Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (18 page)

“OKAY,” ANGEL SAID, curling up on the couch next to me and propping her jaw on a hand. “Are you going to tell me the real reason now?”

“The real reason?” I lifted my head from where I’d been resting it on the back of her couch, yawning a little, even though I knew that was an avoidance tactic of mine––or a stalling tactic, at least. “The real reason for what?” I said.

Angel rolled her eyes, snorting. “You suck at that, you know?”

“I suck at what?”

“Playing dumb.”

It was my turn to snort, then to smile. “Maybe it’s not an act.”

Angel exhaled in overdone irritation. I could tell at least some of that irritation was real. Taking a drink from the wine glass she held in the hand not currently propping up her head, she went back to studying my eyes, her own openly appraising.

It had been her idea to pop open the merlot after Nick dropped us off from the restaurant. We’d each had a glass with dinner too, but I’d only had enough to feel sleepy at that point. Given how I’d eaten until I literally couldn’t make myself eat any more at Angel’s favorite Thai restaurant in the Marina, it was amazing I was conscious.

I’d been so hungry it shocked me a little when we finally got our meals. Even though I’d avoided Thai food for the most part since my trip to Bangkok, I still couldn’t seem to make myself stop eating once we got our food. I couldn’t finish everything, of course, since the portions at the Purple Orchid were huge and my stomach seemed to have shrunk to the size of a pea over the course of my however-many weeks staying in Black’s penthouse, but I’d still left there so full I dozed in the backseat of Nick’s car on the way back to Angel’s place.

Black still hadn’t called.

Well, he hadn’t called
me
.

Nick mentioned over dinner that he’d called in. He waved his chopsticks over the giant plate of Pad Thai he’d been eating, his mouth full of rice noodles.

“Your boy-toy tell you he’d be out of town for a few days?”

I’d lowered my own chopsticks to stare at Nick. “What?”

His words managed to distract from the smell of Pad Thai, which had been making me physically sick up until Nick casually dropped the information about Black’s latest disappearing act. I used to love Pad Thai, but my one and only trip to Bangkok pretty much ruined that dish for me forever. Now, just looking at the noodles and peanuts and lime and shrimp on Nick’s plate––even though we were in a high-end restaurant and it wasn’t street food like what I’d eaten in Bangkok––was enough to make me nauseous. It was also enough to bring back memories I just as soon would have forgotten.

Those memories didn’t mix so great with Nick’s news about Black.

“What do you mean, he’s out of town?” I prompted, when Nick went back to eating.

He glanced up, chewing the piece of prawn he’d just sucked out of the shell. He swallowed what remained in his mouth before he answered. His voice came out more businesslike that time, maybe because he saw the annoyance in my eyes.

“Guess he was serious about running down leads,” he said, shrugging. “Said he’d be back in a few days, that he might have some way to get us intel on Archangel. Said no promises, but he had a few ideas he was going to run down.”

I felt my face grow hot as I turned over Nick’s words.

“He didn’t tell you?” Nick prodded.

I gave him a hard look. I could tell from his voice he was a little too happy about that.

“No,” I said. “Did he say where he was?”

Nick waved a hand vaguely. “Somewhere south. Central valley, maybe? Said he might have to go as far as L.A., but he had someone closer to home he could ask first.” Nick grunted. “Pretty ironic, given that our favorite hotshot detective, Mozar, just came from down there.”

I nodded, but didn’t speak.

I knew both Angel and Nick could probably tell I wasn’t thrilled.

I also didn’t miss the edge in Nick’s voice when he mentioned Mozar.

I knew that might not entirely be about the murder case, either.

In one of the more awkward moments of my professional career since I’d started doing contract work for the SFPD, Mozar asked me out––more or less publicly, and while we were all still working. He’d done it minutes after Black left us out on that pier and climbed onto a brand new looking Ducati motorcycle that I didn’t even know he owned.

I’d been watching him drive away when Mozar approached from behind and asked me––way too loudly, in my opinion––if I’d consider joining him for dinner that night.

Luckily, I’d already had an excuse. I didn’t even have to think about it for long, since I’d only just recently asked Angel and Nick out for drinks and dinner.

Mozar had been persistent though.

And yeah, loud.

“What about tomorrow night?” he said, not missing a beat.

“I’m seeing someone,” I told him, as politely as I could. “But thank you. It’s nice of you to ask.”

“Seeing someone?” Mozar frowned. “You mean tomorrow? Or as in you’re dating someone?”

“I have a boyfriend.”

“So? You’re not married, right?” Mozar smiled when he said it, but I could tell it wasn’t really a joke. “Or does Mr. Boyfriend get pissed off when you have a few friendly drinks with anyone besides him?”

“We’re exclusive,” I told him, without smiling back. “So yes. He does.”

Mozar didn’t lose the smile, but when I glanced to my right and saw Glen and Nick standing right there, I felt my mood sour considerably. Nick and Glen were practically gaping at us––they didn’t even try to hide the fact that they’d been eavesdropping. Nick was scowling openly at Mozar as soon as he seemed to wrap his head around the exchange, his thick arms crossed over his chest the way they had been when he’d been arguing with Black.
 

Glen just kept looking me up and down with a puzzled expression on his face, like he couldn’t figure out why he kept looking at me.

He probably couldn’t.

Figure it out, I mean.

Anyway, because of that little scene, Nick had been making cracks about Mozar off and on all night, pretty much ever since we’d dropped him off at the Northern Precinct station.

