Piper buried her face in her hands. “Will somebody please kill me?”

Berni rounded on Amber. “You’re behind this secret meeting. You think I’m too old to know what I saw with my own eyes. Next thing you’ll try to get me hauled off to a nursing home.”

Piper lunged for the coffee.

“Calm down, Berni,” Jen said. “Stop being so mean to Amber.”

“Me?! Why don’t you tell her to stop being so hateful to me?”

Maybe it was the coffee or the sugar from the doughnuts, but Amber, like Tosca about to hurl herself from the battlement, reared up to her full height and advanced. “I have never been hateful to you, but from the day we met, you’ve either acted as if I didn’t exist or been outright-”

“You called me Mrs. Berkovitz!”

“-or you’ve been outright rude. I was brought up to be respectful of my elders, but-”

“There!” Berni pointed an accusing finger at all of them. “Did you hear what she said? Did you hear what she called me?”

Mild-mannered Amber’s anger was a sight to behold. “Regardless of your age, there’s no excuse for racial prejudice!”

Berni puffed up. “What racial prejudice? Stop trying to change the subject. And how can you talk about respect after the way you’ve treated me?”

Jen was still looking dumbfounded, but Piper was starting to get the drift.

“I’ve treated you with nothing but respect!” Amber exclaimed.

“Like I’m in my coffin. You call that respectful? Jumping in front of me to open doors… running out to get my newspaper in the winter because you think I’m too old and weak to get it for myself… You think I don’t see what you do, but I still have eyes. Piper doesn’t behave like that. Neither does Jen. Is that respectful?”

Amber’s mouth closed on its way to its next sentence. Jen laughed.

Somebody had to be the grown-up here, and Piper figured she was it. “Amber,” she said with forced patience. “Berni doesn’t hate your guts because you’re Korean…”

Berni protested. “What does Korean have to do with anything?”

“She hates you because you were brought up to be respectful of your elders,” Piper said. “Which she is.”

“That was unnecessary,” Berni sniffed. “And I don’t hate her.”

Piper gave Berni a sickeningly sweet smile. “Berni is too old to change her ways, and too inarticulate to have explained what’s been bothering her, so from now on, don’t do another considerate thing for her. Matter of fact, treat her like crap. Then maybe she’ll appreciate you the same way Jen and I do.”

“I don’t know why you’re saying all this,” Berni grumbled. “Amber’s a smart girl. She knows.”

“I didn’t know!” Amber exclaimed. “How could I?”

Berni’s mouth arranged itself in something approaching a pout. “I don’t like feeling old.”

“Good,” Piper said, “because you’re acting like a five-year-old.”

Amber’s proper Korean upbringing once again reared itself. “Piper, you shouldn’t say-” She caught herself and took a deep breath. “Berni, from now on, you can get your own newspaper.”

Coop sauntered through the open door. He glanced from the women to the body on the floor. “Is he still alive?”

“No idea,” Piper said, and then, “Don’t you ever sleep?”

“Did you check his pulse?”

“I don’t care enough.” Piper looked around her. There were now four uninvited adult people jammed into her tiny living room, one teenager still asleep in her bed, and a comatose pop idol on her floor. “Everybody get the hell out of here!”

“Grouchy,” Coop observed.

Berni bustled toward his side. “Cooper! Mr. Graham! I was hoping I might see you. I have a pound of homemade divinity in my car. I was going to leave it with Piper, but now I can give it to you personally.”

Logan chose that moment to roll over, look up at all of them, and gag.

Jen was the closest, but she was too late with the bucket.

Long seconds ticked by before Coop looked over at Piper. “Yeah…” he said slowly. “I should probably give you a raise.”

Berni pressed both hands to her cheeks in delight. “Oh, Piper! I just love your life.”


***

That afternoon, Piper tracked down a friend of Taylor’s and learned she’d left Chicago for Vegas to take a casino job. The friend didn’t know where Keith was, only that Taylor had broken up with him because “he was a loser.” Piper intended to check out the story, but it rang true, and Taylor moved toward the bottom of her list of suspects.

At the club that night, she tossed out two members of a rowdy bachelorette party snorting bumps of cocaine off a credit card in the ladies’ room. More lies about the club had shown up online, and she didn’t need Coop’s reminder that Spiral’s reputation had to be spotless. Jonah stopped her as she came back inside from tossing the women out. “Where were you last night?”

With everything that had happened, she’d forgotten all about her ill-advised challenge to meet him in the alley. “I was a little busy babysitting our visiting pop star.”

He smirked. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anybody you chickened out.”

“Amazing. I’ve time-traveled back to fifth grade recess.”

He regarded her blankly. She thought about explaining, but it was too much trouble, and she made herself take the higher path. “I concede. You’re bigger and stronger.”

“I sure as hell am.”

That smirk was more than she could take. “But I’m smarter and faster.”

“Bullshit, you are.”

“I guess we’ll have to find out then, won’t we?” She hated this about herself. Why couldn’t she walk away? No. Not her. She was incapable of turning the other cheek. “I’m not ripping another dress, so give me a few minutes to change after the club closes.”

“Take all the time you want.”

He didn’t believe she’d show up, but he was wrong. She’d be there, and knowing that depressed her. Not because she was afraid to face him. That would either go well or it wouldn’t. But because she still had this compulsion to prove she was the better man. Even to a cretin like Jonah. Thanks, Duke.

Blaming her insecurities on a father who’d loved her, even as he’d forbidden her to show any weakness and suffocated her with his overprotection, made her feel worse. When was she going to grow up enough not to regard everything in life as a test she had to pass to prove her own worth? Unfortunately, today wasn’t that day because she’d backed herself into a corner-again-and she was emotionally incapable of not seeing this through.

