On the Edge of Love (Mama's Brood Book 1) (15 page)

A black man, maybe six feet tall, in a gray suit, approached them. His shoes were expensive, not worn. His clothes and facial hair gave him the appearance of a competent professional. Sabrina’s back straightened when she saw him coming.

“Bad spirit?” Zeus asked. He had to know if he was going to help her be safe.

She laughed out loud and relaxed against his side.

He’d
made that happen. The feeling he got from taking her worry away and making her laugh was dangerous. That kind of pleasure could lead to a whole new compulsion, and he didn’t need to be compelled by feelings for a female. He had his blades, the hunt, that was all he needed.

“I don’t know how bad the detective’s spirit is,” Sabrina responded, “but his outside is good-looking enough.”

Zeus examined the man again. There didn’t seem to be anything special about him. Dark brown skin, closely shaven head, slim build…brown eyes that warmed with interest as they landed on Sabrina. Zeus’s brow dipped into a frown. He definitely didn’t like the manicured cop, bad spirit or not.

Standing, Zeus angled his body in front of Sabrina so she was only partially visible to the other man. He saw the detective’s eyebrow rise. A man, being a man, would recognize when a claim had been made, and until Zeus determined she wasn’t, Sabrina was his to claim.

Sabrina tried to see around him as the detective approached. “A dead man can’t work your case,” he muttered, loud enough for her to hear, clear enough for her to understand.

“It’s just a simple observation; stop tripping,” she said, standing up. “You can’t kill a man because I think he’s cute. Do you know how insane that sounds?”

He shrugged. Like he cared about how a thing sounded. “Either of you make a move to get to know each other better and you’ll see just how crazy.”

She rolled her eyes, but she didn’t move away from him.

The cop held out his hand to Sabrina in greeting, and Zeus reached out and shook the detective’s hand instead. The contact was brief, but Zeus put enough pressure on the man’s hand, readjusting sinew just enough to drive his point home.

The cop turned back to Sabrina, all cool and professional. “Ms. Samora?”

Sabrina nodded.

“Good to see you’re alive. I’m Detective Cassidy, the lead on your case.” He looked Zeus up and down as if recording each detail directly into the computer’s criminal database. “And you are?”

Zeus simply looked at the other man, listing all the ways he could fuck him up.

“This is Zeus. He picked me up from the side of the road after I escaped,” Sabrina said, holding on to Zeus’s hand with both of hers, her eyes tearing.

She was a better actress than he’d thought, which succeeded in stirring his wariness of her again.

“Will you both follow me please?”

They trailed behind until the detective waved Zeus ahead into a small interview room. Another man stopped in the hall beside Detective Cassidy. This cop was white and slightly out of shape, based on his rounded gut. His brown hair was disheveled, like he worried a lot and his hair paid the price, and his pale blue eyes already held speculation about Zeus and Sabrina.

“You think he’s cute too?” Zeus muttered to Sabrina.

“Shut. Up,” she said, gaze darting away from Detective Cassidy.

Zeus reached for Sabrina, but the white detective placed a hand at the small of her back, speaking low as he gently guided her down the hall.

“Detective Sedgwick is going to take Ms. Samora’s statement. Forensic evidence is also going to need to be processed, so she’ll likely be here for some time. While they’re away, you mind if we talk a little bit?” Detective Cassidy asked. “You two seem awfully familiar for having only known each other a short time. I’m curious about the events that led you to come into contact with her.”

Zeus vacillated between wanting to cut the cop and wanting to go after Sabrina, but he focused, remembering what they were there for.

“Zeus… What’s your last name?” Detective Cassidy asked.

“Just Zeus. Like the god.”

“And Mr. Zeus—”

“Just Zeus.”

“Zeus, can you remember where you were when you discovered Ms. Samora?”

He gave a location a couple of miles from the warehouse.

“What business did you have on that stretch of road at that time?”

“My own.”

The other man paused from his writing and gave Zeus a level look. He deduced the cop didn’t like his answer. He smiled to himself, thinking this was the first time he’d used the word deduced in a sentence. This Sherlock Holmes bullshit interview was making him deduce things. “That’s some funny shit.”

