I led with, “Hey,” to get the lay of the land.

He shook his head and grinned.

Darius was black, had twists in his hair, soulful eyes, and the lean he had been when he was a drug dealer, which had bordered on hungry-looking and mean, had filled out now that he left that life behind. He looked healthier; not content but not angry, and his lean was no longer mean. It was kickass edgy.

Then again, he’d always been hot. Even when he was a drug dealer.

“Since it’s you, I’ve decided to find this amusing rather than drag your ass outta here and tell you to get your head out of it,” he declared.

I blinked.

Then I asked, “What?”

“Woman, you are not flying under radar.”

I looked around the bar to see if eyes were on me, particularly if the woman I was hoping to see there was there and had, for some bizarre reason (since she couldn’t know I was looking for her), made me.

“Not the bitch you’re after,” Darius said, and I looked back at him. “Lee.”

Oh. That.

I didn’t care about that.

“I’m not doing anything illegal,” I pointed out.

He ignored me and said, “And Hank.”

“So?”

He again ignored me and continued, “And Eddie. And your dad. And Indy’s dad—”

I cut him off. “I get your point, Darius. I just don’t know why you’re making it.”

“They’re letting you do your thing. But you gotta know they’re beginning to get antsy about it.”

Uh-oh.

Letting me do my thing?

Letting?

I decided to let that slide since I loved Darius and figured he didn’t mean anything by it (or I was giving him the benefit of the doubt) and focused on something else.

“Why on earth would they be getting antsy?”

“Because you aren’t stopping.”

Uh-oh again.

“Okay. Now tell me why they’d want me to stop? Or maybe the better question is why they’re in my business at all?”

He turned and leaned closer to me before answering, “I don’t know, Ally. Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re their sister. Or as good as a sister, or a daughter, and they’re worried. Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re untrained, which is why they’re worried. Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re out at places like this and unarmed, which, if they knew you were here, they’d be all kinds of fuckin’ worried.”

“I have a stun gun,” I shared.

“The last three years, this bar has had four hits carried out in it,” he told me. “Bullets are flying, stun guns aren’t worth shit.”

Fuck.

Four?

That was a lot.

Hell, one was one too many.

I knew this place was seedy.

Maybe I should have asked Brody to do an electronic look-see into the location I was casing. I’d remember to do that next time.

“Ally,” Darius called my attention back to him. When he got it, he said, “I can tell by your face you aren’t listening to me.”

“I am,” I returned. “I just think you need to be straight up about what you’re saying.”

He leaned in closer and replied quietly, “You have no business being here.”

“I have a friend who has a friend he cares about who has a fiancée who, I’ve heard, is tied up in some business here. He’s in knots about it. He loves her. And he can’t afford Lee. He can’t even afford Dick Anderson.”

Dick Anderson was another local PI, less expensive than Lee and his boys, also less talented. Though, a nice guy.

“So enter me,” I finished.

“Whatever shit she’s wound up in here is shit you don’t want swirlin’ around you.”

I had a feeling he was not wrong.

“I’ll exit this situation shit free. Promise,” I assured him blithely.

“You do not have the skills to do that,” he contradicted me.

My back went up, but my attention sharpened.

“Do you know the job I’m on?”

“Yeah,” he didn’t surprise me by answering. He’d already mentioned “the bitch” I was after. “Brody spilled,” he went on. “You pulled him in, gave him the name. He talked to me. When he did, I decided it was time to stop delaying our talk.”

That Red Bull, vodka and gaming session was exchanged for information and confidentiality.

If Brody got me good shit, he’d get his Red Bull and vodka. But for this crap, I was so totally not spending the afternoon with a joystick in my hand when I could spend it with Ren and a better kind of joystick in my hand. Or in other parts of me.

Brody. God, such a big mouth.

“Ally,” Darius called again, and my attention returned to him. “Focus, woman. What I’m saying is important.”

“What you’re saying would be important if you had info on the woman I’m checking out.”

Darius stared at me.

This lasted a while.

I let him. I could be patient.

Or I could be patient for a while.

Luckily, I was able to be patient for the while it took Darius to break his silence and mutter, “Stubborn.”

Told you Darius had known me a long time.

“So, do you have info on this chick?” I pushed.

