Four dates had done it for me.

This was my guy.

So the thought of giving him as many babies as he wanted thrilled me to pieces.

I didn’t want it the next day or week or month.

But when I got close to graduating from college, I wanted to start thinking about it because I wanted it early so I could be young and enjoy my kids and then be young and enjoy my grandkids.

“Start early,” I whispered hesitantly.

“Oh yeah,” he agreed instantly.

See?

This was my guy.

We agreed on everything. Not just everything that meant something, everything as in everything.

His gaze grew intense on me right before he rolled us so he was on top.

“Gotta get you home soon but want a little more of you before I hafta let you go,” he told me.

Oh yes.

We agreed on everything.

I melted under him.

“Okay,” I agreed.

His eyes warmed a different way before he slanted his head and kissed me.

Logan got a little more of me and I got a lot more of him.

Then he took me home.

I hated to say good-bye at my parents’ front door.

But it wasn’t that bad.

Because we had plans the next night.

CHAPTER FOUR

A Tragedy

Tyra

“RIGHT,” ELVIRA, SITTING in my car next to me, stated. “I’m wired for sound. I go in, you listen in. Now, I’m likin’ this ’cause for me, it kills three birds with one stone. It breaks up the tedium of herdin’ commandos all day. It gets you intel on your girl. And, seein’ as she’s a party planner and I called all her references before I set up this gig, she and me do this sit-down, I get the prelims done for my wedding.”

She then clapped her hands together and held them palm out in front of her, indicating done.

“Uh... don’t you think it might be bad luck to start planning your wedding before Malik actually pops the question?” Lanie, crammed in my backseat, asked Elvira.

Elvira twisted around to glare at her. “Uh... no, seein’ as Malik’ll be the one with the bad luck if that man don’t put a ring on it and soon. He don’t, I got two choices. Kick his black ass out or kill him. And, just sayin’, I’m leanin’ toward door number two.”

She didn’t have to “just say.” She’d been ranting about this for months, so we already knew.

I didn’t blame her. Elvira was my girl and Malik was her man and had been for a long time. He needed to make a move.

I felt for her because I loved her.

But this was not the time for that.

“Not to change the subject from one this important,” I put in. “But I don’t have a good feeling about our current mission.”

It was only three days after Wild Bill’s rally.

In that time, I had taken into consideration my husband’s warnings to stay out of it.

Then I (and all the boys) had been treated to High’s foul mood.

So I decided to go for it.

To that end I’d roped in Elvira, my friend who also worked for Hawk Delgado, who was a kind of private investigator, kind of commando, but mostly unsung superhero (in my mind). I’d also pulled in Lanie, my bestest bestie, who had traveled my path. She’d just done it years later when she, too, married a Chaos brother, Hopper “Hop” Kincaid.

Once she heard, being one to dive in to something like this with both feet, Elvira made short work of doing the legwork, utilizing Hawk’s superhero resources at his command center.

Therefore we knew a fair amount about Millicent Cross.

We knew she was forty-one. We knew she’d never been married (something I found telling, and Lanie and Elvira agreed). We knew she also had never had children (again with the telling). We knew she’d lived in her house for eleven years.

But we also knew that, years ago, she’d shared a rental with High and they’d done that for three years.

Further, we knew she had one sister, who was married with two kids and lived local, and two living parents who had moved to Arizona three years ago.

And last, we knew she owned her own business.

She planned parties.

All parties.

Weddings. Anniversaries. Bar mitzvahs. Bat mitzvahs. Quinceañeras. Corporate gatherings. You named it, she planned it, and after Elvira had called the references listed on her website, we’d found that she did it very well.

She also had an add-on to this business where she’d design the schemes, then decorate houses or offices, inside and out, for holidays. Any holiday (but mostly Christmas). And from the pictures in the gallery on her website, she was really good at that.

After learning all of this, Elvira had concocted a plan where she scheduled an appointment, ostensibly to plan her upcoming nuptials, this happening so we could get a “feel” for Millie and from that feel, decide for ourselves if we should officially wade in.

And without girl posse consensus, Elvira had put that plan into action.

Thus we were there, sitting in my Mustang on the street in front of Millie Cross’s (very quaint and unbelievably pretty) little old house in Cheesman Park.

We were there because, at the back of the main house, there was a small mother-in-law cottage where Millie had a studio in which she ran her business. You got to this going up a drive that was two narrow strips of concrete between wider strips of tufted lawn. These were under an overhang that was, back in the day, probably to protect cars or even carriages and it had a wall of trellis covered in wisteria.

And Elvira’s appointment was two minutes away.

Elvira turned her attention to me. “How can you not have a good idea about this? It’s the perfect plan.”

She would think that, it was her plan.

“Well, you might not have gone through the initiation ceremony, that being becoming an old lady, but you’re still de facto Chaos,” I stated. When Elvira opened her mouth to retort, I kept going. “And you know it. Which means, if Millie Cross is who I think Millie Cross is, and we can fix what’s broken with her and High, which means she might come back in the fold, do you think the first thing we should do as her possible future Chaos sisters is pull a fast one?”

“What I think is you gotta know what you’re dealin’ with here and you got your man’s strong words. She’s got her man’s strong words.” Elvira jerked a thumb at Lanie. “And those two boys are far from dumb. Loyal, perhaps to a fault, but not dumb. So I think you gotta proceed with caution.”

Elvira wasn’t wrong. Lanie had gently probed Hop about his knowledge of the history of High and Millie.

Hop’s response had been, “Heard she showed her face. I’ll say what Tack said to Cherry. Bitch is not welcome anywhere near Chaos. So do not stick your nose in that, woman. You do, you won’t be prepared for the extreme.”

Lanie being married to a biker and the mother of one of his sons, getting this warning and sitting in the back of my Mustang with crazy Elvira on a mission was one of the many reasons she was my bestest bestie.

I still didn’t have a good feeling about this.

“I hear you,” I told Elvira. “But I think you should call her, reschedule, and we should talk this out further before—”

Her phone beeped before I finished. She held the screen out to me.

I saw the appointment alarm on the display just as she said, “Go time,” turned to the door, tossed it open, threw out her Valentino pump, and hauled herself out.

The door was slammed and she was gone.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“Shit is right,” Lanie agreed, and I looked to the backseat. “I can’t help but feeling, one way or another, this is going to go south for us.”

I had that feeling too.

I was worried Tack and Hop, who both knew Millie and had been around when whatever went down went down, were right.