“Sugar, Luke ain’t gonna be aimin’ at Noah’s ass,” Daisy told me.

“Listen to you, ‘a cap busted in his ass’. You’re cute,” Shirleen said. “I can see why Luke likes you, outside of the fact you got a great ass that is. Luke strikes me as an ass man.”

She was wrong. Luke didn’t discriminate. He was a whole package man.

“I have an idea,” Sissy threw in and everyone looked at her. “You, Indy and Jules lure your boys home somehow, I don’t know, pretend you’ve got flu or food poisoning or something. We’ll assign each one of you a buddy. The minute they get close to you in bed, you give the high sign, we’ll jump out of a closet, stun gun them and cuff them to the bed. Then we can keep searching and maybe talk Eddie and Hank into helping us on account of they’re cops and will want to do this lawful like.”

This was a terrible plan but I did allow myself a moment to think of Luke cuffed to a bed. It was an intriguing thought.

“I ain’t cuffin’ Luke to no bed,” Tex boomed, tearing me away from my intriguing thoughts. “Fuck, I’m not cuffin’ Lee or Vance to a bed either. Those boys would lose their badass motherfucker minds. I got a girlfriend and fifteen cats. I get tortured and killed, who’s gonna take care of Nancy and my kitties?”

I stared at Tex. Tex didn’t strike me as the type of guy who had “kitties” much less actually used the word.

“I’m checkin’ in to Command Central, see if Jules’s got anythin’ new,” Shirleen announced, walking off the porch and around the house all the while flipping open her cell.

I turned to Winnie and crouched beside her again. “You doing okay? After…erm, Noah –”

Winnie shook her head but said, “Got a large, big-hearted family. They’re takin’ good care of me.”

I smiled at her again, reached out and gave her another hand squeeze. Then I pulled a pen and a stray receipt out of my purse and wrote my name, home and cell numbers on it and handed it to her.

“Your family just got larger. You need anything, even if it’s just company, call me.”

She took the piece of paper and looked at it then she looked at me. “He got your auntie’s jewelry?”

I nodded. “The jewelry didn’t mean much, wasn’t my style, but Auntie Ella meant the world to me and it was hers and she wanted me to have it. I try not to think about it but it sucks that it’s gone.”

“Maybe you should let your man do what he’s gotta do,” she suggested.

I stared at her thinking maybe she didn’t just get back from church. The Bible said an eye for an eye but it also went on about forgiveness being divine. Nothing like mixed messages. Still, even though Luke looked the part of a kickass angel of vengeance, I couldn’t be totally sure he was God’s chosen tool to send Noah straight to hell.

“The thought had crossed my mind,” I admitted, Winnie grinned and I went on. “Problem is, Luke moved in across the street when I was eight which is about the time I fell in love with him. He was always hot, even when he was twelve, but I was fat, had glasses and mousy hair. Didn’t matter, he liked me all the same even back then. It took us awhile to hook up and I’m not anxious to get unhooked.”

It was her turn to nod. “I can see your point.”

I got closer. “I’m a little worried Noah, or Jeremiah, or whoever he is, is getting kind of desperate. Who knows what he’ll do but if he finds out we’ve all looked you up –”

“I’ll give my grandchildren a call,” she interrupted me. “They’ll keep an eye on me.”

“Could you check in with me just to set my mind at ease?” I asked.

Her grin went ultra warm. “Be happy to.”

I gave her another hand squeeze just as we heard the deep bass thrumming from a moving vehicle on the street. A shiny, dark blue, older model Lexus with gold trim pulled up in front of the house, seriously loud rap assaulting the quiet neighborhood. The rap cut off and four young black women of varying shapes and sizes, but all dressed and made up as if they were just about to stroll into a club, rolled out of the Lexus.

“Uh-oh,” Daisy muttered as she stared at the girls heading up the walk.

I stood up as Sissy asked, “Uh-oh, what?”

The leader of the pack was short, round and had her black hair in big fat ringlets that were bouncing around her head and face. She wore fire-engine red lipstick and it looked good on her.

Daisy was moving behind Tex and I didn’t get a good feeling about it. Daisy was not the kind of woman who hid without good reason and I didn’t relish finding out what her good reason might be.

“What’s going on?” I whispered toward Daisy.

“You! Bitch! I see you!” The ringlet girl was clickety-clacking on her high-heeled, bronze, peek-a-boo toe pumps and she was pointing at Daisy.

What now?

“Think you can stun gun me twice then walk away?” Miss Ringlet demanded.

Stun gun? Twice?

Uh-oh was wrong.

Eek! was more like it.

I looked at Daisy and Daisy was done trying to hide behind Tex. She came out in full view and she’d morphed straight to Attitude.

“I didn’t stun gun you!” she shouted back. “Indy did, but only after you charged her and that time I wasn’t even there. Then Jet did it but only after you called Ally a be-atch and punched me so I had to take you down.”

Eekity, eek, eek, eek.

“Olivia Conrad,” Winnie waded in. “What you thinkin’ waltzin’ up to my porch, all attitude? These are my friends.”

“Ain’t no friends of yours, Big Momma,” Olivia answered, having arrived on the porch looking ready for action.

“What’s going on?” I asked and Olivia’s eyes swung to me and they got big.

“Shit, girl, what happened to yo’ face?” she asked, forgetting her tirade when confronted with the busted up vision of me.

“Noah Dexter beat me up,” I told her.

“Noah who?”

“You know him as Jeremiah Levine,” I explained.

At my words, Olivia, already ready to blow, pushed the lever up to engage the rocket launchers.

“That no-good motherfucker beat you up?” she screeched and I was pretty certain my eardrums were close to bleeding.

“Duct taped her to a steel post in her basement,” Daisy shared then went ultra generous with information. “Once he’d taped her, he stuck his hand down her pants, dry humped her and then left her in a basement coal room for hours before one of our boys found her.”