Page 5 of Vicious Sabotage

A huge, muscled guy stood sentry at the entrance. As far as Carver was concerned, the guy didn’t have enough brain power to protect a flea. He’d seen guys like this before—all brawn and no tactical abilities. All the bouncer seemed capable of doing was throwing a punch.

Carver eyed him. “Livia inside?”

His brows shot up. “Who’s askin’?”

“Her new bouncer.”

Narrowing his eyes, he folded his thick arms over his chest. Carver’s arms were thicker, his chest broader, but he didn’t need to flex.

“Livia said you can go for the night.”

Now the guy appeared confused. Just as Carver thought—he wasn’t too bright. Which was dangerous. If he was so easily led, he was useless to a woman who had somebody after her.

“She didn’t tell you I was coming? That’s just like her. Look, I’m sure she’ll pay your night’s wages.” He clapped a hand on the bouncer’s shoulder. “I got this.”

He stood there a moment, mulling it over. Then he shrugged and walked off into the parking lot.

“Good choice,” Carver muttered under his breath.

That was far easier than it should’ve been. The bouncer should have put up a huge fight and at least attempted to rip off Carver’s head.

He’d bet anything that Livia hadn’t told her employees about shooting a man earlier.

He walked into Badlands. Moving through the crowd of bodies, he arrowed straight for the bar. In his experience, the owners liked to sit back and watch their customers drop money on the drinks that paid their bills.

When he saw a skinny waitress walk up to a redhead behind the bar and start waving her hands in animated conversation, he looked harder.

The redhead squeezed her forearm and then gave it a pat. Then she took the tray of empty glasses from her and set it aside. In distress, relief or both, the waitress threw her arms around the woman in a big hug.

The redhead patted her back in a genuine way, though she wore a surprised expression.

Carver walked up to a guy seated at the corner of the bar and gave him a nudge. He looked up from his shot glass.

“Is the redhead the owner?”

He glanced around at the woman, eyes glazed with inebriation, and bobbed his head in a nod.

Wordlessly, Carver walked right behind the bar and stepped up to the woman.

She broke away from the waitress and reached for a baseball bat propped within reach.

If she didn’t look so worried, he might have chuckled.

He dropped his duffel. “You Livia?”

Annoyance pinched her pale red brows as she glared up at him, fingers curled around the handle of the bat. “Who the hell are you?”

“Your new bouncer.”

She cocked one hip forward, showing off the petite curve of her waist wrapped in a black cotton apron. “I already have a bouncer.”

“Yeah…I sent him home.”

“What!” She shoved her way around Carver, pushing her way through the crowded bar to reach the front.

He tailed her, amused by her shocked outrage but irritated that she’d take risks with her life after what she’d been through.

Reaching the entrance, she swung her head left and right. “Dammit!”

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