He realized he’d spoken aloud when the detective methodically placed his pen on the table and sat back in his chair. “What’s funny, Zeus?”

He shrugged. “I’m
deducing
things. I think in my next life I might try to be a detective.”

“So what do you do in this life?”

“I’m an entrepreneur. Got a business making and selling blades.”

The detective wrote the information down and bombarded him with other questions about his life, which he didn’t expound on, questions about Sabrina, about Zeus’s decision to pick her up and what they’d talked about during the drive. After over an hour, Zeus’s interest in the interview waned. He stood up and walked the periphery of the room, eyeing the camera in the corner. “Room has video recording everything we say. Why are you taking so many notes?”

“Old habit,” the detective said, scribbling on the notepad.

Zeus continued his stroll, stopping at the center of the wide mirror everyone knew was two-sided. He took in his reflection. He wasn’t so bad. Sabrina should find him more appealing than the detective, but she’d never called him cute. Maybe she didn’t like his fair skin, that his race was indistinguishable. He knew she didn’t like how he spoke to people, but hell, he thought, facing the detective, that was as likely to change as the blood in his veins.

* * * *

Not long after being separated from Zeus, Sabrina was relieved of her bloody clothing, photos were taken, her body prodded and manipulated as she complacently allowed them to treat her like evidence. She had never felt more like a victim than in those moments, not even when she’d lived in the midst of Ernesto’s violence. There was something about exposing your vulnerability to others, allowing them to see and document how much you had suffered, that was so much worse than enduring it alone.

It was the process of reciting the story she had gone over again and again with the Brood and Mama that fortified her.

“No longer than five more minutes, Ms. Samora. I promise,” Detective Sedgwick said.

At this point she had been at the station for hours. In the interview with the detective, he attempted to put her at ease, make her feel safe. He listened attentively and clarified her responses, never becoming combative or judgmental, and she appreciated that.

“So this guy, Kragen. You sure you don’t know who they were referring to?”

She shook her head. “The only reason the name stuck with me was because of the way they referred to him. It sounded like the men who took me were simply following his orders.”

“The crime scene unit has completed their investigation at your apartment, so there’s no reason you can’t go back home. You might want to get a service to do the cleaning first, though. The back part of your place is a mess,” the detective said.

“I don’t have money for a cleanup service, Detective. I’ll clean it about as well,” she said as they stood.

He walked beside her, escorting her back to the lobby. “Ms. Samora, I don’t want to cause you more worry or alarm, but I have to suggest you find a safer place to stay until we get on top of this. As it stands, we don’t know who’s behind your abduction, and you going back home may provide them with another chance to make an attempt.”

“It’s okay. The guy who helped me, Zeus, said he’s done bodyguard work before. He promised to look out for me while he’s in town.”

“That’s awful Good Samaritan of him,” Detective Sedgwick muttered.

Detective Cassidy, who had come in and out of her interview, joined them in the hallway. He thanked her for her patience and let her know that he and Detective Sedgwick would be in touch with her. In the lobby, Zeus paced, fingers moving rhythmically at his side. She stopped beside Zeus, feeling an overwhelming sense of relief at seeing him there. They had survived the experience without being jailed.

Detective Cassidy handed her two cards. “Give us a call if you remember anything, if you need anything.”

Zeus took the card from Sabrina’s fingers and put it in his back pocket. “I’ll be the one calling if they make another move.”

He reached for the small of her back and guided Sabrina to the exit as she was saying thank you.

“That was rude,” she said.

The look he threw her clearly said that he didn’t give a fuck. “I needed to get out of there before my bad spirits started misbehaving,” he said, holding the car door open as she seated herself. Once he was back in the driver’s seat, he leaned over and kissed her, then turned the ignition, revving the engine. Sabrina reached inside of the glove compartment and extracted the necklace her sister had given her, securing it around her neck again. It was the only thing she had left of her sister, and she wasn’t about to let it be placed in evidence for who knew how long.

A glittery, green-apple-colored ’69 Impala with oversize wheels and spinners cruised past with NWA spitting “Fuck the Police” loudly enough for people three blocks down to hear the refrain clearly. Zeus turned toward the police station as if waiting to see if any cops would give chase. When he looked back at Sabrina, she grinned.

