Dirty Laundry (24 page)

“Do you still have those papers?” I inched forward on the chair’s seat. “It might help clarify a few things.”

The suspicion was back in his face. “What kind of things?”

“I’m trying to find out who killed Vivian. I was there at the coffee shop when she died. I was supposed to meet with her about Madame Sun’s clients when the shots came through the window.” I leaned forward, keeping my voice down. “It was fast, Hong Chul. I’ll tell you what I told her mother; it was very quick. She never knew.”

“And you think it’s got something to do with Gyong-Si?” He cocked his head and stared me down. Hong Chul might have stepped back into line, but it wasn’t hard to see him as an intimidating piece of gangbanger.

“It looks that way. So far, everyone who’s died is connected to him in some way.”

“The cops are saying Darren’s probably the one who shot Viv, but they don’t know why. I wish James Bahn hadn’t killed him. I’d want to fuck him up something fierce.” The power in his voice left me with no illusions of what he’d do to the person who’d targeted his sister. “If someone else’s responsible for this shit, then I want a piece of them. She was my sister too. Fuck, she was my sister before I even knew we were related. I owe her. She was there for me when Abby got sick a while back. I’ve got to be there for her now, you know?”

“Darren
might
have killed her. I don’t know,” I admitted. “But there’s got to be a reason. Maybe someone hired him?”

“Maybe. Yeah, he didn’t really even know her.” Hong Chul’s eyes grew distant. “I think they might have met like once or twice, but that’s it.”

“If it wasn’t him, then it was someone else we don’t know about. So far, everything I’ve got connecting comes through Gyong-Si,” I said. “If you’ve got something that can point me toward someone else, I’d like to take a look at it. Before someone else gets hurt. Or worse, killed.”

“You find out who did this, you tell me.” His eyes burned with a nearly religious fervor. “Because I want to be there when they drag him in. I want to make sure that fucking bastard pays for what he did to me… what he did to my family. ’Cause if the cops don’t do it, then I’ll find someone who will.”

“S
O
WHAT
do you think?” I turned down the main thoroughfare toward my place. “Think he’s telling the truth?”

“What? Hong Chul?” The look Jae gave me could have been called incredulous if not scathing. He’d been thumbing through the papers Hong Chul gave us, briefly murmuring over some of the man’s comments. “What would he lie about?”

“Him and Vivian Na being lovers.” I had to stop the Rover as a bunch of bearded slackers ambled across the street toward the granola girls’ coffee shop.

“No.” Jae’s disgust was palatable. “People
can
just be friends. You and Bobby are just friends, no? You’ve never….” He trailed off, going someplace in his mind that he probably didn’t want to go. I opened my mouth to respond, but he leaned over and pushed my jaw shut with the back of his hand. “No, I don’t want to know. No matter which way it was, I don’t want to know.”

“You sure? Could be interesting.” I smirked at his derisive snort. “Bobby’s done some fucked-up shit.”

“I worked in a host club. Pretty sure I’ve seen things Bobby hasn’t even thought of.”

The hipsters were stalled in the middle of the road, seemingly having a long discourse on the price of wool jumpers and totally oblivious to the Rover. I honked my horn, startling them into action. There was not a single apology from the duckling pack. Instead, I got outraged glares through the Rover’s windshield, and one of them had the nerve to flip me off.

I would have stepped out of the Rover to discuss his gesture, but one of the hairy-pitted women who owned the café hustled out and grimaced an apology at me, ushering her ill-mannered customers in. She and Bobby’d had words before, mostly Bobby having words and her wincing at the volume. A few weeks ago, one of her regulars decided spitting on Bobby’s truck was a good idea while he’d waited for them to cross the street and, once again, they’d stopped to talk midroad. He honked and spittle flew.

Things escalated from there. Lessons learned that day: never spit on an ex-cop’s car, especially when you’re heading over to a coffee shop with a
special
garden growing in the back alley.

“They’re very… rude.” Jae watched the herd pick up their pace and shuffle to the sidewalk.