After the club closed, she changed into jeans and sneakers, pulled on a Bears jersey, and, full of self-disgust, headed back downstairs. She peeked into the alley to make sure Coop’s car was gone, then stepped outside.

Jonah was already there, standing next to the Dumpster, smoking a cigar with Ernie and Bryan, his best bouncer buddies. She waved at them. “Hey, Jonah. I see you brought backup.”

He hadn’t expected her to appear, and his cigar twitched at the corner of his mouth. His buddies snorted.

“I’m not surprised you didn’t want to face me alone.” She sounded exactly like the eleven-year-old who’d once fought Dugan Finke for pulling up her T-shirt. Dugan had been twice her size and beat the crap out of her, but he’d never touched her or her T-shirt again.

Jonah was in a conundrum. Because she was female, he couldn’t swing at her the way he wanted. All he could do was drop his cigar and look threatening.

She believed in fair play, and she took pity on him. She walked closer and, with a smile on her face, shoved the heels of her hands against his chest, hooked out her leg, and sent him down.

Cursing, he was back on his feet in a flash, temper on fire, poised to launch. She braced herself, but before he could get to her, his pals sprang forward and grabbed his arms.

“Don’t do it, J.”

“You can’t hit her!”

Jonah struggled to get free. “Let me go! I’m going to take her head off!”

“Try it!” she countered.

He screamed more invective, and since he couldn’t get to her, it wasn’t honorable to keep taunting him, so she joined him in ordering his boys to let him go. They were so engrossed in yelling at each other that none of them noticed Coop’s Tesla squealing into the alley.

Just as Jonah managed to work himself free, Coop threw himself between them. “What the hell is going on here?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, he swung hard, catching Jonah in the side of his jaw and sending him bouncing against the Dumpster. “You’re fired, you son of a bitch. I don’t ever want to see your face around here again.”

“She started it!” Jonah cried, cradling his jaw.

The adrenaline that had been driving her began to ooze away, leaving her tired and dispirited. “I kind of did,” she said.

Coop swiveled around and stared at her. When he finally spoke, each word was a surface-to-air missile. “You kind of did?”

“I hit him first.”

Ernie and Bryan nodded. “She did, boss.”

“I’m not good at self-restraint,” she said, as if that weren’t blindingly clear. “And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fire Jonah.”

Coop’s dangerous eyebrow went up.

“You would?” Jonah said, clearly dumbfounded.

“Not because of me, anyway,” she said.

Coop was furious. “Maybe I should fire you instead? Because clearly you can’t be left unsupervised.”

“If I could respectfully disagree…” Ernie said. “She’s been making our job a lot easier.”

To her shock, Jonah spoke up, even as he continued to cradle his jaw. “That bachelorette party tonight. A couple of ’em were causing trouble, and she took care of it.”

Coop looked ready to explode. “Everybody get the hell out of here!”

She was more than willing to do that.

“Except you.” His finger aimed at her temple. “Stay right where you are.”

He kept her waiting until all three men had hastily driven away, and then he grabbed her arm and started dragging her toward his car.

She tried to dig in her heels. “It would probably be better if I went to my apartment now.”

“You’re going to my place.” He planted his hand on top of her head as if he were a cop and shoved her into the Tesla’s passenger seat. “I don’t want Jada and Karah to hear you scream.”

Not good at all.

He took off down the alley, tires spitting gravel. Even when he was calm, he was an aggressive driver, and since he wasn’t calm now, he was hell on wheels. As she breathed in the scent of his brown suede jacket, she ticked off all the ways she’d failed them both. She’d been juvenile, unprofessional, and hotheaded-dangerous qualities in an investigator. And all because she hadn’t been enough of a grown woman to put her leftover childhood insecurities behind her. Coop had every right to be furious with her.

The area around his garage was mercifully free of predators, except for him. When she didn’t get out of the car quickly enough-and why should she hurry?-he extracted her. As soon as her feet hit the cement, he pressed her against the car and ran his hands over her body, touching pretty much whatever he wanted to touch, his jaw set like tempered steel. “Not armed?”

“I wanted to teach him a lesson, not kill him.”

His hands slid up the insides of her thighs, then moved from her butt to her waist. When he was satisfied, he led her from the garage. “Let’s go.”

“Look, Coop… I understand you’re pissed, and I don’t blame-”

“Oh, no. I’m not pissed. I’m way beyond pissed.” He clasped her upper arm again, not hurting her, but holding her in a lock she’d have trouble breaking.

They were inside his condo much too soon, but now that he had her there, he didn’t seem certain what to do with her. A perfect time to make a dash toward the kitchen. “Hungry? I’ll fix you an omelet.”

“I’m not hungry,” he said thoughtfully. “I’m trying to decide whether I want to do this rough or easy.”

She held up her hand. “I vote for easy.”

“You don’t have a vote.” He tossed his suede jacket over the back of the couch. “So I’m clear… You started the fight, right?”

“Technically.”

“Technically?”

“We have a history, but-”

“And you decided the best way to handle that history was to go after a former Clemson linebacker in the alley? Do I have that right?”

“If you give a bully an inch…”

“That’s only true when you’re twelve!”

Before she could concede his point, he stalked toward her. “If you had problems with Jonah, you should have come to me.”

Suddenly, she was as hot as he. “I handle my own problems.”

“By damn, not any longer. I’m either going to fire your ass or… or…” He seemed to be having difficulty coming up with something more dire, even though getting fired was at the top of her personal dire list. “Or… spank it.”