The Taken (17 page)

Bridget’s mouth firmed into a thin line. “I can’t.”

“Not even anonymously? Off the record?”

Huffing, she shook her head. “Who’d believe me?”

“I would,” Kit said sincerely.

“I know. I’ve heard you protect your sources. You got a good rep on the street.”

“So what’s the problem?”

Bridget stilled and looked at her. “No one even believes you.”

Kit drew back but realized Bridget was right. Marin was helping, but Marin was blood, and always on her side. But Paul had dismissed her claims outright. Even Dennis hadn’t yet returned the calls she’d put in to the police station, though maybe he would have if she’d told him her suspicions regarding Schmidt. She’d have to talk to Grif about that later, but for now nobody was asking questions about what happened at the Wayfarer. Nobody but Grif.

“You know,” Bridget said, seeing from Kit’s silence that she finally understood, “I worked at another salon when I first got my cosmetology license. On the Strip, catering to bachelorette parties and all the bored wives of men who come here to gamble. It was real pricey, real exclusive . . .”

Kit ventured a guess. “Fifth Avenue?”

“You’ve been there?”

She nodded. “My girlfriends sprang for it when I got married.”

“How’d you like it?”

“The manicure lasted nearly as long as my marriage.”

That garnered a wry smile. “Well, I saw a lot of women come through those doors, some splurging like you, though most were simply wealthy. They wanted perfect nails to match their perfect husbands and perfect children and cars and homes.

“Thing is, once I started filing away?” Bridget shook her head. “The truth came up quicker than tequila on an empty stomach. Husbands were straying, the women were in denial, all the old clichés and a few new ones as well. But as they talked, and I filed and listened, they all had one thing in common. See, fake nails—acrylics, overlays, gels, tips—all they do is mask imperfection. There’s always something else going on underneath a perfect, pristine, glossy facade.”

She wasn’t talking about nails. “And what’s that?”

“Rot,” Bridget said shortly. “I scrape under a nail and I pull out dirt. I pull off an overlay and I smell urine. It’s the rot of their lives seeping into their nailbeds, you see? They can fix their hair and paint their nails and run on a treadmill until they’re anorexia’s poster child, but they can’t fix their lives . . . lives of rotting perfection.”

Kit frowned. “Just because you’re rich doesn’t mean you’re bad, or not deserving of good things.”

Bridget shook her head. “I know that. I’m just saying that when something looks perfect, all you have to do is dig down a couple of layers. That’s where to find the truth.”

A smile began to grow over Kit’s face. So Chambers wasn’t the perfect businessman. The perfect family man. The perfect Mormon. Pursing her lips, she thought about prodding for more, but if Bridget had wanted to speak openly, she would have. Instead, Kit tilted her head. “So why’d you leave Fifth Avenue?”

The woman smiled tightly, pausing as she pulled the brush from the nail polish. “It seems someone dug down a couple of layers on me as well. Decided that my past made me unfit to render services to such perfect people.”

“I’m sorry,” Kit said, meaning it, and understood better why it was so important that Bridget work for herself. And why she was so unwilling to talk about Schmidt. After all, who else had the power and authority and
motivation
to reveal such information to her employers?

“And I’m really sorry about your friend.” Bridget’s fingers tightened on hers again, but this time it was a consoling squeeze. “I’m sorry I can’t help you either.”

Kit smiled at her, then looked down at her right hand. “These look beautiful.”

“Hope your boyfriend thinks so, too.”

Kit realized she meant Grif. “Oh, no. It’s not like that.”

“With that type?” Bridget scoffed and started on the left hand. “It’s always like that.”

“Type?”

Glancing up, Bridget laughed at Kit’s perplexed expression. “Take it from a pro. You know a man by his thrust, and that one’s got it.”

“I generally get to know the man before I get to know his thrust.”

Unoffended, Bridget just snorted, and started cleaning up. “Not physically. I’m talking about a man’s drive. Plenty of men are good at acquiring money and cars and things, but only a few have real forward motion. You know. Thrust.”

Kit pursed her lips. Paul was certainly driven, but compared to Grif, and Kit had certainly been doing so the night before, Paul had the thrust of a Schwinn. She huffed, surprised she’d realized it only now. “You are so right.”

“ ’Course I am,” Bridget scoffed. “And you can lay odds that a man who’s driven in his life’s pursuits—whatever they are—will be equally driven when it comes to you.” Stilling suddenly, she looked up from her work. “You can lose yourself to a man like that.”

Kit swallowed hard, and thought of all the questions that remained about Griffin Shaw. She thought of the way her pulse throbbed harder, thicker, around him, too. The way her gut had kicked when she thought he’d been injured. The way it warmed when he’d stood up to Paul.

But the idea of losing herself entirely in another person? Sure, that idea spoke to the romantic in her. But so far it’d done so in a language she didn’t know.

“Anyway,” Bridget went on. “This case you and your girlfriend cracked open? It’s all about ambition gone sour. Sex isn’t about power or money.”

“No. It’s about love.”

“No, it’s about sex.” Bridget laughed wryly, and pushed her hair back from her face. “Sex drives us, love or no love. Power or no power. Money or no money. It’s the most powerful drug in the world. Some pay for it. Some die for it.”

“And others kill for it.”

Bridget held the questioning gaze for a moment, then jerked her head down at Kit’s nails. “I’d let them sit for a bit to make sure you don’t smudge. Or maybe let your man drive.”

Kit didn’t correct her this time. She’d been warming to the idea of Grif anyway, backing up to it like it was a cold night and he was a flame. Sex
did
make people do strange things. But Kit would be careful not to do anything too strange—or so she told herself. “Thanks for your time, Bridget.”

