She shoved the pencil behind her ear. “Something’s not right about this, and I don’t want you going back home yet. You’re sleeping here tonight.”

He regarded her incredulously. She had to be kidding. He tossed down the ice pack. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I hide behind a woman’s skirts. Or, in your case, an ugly T-shirt.” He made it outside the building before she could yell at him about sexism and all that other crap.

He got home without a problem. His jaw hurt like a bitch, and he needed to get cleaned up, but before he did that, he crossed through the kitchen and went out into his garden.

As always, the good scent of dirt and green growing things did their work. He loved this place.

The illumination from a pair of headlights shone over the wall from the alley behind the building. The same headlights that had followed him home. With a sense of resignation, he pulled out his cell and hit the contact button. “Go get some sleep, Sherlock. I’m not going anywhere.”

12

Piper woke Dell up the next morning. Spiral’s recently fired bouncer glared at her from his open apartment door. Scrubby blond stubble covered his jaw, his eyes were sleep crusted, and he wore only a pair of boxers. “What the hell do you want?”

She’d already seen what she’d come here for, although not what she’d expected. Dell looked like he’d had a hard night, but he wasn’t bruised or cut. He bore none of the signs of injury Coop had inflicted on his unknown assailant last night. Whatever else Dell had done, he wasn’t the culprit behind the ambush.

“Verifying your address,” she said. “Tony wanted to make sure you got your severance check.”

“Tell Tony to go fuck himself.”

“I’ll do that.”

As she began to turn away, he stepped into the hallway, his belligerence replaced by the smarmy come-on tone he used with the swishy-hairs. “Hey, you wanna hang for a while?”

“Not so much, but thanks for thinking of me.”

One suspect eliminated. Now she had to find Keith and Taylor. As for the possibility that Prince Aamuzhir had discovered he was the owner of a phony Super Bowl ring and wanted revenge... That was going to be much more complicated.

On her way to Lincoln Park, she contemplated the e-mail she’d gotten from the limo owner that morning about her tip from the royals, from which she’d learned she’d received only half of what the male drivers had been given. She’d worked harder than most of them, but in the world of the royals, gender trumped everything. She should have seen it coming, but the injustice still made her livid.