The Taken (12 page)

“Did you hear the part about my attacker being a policeman?”

“But your bruises . . .” Fleur touched Kit’s neck gingerly now, like she was breakable. Kit gritted her teeth, and shooed her away.

“I’m fine. And Grif has promised to protect me.”

With raised brows, Fleur motioned around the salon, empty but for the two of them.

“I’m not in any danger right now,” Kit said hurriedly. She hoped. “And I’m sure he’s doing something to further our investigation.” She hoped.

“Your
investigation
?” Fleur’s eyes went round, her arms falling slack. “Kit!”

“You didn’t see him, okay?” Kit said, holding up a hand. “He’s a fighter, and . . . cranky.”

“Cranky?”

“I mean, tough, but gentle enough with me. Well, gentle-ish. Plus . . .” She let her words trail off into a mumble.

“I’m sorry. Can you repeat that?” Leaning over the chair, Fleur looked directly into Kit’s eyes. “You saw black wings flare from his back right after he saved your life?”

Kit pushed her away. “I told you I was tired!”

Fleur shook her head, catching herself before she ran her hands through her pin curls. “Gee, honey. Project much?”

“I know, I know.” Kit rolled her eyes. “It was the muscle relaxer. The drink.”

Fleur winced. “The grief.”

“Yeah.” Tears threatened to spill again. Besides, if there really were such things as angels, Nic would still be here.

Fleur lifted her scissors, resumed snipping. “The question now is, how’d this Griffin Shaw get in your house?”

“Followed the others, I guess.”

“And hid in the bedroom before them?” Fleur said skeptically.

“I don’t know,” Kit admitted, because the question had been niggling at her, too.

“Kit . . .”

“Don’t give me that look.”

“The one that says exciting and scary aren’t the same thing? The one that says bad boys have
never
been good for you?”

“Yes. That one.”

“But
is
he dangerous?”

Kit bit her lip, then nodded. “He wears it like that suit of his. Loose and roomy, like he’s always on the edge of a punch.”

“Damn,” she said, then added, “That is hot.”

“I know.” But Kit also knew that Grif was somehow broken. She’d seen it when he was talking about his grandmother, that Evelyn woman, and in the way his expression shuttered when she teased him. It was strange, but also intriguing.

“As long as he’s not dangerous to you,” Fleur said, though it was a question.

“Look, he’s helping me when no one else will, so I’m inclined to trust him,” Kit replied slowly, then shook her head, which Fleur stilled with her palms, before she resumed cutting. “No, ‘inclined’ isn’t the word.”

“Compelled?” Fleur offered, knowing how Kit loved precision in her words.

“Yes.”

“Moved? Driven? Fated?”

“Yes. That’s it.”

“Which?”

Kit offered up a lopsided smile. “All of them.”

“Damn it, Kit.”

“I know.”

It was dangerous to overlook the way he’d slipped into her home. And scary.

And exciting.

“He’s helping me,” she repeated, more to herself than Fleur. Helping protect her, helping her find out what happened to Nic, helping her get out of bed and keep moving on a day when it would have been easier to just disappear.

But she’d gone that route once before, after her father’s murder, and she’d take dangerous any day. That’s why she was going to track down Nic’s killer. And why she’d go head-to-head with a crooked cop. And why she needed to get her damned hair done
.
She needed time to think.

She was jolted from the thought by her phone, trilling in her lap with the notes from the past. Kit just looked at Fleur, who rolled her eyes.

“Ah, Paul,” Fleur said, as Kit silenced the phone. “You are a bundle of nerves wrapped in a spray-on tan wrapped in a thousand-dollar suit.”

“Ah, but he’s fiscally sound.”

“And a few other adjectives.”