“I hella love Oakland,” she said, relaxing back into her seat as he pulled into the ongoing traffic, happy to have returned to her adopted hometown. “Turn left when you get to Broadway.”

* * * *

Cassidy watched the man and woman leave the station. Cal Sedgwick, his partner of three years, popped a piece of nicotine gum in his mouth, a sure sign he was feeling unsettled. Twenty years on the job and the only indicator of extreme nerves on Cal was when that tan square of gum made its way into the other man’s mouth.

“That guy’s not right. Something’s off about him, Cassidy. Something that off—and he can’t be found in the system—I’m thinking special ops maybe. And did you see the size of that fucking guy?” Cal waved his hand above his head. “Like he was cut from a two-hundred-year-old tree.”

“He’s just a man, Cal, despite his name.”

“That’s what
you
say,” Cal said, fingering the gold cross beneath his shirt.

Except for his religious beliefs, Cal was the most pragmatic man you would ever want to meet. It had to be his Roman Catholic upbringing that led him to see angels and demons at every turn. If he was a good Baptist, like Cassidy, he wouldn’t be so prone to spiritual hysteria.

“Let’s just work from the premise that Zeus is a man. We didn’t get a hit on him, but we can run the prints he left on the table. He seemed unnaturally attached to her,” Cassidy said. “That kind of connection doesn’t come from a few hours of contact.”

”Let’s include the name Kragen and ‘big money’ in our search,” Cal said. “It just might be that this Zeus is the Kragen behind the kidnapping.”

“So we find out all we can on Zeus, search for men named Kragen who have money—someone with enough cash to bankroll a kidnapping—and find out more about the lovely Ms. Sabrina Samora.”

Chapter Seven

Her kitchen was a damned mess.

“Shit.”

The dump of adrenaline into her bloodstream made her want to fight and run away at the same time. Zeus’s arm reached around her from behind, and he pulled her up against him, muting the panic that clawed its way through her.

“Bree, you okay?” Randy asked, still standing on the path outside. She’d called him on the ride to her apartment both because Randy had a spare key to her place and because it was past time she let him know she was alive.

Sabrina waved Randy forward. “I’m good. It all just caught me off guard.”

“I’m just glad you made it back safe. The impressive muscle you’ve returned with only makes it more pleasurable to have you home,” he said, looking at Zeus with cool appreciation.

“Um hum,” Sabrina uttered. If Zeus had appeared here without her, Randy would have gladly peeled her name off the mailbox and replaced it with Zeus’s.

“I’m serious. I haven’t been able to sleep since I called the cops—”

“It’s only been a night.”

“A night, a day, and almost another night. Waiting, pacing, worrying. Praying you came back safe. Not to wish another person harm, but I kept thinking, ‘Why couldn’t it have been the new guy in number four?’”

The “new guy” had lived in the building almost as long as Sabrina, but Randy didn’t like him, so he was destined to remain the new guy until he moved out.

Sabrina bent down, collecting fractured bits of her Mardi Gras mug from the floor. She was surprised when Zeus assisted her and Randy in picking up fractured plates, glass fragments, and other broken and destroyed items, placing them in the thirteen-gallon metal garbage can.

Her small wooden table and two white-washed wooden chairs with wicker backs were broken beyond repair. They hadn’t been expensive, but they had given her kitchen a homey, Southern feel. Dried blood—her blood—was smeared along so many surfaces of the kitchen it would be hard to feel comfortable eating in there.

Zeus hauled the broken pieces of wood to the small Dumpster on the side of the building while she ran enough water to fill the sink. She poured liquid detergent and bleach into the water and wiped down walls, countertops, and cabinets. In some places she was reduced to spraying straight bleach in a last-ditch effort to try and remove the stain of her blood.

“This is grim fucking work,” Randy muttered as he swept the floor. As the eldest of five kids, in a household where both his parents had worked labor-intensive jobs, Randy knew how to clean and organize a home better than Martha Stewart. His tall, lean body corded with dense muscle, coupled with his urban style and dry wit, could deceive others into believing he wasn’t a domestic slut, but she knew the truth.