“No. Don’t know who the fuck she is. What I know is that two kinds of women walk in those doors.” He jerked his head to the door to the bar. “First kind is looking to score, and by that I don’t mean get laid. I mean tweaker bitches too stupid and too desperate for their fix to stay away. The second kind is looking to get laid, but if that happens, they also get paid.”

I knew both. I hadn’t seen one woman there, outside me, who was not one or the other.

Therefore, this gave me nothing.

“You don’t care,” Darius declared, and I focused on him again.

“Care about what? I mean, you aren’t telling me something I don’t know.”

“Care about your brothers, your dad, your friends worried about you.”

I felt something unpleasant slither through me. Something that forced me to ask, “Has Lee shared with Indy?”

“No,” he said firmly.

I liked the firm, but I needed more.

“Eddie with Jet?”

“No, Ally. No fuckin’ way. They tell their women what you’re doin’, those crazy bitches will be all over gettin’ in on the act. You think those men want their women involved in this brand of shit? That is, when this brand of shit doesn’t hit them when they’re actually not doing anything to buy it, rather than doing what you’re doing, which means doing something that might buy it.”

No. I didn’t think that.

So good.

That secret was safe.

And it was a secret for precisely that reason.

I could sense danger, and stay away from it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t court it. And the Rock Chicks had had enough of that. With their track record, there would probably be more. I didn’t need to be the one to bring that down on them.

Not to mention, if I did, Lee, Hank, Eddie, Vance, Luke and Mace would lose their badass minds, and I really didn’t need that shit. Badasses were a pain in the ass to deal with. The Rock Chicks didn’t agree, but then again, they were getting orgasms regularly given to them by said badasses, and it was my experience that colored a woman’s thinking.

But it was more. I liked doing this. It was mine. And the Rock Chicks would be all over getting involved.

Doing this wasn’t a fun diversion for me.

It was something else.

I just didn’t get what it was, so I was riding the wave until the cosmos shared that intel with me.

And I was getting off on it.

“Fuck me,” Darius murmured.

I’d lost focus on him again, but when I went back to him, I saw him eyeing me but shaking his head.

“What?” I asked.

He stopped shaking his head and locked eyes with me.

“The what is you’re you. You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. What you’re not gonna do is do this shit not knowin’ what the fuck you’re doin’.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Darius shook his head again and kept talking.

“I get that you need this to fly under Rock Chick radar. And I really need this to fly under Rock Chick radar.  Those motherfucking men will flip right the fuck out if their women get a hint of what you’re doin’, get involved and that somehow blows back on me. So we’re keepin’ this under radar.”

I was down with that.

I just didn’t know exactly what he was talking about until he told me.

“I’m talkin’ to Zip. On the down low, we’re takin’ you in, gettin’ you a weapon.”

Oh shit.

Zip owned Zip’s Gun Emporium. I’d been there. Zip was old. Zip was cantankerous. Zip was also a hoot. And his shop had all any badass needed to kit out his badassness and make it lethally badass. I loved his shop. I had a stun gun, Taser and a variety of mace delivery systems I’d bought in his shop.

Zip’s place also had a firing range.

I wasn’t sure about carrying a weapon, though. I could stun gun with the best of them, but a real gun?

“Darius, I—”

He lifted a hand. “No, woman. No fuckin’ way. You’re in a bar like this, you come in carryin’. But you come in carryin’ and knowin’ what you’re doin’. I know your dad taught you how to handle guns. But before you go out packin’, you’re gonna shoot at Zip’s and you’re gonna do it a lot. We’ll talk him into openin’ the range after hours so you don’t get seen there. And you work with your weapon so you’re so comfortable enough with it that it feels like an extension of your arm. You understand it. You respect it. You know what it can do. And you know how to use it.”

That sounded kind of exciting, but I didn’t get to tell him that because Darius was not done.

And it got better.

“Lee uses this dude’s place down in Colorado Springs. The guy’s got three set ups. One’s a warehouse you gotta clear, good and bad guys. One’s a house you gotta clear. You walk through with your weapon shooting pop-ups. You fail if you take down one innocent, and that means you do it again. And again. And again. Until you pass. You don’t go through it memorizing the scheme. He switches the pop-ups and you never know what you’re going to get. You don’t pass until you can get through it completely clean.”