“Well, hello, Ozzie,” a pert blond in slacks and a formfitting maroon blouse slurred, sidling up to Ozzie like a cheerleader to a quarterback. Somehow, she managed to squeeze herself between Samantha and the lying asshole. That’s how Samantha was going to refer to him from here on out. Not Ozzie, but Lying Asshole. Lying Criminal Asshole. “My friend over there told me I should come and introduce myself to you.”
“Oh, uh…” Ozzie said haltingly, glancing into the mirror at the women by the pool table. “Hi. Which friend is—”
“The redhead. Gloria. She was a brunette when the two of you hooked up.” The blond tried to bat her lashes, but the booze in her blood made the move look less sexy and more like she had glue stuck in one eye. “My name is Janie, by the way. And Gloria told me to tell you I have a really small…” She glanced around and leaned close to whisper something in Ozzie’s ear.
Even though he was a lying criminal asshole, Samantha felt jealousy bubble in her guts, all green and gross and altogether obnoxious.
But it’s not for this Ozzie, she assured herself. It’s for the Ozzie I thought he was.
Fake Ozzie was wonderful. Fake Ozzie had walked around Lincoln Park Zoo with his face painted like a lion because they had passed the kiddie station and she had dared him to have it done. Fake Ozzie had hired a singing stripper telegram to stop by her apartment the morning of her birthday. When the “UPS driver” began to take off his shirt while doing his best Paul McCartney impression and serenading her with the Beatles’ “Birthday” song, she had never laughed so hard in her whole life.
Fake Ozzie had brought her chicken soup, the entire DVD collection of Orange Is the New Black, and two bottles of NyQuil when she came down with a wretched cold. He had knocked on her door and left all the stuff outside with a card that had the Starship Enterprise printed on the front. Inside had been an inscription in his decisive hand that read: Get well soon so you can…live long and prosper.
Yes, Fake Ozzie was a gorgeous, geeky, wonderful man. Too bad Fake Ozzie was a big ol’ phony.
The laugh he managed when the blond trailed a bloodred fingernail over his jaw before turning to stumble back to her friends was forced and hoarse-sounding. If Samantha wasn’t mistaken, there was a slight flush on his cheeks when he pinned his eyes to his pint glass, refusing to meet her stare in the mirror.
“Sweet fuck all.” Christian’s face was the epitome of incredulity. “Do you have some sort of magical pecker?”
“I—” Ozzie began but was cut off by a discordant jangle coming from Samantha’s purse.
Saved by the bell. She was a wreck, completely devastated, and the last thing she wanted to talk about, to think about, was Ozzie’s penis. His lying, criminal—likely big and lovely—penis.
She rummaged around inside her purse, pushing past a Snickers bar, a can of Diet Coke, and all the various notebooks, pens, pencils, and whatnot. But her phone was nowhere to be found. She was left with no other recourse. She upended her purse, spilling its contents onto the bar.
She could feel the men beside her raising their eyebrows as she located her phone. Ozzie picked up a tampon from the pile, his expression bemused. Probably fake bemused. She slapped it out of his hand at the same time as she glanced at her phone’s screen and saw she had a text from Donny Danielson, her best friend and mentor. Also the man she tried to beat when it came to getting her byline above the fold.
Holding her purse beneath the bar and opening it wide, she used her arm to sweep everything but her phone back inside.
“It’s all essential to my daily life,” she assured Christian, keeping up pretenses when he leaned around Ozzie’s back to blink at her haul. Punching in her security code, she went to her text messages and felt her heart freeze into a solid block of ice.
Isn’t he one of yours? the message read, followed by a crime-scene photo of Marcel Monroe lying in a dirty alley somewhere, his dark eyes unblinking on either side of a gruesome, wet-looking bullet hole. Her mind flashed back to the crime-scene photos of her father’s murder. And the gin sloshing around in her stomach threatened to reverse directions.
Terror grabbed hold of her with sharp teeth and shook her savagely. She must have made some sort of noise, because Ozzie asked, “You okay?”
She turned to him, a million thoughts spiraling through her head. Had Marcel fallen victim to the life of an Apostle, taken out by a rival gang member? Or had someone discovered he had talked to her today and decided to end him before he could give her more? Could that someone have been one of the Black Knights? Could it have been…Ozzie?
She searched for the truth in Ozzie’s eyes but reminded herself that he wasn’t the man she had thought he was. He was a lying criminal asshole. There wasn’t one true thing about him.
“I…uh…” She had to swallow. Her voice sounded like she’d taken sandpaper to her vocal cords, and her heart was a lead fist pounding against her ribs. “I need to hit the ladies’ room.”
And get the hell out of Dodge.
Because if they’d killed Marcel, they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her too. Was that why Ozzie had texted her to meet him here for drinks? Because he planned to take her out back and put a bullet between her eyes?
A part of her, the part that had fallen for all his bullshit, didn’t want to believe it. That part of her hurt to believe it. But the rest of her was screaming one and only one word: Run!
Chapter 2
Full situational awareness…
It was a phrase the Navy SEALs used to describe an operator’s ability to focus on a million things at once and quickly come to conclusions about who or what in his environment posed a potential problem. As far as Ozzie could figure, his environment posed three potential problems.
The first was Janie. She was gearing up to make another pass at him. He could see it in her come-and-get-me-big-boy stare. And what the hell was Gloria thinking? That he was some toy to be passed around? Sure, he deserved an ass-kicking for not immediately recognizing her. But in his defense, they’d only had sex once. And besides being a brunette back then, she’d also been about twenty pounds heavier. And just to be clear, she was the one who never called him back.
Pretty much the story of my life, he thought, quickly followed by, Damn you, self-pity!
