“No questions,” she whispered. “You promised.”
He had promised and apparently he took his promises seriously. He stepped away to let her pass, but she could feel his steady gaze on her as she made her way back to the office.
Don’t look back, she said to herself. She had learned that lesson the hard way over the years, but still, she couldn’t help peeking over her shoulder before she entered her office.
Suro remained in the doorway of the daycare, leaning against the doorway as if he knew it was only a matter of time before she gave in to him and told him all her secrets no matter how dangerous it might be for them both. This caused her to rush into her office and close the door.
Because her biggest fear at that moment was that he was absolutely right.
She was trying as hard as she could to keep herself emotionally separated from what her body was doing but it didn’t feel like it was working at all.
CHAPTER 14
“HOW’S it going with the Dead Girl?” Dexter asked that night when Suro called to talk about the current slate of assignments. No hits scheduled, but they’d had to plot out security details for several parties going into the busy holiday season.
“We’ve come to an understanding,” Suro answered. “And she’s still very much alive.”
Most days Suro appreciated his friend’s sense of humor, but today wasn’t one of them. Technically, he’d gotten what he most wanted from Lacey. She was back in his bed. She cooked him warm meals and offered him companionship like he had never known.
His silence had intimidated most of the women he’d been with before Lacey, including his ex-wife. Often, the ones who didn’t eventually leave with exhortations that he needed to “work on his communication skills” ended up boring him when they tried to match his own silence by staying as meek and mute as possible.
But that wasn’t what he wanted. In fact, he hadn’t known what he wanted until he’d met the talkative black woman in Montana. Lacey had thanked him profusely for the shortened hours and the on-call maintenance man and the daycare, but it was Suro who found himself grateful for her every day.
Not just the way she cooked, but the way she smiled when he came into the room, and the way she told him about every aspect of her day, but somehow made it all seem interesting. From what she ate for lunch to the soap opera love triangle currently unfolding amongst three of the dancers—one redhead, one brunette, and one blond. The redhead and the brunette had been dating, but then the brunette left the redhead for the blond. And it might have ended there, but Lacey had walked in on the blond and the redhead kissing in the supply closet.
She summed the story up with, “Just so you know, we’re going to be losing a dancer soon. But at least they don’t live in the apartments. Then I’d have to deal with getting a new dancer and a new tenant. Though, why am I even worrying about that? You were smart to buy this business. It doesn’t look like much, but we’ve got a waiting list about a mile long for the apartments. You’ll never have to worry about putting in a rental ad.”
Yes, he agreed he had been smart to buy the business. It hadn’t felt like it at the time when he’d called himself all kinds of crazy and foolish for going through such extremes to position himself in her universe. But the more time he spent with Lacey, the better the investment looked to him.
In fact, he would pay double what he had for the club if he could get past the last wall she had erected.
She had let him into her life, and sometimes he caught her looking at him in a way that let him know she had let him into her heart, even if she hadn’t realized it yet. But she still didn’t trust him.
It shouldn’t matter, he thought to himself. He had what he wanted, and he had set up her life in a way that would make it very disadvantageous for her to run away again. But something in him wouldn’t let sleeping dogs lie. He didn’t just want Lacey’s body and her willing companionship. He wanted all of her, and he wouldn’t stop until he got it.
“Were you able to dig up anything else on her back story,” he asked Dexter now.
“Yeah, actually I was,” Dex said. “You mentioned something about her being a really good cook, all these New Orleans dishes, right?”
“Yes. Did you get a hit on her in New Orleans?”
“Naw, man, nothing there. But when I was going over the news stories about that fire Lacey Winters died in, I found a quote about the John Doe whose leaky stove set off the fire. One of the tenants, an elderly woman who escaped the fire, said and I quote, “He was a good man. He didn’t say much, but when I was laid up with my gout, he brought me some of the best jambalaya I’d ever tasted.”
Suro sat up in his office chair. “Do you think this man might have been Lacey’s father?” She’d mentioned him once or twice in passing and Suro had told Dex to look into him, too.
“Well, they never were able to identify his body, so even if it was, it might be another dead end. But I’m in D.C. again in a couple of weeks. Philadelphia’s not that far away. I was thinking I could stop by this woman’s place, ask her some questions.”
Though most of their government clients would disavow things if asked, many of their higher-level security jobs and elimination orders came from agencies who needed certain things done without it tracing back to them. Therefore, Dexter went to Washington D.C. twice a month for clandestine meetings, which usually resulted in assignments for Suro.
“I shouldn’t even be offering. You know how I feel about all the hoops you’re jumping through for this chick. She seems nice and all that, but this is some dramatic bullshit she’s putting you through.”
“She’s worth it,” Suro said.
“If you say so.” He could hear Dexter suck his teeth on the other end of the line. “By the way, your boy Rustanov called me the other day about us heading up security for Rustanov Enterprises.”
“I’ve already given my answer to that offer several times.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s why he called me this time. He thinks maybe I can talk some sense into you.”
“I don’t like working for one client. If I wanted to that, I would have stayed at my father’s company.” Not exactly true, after the last argument he had with his father, nothing would have driven him to work for The Nakamura Group again. But he’d found that what started out as the rebellious act of striking out on his own, working for any non-criminal client who could pay his fee, had been more to his liking than performing Due Diligence background checks, securing The Nakamura Group against fraud, and conducting corporate crisis management.