Kiss the Girl (14 page)

“Ty didn’t even get that.  They just suspended his broker’s license.”

“Ah.”  Nixie nodded slowly.  “Legitimate employment was off the table, so he went under the table instead?”

“Right.  Gangs are businesses, after all.  Even a drug lord needs profit and loss reports.  And then, of course, he’d need some sage advice o
n where to launder--oh, excuse me,
invest
--said profits.  So maybe Marcus P runs the gang, but
Tyrese
Jones
runs the money.  And that, Nixie, makes him
the most powerful man in this neighborhood. 
An invitation from him isn’t exactly a request.”

Nixie frowned, her brows coming together in a perfect little furrow that should have had a cartoon caption: 
thinking!

“Well how was I supposed to know that?”  She slid off the desk and started pacing. 

“Everybody knows that
.”  Erik dropped into the receptionist’s chair, somewhat mollified by Nixie’s pacing.  The more anxious she got, the better he felt.  Getting her head on straight might be the only thing of any consequence he did tonight.  “Everybody with half a brain, anyway.”

“Hey!”  She stalked up to him, poked a finger into his deltoid hard enough to hurt.  “That’s not fair.  I’m new, not stupid.”

“No?”  He closed his eyes and hoped she’d back off but she didn’t.  He could still smell her, fresh and lemony.  How the hell could she smell so good after a full shift, a tree burial and a near abduction?  And why on earth would he even notice what she smelled like when his
best friend
had just been snatched by
gang
bangers
?  “Then stop acting like it.”

She hissed in a breath and he braced himself.  That had been over the line, and he knew it.  She was going to
tell him to screw himself and his stupid clinic now
, and he dese
rved it.  But she didn’t
.  He opened his eyes, and found her staring down at him.  Her eyes were hazel, he saw.  Copper-flecked green and very, very steady. 

“Why didn’t you tell the police who your mother is?” she asked softly.  “You could’ve had the mayor, the chief of police and the police commissioner down here with one phone call.  Why didn’t you do it?”

“I’m a grown man, Nixie.  I don’t call in the mom squad to fix my problems.”

“I see.  So
Mary Jane’s
safety ranks lower than preserving your ego?”

He stood up.  “What, you’re a psychoanalyst now?” 

“I know mommy issues when I see them.
  What exactly did your mom do to you that was so awful, anyway?
”   He walked away from her, but she was right at his elbow, nipping like a herding dog.  “Are you really going to let your hang ups put
your girlfriend
at risk?” 

“Me?”  He huffed out an incredulous laugh.  “I put Mary Jane at risk?  Jesus, princess, that’s great.  Let me run this down for you one more time, okay? 
You
witnessed the abduction. 
You
gave a statement to the police that made it look like Mary Jane ran off for a little fling with
Tyrese
‘
CPA-to
-the-
Dark-Side
’ Jones while I called the cops like a jealous boyfriend.  And suddenly
she’s
in trouble because I have mommy issues?”

Her pretty mouth snapped shut. 
She threaded a finger through one of those shiny curls of hers and fr
owned into the middle distance. 
“Okay, so there’s enough blame to go around.”

Erik dropped his head. “Jesus.”

“The question is, what are we going to do now?”

“
We
aren’t going to do anything.  You’re going home.  I’ll come back in the morning, do some door knocking.  Somebody’s bound to know what’s going on.”

She swished her elbow away from his grip.  “I want to go with you.”

“Like hell,” he said.  “This isn’t exactl
y Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood
.”

“No kidding?”

“You’d be a liability, Nixie.  You’d just slow me down.”

“I might surprise you.”

“Yeah, you’re just full of surprises.  But no, it’s too dangerous.”  He grabbed at her elbow again, got it this time.  Damn, it felt fragile.  He gentled his grip until he wasn’t worried about her bones.  The urge to tuck her away safely was strange and overpowering.  She was much taller than Mary Jane, and clearly had some skill in the art of self-defense or else she’d have been the one riding off with a couple of under-aged felons.  So why did he want to wrap her in cotton batting and lock her away?  Mary Jane traipsed through this neighborhood twice a day and it had never put this kind of knot in his gut. 

“I’m a big girl, Erik.”  Her eyes were huge and intense, and she was still wearing his extra lab coat.  It made her look small, breakable.  “I feel responsible.  I need to do something.”

“Let me take you home, Nixie.  We’ll talk in the morning, okay?  Maybe you can go to the police station, revise your statement.  That’ll help more than anything.”

“You’ll go with me?”

“Sure,” he lied.  He would be back here by first light, and without Nixie in tow.  “I’ll call you after we’ve both gotten some sleep.”

He forced himself to meet that steady gaze.  She finally nodded.  “Okay,” she said.  “Okay.”

It was
nearly midnight
when Nixie climbed out of Erik’s beat up
Jeep Cherokee
. 

“I’ll walk you up,” he said, but Nixie waved him off. 

“There’s a doorman,” she said, pointing to the brightly lit awning protecting the entrance to the Watergate.  “I’ll be fine.”

