The Firm Hand of the Law (9 page)

Gareth had her money. Jasper was still using the place as a drop point, and she was all but cut out of things, peripheral in her own life. It was maddening. Funds for Gammy’s care were fast dwindling too, which meant cutting back on non-essential items. She ate exclusively from the bar’s kitchen, not the most nutritious food, but it got her through the day. She’d also had to cut some shifts for the bar staff and the bouncers too. It wasn’t a popular move with the staff, which added more tension to an already tense situation.

“We need someone else to serve,” Mia complained. “I’m twenty minutes late for my dinner break.”

“Go take it,” Lily replied. “I’ll cover the bar.”

“I thought you were covering the kitchen?”

“I’ll cover both. Go on now, get your break.” Lily was trying not to be short with the staff. They were all good kids. Mia was putting herself through law school on tips garnered by wearing tops so low cut that there was a pool as to how many times her areolas would peek out on any given shift. They were up to three that night.

Mia and her effulgent cleavage retreated to get some food while Lily poured a whiskey and coke, then zipped back to the kitchen to retrieve a vat of fries from the deep fryer. They were a little overdone, but she figured people liked them crispy.

The plate went out to a customer along with a fresh pitcher of beer and then there were two white wines and a couple of shots and then…

“Beer, please.”

She glanced up at the customer’s face and sighed. It was no customer. It was Gareth. And he was acting as though everything was alright, as if he hadn’t ripped her off. She looked past him to the next customer and served them instead. She did that until there was a lull in the action, at which point he gained her attention once more.

“Are you sulking?” He asked the question with a tone of mock sympathy which only served to irritate Lily to the point of wanting to swipe another customer’s drink and toss it right in his face. She refrained, not wanting to create a scene and draw attention to the cop in her bar.

“What do you want?”

Gareth winked and slid a twenty over. “Whatever’s on tap.”

She would have liked to have thrown his money in his face, but she really couldn’t afford to turn down any cash at all.

“Keep the change,” he said as she pushed a beer over to him.

“Thanks.” She dropped the note into the cash register and went on to serve the next customer. Gareth’s eyes were still on her, but she ignored him as best she could. It wasn’t as if they could have a real discussion there amidst the smugglers and the undercover agents anyway.

She was pretty sure she could pick a few out. They were wearing what an upper side cop might imagine the sort of person who frequented her bar would wear. Conspicuously ripped jeans matched with conspicuously ripped t-shirts and conspicuously messed up hair. It was all a little too deliberate, and a little too clean cut. There was no hiding a wholesome disposition, especially in a place where people evaluated one another in a split-second in order to work out if they were carrying, holding, tweaking, freaking, or any one of a dozen other dangerous-ings.

The smugglers were harder to pick, and there was always the chance that some of the harder-bitten cops weren’t sticking out either. That meant she couldn’t trust anyone, or anything for that matter. The place was probably bugged six ways from Sunday.

Lily had never been paranoid before. She’d been careful, cautious, but never paranoid. Now she felt as though she were living on borrowed time, with money running out and the risk that Jasper would find out what was going on before the cops closed the net. If Gareth thought he was going to get cozy with her now, he was very much mistaken. Hanging around the bar like an overgrown puppy was not going to endear him to her.

“Seriously,” he drawled as she went past, “are you sulking?”

“Sulking isn’t what they call it when you ruin someone’s life,” she said. “Did you want something else to drink?”

“I’m good,” he said. “Just enjoying the atmosphere. Maybe I’ll find myself a lady tonight.”

Lily cut him a dirty look. “If you do, try not to jack their purses.”

“Cute,” he said, his brows lowering as he fixed her with a serious stare. “Maybe you need a little help processing your recent loss. Maybe you could do with some time over my knee.”

“Maybe you could use some time kissing my ass.”