They settled up, but Kit paused with her hand on the door. “What you were talking about earlier,” she said, frowning. “Maybe
that’s
what everyone is really after. Not just sex, but a passion and thrust and a love for life that’s, I don’t know, almost desperate.”

“Maybe.”

“You think that kind of passion is meant for everyone?”

Now Bridget did look at her like she was foolish. But she also looked wistful. “Ideally.”

But they weren’t in an ideal world. And it was too bad, Kit thought, exiting the shop. Bridget might have talked to her if they were. Kit might have been able to trust her. And neither of them would have to fear a man with a whole different sort of thrust—corrupted, soured, rotting . . . and seemingly unstoppable.

S
he expected Grif to grill her as soon as she was back in the car, or at least chastise her again for getting a manicure while on the job, but he only tossed the phone in her lap and shifted to face her. “Tony called. Guess which little birdie finally flew his coop?”

“No way,” Kit said, eyes grown wide. She’d had a long conversation with the old man that morning, encouraging him, aptly, to spread his wings. It just seemed sad to waste what time he had left on this earth hiding from what was both possible and inevitable: death. What kind of life was that, anyway?

“Look, if I can walk around with a killer following me now,” she’d said to him, “why can’t you go out there after forty years?”

Tony gave her his death stare. “Have you ever had a bomb go off beneath the car you were supposed to be driving?”

“No. Have you ever been attacked by two men in your own bedroom?”

“Three. And more than once.”

Kit frowned. “Oh.”

Yet he’d done it. He’d left his safe house for the first time in decades and Kit liked to think something she’d said had contributed to that. “So where is he?”

“A coffee shop down on Western Avenue, one he used to frequent when he was still made. He wants us to meet him there. Have a celebratory ninety-nine-cent special.”

Kit knew exactly where it was, in the old industrial area now littered with auto shops, XXX movie houses, and a scattering of taco carts. It was closely watched by Metro, carefully ignored by the tourist bureau, and loyally frequented by old-timers despite the unchanging menu and dated decor. Maybe even because of it. One half-expected Lefty Rosenthal to suddenly saunter through the wooden door, and it was one reason Kit and her friends loved the place.

“So is she holding back?” Grif finally asked.

“Who, Bridget Moore?” She nodded at his sound of assent. “Of course.”

“Think she was the contact who lured Nicole to the Wayfarer?”

“I don’t know.” Frowning, Kit turned the possibility over in her mind. “I think it’s time to bring Dennis in. I think he can help.”

“I told you. No cops.”

“I trust him.”

“No.”

Kit tried on Tony’s death stare. When Grif only blinked, she filed his definitive “no” under “maybe” and let her expression clear. “Well, either way, I like her.”

Grif looked at her. “Even though she might be hiding something that can help you solve Nicole’s death?”

“Yes.”

“But . . . aren’t you angry?”

“Nah. Who’s to say that I wouldn’t do the same? Besides, much of the world’s problems could be solved if we were all just gentler with each other.”

She’d also run into too many reluctant sources to let them get to her now. Sometimes they came around on their own. More often they got tired of her nagging and just fessed up. It was rare that her ability to circle a source and dive back in from another direction didn’t create some fissure of opportunity she could crack.

So she’d do so again in this case. Maybe not until Saturday, when she’d hit the Chambers benefit—with beautiful nails and a fantastic dress—but for now she’d fortify herself with a veggie omelet, limitless coffee, and—most important—hope.

“Do you always have to see the best in everyone?” Grif said out of nowhere, watching her face with something close to a wince.

“Yes.” She swung into the triangle-shaped lot in front of the hash house.

“Why?”

Turning off the car, she almost laughed at his bemused expression. “You should just be thankful I do, otherwise I’d be obsessing over your presence in my bedroom on a night someone tried to murder me—”

Grif sighed dramatically. “Not that again.”

“—instead of thanking you for your help in the days since,” she finished, and that shut him up. Kit smiled. “I am thankful, Grif.”

He looked away. “I know.”

“I’m also still a bit obsessive.”

He sighed again, this time resigned. “I know that, too.”

Letting it go for now, Kit climbed from the car. “You know, I could ask the same of you. Do you always have to see the worst in people?”

“Yes.” And before she could ask why, he jerked his head at the coffee shop. “Case in point.”

Kit spotted Tony’s head rising like a plucked chicken to peer at them through the window. She frowned at Grif over the hood. “If you don’t see the best in him, then why are you staying with him?”

He seared her with a look as he slammed the car door shut. “ ’Cause we’re friends.”

And he strode across the lot in that smooth, dangerous gait.

A man with thrust.

Shaking her head, she followed him in.

Tony was seated in a wooden booth lined with lumpy red cushions, perched at a table that looked like it’d been lacquered in lieu of cleaning. Hunched over a plate of pasta the size of his head, surrounded by a half-dozen other dishes, he glanced up, eyes gleaming. “You gotta try the ziti!”

Kit smiled as she slid into the seat across from him. “It’s good to see you out, Tony. How does it feel?”

“I forgot what it was like. So many scents, so many noises.” He jerked his head, and Kit saw a waitress coming their way with a coffee pot. “What do you think of her?”

“Long in the tooth,” Grif muttered, before the mugs were dropped down in front of them. Kit elbowed him in the stomach.

Tony grinned up at the waitress as she refilled his cup, then leaned forward when she left. “Ah, but she’s got all her own teeth. I like that. Here. Try the meatballs. And these pancakes. They’re amazing. I tell you, you can’t get this delivered.”

Grif held up his hand, but Kit dug into the pasta. It really was good. Tony wiggled his brows when she sighed, which made her laugh again. How could Grif not like this guy?

“You’re being rude,” she told him, and both men stared. “You are. This is a celebration. Tony’s first day back in the real world. Here. Eat some ziti.”

She held the fork up to his mouth. Grif pursed his lips and glared.