8
Chapter Eight
“Dial it back.” Eli, Jase’s buddy, tightened his hand on Jase’s shoulder in the dusky strip club.
Eli could dial it back when it washisgrandmother lounging at Pistol Polly’s. With Heather Reese. In a fog-filled room with a woman in a G-string dancing on a stage.
He closed his eyes and did a few deep breaths. Counted to twenty. The smoke. The lights. The flashes. Memories of another place hit him hard.
But this wasn’t there. This was here.
The blood that’d been thrashing in his vessels kicked even stronger. He might die of an aneurysm right there next to a poster of Kitty Wyn—the weekend headliner.
The root of each hair on his head throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
His friend forced him to stop plowing forward through the neon haze of the club. “Don’t do something stupid.”
Like take-his-grandmother-to-a-strip-joint stupid? That kind of stupid?
“Breathe, man,” Eli said in a low voice.
Jase’s vision tunneled, but he took a breath.
Things Jase could do? Take a breath. Defuse an underwater bomb. Fast-rope out of a MH-60S Seahawk. Arrange tulips into a goddamned masterpiece.
Things Jase could not do? Control any aspect of his life, currently.
“Babushka?” he asked as calm as he could.
“Jason! You have come to join us for lunch.” Babushka slipped from her stool and wrapped him in a hug.
Heather looked like one of the guys up front getting caught by his wife while he stuffed dollar bills into a purple G-string. Her lips round, her eyes mirrored his own shock when he’d stopped in to chat with his grandmother and she wasn’t at the cookie shop. So he checked Babushka’s location on her cell tracker and found it to be at Pistol Polly’s. Of course he hadn’tbelievedit could be right, but he had to check it out. Make sure her phone hadn’t been swiped. He hadn’t expected to actually find her here.
Eli had come along…well, originally because they were stopping at Pistol Polly’s to figure out what was wrong with Babushka’s phone tracking app that said she was there. Now, apparently, he was trying to save Jase from strangling Heather.
“C’mon, we’re going home.” Jase wrapped a protective arm around his grandmother and guided her toward the door.
“Vat? No. Ve have steaks.” She pushed him away. Hard. “All you can eat for ten dollars on Tuesday.”
His arm held firmer to get her to the exit. To sanity. “You shouldn’t be in here.”
“Vat? It is Tuesday. I got my eyes checked. Ve have steaks.” The way she said it made it sound totally logical. And yet…nope.
“She had her eyes dilated at the ophthalmologist,” the traitor on the barstool chimed in. “She can’t see anything.”
That made this better?
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” He dropped his arm from around his grandmother and stepped toward the table.
On the barstool, Heather was nearly eye to eye with him. Nearly. She met his stare and didn’t blink.
Of course she didn’t. She was a traitor.
“I trusted you to take care of her, not bring her here.” He gestured to the bared breasts on the stage to make his point.
“Okay, whoa. First of all,youtrusted me?” She stood, planted her feet, and stared up at him. “You were too busy today. She needed help. I offered to helpher, not you.”
“This is crazy. She’s not working for you anymore.” And he needed a goddamned beer. At home. Once he got his grandmother out of there.