Chapter Ten

A
nthony “The Cobra” Prima was twenty-four years old at the time of Grif’s death, but had already been a lieutenant in the Chicago outfit of the Las Vegas mob. Despite being on what was essentially opposite sides of the law, he and Grif had hit it off fifty years earlier, due in part to an incident where Grif had crossed sides to deal with a card shark who was also responsible for early-morning stairwell rapes in the city’s most glamorous properties. It was ironic that, of the two of them, Tony was the one to survive the era, but here he was—a spry, if bow-legged, seventy-four-year-old with an irreversible slouch and a bad case of psoriasis.

Prima’s digs were in a neighborhood aging similarly to Kit’s, with owners clearly obsessed with keeping bygone years alive. The most notable difference was that Tony’s wrought-iron fencing was double-enforced, guarded by two Dobermans, and the home iced over with bulletproof windows overlooking a green where Sinatra had once allegedly sunk a hole in one—though the cart girls had never said which of them it was.

His security system would pass muster at NASA, and he had phone jacks in every bedroom closet, each of which turned into panic rooms at the touch of a button. Yet as state-of-the-art as his defenses were, they collectively spoke to the one thing that clearly hadn’t changed in the last fifty years: Anthony Prima was as paranoid as ever.

Thus, it had to be disconcerting for the old coot to hear his bell ringing when the community’s guard hadn’t called, the gate opening when the voice box failed to signal, his perimeter breached when the alarm hadn’t tripped, and a knock on the door almost no one ever touched.

I am the prodigal son, Grif thought, marveling at the way bolts gave under his touch. Sure, he was undeniably in the celestial doghouse, but for some reason he had a long etheric leash.

Ringing Prima’s doorbell, listening to chimes that would do Liberace proud, he was just about to knock when a blast from above shattered the melody. Hunching, Grif dodged as the ground erupted beneath his feet. Concrete shrapnel trailed him as he fled, and he dove behind a planter as the unmistakable sound of bullets ricocheted to his left.

“Goddamn it, Tony!”

The potted bush in front of him lost its fringe.

Holding up his hand, he hoped the smooth magic he’d used to calm Kit wasn’t lost in the frantic wave. “Stop firing, Prima!”

The tommy gun stuttered. Then an equally hesitant voice emerged from the ceiling speaker.

“Hello?”

Prima’s voice came through the intercom system, staticky with suspicion and possibly something else. Fear? Excitement?
Agita?

“Open up, Tony.”

Silence. “Step into the outer foyer so I can see you.”

Grif hesitated. The tiny rotunda could easily be jerry-rigged for explosives. If so, he might be back in the Everlast sooner than he thought. Straightening, he took a tentative step forward.

“Take off your hat.”

Grif removed his stingy brim, and held it in front of him, turning his head up at the camera to give Tony a good, long look.

“Grif?” The static accentuated the disbelief. “Griffin Shaw?”

“Hello, Tony.”

There was the scrape of multiple bolts being thrown, then the door gave way to a squinty blue eye and an errant tuft of wiry gray hair. “I heard you were dead,” Tony said, with his characteristic candor.

Grif’s stomach clenched. So
someone
knew he hadn’t just disappeared. “Well, I’m happy to report that as a great exaggeration. Can I come in?”

Tony scoffed. “You
have
been gone a long time. Nobody comes in, Grif.”

“C’mon,” Grif said, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Old time’s sake.”

“The only old times we had together involved beating the shit out of some asshole in a urine-soaked stairwell.”

“The good old days,” Grif said, undeterred.

Tony opened the door wider, but left it bolted. “Then you disappeared, never to be seen again.”

“You see me now,” Grif pointed out.

“Yeah. You look good, too.” Tony rubbed at his eyes. “Damned cataracts. It’s like you hardly changed at all.”

“Well, everyone’s pretty well-preserved where I went.”

“California, huh?” Tony huffed. “They didn’t offer nothing like that to me. Know what they said when I asked about witness protection? Said I might skate on extortion and embezzlement, but I was still going to take a hit for tax evasion. I got two years then house arrest. Can you believe that?”

Grif just raised his brows. “You gonna let me in, Tony?”

