Страница 41 из 70
“What?” I was still staring. I shook out of it and said, “I think he’s upset about Cookie’s date.”
“Ah. That makes sense.” He ran a finger over the back of my palm. “Is he ever going to ask her out?”
“If he doesn’t, I’m going to beat him to death with wet noodles.”
“Does he know that?”
“He will soon enough. It’ll be a long, slow death. Arduous and labor intensive. Hopefully I won’t get a repetitive motion injury.” I couldn’t help but let my hand rest on his hip. I hooked a finger in his belt loop and pulled.
He eased forward, a willing participant. “I saw your apartment, by the way.”
“I thought that was compliments of your Dealer. Now, I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
“He said he didn’t do it.”
“Ah, right, I remember. And you believed him.” It wasn’t a question, but I answered anyway.
“Why would he lie? He has the dagger. He freely admitted to taking it.”
“Dutch, they lie because that is what they do. That is who they are. They lie when the truth would sound better. So, can I sever his spine yet?”
“No, you can’t. I think he could be an asset.”
“You’re partly right. He can be an ass.”
I gave him an admonishing glare. “Are you here to cook?”
“Nah, Sammy’s got it covered. I’m just here.”
Oh, how nice. “You mean just the two of us? Like on a real date?”
“If our dates are going to include your uncle and your best friend, then yeah.”
I laughed out loud, and asked, “Okay, why are you really here?”
“Just keeping an eye on you.”
“Reyes, you can’t babysit me forever.”
“Would you like to bet on that?”
“I mean, you have a life. I have a life. We both have lives.”
He glanced toward the man in the seat beside me. It was just a glance, nothing more. But the man stood immediately, excusing himself. Reyes sat down and pulled me closer to him, leaning in like we were lovers having a flirtatious conversation. But what he said next was anything but flirtatious. “Have I explained fully what the Twelve is?”
“Yes. They’re mean, horrible beasts who want to eat me for breakfast.”
“Wrong,” he said. “I want to eat you for breakfast. They want to rip you apart and hand your soul over to my father on a silver platter.”
“I don’t get it. If your father imprisoned them, why would they want to do him any favors?”
“They’re the Twelve. There is no understanding them.”
He’d rested his hand on the bar. As I leaned toward him, he let his fingers brush across Danger’s nipple. She sprang to life, pushing against the restraint of my blouse, craving more of his touch. I couldn’t blame her.
“We have an audience.”
When his words sank in, I finally realized that we did indeed have an audience. Half the room was staring at us. I started to lean back when Reyes said, “Not them.”
He nodded toward Uncle Bob.
I turned to him. “Oh, sorry, we were just talking about how lovely this rain is.”
“I bet.” His disposition had changed. It was weird. He looked over at Cookie and her date, and instead of anger and jealousy, there was just anger. And some of it seemed directed at me.
“So, about Brinkman and his cars.”
“Yeah, it seems that his dealership is a front to launder money. He runs way more through it than he sells, but he hides that by duplicating titles.”
“And they are just finding this out? What does that mean?”
“What that means is that if they can get him for that, they may not need Emily Michaels to testify against him. Agent Carson is working toward that goal.”
“You’re working with her?”
“More like consulting. We have a plan. Maybe you could help?”
“I am so there.”
He nodded, but his anger was still present, simmering just under his curmudgeonly surface. “Are you okay, Uncle Bob?”
He looked pointedly at Cookie. “I’m fine. I have to get to a meeting.”
When he left, I turned back to Cookie and shrugged. She shrugged back at me, thanked her date, and nodded toward the back door, indicating she was headed home. I followed her out, my shoes still squishy.
“Your uncle seemed upset,” she said when I caught up to her.
“He did, didn’t he? Oddly upset, but in the wrong way.”
We passed the alley where Reyes’s muscle car had been only a little while earlier. I wondered where he was keeping her parked. Any man who would risk his paint job for the feel of a woman was a wi
The next thing I remembered was Reyes smiling down at me as the sun filtered into his apartment, his hair mussed, his lids hooded with the thick remnants of sleep. I stretched as those three little words that every girl longs to hear slipped from his mouth with effortless ease. As though they did it every day. As though they didn’t mean the world to me.
With one corner of his mouth tipping sensually, he asked, “Want some coffee?”
And I fell.
I fell hard.
15
The most important thing is to not be on fire.
Ask someone who is on fire, and they will tell you
that the most important thing is to not be on fire.
—TRUE FACT
The first thing on my agenda, besides finding out who trashed my place, was to confront Captain Kangaroo. Oh, and I had to get ahold of Garrett and set up a meet with the Dealer so they could do their homework together. They were taking Vague Prophecies and Muddy Supernatural I
Now that my mind was on the subject, I’d never managed to figure out where Garrett found the knife. He said his acquisition of the dagger wasn’t one of his finer moments. That could’ve meant anything from a museum heist to an illegal excavation of a dig in Romania to a con to swindle it out of an elderly investor.
Or maybe he stole it from a temple. Of doom! That would be cool.
His vagueness only made me all the more curious. Like he didn’t know that would happen. The butt. I wanted so very much to ask him about his family, too. Another area he’d been very vague about. According to the research Cook and I had done behind his back, his great-grandmother was a true voodoo princess, quite a renowned one. She was born in New Orleans and practiced her art openly to become one of the most famous voodoo priestesses in history.
Our research uncovered the fact that his grandmother’s gift was passed down to an aunt of Garrett’s and possibly his sister. A sister! It was hard to imagine Garrett with a sister. Still, I wondered if a little of that gift hadn’t been passed on to him. He was such a skilled tracker. His methods often went beyond the average interviews and Internet searches. He seemed to have a sixth sense where his job was concerned. Something a voodoo prince might possess, as it were.
He didn’t talk about his family much, but that didn’t stop me from finding out about them. Honestly, he couldn’t tell me something like some of his family was sensitive to otherworldly occurrences and expect me not to follow up on that. Seriously? Did he not know me at all?
When I arrived at the police station, I was told the captain was in a meeting and that I would have to wait in the lobby. Fine. I could wait him out. If I had to sit there all day, I was not leaving this station until I knew what the captain was up to.
I dived into my bag and fished out my phone so I could at least do something semi-productive while I waited. After I found my favorite icon, I waited for
Bejeweled
to load and proceeded to kick some sparkling ass.
A voice filtered toward me through my mesmerizing grid of jewels.