“Guy’s not very good with ‘no,’ is he?” Nick grunted, as if he’d read some portion of my thoughts on my face. “Can you believe the nerve of that shit-head? We were
working
for crying out loud. Did he somehow miss that part of our being out there? And what’s up with that Sphinx-like partner of his? I don’t think that guy said two words the whole day.”

“He found the other symbol,” I reminded him.

Nick shrugged, his expressing relaxing somewhat. “True.”

Hawking had been the one who found another alchemical symbol, presumably left by the killer. None of the CSI guys caught it, since it had been carved on the inside of the door of the pavilion, right on the other side of where the killer left the body.

Nick grunted, taking another bite of the Pad Thai.

“He’s got a good rep down south,” he conceded. “Hawking, I mean. Quiet, but good at his job. I talked to Joanna... remember her?” When I nodded, he focused back on his food, still talking. “She said Hawking and Mozar have been working this thing together from the beginning... that Mozar gets all the press, but Hawking’s done a lot of the legwork.”

He glanced up, giving me a level look. “He found the merc connection too, doc. Hawking. He started mapping the guy as ex-military after the first kill, from what Mozar says. Something about the way he stalks his victims. Hawking served over there when we did, give or take. He was a Ranger. Sniper. So he should probably talk to Black when he gets back.”

I nodded, taking all that in.

It made sense, given the small amount I’d felt on Hawking the few times I’d read him. He had a kind of sniper’s personality. One type, anyway.

Truthfully, I’d checked him out in part because I’d wondered fleetingly if he was our killer. The guy I’d felt on the ladder had been blank too, like an absence of presence, which is how Hawking himself struck me. The coincidence was too much for me not to do a quick pass, if only to make sure those resonances weren’t the same.

They weren’t––the same, that is. Maybe there were more guys like that in Spec Ops than I realized. Most of the ones I’d known could shoot their mouths off with the best of them, although I knew that could be a form of camouflage too.

I didn’t say any of that aloud over dinner. In the end I found myself thinking that maybe you needed a quiet-guy hunter to catch one of his own.

Angel only grinned at Nick’s words over dinner, shaking her head a little. Even so, I’d seen her looking at me, that narrower scrutiny in the back of her gaze.

Pretty much the exact same scrutiny she was aiming at me now.

I exhaled. “You mean why am I here? Why did I ask if I could stay with you?” I leaned my jaw on my hand like her, turning so I faced her. “You heard Nick. Black’s out of town.”

“You asked to stay with me before you knew that,” Angel said, shaking her head to show me she wasn’t buying it. “And things were... chilly... with the two of you. And I don’t just mean at the pier, where he walked off without so much as a goodbye.”

I rolled my eyes a little, but felt my face heat. Thinking, I took a sip of my own glass of wine. Eventually, I could only shrug.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully.

“You don’t know?”

I shook my head, once. “I think he’s mad at me. But I honestly don’t know.”

“You think he’s mad at you,” Angel said. “Black.”

I nodded, meeting her gaze. “He told me to ask you if I could stay with you. He didn’t want me staying alone, but he said I couldn’t stay with him. That was before he decided to leave...” Pausing, I frowned. “Well, I think it was. Unless he’d decided to leave and just didn’t tell me.” My frown deepened as I turned that possibility over in my head. “Anyway. He made it clear he didn’t want me staying with him. He asked me for space. He was clear about that.”

Feeling my face heat again, I shook my head.

“It was confusing, honestly.
I
was the one who first said we needed to talk. But he comes back at me that if I want him to talk to me, he needs space first.”

“What did you want to talk to him about?” Angel said, resettling her arm and butt on the couch. She was frowning too, like she was having trouble following all of that.

I shrugged, taking another sip of the wine. “Seer stuff, I guess. He kept getting pissed off about things... things I couldn’t really understand. It was starting to seem like maybe we had a cultural problem.”

Angel quirked an eyebrow, smiling. “A cultural problem.”

Again, she didn’t really say it like a question.

“Yeah, you know.” I made a vague gesture with the hand gripping the wine glass. “Like a disconnect. Like we’re not quite meeting each other in the same place.”

When I glanced up that time, Angel burst out in a laugh.

“What?” I said, annoyed. “That’s funny to you?”

“You two... wow. You’re like little kids. I honestly can’t decide if it’s cute or deeply disturbing, given that you’re both over thirty.”

I felt my jaw tighten more. “Meaning?”

“Meaning,” Angel said, scooting towards me on the couch and giving me a mock stern look. “That boy is head over heels in love with you, Miriam. If you can’t see that, you’re blind as a bat. And whatever ‘cultural disconnect’ you think might be happening, I strongly suspect he’s losing his shit because you’re doing your weird ‘doc’ thing with him and putting up all your walls.” She shrugged, taking another sip of the wine before adding, “You’ve been doing it to him pretty much every time
I’ve
seen the two of you together, Miri. I can’t vouch for when you’re alone. But even that morning in his apartment, you were doing it––”

“I was not––” I began, fighting real annoyance.

But she didn’t let me finish.

“––Maybe you’re doing it worse this time after Ian or what happened in Bangkok. Or maybe it’s because of all that crap that went on in Paris and him leaving you alone for months on end. Either way, he’s too paranoid, or too freaked out––or just too much of a damned
guy
to realize
why
you’re doing it. He just knows you’re shutting him out and it’s scaring him. Apparently he doesn’t know you well enough yet to realize you’re crazy about him too... and terrified of this whole thing for that very reason.”