The sole blue eye narrowed. “How do I know you’re not here to kill me?”

Because there’s not a hint of plasma around you, Grif thought. “Why would I kill you?”

Face creasing further, Tony thought about it. “Look, Grif. I know we go back a ways, but some things don’t change. I don’t throw good money after bad. I don’t believe Joe Pesci just plays a made man on TV. And no one ever, ever comes into my home. Got it?”

Grif nodded. “Well, that’s too bad, Tony. It really is.”

Tony nodded back. It was.

Then Grif pulled his housewarming gift from behind his back. “Because I brought this.”

Tony glanced down and let loose a deluge of Italian curses that would topple the famous tower in Pisa. Chest heaving, he glared at Grif. “All right. But just this once.”

Grif handed him the bottle of vintage Sangiovese on the way in. “Don’t forget to put out the dogs.”

O
nce Tony got over the novelty of having someone in his home, once he stopped marveling over the way his Dobermans inexplicably turned into lapdogs around Grif—“But they don’t like no one!”—and once he opened the bottle of wine and took solitary communion with the first few sips, he actually warmed to Grif’s company.

Sitting in a living room wrapped in wall-to-wall shag, Grif looked around and decided the place couldn’t be called retro. That was how Kit had referred to hers, but that would imply effort at gathering together items for a space to reflect a bygone era, and from what Grif could tell, the wood paneling and dark stone fireplace and built-in bar had been here from the first. Watching Tony recline on a sofa already molded to his frame, Grif thought of the genie in Aladdin’s lamp, a man locked in luxury and a slave to the same.

Tony didn’t seem to notice or mind. “Remember that time we set up the unsanctioned fights in the back of Vinnie Covelli’s restaurant?”

“Vaguely,” Grif said, but he couldn’t fight the smile.

“Yeah, you remember,” Tony said, pale eyes sparkling. “You won the whole thing, bare-knuckled.”

They’d run that racket every weekend for months. It was how Grif had paid off Evie’s diamond. “That was the last time I saw you,” Grif said, smiling lightly.

Tony’s smile faded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it was.”

Grif leaned forward, casual-like, elbows on his knees. “So you heard I was dead, huh?”

A bony shoulder lifted and dropped, a slight movement that betrayed the gun beneath his sweater vest. “Just hearsay. Not solid, like with your Evie.” Tony winced when Grif stiffened. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. She was a real gem. Had a way about her. Coulda given that Virginia Hill a run for her money, that’s for sure.”

Grif swallowed hard. “Yeah, well. It was a long time ago.”

“Yet here you are,” Tony pointed out. “Snooping around. Stirring the pot all over again.”

He put up his hands at Grif’s hard look, then reached forward for the pack of sticks in the middle of the giant coffee table.

“Grandkid?” Grif asked, jerking his head at the world’s largest ceramic ashtray.

“Would I have anything this ugly in my house otherwise?” Tony lit up, tossed the pack over to Grif. “Listen, I’m not poking at old pains, or telling you to forgive and forget. I mean, look at me.” He waved around the room as if it was an extension of his body. “My kids call this place a glass fishbowl. Say I should start charging people to stand out on the green and gawk at me like I’m in an aquarium. My plaque would read, ‘Dago, in his natural habitat.’ ” He shook his head, his cigarette shaking between knuckles that’d outgrown their fingers. “They tell me the past is over. That it’s a new world. But I know what I know.”

“And what’s that, Tony?”

He pointed his fingers at Grif, smoke trailing behind. “It ain’t ever over. You can’t have no future if you don’t have no past, and the past ain’t never done with you.” He leaned back, nodding to himself. “At the end of your life, all you have is what you know.”

Grif was well past the end of his life, and he knew things Tony couldn’t even imagine. But he was right about fingering old pains. Grif wouldn’t be here if he’d been able to just let it go. Then again, he thought, looking around at the museum Tony called a home, neither would Tony.

