He settled down beside her in bed a few moments later. For a while they both basked in the after glow of their love, until she said, “I know you like my cooking, but I want to tell you, those are my father’s recipes. He taught me how to make them. He taught me almost everything I know. We were very close. You’re the first person I’ve ever told that to.”
Suro took her hand in his. “Your father’s dead, isn’t he?”
She clamped her lips and nodded. “Ten years ago. He died in a fire. I miss him everyday.”
He didn’t answer for a long time. “I’m planning to make some lifestyle changes. I’ll make it so you don’t ever have to miss me like you miss your father.”
For a moment, she was giddy with love, her heart swelling, because this man wanted something bigger with her. But then reality intruded, and she saw Candy, so proud of herself for giving the boss her come-uppance.
She rolled over and gave Suro a light kiss. “I think I’m going to get a glass of your scotch,” she said against his lips. “Do you want one, too?”
And there it was, that smile that turned his entire face into the most beautiful sight she had ever seen. “Yes, I’d like that,” he said, looking more content then she’d ever seen him.
CHAPTER 18
“DAD? Dad? Are you awake?”
Suro had to put considerable effort into opening his eyes, which felt like they had been glued together, but Kenji’s voice compelled him to fight against the blackness that was trying to pull him back under, and eventually an out-of-focus picture of his son’s worried face came into view.
“What happened?” he asked. He shook his head to clear out some of the fogginess when the room finally came into clear focus. This was when he realized he was no longer in Lacey’s apartment. “Where am I?”
He tried to sit up, but the world spun on him, forcing him back down to his elbows.
“Don’t,” a pretty black woman, who Suro recognized as Ferrari, one of the dancers Lacey liked and considered a friend, stepped into his line of vision behind Kenji. “Lacey said you’d be out of it for a while, even after you woke up, so don’t try to overdo it too quickly.”
He had been drugged. And furthermore: “Lacey did this?”
He reached up to his chest to feel for the key, but of course it was gone.
“Where is she?” he said, fighting the spinning and sitting up anyway.
“She’s gone, Dad, and she took Sparkle,” Kenji told him. “She said to tell you sorry, but they had to go.”
“Why am I…wherever this is?” he asked, looking around the overly frilly room. The bed he was lying on was lined with stuffed animals, the windows were adorned with lace curtains, and there was a glass cabinet full of African-American Precious Moments figurines against the opposite wall.
“It’s my apartment,” said Ferrari. “Lacey brought you here because she said it wasn’t safe for you at her place.”
He gritted his teeth. “How long have I been out?”
“Dad, I’m sorry,” Kenji said. “I wouldn’t have helped them bring you over here if I knew you’d be out so long. But Sparkle’s mom said it was the only way to keep you safe while you slept.”
So she had not only drugged him, she’d gotten her son to help him drag his body to her friend’s apartment. “How long have I been out?” he asked again.
The pretty woman winced. “About twenty-four hours, I think?”
It took Suro fifteen more minutes before he was able to stand on steady feet and take care of practical matters like emptying his bladder. But as soon as he could, he made his way down the hall back to Lacey’s apartment.
“No, Dad,” Kenji said. “Sparkle’s mom said to tell you not to go back there. She said it was dangerous and that we both needed to stay at Miss Ferrari’s apartment until we could get a room somewhere.”
Suro ignored his son and kept walking until he got close enough to see that the door to Lacey’s apartment was standing open.
He stopped. “Get back to Ferrari’s apartment,” he said to his son in a quiet voice.
Kenji’s eyes widened. “Do you think someone’s in there?”
He’d done a lot to keep Kenji distanced from what he did, but that had come at a certain cost. His son didn’t know how to obey his father under life or death circumstances.
“Kenji,” he said, his voice very hard. “Lacey was right. It’s dangerous. I need to go in alone. Now get back to the apartment.”
“No, I’m coming with you. I can help.”
“You already helped enough!” Suro roared. “Now get back to the apartment.”
Kenji, who’d never been yelled at before by his father, looked hurt. His bottom lip shook, but he turned and ran back to Ferrari’s apartment, leaving Suro to feel like an ass.
Kenji’s advanced verbal skills and musical genius sometimes made him seem older than his years, but the truth was, he was still a little boy with special needs. One who Lacey had easily manipulated into helping her. A fresh well of fury rose up inside of him, and he pushed on to Lacey’s open door.
He found the apartment completely ransacked. Whoever had been here hadn’t found what they wanted and had angrily looked for clues of Lacey’s whereabouts. They’d overturned furniture and knifed open cushions, leaving shattered knick-knacks and appliances in their wake.
Suro didn’t sense anyone still in the apartment and he doubted his guns would still be where he’d hidden them in the closet. He was right on both counts.
The apartment was empty and the guns were nowhere to be found. They had also cracked his rattan bo staff, another treasured item lost, thanks to Lacey’s refusal to tell him the truth.
“I was just about to get in touch with you, man,” Dexter said when he answered Suro’s call fifteen minutes later.
“If it’s about a job, I don’t have time to talk about that now. I need to know if you found anything else out about Lacey.”
“Man, get this. It’s about her and a job,” Dexter said. “I caught up with that woman from the building fire three days ago, and she didn’t have a name for me, but she did say the man had definitely been from New Orleans. Though he said he’d been living up North for a while. She said he had a daughter and the daughter had a little girl of her own who was the same age as the child who died in the fire. I was like, ‘Bingo, we got her!’ But the trail went cold again, because they were paying their rent in cash and had given the landlord fake names. And I was thinking that was the end of it, but this morning, I get a call from one of my contacts. There’s a big contract out for the girl who killed Hector Mendez’s son.”