“You, love of my heart and loins, are a master of the understatement. What they are, are assholes.” I drove the Rover up onto my driveway and parked it in the carport. Jae’d parked his Explorer on the cement pad next to the driveway, and I checked the windows and tires automatically when we walked by. “But if I start screaming at them to get off my lawn, put me in a nursing home, okay?”

The office was quiet when we came through the screen door. Mo was behind his grandmother’s desk, buried deep in what looked like a calculus book thick enough to kill a dinosaur. The conference room door was open wide enough, and a murmur of loud sound effects and steamy Korean seeped out. I couldn’t follow a lick of it, but it sounded sensual. I shot a look over at Jae, but he seemed unconcerned.

After calling the girls out, I then dealt the first salvo in a battle I had no hope of winning. Still, handing Tiffany a sheaf of hundreds from petty cash so she could go get some clothes that didn’t belong to me or Jae seemed like a good idea at the time.

Her brother didn’t seem to think so.

Mo did what Mo did best. He analyzed the situation, then herded the girls outside amid confused, querulous objections and closed the screen door behind him. I made a mental note to give him a bonus. Maybe a car. Hell, an aircraft carrier wasn’t out of order. Next thing we heard was the Mo and Sissy mobile firing up and pulling away from the curb.

Jae was going to argue with me. I could see it before he even drew in a full breath. “Cole-ah—”

“Hear me out.” I put the cashbox back and locked it up. “She brought nothing with her, right? Dude, she’s wearing
my
clothes. How fucked-up is that for a teenaged girl? I’ll give her a few hundred dollars, and she can get some of her own stuff. We can order some pizza and go over the papers Hong Chul gave us.”

“Cole—” He wasn’t weakening. Not by a long shot, but I had a trump card up my sleeve he couldn’t fight.

“You promised we’d do this kind of shit together.” I was stretching the words that’d come out of his mouth, but if I could get him to give on this, it would lay a groundwork for larger things. I needed something to budge between us. At some point, Jae was going to have to acknowledge I was standing beside him. “Trust me. Money is pretty small shit in the scheme of things.”

“I don’t want her to… depend on your money.” He exhaled hard, leaning against my desk. I stepped closer, letting the warmth of my body wash over his skin. “It’s not—”

“We’re together in this, remember, babe?” I softened my voice to a whisper. “
That
means everything. Whatever you need to get done, we can do it together. And as for my money… dude, it’s there. And there’s enough of it that all it does is make more money. I don’t spend a lot. This place was the biggest purchase I’ve made. Hell, I was still driving my old Rover until Grace decided she needed to blow it up.”

“I hate that I can’t give her things like… this.” He finally broke, and his pride crumbled. The stoic façade he wore to argue with was gone, swept away by frustration and something fragile I couldn’t quite name until it dawned on me he was ashamed, hurt by the inability to hand his sister a few hundred dollars to go shopping.

Reaching for him was easy. Holding him close was even easier. Jae folded into me, curving his body against my chest and wrapping his arms around my waist. It felt good to have him tuck his head under my chin, and the tickle of his hair in my nose was a sublime pleasure. It was like having a full-body orgasm encasing me in its tight grip.

“I don’t have money,” Jae murmured. “We’ve never had it. Anything my mother got from Uncle was for Jae-Su. He didn’t send enough to support all of us. I can’t… wrap my head around the money you have.”

“Hey, you think I’m good with it?” I kissed the top of his head and stroked at the small of his back until he nearly purred under my touch. “You know why I’ve got it?”

“’Cause of Ben… because he shot you.”

Besides me, the only other people who knew exactly why the department shoveled boatloads of cash at me to keep me quiet were Mike and Maddy. It was probably time to talk to Jae about the whole mess.

“Kind of.” I hesitated. “See, Ben’d gone to the department shrink after one of our cases. He was losing it. Really losing it. Drinking too much and not talking enough. The captain thought he needed some talking
to
. The doctor… I don’t know what Ben said to him. No one really does, but the doc told the department Ben should be given a leave of absence. That he needed some time to work through some issues. The department disagreed.”

