I’m bound by gravity.
But the things I thought I knew
Changed the minute I met you.
It seems I’m weightless
and I’m endless after all.
She hadn’t panted and strutted, she hadn’t moved her body in sultry ways. She hadn’t serenaded the crowd with suggestive lyrics, but she’d bared her soul and Finn’s soul too, and he didn’t think he would have felt more naked or exposed if he’d participated in a strip-tease.
I’m weightless and I’m endless after all. That was it. He felt weightless. Her eyes were on his as she stepped back from the mic and shrugged the strap back over her head. The bouncing band seemed momentarily stunned as she set down the borrowed guitar, fully aware that their audience had completely abandoned them for a slip of a girl with a pixie hair-cut and red cowboy boots. The crowd took a collective breath and released it in shouts and applause and stomping.
Finn had been moving toward her as she sang, walking toward her because he couldn’t walk away, and now he closed the gap, side-stepping dancers and drinking observers and swept her up bodily as she moved to step off the stage. She gasped a little as her feet left the ground, but then his mouth found hers, hot with need, but laced with anger at her foolishness. It was the second time he’d kissed her in frustration. But regardless of the reason, it didn’t take Bonnie long to catch up, and she kissed him back, unaffected by the crush of people around them.
And then Finn heard the whispers. He heard the name Bonnie Rae Shelby ricochet around the room in hissed wonder, as if people guessed but weren’t sure. She didn’t look the same. But her voice was distinctive, and once you saw through someone’s disguise, it was completely useless. The moment question became belief, there would be a stampede. He pulled his lips from hers and barreled toward the back entrance he’d noticed upon arriving. Bonnie had taken her purse to the stage with her, and it now hung across her body. But their coats were back at their table, and they hadn’t paid for their meal. Shit! He set Bonnie down and pushed her toward the side entrance, across from the bar.
“Stand by the exit. Don’t go out! Wait for me! I’m going to grab our coats and leave some money on the table.” He strode toward the alcove that housed the booth where they’d tried to hide before Bonnie gave in to the lure of the microphone. Digging out his wallet, he tossed more than enough money to cover their dinner among the plates and napkins that had yet to be cleared. He grabbed their coats and was heading back toward the exit, pushing around people that were still watching, still wondering, although the band had begun to sing again, desperately trying to recapture their audience after Bonnie’s performance. The pounding drums were sufficient distraction for most of the patrons, and Finn had never been more grateful for obnoxiously loud music in his life. His eyes were on Bonnie, on the ten steps it would take to reach her and exit the building, when the lights flickered, the sound system lost power, and the band was upstaged once more.
Cops flooded into the room from every entrance, SWAT team style, all in black, shields and weapons raised, DEA written across every chest. Finn lunged for Bonnie and narrowly missed the advancing stream of police shouting for everyone to get down. He obeyed immediately, pulling Bonnie with him, but he didn’t stay put. He crawled toward the bar just to his right, finding himself nose to nose with the wide-eyed bartender, the college kid who he suspected had a cocaine habit and a side business that paid for it.
“Is there a way out that nobody knows about? A window, a cellar, the roof, anything?” he shouted into the bartender’s face, the din around them making it impossible to do anything but yell.
“They’re DEA! I’m in so much shit, man!” Jagger started to babble.
“So let’s get out of here!” Finn coaxed, willing the bartender to pull a disappearing act out of his hat for all of them. Jagger nodded, gulping, and eased himself deeper behind the bar and Finn followed him on his hands and knees, pushing Bonnie in front of him, his hand on her rear end, urging her along. The bartender opened what appeared to be a large cabinet built into the wall behind the bar, about three feet by two feet, and Finn worried for a second that the wiry bartender was going to crawl inside and pull the doors closed behind him, a hiding spot for one.
“It’s the recycling—there’s a delivery dock on the other side of this wall and a dumpster where we keep the empty glass bottles until they are picked up. This shoot feeds the dumpster. Careful. There’s lots of broken glass.”
Jagger shimmied into the opening, feet first, and disappeared almost immediately. Bonnie didn’t need prodding and copied his exit. The opening was a little narrow for someone Finn’s size, but he turned his shoulders, squeezing himself through, and dropped into a half-full bin of glass bottles, most of them still in one piece. The dumpster was shoved into the right angle between the back wall and the wall with the recycling shoot. There was only one way to go, and the young bartender was already loping down the narrow loading dock toward the sliding metal door.
Finn called out to him, warning him. He knew what would be on the other side of the door. The police weren’t stupid. They would have the exit covered, and if he went out, they would come in. Jagger halted and ran back as Finn swung out of the dumpster behind Bonnie and looked around for another way out that wouldn’t be as obvious and destined for failure.
A door opened across from them, and an old man with a janitor’s uniform and a haggard face stepped out onto the blacktop, pulling a cigarette from his breast pocket, the pocket with a laminated employee badge with a picture, an employee number, and a barcode clipped to it for all to verify. Apparently Verani’s wasn’t the only business that used the loading dock. The janitor patted his pocket for a light and Bonnie ran toward him, Finn and the bartender on her heels, digging in her purse as she did.