I could hear the ringing coming through Joe-Moe's cell-phone the whole way to the car. It must have rung ten times by the time we got there, with no sound of interruption. It was an ominous sign, and I could see Joe-Moe trying to control his panic as much as I was trying to control mine.
And then, as he pulled his car-key out, the ringing was interrupted, and I could hear Axel's "Joe?" from where I stood.
"Axel? Where are you?"
Joe-Moe sounded angry, but I knew it was fear making his voice tight.
I could have cried with relief that Axel was still in a position to take a call, but there wasn't time. Instead I ran around to the passenger side and let myself in with shaking hands.
"Wait, wait," he was saying into the phone as I closed the door. "You're going to..."
There was a burst of hurried talking, and Joe-Moe nodded.
"OK. Do it. I'm coming to pick you up in around thirty minutes. I'll call you when I'm outside. Come out with someone, ok?"
He hung up, and started the engine with a roar.
"He's in a night-club," he said, answering the question I hadn't needed to ask. "He was on the road home and a car crawled up alongside. He recognised one of Lucas's guys, and he turned straight into the door of the club. He used to date one of the bar staff, so he's going to get behind the bar where they can't man-handle him out."
I nodded, my heart a painful thump in my throat. I hoped Joe-Moe was right, and they couldn't simply threaten Axel's ex to get him out of there. The world of organised, violent crime was not one I'd ever had a particular interest in getting to know.
"What are you going to do?" I asked Joe-Moe, holding onto a handle on the door briefly as he took a corner at speed. "I mean - not right now. In the long-term."
"I don't know," he replied, in a low voice. "I'll do everything I can not to make things... bad, but -"
He didn't have to explain any more. I knew that Axel meant more to him than the life of a drug-dealing ex-boyfriend and his stooges. And I didn't expect him to have a lot of sympathy for his boss, either.
"It's going to be hard controlling it if they're threatening him," he added.
I slid my hand around his elbow and rubbed his skin with my thumb. "I'll do what I can to help."
He turned a very serious gaze on me for a moment. "Don't come inside. I know you'll want to be there, and won't appreciate me being over-protective. But I'm probably about to really piss these guys off, and I'd prefer it if they didn't have someone else to aim at."
It's pretty crappy to admit it, but a large part of me was relieved. I didn't want to walk in there. But at the same time, I didn't want him walking in there, either.
"If you're sure," I said, and then added, "but I'm going to be right outside with the car, whatever you say. You're going to need a fast exit strategy."
He grinned, slightly. "Hidden depths," he said.
"What, as a criminal mastermind?" I asked.
"No, I just didn't know you could drive..."
I shoved him gently, trying to hold on to the humour while that urgent note of alarm pulsed in my mind.
Axel called again once we were on the edge of the city, telling Joe-Moe to come to the back of the club.
"That's good," Joe-Moe said, once he'd hung up. "There's a staff entrance to an alley where they get rid of the trash. You can't get in that way, only out. Which means you can drop me close by and drive round to the alley-way. We'll come straight to you, and it keeps you out of sight."
He pulled into a side-road a few blocks from the nightclub, and climbed out of the driver's seat so I could climb in.
"I'll walk from here," he said, catching me briefly and kissing me before I could get in. "You know where you're going?"
"I've got it," I said, trying to smile at him. "Be careful, Joe-Moe."
He kissed me again, with a smile, and then headed to the busy main street while I negotiated the car around the corner and onto the narrow alley that ran around the back of the shops and clubs on the street.
I had a sudden worry that I didn't really know where I was going. It was the back door of Belusci's, and I knew basically where that was, but there were no signs on this side. It was all just metal doors and dumpsters.
Five blocks down, though, I passed a door with a small sign on that had the MacDonald's logo on, and I knew that was close to Belusci's. I drew the car in close to the wall opposite a steel door and switched off the engine.
The reality of waiting for the brothers to emerge hit me the moment I was on my own in the car. I had no idea what was going on in there, and I had no way of telling whether silence from Joe-Moe meant all was going well or that all was going wrong. All I could feel from my awareness of Axel not far away was that the threat was still there.
As time passed (twelve incredibly slow minutes by my obstinately silent cell-phone screen) I began to feel really afraid. Axel might be ok, if still in danger, but what if Joe-Moe had run into some of the ones sent to get his brother? Lucas knew who he was. I had no way of knowing whether he'd made it inside.
My palm started to sweat where I was holding the phone. I was itching to call him, just to hear him tell me that he was ok.
