If You Fall (Brimstone 1)

Man, did I like this woman… She could keep up. She could dish it out and take it.

I wanted her to take it. Every inch.

“Look,” she said and stopped me, her hand on my chest. “You’re really funny and all, but I really can’t have a drink with you.”

I sighed, disappointed at her abrupt change of mind. “You know, you kissed me. A man might take that as a woman expressing a certain interest in him.”

“That was just to see if I could touch your weapon.”

“You can touch my weapon any time,” I said, grinning, trying to hide my disappointment behind a façade of good humor. “I’ll be really sad if you don’t give me a chance.”

“I can’t,” she said and shook her head. “Sorry. And I mean that.”

“Is that Steve guy your boyfriend?”

“What?” She frowned and shook her head. “No. What gave you that idea? He’s a family friend who works at the bar in the summer.”

“What gave me that idea is that he definitely sees you as his property and did not like me flirting with you.”

She shrugged. “He’s just being protective. We’re not dating.”

“Well,” I said and followed her back to the bar. “He wants to.”

She harrumphed at that but said nothing more. On my part, I knew the Steve guy wanted her. That much was clear.

I sat at the bar and sighed, sad that she had agreed to have a drink with me just to check my weapon. I knew she’d be cautious about me now that she knew I was DEA, probably trying to figure out why I had two jobs. I didn’t want to explain my job with the DEA. I wasn’t just an informer who met with a contact now and then to provide any intel. I was an undercover DEA agent. I took the training. I went for periodic exercises on how to do a recovery or takeout of a suspect. I kept my credentials up to date, with weapons training on the range and in the field.

But my main job was to provide intel on my family’s contacts with the Irish-American mafia.

I could tell her none of that. Hell, I barely told Graham, except I had to come up with some excuse for the weeks I was away in field training. All I told him was that I was undercover DEA and that now and then, I’d have to take a week off for exercises.

So while she worked pouring drinks and restocking the bar, I put my earphones on and tried to work out what I’d tell her. I decided that it was best to tell her, well, whatever minimum I had to in order to appease her.

I listened to some music, watching her while she worked. When she saw that I had my earphones in, she came over.

"Our music not good enough for you?" she asked.

"I'm not much into Billboard.” I shrugged, not wanting to insult the music, but it wasn’t my favorite.

"Let me listen," she said, and reached for one of my earphones.

I was currently playing some Dylan and was curious how she’d respond.

"Who is it?" she asked, frowning. Then her eyes brightened. "It's Dylan. ‘Knockin' on Heaven's Door.’"

That surprised me. Genuinely surprised me. Dylan was retro stuff. "The lady has knowledge about bourbon and music," I said and held a hand over my heart. “Goner.”

She smiled but avoided meeting my eyes. "My father used to play it." She listened for a time and then nodded. "It's good."

Finally, I decided to ask her for the phonebook, since I hadn’t been lucky enough to meet the manager or find one in the office.

"Do you have a phonebook?"

She nodded and bent down to sort through some things on the shelf under the bar. Then she placed the thin volume on the bar top in front of me.

"Thank you. I'm looking up someone." I paged through the directory, looking for the section with Scott Lewis’s phone number and address. “Their address wasn’t in the white pages on the internet. I hoped it would be in the local phone book.”

While she continued to pour drinks, I flipped through the pages of the directory and found what I was looking for. Sure enough, there was an entry for a Scott Lewis, giving an address on Ocean Drive. I entered the address on my phone and then closed up the directory.