Hell on Heels

“I’m black, gay and named after my mama’s favorite casino, but I’ll be the best damned personal assistant you’ll ever have,” she’d pronounced.

She hadn’t lied. There were days Chantal didn’t know how she’d functioned before Harrah. Harrah was tall and beautiful and the most efficient person Chantal had ever met. Harrah not only kept track of Chantal’s appointments and social engagements, she also kept the house clean and occasionally cooked.

As if conjured up by mere thought, the woman appeared in the office doorway. “Got it?”

Chantal nodded and handed her the list. “Do I have anything on my schedule for today?”

“Nothing,” Harrah replied.

“Once you get the invitations mailed off you can take the rest of the day off. I think I’ll head to the Plaza and work out in the Gym, then go to Mimi’s and get a facial and a massage. I’ve been tense since Saturday.”

Harrah grinned, exposing perfectly straight white teeth. “Kicking his ass would probably do you as much good as a trip to Mimi’s.”

Chantal laughed. “Yeah, but a trip to Mimi’s is a lot less dangerous.”

With plans made for the day, Chantal left her office and headed for her bedroom to change clothes. It had been the master suite that had ultimately sold Chantal on the house.

The room was huge with windows that overlooked the ninth hole. She’d chosen melon tones to decorate: lush cantaloupe and cool honeydew colors that she found sexy yet restful.

In the center of the king-size bed, a large gray cat raised its head and hissed as if to protest her very presence in the room.

She’d found the cat six months ago in a box near the Dumpster behind Big Joey’s Bail Bonds. It had been a miserably bitter January day with snow in the forecast. Chantal had brought the cat home and named it Sam, after her beloved father.

When she’d first found him she’d entertained fantasies of a warm purring fur ball against her chest, a little creature who would coil affectionately around her legs the minute she got home.

She’d obviously been delusional. Savage Sam, as she liked to refer to her roommate, didn’t seem to have an affectionate bone in his body and she had yet to hear him purr.

It took her only minutes to change into workout clothes, pull her shoulder-length blond hair into a ponytail, then grab her gym bag and leave the house. It was a thirty-minute drive to the Plaza, a high-rent, beautiful shopping area of the city.

The gym where Chantal worked out wasn’t an exclusive one and catered only to the serious-minded exercise freaks. The Gym was as simple as its name, a place that smelled of sweat. It definitely wasn’t a place for social gatherings or chitchat.

Power shopping was as close as Chantal had gotten to exercise before going to work for Big Joey. But she’d realized that if she intended to be a successful bounty hunter, she needed to make sure she was in the best physical shape possible.

She worked out for a little over two hours, until her muscles were limp as linguini, then showered and dressed in clean clothes for a trip to one of her most favorite places in the whole world.

Mimi’s was an exclusive club with membership reserved for those people who had the right name, the right connections and the ability to pay exorbitant fees for massages, facials and tanning sessions.

Chantal decided to have a full-body massage. As Mary, the masseuse, worked her magic on her tense muscles, Chantal’s thoughts turned to Luke Coleman.

She still couldn’t believe what he had done Saturday night and wondered if he had been at Ruby’s to score Wesley Baker or if that was one of his usual hangouts?

She knew little about the man, only that he was a loner. He’d worked for Big Joey for the past five years and in that time had garnered a reputation for being tough and having the best street contacts in the business.

“You are one big bundle of tension,” Mary said as she kneaded Chantal’s shoulders. “What have you been doing to yourself?”

“The usual stresses. I’m giving a dinner party next week.”

“Oh honey, no wonder you’re tense. We all know how stressful entertaining can be.”

Chantal didn’t reply. Entertaining was nothing. Stress was watching a Neanderthal saunter away with the criminal she’d collared. It was as if she were a gold miner and had spent hours, days digging for gold. She’d finally uncovered a nugget and some other prospector had reached over her shoulder and stolen it away.

She didn’t care about the fee that she’d have earned for delivering Wesley Baker. Money wasn’t the reason she’d gone into this business in the first place. What bothered her more than anything was Luke’s assessment that she was in over her head.

By the time Mary had worked her magic, Chantal had managed to put Luke Coleman out of her mind. She left Mimi’s feeling rejuvenated. After a fast lunch at a nearby restaurant, she headed for Big Joey’s to see whose mug shot had made it to his wall of shame.

Big Joey’s Bail Bonds was located in downtown Kansas City, three blocks from the city square that held the court house, the police station and various other government buildings.

On top of the flat, one-story business, a neon sign—as gaudy as that on any Vegas casino—flashed, despite the brightness of the afternoon.

At this time of the day the heat radiated up in fierce waves from the blacktop parking lot, intensifying the scent of motor oil and rotting garbage that permeated the area.

Chaos ruled the front office. Chantal had never been in the place when the desk wasn’t littered with mounds of papers and fast-food wrappers, the phones weren’t ringing off the hook and the scent of burnt coffee, sweat and fear didn’t saturate the place.

A large bulletin board sporting mug shots of the people who had jumped bail and not made their court appearances covered one wall. Skips, as they were referred to in the business, were the people Chantal and her fellow bail-enforcement agents hunted.

Monica Hyatt sat behind the only desk in the room and she waggled two fingers in greeting at Chantal as she continued talking into the phone. As usual, she wasn’t the only one in the room.

Two other bounty hunters played cards at a table in the corner and a pizza-delivery boy stood impatiently waiting for somebody to pay him for the pizzas that teetered precariously on the edge of Monica’s desk.

“Hey, Carol,” James Walker, one of the card players, greeted her. “Heard Coleman trumped you Saturday night.” He and Brian Cooke, the other card player, laughed.

“I’m glad you two are so amused,” she replied and walked over to the wall to see if any new photos had been put up since Friday when she’d last been in the office. There were two and she pulled a notepad from her purse and wrote down their names and all the pertinent information about their crimes.

“Honey, I’d never have done anything like that to you,” James said.

Chantal raised one of her blond eyebrows to gaze at the older man. “James, you’d cuff your own mother and bring her in if you thought a fee was involved.”

She turned back to Monica and motioned toward the inner-office door. “Is he in?” she mouthed. Monica nodded and indicated she should go on in. Chantal knocked on the door, then pushed it open.

Big Joey Barlow stood less than five feet tall and weighed a hundred pounds soaking wet, but he had the attitude, the aggression and the guts of a man four times his size. The biggest mistake people made with Joey was to underestimate him because of his stature.

“Just turn yourself in, Pete,” Joey said into the phone as he gestured Chantal into a chair in front of his desk. “If I have to send one of my people after you I can’t guarantee things won’t get ugly.”

As Joey alternately cajoled and threatened whoever was on the receiving end of the call, Chantal sank into the chair opposite the desk and waited.

In the eight months that Chantal had been working for Joey she’d found him to be a generous, kind man unless you crossed him, then all bets were off.

“Just get your ass in here,” Joey yelled into the receiver, then slammed it down and grabbed a bottle of antacid tablets from the desktop. He popped two of the chalky tablets into his mouth and chewed feverishly.

“Some days I think I should get out of this business, sell it and spend the rest of my days living on a beach somewhere and sipping drinks with those pretty little umbrellas stuck in them.”

Chantal smiled at her boss. “You’d go crazy with boredom within a month and use one of those umbrella toothpicks to put yourself out of your misery.”

He laughed. “You’re probably right. This business is in my blood.” He reared back in his chair and gazed at her with his intelligent brown eyes. “So, you in here to bitch?”

She frowned. “Why would I bitch?”

“Two words. Luke Coleman.”