She was pushing her luck, but the bar was between them and the room was packed with people. Gareth was bold, but he wasn’t stupid. It occurred to Lily that she could say and do pretty much what she wanted as long as there were people around, people who might report back to Gareth’s superior, or to Jasper. Having realized that, she started enjoying the evening a lot more. If Gareth was going to hang around making himself a target, she was more than happy to take shots at him.

“Hey. Boss.” Mia was back.

“Yeah?”

“Take a break, wouldja?” Mia grinned. She had a point. Lily hadn’t taken a break since opening the bar. Darting into the kitchen to grab a few fries didn’t really count. She slipped out into the alley and drew a deep breath of the night air. Footsteps in the middle distance made her roll her eyes toward the heavens and curse again.

“Fuck off, Gareth.”

“Language,” he drawled as he drew closer, catching her by the wrist. He pushed her up against the building, his mouth on hers, his thigh pressed between hers. In an instant the tension melted to erotic frisson. His domineering approach which so frustrated her most of the time became her salvation, releasing her from the concerns which were weighing her down with every waking breath.

When their bodies touched, her brain turned off. Worry seemed like a distant land when he was kissing down her neck, his hands tracing the curve of her body. Though he was undeniably forceful, there was a tenderness in his touch. He was taking his time, letting his hands caress her into arousal, but she couldn’t let herself go all the way there, not after he’d taken her money and left her to work herself into the ground.

“Why?” The question burst out when his lips left hers. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because,” he said, palming her bottom with his large palm, “I want you.”

“You want me, or you want information?”

His palm left her bottom and came back down in a quick swat. “I want you.”

She didn’t believe a word he said, but she believed the way his rampant cock was grinding against her skirt clad pussy. He really was out of his mind if he thought she was going to let him just take her in the alley like some common street whore. After what he’d done, she had no intention of sleeping with him for a very long time—well, not immediately anyway.

“Oh, you want me?” She let her hand slide between them and pressed against the hard line of his cock. He was ready, probably had been for some time. His groan as she caressed his erection through his pants told her that much.

“You know I do, minx.”

“Well,” she said, a smirk rising to her face. “We can’t always have what we want, can we? This is for your own good, remember.” She stepped away and turned back toward the bar, leaving him nursing his erection in the alley. It was a small victory, but it made her feel better as she started the last stretch of what was close to a twenty hour shift.

Chapter Seven

Gareth didn’t blame Lily for turning him down. He didn’t care for the way she’d done it quite so smugly, but hey, she needed a victory every now and then. The truth of the matter was, she wasn’t the only one under pressure. Pretty much every day he found himself hauled before the chief to answer a bunch of questions which all boiled down to: “Why aren’t I the DA yet?”

“How’s the case going?” The chief was asking the same question he’d asked a dozen times before. Gareth prepared to give the same answer, but phrase it a little differently to satisfy the chief’s need for progress.

“I’ve gotten some co-operation from Miss Brannigan,” Gareth reported. “We are making good progress on the case. The bar itself is completely locked down. Anything that happens there is on six different records, we have eyes, ears, tape, everything on the place. With Rex’s tips, we’ve managed to catch a few small fry, but the big ones are still out of reach. There’s a lot of insulation to get through.”

“Then you need to put more pressure on Brannigan. Get her to bring the big guys in.”

“Too much pressure and she’ll break. We’ll lose our in all together. I think we need to play this cool for a while longer.”

“We don’t have forever. You need to start taking people down, so start taking people down. I don’t see anyone in the cells. I don’t see any arrests on file. I don’t see anything.”

“I’m being subtle, chief, like you asked.”

Chief snorted. “Well, stop being subtle and start breaking skulls. I need some movement on this case.”

What he needed was an arrest before the calendar year end. He needed that so he could impress the folks at city hall and on the street so he could get himself that coveted position. This was about politics, not people, and it was going to end badly if they weren’t very careful. Gareth had seen it before with the chief before the chief, and the chief before that. Men bounced in and out of the position every election cycle. Sometimes a chief would stick around for more than one election, but for the most part they either moved up or out. A chief who just wanted to chief was no use to city hall. They wanted a man with ambition, a man who’d do as he was told when the mayor made a call. Chief was that man.