Fifteen minutes.
How could it take fifteen minutes? He only needed to walk two blocks, grab Axel and leave the club.
I needed to drown out that internal voice, and so I started talking to myself instead, out loud.
"Axel was probably busy talking to his ex. Or maybe they had to hide while someone went past. They'll be fine."
Seventeen excruciating minutes, that felt like a life-time.
"OK, so this is useful. You have now ruled out a career as a get-away driver. It sucks."
I was looking so hard at the smooth, slightly dented metal door that I started to think I might melt through it with my eyes.
"That would be a so much more useful super-power," I muttered to myself.
It had hit 10:48 on my phone, a full twenty minutes after I'd left Joe-Moe, when my gaze was drawn away temporarily by movement in the alley-way. I would have ignored the two men in leather coats and black pants who were walking oh-so-casually past if one of them hadn't nodded towards me, and then stopped to say something to his companion in what was clearly a low voice.
Oh, shit.
I glanced away, as if I were just waiting and bored. I lifted my phone to my face, not able to remember how I acted when I was being casual.
My mouth had turned into some kind of desert, and by the time I glanced past the screen again, the two of them had started walking again. My vague hope that they actually weren't anything to do with us died pretty quickly when they stopped at the metal door to the club and one of them drew out something metal and slid it into the frame.
The other one glanced at me again, and I looked back at my cell-phone and gave a theatrical sigh.
I'm a bored girlfriend, I thought, as I brought up Joe-Moe's number on the phone as well as I could with sweaty, half-numb fingers. I don't care about you and your obvious criminal intentions.
The moment the guy looked away, I pressed the call button, praying that Joe-Moe would hear or feel his phone even with the noise and the press of the club.
Nothing happened, and I slumped back in my seat, half trying to hide the phone and half trying to pretend that I was just pissed off at being made to wait for someone.
Come on, come on...
And then Joe-Moe's voice was in my ear, surprisingly clear and free of noise.
"Are you-"
"There are two men forcing open the back door," I said, cutting across him. "They'll be in in about ten seconds."
"Are they armed?"
He sounded pretty cool, all things considered.
"I don't think so, I haven't..."
And then I made the mistake of looking up to check, at the moment the guy looked over again.
I felt cold as our eyes met. Totally cold. I was frozen there, and I knew my face was telling him everything.
Very slowly, his eyes narrowed, and his hand reached towards his jacket pocket. I didn't get how he could move. I couldn't seem to do anything except sit there, the cold draining away and a terrible heat taking its place.
Which was the only warning I had before the metal door blasted open as if something had exploded behind it. The guy who'd been trying to force it went down like a dead weight, and the other one was sent staggering after the edge of it clipped his arm.
Like an unstoppable force, Joe-Moe was suddenly there, and on him, grabbing him by the throat and hurling him back into the door as it bounced off the wall. The guys head snapped forwards as it met the metal, and I flinched, unable to help a pang of sympathy.
Joe-Moe didn't seem to feel the same. He swung him round and brought a knee up into his groin. I saw something fall from the guy's hand, and realised that he had been armed after all. It was a small, black, but unmistakably deadly gun that clattered to the ground.
As Joe-Moe swung, I saw the apparently unconscious guy on the ground move. I had my mouth open to shout in warning, but I wasn't even nearly in time.
The sound of a gun going off in close proximity was utterly unreal. It wasn't loud enough, and yet it rang in my ears for what seemed like hours afterwards.
Joe-Moe didn't seem surprised. Even after the bullet had found its home, he was calm as he kicked the gun out of the guy's hand and then stamped on the exposed fingers.
He wasn't quite in time to catch the guy he'd kneed in the groin. He sagged, and his knees hit the tarmac. He pressed his hands to his stomach and looked up at Joe-Moe with an expression of mild surprise.
The bullet hit him, I thought. Joe-Moe's ok. He's ok.
I pretty much fell out of the car as I hurried out. I couldn't seem to make my legs and arms work, and when Axel emerged from the club at the same time I could see my shock mirrored on his face.
The feeling of heat was suddenly gone, and I was shaking with cold as well as the after-effects of fear.
Joe-Moe looked up at me, his eyes large but his face calm. He gave me a strange half-smile, that somehow reminded me of someone crying.
"We need an ambulance," he said, briefly, and then surprisingly gently laid one of the two guys who'd tried to shoot him onto his back and pressed his hands over the wound in his stomach.