The uniformed doorman swept open the doors as she spoke and Erik frowned, but nodded.  “Okay.”

“You’ll call me first thing?” 

“Yeah, sure.” 

Nixie gave him a skeptical look, but he didn’t catch it.  He was too busy looking innocent and studying the steering wheel.  The man was a terrible liar.  She shook her head.

“See you tomorrow, then.”  She wanted to leave but worried guilt hung in the air around him like a miasma.  She reached over and touched his arm.  “She’s fine, Erik.  I really think she is.”

“Yeah.”  He gave her a crooked smile that clearly cost him an effort.  “Of course she is.” Nixie shored up the crumbling walls around her heart. 
God
, she was a sucker for the stiff upper lip. 

She squeezed his arm, and it felt so solid and strong under her hand that she took an extra second to bask in the unexpected sense of safety.  She was used to giving comfort, not taking it.  Funny how she could do both with this man. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said again.

He waited until she was safely inside the building before pulling away and Nixie smiled.  Wouldn’t his mother be pleased to see her boy showing such a decent set of manners?  She glanced toward the Senator’s door as she was fitting her own key into the lock.  It was silent and dark.  Either nobody was home or nobody was up.

She hesitated a moment, then made a decision.

She rapped smartly on the Senator’s door.  It took a few minutes, but eventually a light flipped on and the Senator herself appeared, wrapped in a brilliant blue silk robe.

“This had better be good,” she said.

“It is.”  Nixie studied the Senator.  “Your son is a terrible liar.”

“You didn’t have to wake me in the middle of the night to tell me that.”

“He’s trying to cut me out of something I need to do.  I want you to help me get around him.”

The Senator stepped back, opened the door.  “Come in.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mary Jane hefted the emergency kit onto her shoulder and swallowed a huge lump of terrified rage.  She didn’t look at the adolescent goons flanking her, just kept her eyes on her shoes.  She didn’t need to look up to know they were marching her deep into the bowels of the Wash.

Washburn Towers was one of the newer projects and as such, its stairwells stank of cheap paint and exposed insulation along with the usual stew of grease, pot smoke and abandoned bodily fluids.  Mary Jane was no snob.  She handled the rawer elements of the human body all the time.  A little puke and piss on the landing didn’t normally faze her.  Neither did blood, but they were following fat black blobs of it like it was a trail of bread crumbs and Mary Jane couldn’t deny the little darts of panic streaking through her stomach.  

Embrace it, she told herself.  Use it.  Let it make you stronger, not weaker.  But her imagination loaded up horrifying images of Ty sprawled somewhere at the top of the stairs in a pool of his own blood, far beyond her ability to help him.

They turned a corner, started up another flight of stairs.  Still following the trail of blood. 

“Is it Ty?” she finally asked. 

No answer. 

She picked up the pace.  If he wasn’t dead, she was going to kill him herself.  Hippocrates would surely understand.  Though at this point, breaking
her o
ath woul
d
be the least of her transgressions.

The goon on her left knocked on the door, a specific-sounding combination of raps and pauses.  Mary Jane closed her eyes.  Boys and their secret codes. 
God
. 

The door opened just wide enough for her and the goon squad to be yanked through. 

“All right,” she said, digging into her bag for a pair of rubber gloves.  “Where’s the bleeder?”  She snapped them on and looked around the circle of painfully young faces gazing at her with such open hostility.  They hated her, she realized with a sinking certainty.  No, not her.  Just her face, her hair, her skin.  Her privilege.  Her refusal to show fear to a group of heavily armed teenagers.  She hardly knew
which
.

“The bleeder?” she asked again, this time putting a little more authority into her voice.  She glanced around the room like she was taking it in, but in reality, she was just avoiding eye contact.  It was one thing to be authoritative.  It was quite another to issue a direct challenge. 

The apartment was small and generic, but clean.  There were more bookshelves than anything, each one stuffed to overflowing with everything from economic and political theory to John Grisham’s latest.  A laptop hummed gently on a table by the window, another blinked from the kitchen counter.  She could see it from the door.

The floors were a dull grey linoleum, but clean except for the blood.  There was less here, she saw with a surge of relief.  He must have either clotted on his own or done a little first aid.  Temper skated in hot after the relief, and she flipped her bag back onto her shoulder.

“Never mind.  I’ll just follow the trail.”

The bodies parted silently for her and she didn’t bother to knock.  She stepped up to the closed door that presumably led to the bedroom
--
Ty’s bedroom,
God
help her
--
and let herself in.  She closed the door against the blank, hateful eyes that followed her, then turned and found him there.  Perfectly alive if a little dinged up.  Relief was a choking pressure in her throat, so she glared at him.

He smiled back at her from the bed where he sprawled, shirtless, a bloody bandage swathing his left shoulder. 
In spite of the chilly air, his chest was
sheened
with sweat
and
Mary Jane tried not to notice the way his dark skin gleamed
.  H
ow it threw all those long, lean muscles into gorgeous, touchable relief.