They both dragged on their smokes, neither of them looking at the other, comfortable enough until Tony said, “You really do look good, Grif.”

Grif snorted. “Keep drinking, Tony.”

But, as he said, despite his failing eyesight and obsession with fine Italian wine, Tony knew what Tony knew. “So what do you want with me? You’re not here just to bring me gifts, or fill my ashtray.”

“I’m back to find out who did it.” Grif lifted a brow. “I could use a little help.”

Tony looked down. Shook his head. “Like you said, Grif. It was a long time ago.”

Grif felt his jaw tighten, stubborn as flint. “Doesn’t make it right.”

Tony laughed mirthlessly. “Lots of things weren’t ever made right. They won’t ever be right again, either. I mean, can you believe this country? You can bust your balls your entire life and have nothing to show at the end of it. Even this town has lost its entrepreneurial shine. And the government called
me
crooked.”

Tony looked at him, but Grif wasn’t interested in his self-pity. “There has to be someone.”

“There ain’t.” He flicked ash.

“What about the old family?”

Tony licked his lips warily. “What about them?”

“They owe me.”

Tony scoffed, voice gone gritty. “What, for saving their dear little Mary Margaret? Let me tell you what happened to that sweet, spoiled little schoolgirl. She took off that Catholic school uniform and it wasn’t long before everything else followed. Took it upon herself to sully the family name and pushed her papa into an early grave.”

“That’s disappointing.” Grif meant it. She’d been a cute kid.

“You always were a softie for the females, Grif.” Tony blew out a stream of death, and stubbed out his smoke. “First Evie. Then Mary Margaret.”

The frown came on slowly, but sank and hardened in his face. “What do you mean, ‘first Evie’?”

Tony stiffened, and leaned back, his face carefully blank. “I just mean she was a bit wild before you reined her in. Couldn’t do no wrong in your eyes. That’s all.”

No, Grif thought, studying Tony’s poker face, there was more. But whatever he knew, whatever he
thought
he knew, amounted to squat in the wake of Evie’s murder. He set his glass down and looked straight into that lying blue-eyed goombah gaze. “She never did anyone wrong, got it? And she ended up dead anyway.”

Tony held up his hands. “All right. Don’t bust a gut.”

But Grif’s blood was up, and suddenly he couldn’t catch his breath. Without warning, a jutting pain knifed his skull, an arrow behind his eyeballs, and it wasn’t just his renegade pulse, his unnatural breath, his unsanctioned life. It was more. It was his past busting in, reminding him he was dead. Walking, breathing, drinking, smoking—thinking and feeling—all without any mortal coil to reinforce his existence. There was a consciousness and a body, but it was flimsy, as if he lacked a spine. Very simply, there was nothing to hold it all up.

“Hey. You all right, Shaw?”

No. His mind was burning.

Tony’s voice, worried now, crackled. “I got a white-glove service. The doc comes right to your door. You want I should call them?”

Grif’s silence smoldered.

“I really think you need a doctor.”

Grif pressed the heel of his hand to his head, like he could snuff the heat that way. What he needed was to get off this mudflat. Get back to the Everlast where the cool plasmic balm could soothe his mental ache. Where he could forget about dying and concentrate on being dead.

You can’t have a future if you don’t have no past.

Grif waited until his body stopped constricting around him to open his eyes. Breathing deeply, he looked at Tony—whose skin looked loose and lived-in and comfortable—and said, “Look, I don’t have anyone else. I have no leads, I don’t know anyone here. I don’t even have a place to stay. To use your words, Tony, all I have is what I know. Right here,” and he punched his own chest so hard that even Tony jumped. Grif’s headache momentarily fell into second place in the race for pain, but like a stubborn heartbeat, it sped up again.

Tony said nothing for a long while. He just stared with his gray furrowed brow and for a moment Grif saw his pain, too. Fear lay inside him like a sleeping dragon. That was the real monster that guarded this house. “So what is it that you know, then?”