Page 120 of Avenging Angel

Now I was thinking, maybe he was home.

Maybe he’d been at home, sitting on his couch, staring at his phone for the last two hours, waiting for me to call or psyching himself up to call me.

Though, he was Cap. He didn’t have to psych himself up for anything. He was the single most confident person I’d ever met (barring Mace, Vance, Lee, Eric and Liam, also Shirleen and Clarice).

Okay, so he was the single most confident person I’d met who was my age (barring Liam and Clarice).

If he could call, he’d call.

Which meant he wasn’t home.

Or he was still mad and didn’t want to call.

Or he was so mad, he didn’t want me to call ever again.

I was thinking on this so hard, I nearly fell off my couch when a loud knock sounded on my door before I heard a key in the lock.

Of course, he wouldn’t call.

He’d just come over.

Because it didn’t occur to me until just then, he may have taken his bag, but he didn’t leave my key.

Hope bloomed in my chest as I took my feet.

The door opened, and Luna, hand still on the knob, swung only her torso in.

“Come on, bitch. Jinx called. She needs us.”

This was such a surprise, all I could do was ask, “What?”

“Chop chop. Let’s go. Jinx is in a fix, and it sounds serious.”

I’d worn my black Vans with the multi-colored daisies on the stackform sole that day (and they totally clashed with my dress—I wassooff my game).

I shoved them on. I snatched up my crossbody.

And we motored.

On the way to the Accord (which was out of the way of where Jinx was, that being in a room in the very motel we’d been kicked out of last night, so we really needed a more central location for ease with switch out), after Luna told me where we were going, I asked, “Could this be a setup?”

“A setup of what?”

“A setup of someone who isn’t happy we’re nosing around the missing women.”

“Well, she could be the kind of woman who warns us to be careful one night, and then the next, swings our asses out there. But I didn’t read that on her.”

“Tasers locked and loaded anyway.”

“I hear that.”

We did the car switch out. Luna drove like a bat out of hell to the Sun Valley Motor Lodge. We parked. We both refrained from flipping the bird at the night attendant, the same guy from yesterday who was now sitting behind the counter in reception and scowling at us through the plate glass windows. And we took the steps two at a time to the upper level to hit room number twenty-three.

It was an old key lock door, no update to keycards for this joint, and Luna and I had seen enough TV and movies to know what to do.

I just hoped it wasn’t locked. But the door was flimsy, so maybe I could do the Van in the door trick, like Cap did with his boot to get to Elsie Fay.

I didn’t hold high hopes for that, but we’d figure that out if it became an issue.

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