“How long—” Jae couldn’t finish his sentence. His words choked somewhere in his throat. “Before he—”

“Two days,” I answered. “Two days later, Ben shot the doctor when he was leaving his office. Man lived, but… Ben caught him in the spine and the neck. It went up through his head. He’s lucky to be alive, but the dude’s not all there anymore, you know? No one knew Ben was the one who shot the guy until later.”

We’d begun to lean on one another. I was no longer the one pouring strength into him. His heart picked up the beat in my chest, and we breathed in together, joined as close as we could be without scandalizing the spider sitting up in the corner of the ceiling.

“When did they figure it out?”

“It wasn’t until after Ben shot us… killed Rick… did the department make the connection. Ballistics and all that crap. By then, it was too late to do anything but cry.” It was hard to talk about it. Even after three years, it still hurt to find my world suddenly missing not only Rick but Ben, the man I’d counted as much of a brother as I did Mike. “That’s why there’s money. It’s got blood on it. Mine… Rick’s… the doctor’s. Hell, even Ben’s, because they could have stopped him from blowing his own brains out. But they didn’t.”

“I wish they’d stopped him. Even if it meant… Rick.” Jae swore into my chest. I knew what he was trying to say. It was impossible to express with words without sounding like an asshole, but he tried anyway. “Even if it
meant you and I… someone should have stopped Ben. They should have fucking listened.”

“Yeah, they should have listened, but since they didn’t, they dumped a bunch of money at me and told me to get the fuck out of the department. So, giving Tiff some money to go shopping for clothes is nothing in the long run. What’s important is that she feels comfortable and is happy. Life’s too short not to try to be happy. Fucking let me tell you, if anyone knows that, it’s me.”

“Okay.” His voice was barely a whisper, but the hug he gave me was tight enough to nearly bring me to my knees. “Thank you.”

“Now come on, let’s go home.” Reluctantly, I let him go and pushed him toward the door. “Your cat probably misses you, and I could really use a beer.”

N
EKO
greeted us at the door, then abandoned ship once I’d popped a can of smelly crap into her porcelain dish. I took a couple of beers from the fridge, padded into the living room, and stepped over Jae’s discarded sneakers.

Jae had thrown himself onto the couch, having tossed the journals and papers we’d gotten from Hong Chul onto the apothecary chest. Sitting on the chest in front of him, I tucked his knees between my legs and put my hands on them. I bent forward until our foreheads touched and kissed his nose.

“You want something to eat first or just start tearing apart the papers?”

“Papers?” Jae’s sloe eyes were nearly black when he glanced at me. “But… we don’t have a lot of time… alone, no? Just a few hours until Tiffany comes back….”

I liked how my boyfriend thought.

Even better, I
loved
how he felt against me. Preferably naked.

“Well, you know, there’s a spare bedroom. Hell, even two if you count the Murphy bed in that den I don’t use,” I murmured back. “You two could spend the night. Can’t be very comfortable over at that place of yours. I’ve napped on that bed of yours. Couldn’t walk for a week afterward.”

“You never let go of things, huh?” He broke contact with me, shaking his head in disbelief. “You’re not going to be happy until we’ve moved in.”

“Hey, if I’ve got to suffer your cat’s farts under the blankets in the middle of the night, you should too,” I countered. “We’ll give Tiffany a pass. There’s only so much angst a teenager should have to suffer through.”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to sleep with you… while my sister’s in the house,” Jae admitted. “That’s a lot to ask her to handle, Cole-ah.”

“Okay.” It was hard to say. Even harder to swallow. “Agreed.”

I had to give him that. We’d have to take baby steps where Tiffany was concerned, and if she was going to stick around, she’d have to be folded into our lives as carefully as we could. Frustrating, especially since my dick missed having Jae to nudge up against in the wee morning hours, but it was going to have to suck it up.