told me.
I knew that, though I didn’t say.
When I didn’t speak, he went on. “You’ve got the attention of Darius and Marcus. This is not a good thing. Do you know what I’m sayin’ to you?”
I felt a little thril go through me and not the kind that was going through me with just his body pressed against mine.
Darius Tucker and Marcus Sloan were the two biggest crime heads in Denver, Colorado. I was happy they knew who I was. I didn’t figure they were scared, but I intended them to be.
Wel , maybe, one day.
Crowe must have seen something on my face because his eyes flashed.
“I should take you to the offices, lock you in the safe room and keep you there until you’ve had some goddamned sense talked into you.”
He said “should”. This I decided to treat as a good thing.
I didn’t know what the safe room was but I didn’t want any part of that either.
I kept staring at him and kept my mouth shut thinking maybe he’d let me go.
He stared right back.
We were both silent, staring, his body pressed against mine.
I kept my chin up and hoped I kept my face blank.
“Jesus, you think you’re fuckin’ Catwoman,” he muttered.
“I do not. Catwoman wore a leotard and stupid ears and fake claws. That’s just sil y.”
I had no idea why I shared my views on Catwoman. I should have kept my mouth shut.
I thought this primarily because what I said made Crowe’s face change. He wasn’t looking at me like he was the pissed off, badass boy trying to warn off the helpless, hapless female who dared enter his turf. He was looking at me in an entirely different way. A way that made me even more aware of his body pressed against mine.
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” he asked and even his voice had changed. It was deep and masculine but now it was also smooth, sliding across my skin like silk.
I decided it was best to go silent again.
He tried a different question.
“Why was Cordova chasing you?”
I kept my silence.
Then something else about him changed. It changed the way he looked, it even changed the atmosphere.
I’d been staring at him to keep a brave face and tough out a difficult situation. With the change, I was staring at him because I had to. It was like I was drawn to him. My body softened, even my arms, which he stil held behind me and had been rigid with tension, relaxed.
“I could make you talk,” he threatened, his voice low, quiet and I knew, in that instant, he could.
“Let me go,” I whispered beginning to lose my fight.
This was a first. If Nick knew, he would freak out. He told me I’d been a live-wire since he met me at age six, always beating up kids on the playground who bul ied other kids, sometimes losing, sometimes winning; always phoning and writing senators or congressmen and tel ing them what I thought and how they should vote; always having some cause that I’d fight with a passion that was nearly an obsession.
Crowe kept staring me in the eyes which kept me stuck to him by some magnetic, macho man forcefield.
“You need to stop what you’re doin’ or you’re gonna get hurt,” Crowe told me, his voice stil silky low.
“I can’t,” I admitted, don’t ask me why but I had to say it.
“Then somebody has to stop you.”
Somewhere along the line, he’d let go of my hands and instead he was holding me. Actual y holding me, his arms around me, mine lose at my sides.
It took a lot but I shook off whatever was keeping me entranced, I lifted my hands and pressed against his chest, hard.
He didn’t budge.
Fuck.
“Let me go!” I shouted.
His arms tightened with a jerk and my hands slid up his chest to rest on his shoulders. I immediately began pushing. This didn’t work but it sent a message so I kept doing it.
“I’l let you go and I’l talk to Hank and Eddie. But I hear you’re on the street, I’l find you and shut you down.” He could find me, I knew it. He found people for a living and, if word could be believed, he was real y good at it.
I knew who Hank and Eddie were too. Both good cops, Hank Nightingale and Eddie Chavez, Lee Nightingale’s brother and best friend. I was guessing this meant Crowe would get me off the hook for shooting out Cordova’s tires in broad daylight in the middle of Broadway, one of the busiest streets in Denver. It had been showy and stupid and I knew better. Zip would be disappointed. Nick would be furious.
What I didn’t know was how Crowe would shut me down.
“Al right, Crowe. Let me go, I’l stop,” I lied.
At my words, he grinned.
I stared (again).
He had the most arrogant, shit-eating grin I’d ever seen in my twenty-six (nearly twenty-seven) years of life.
My bel y fluttered.