Gareth was determined that pressure from the boss wouldn’t be allowed to seep into his relationship with Lily. She was under enough pressure as it was, and pushing things was not going to help. Besides, there wasn’t much that could be gained from pushing. It was a waiting game now, waiting for the smugglers to make a mistake, to show their faces and lead the force further up the chain.

He was enjoying this case far more than he’d enjoyed anything in a long time. Spending time with Lily was a pleasure, even though she was still prickly and annoyed about having lost three months’ worth of smuggler’s salary. She’d left him high and dry on their last meeting, but that was alright. She needed a sense of control over something, over him. He was happy to give her a few little victories, though they undeniably left him with an uncomfortable tightness in his pants region.

Leaving the station for the day, he made his way to the little bar down by the water which was starting to become his favorite destination.

He had something special in mind for Lily that evening. She was doing her best to adjust, but her best seemed to be putting her head down and running herself ragged. Surveillance revealed that she was working close to twenty hour days sometimes, barely resting and certainly not taking any time to eat beyond whatever grease was fried up in the kitchen. The situation was untenable, and Gareth intended to put a stop to it. He felt a strong sense of responsibility for the woman whose life was crumbling around her—which in itself was a problem, but one he was doing his best to ignore.

Eschewing the front, Gareth let himself into the bar via the back door. The bar would usually have been crawling with the usual customers, but it seemed to be empty. The jukebox was silent. The only sound was the whirring of the dishwasher and a soft cursing from behind the bar.

He came upon Lily on her hands and knees, scrubbing at a spot on the floor.

“Hello.”

She didn’t even lift her head. “Go away.”

“What’s going on?”

She sighed and stopped scrubbing. “What’s going on is I’m working,” she said bitterly. Getting to her feet, she threw the brush into a bucket of soapy water and began dragging it toward the kitchen. Gareth followed with a question.

“Have you eaten?”

“What business of that is yours?”

“The attitude is starting to wear thin,” Gareth growled. The attitude was understandable, but that didn’t mean he was going to let her get away with it. She needed to know there were still limits where he was concerned.

“Then go somewhere else,” she snapped.

“If you keep this up, I might not ask you out to dinner.”

Lily snorted as she stacked glassware into the tray for the dishwasher. “I don’t have time for dinner, thanks to an unexpected drop in revenue. And we’re closed, so you should leave.”

“Closed? Why?”

“I’ve had to shut the bar a couple days a week to save money. It’s part of my cost cutting, fuck up my life strategy,” she said sarcastically. “Maybe in a few months we’ll be able to cut down to being open just a couple days and then maybe just Saturdays and maybe then I can shut the bar entirely. Can’t fucking wait.”

He withstood her snark patiently before continuing with his invitation. “I’d like you to come out to dinner with me, Lily.”

“I can’t,” she said. “I have a bar to clean. Remember that work you told me I need to do now? That honest living? Well, this is what an honest living looks like. It looks like me cleaning this whole place by myself because I had to let the cleaners go.”

“Clean later,” he said. “Eat first.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You are so,” he insisted. She was starting to look far too lean, her skin was losing some of its bloom, and her eyes were dull. She was hungry and she was tired and she was probably depressed. Dinner wouldn’t solve all of that, but it would go some way towards doing something about it.

“No,” Lily said emphatically. “I am not going anywhere with you.”

“I wasn’t asking,” he growled. “And if you keep arguing, you’ll be eating out with a sore bottom.”

“Go fu—”

He didn’t let her get the word out. Tired of her profanity and tired of her petulance, he followed her into the kitchen, scooped her up over his shoulder and carried her upstairs. Lily went through the usual screaming and flailing process, but he had a firm grip.

“Easy,” he said, putting her on her feet in her apartment. “I’m trying to do something nice here.”

“You don’t know how to be nice!” She threw her hands in the air and glared at him. “Everything you do is just fucked up and controlling.”