He forced a hard knee between mine and spread them, gaining access to my most private area. I gasped at the intimate contact as his free hand dipped between my legs, and knew instinctively I was in way over my head. I grabbed his wrist with both hands.
“Please, stop.”
He paused but kept his fingers cupped at my crotch. I put a hand on his chest and pushed gently, coaxing him off me. “Please.”
He eased back and looked into my eyes. “You’ll leave?”
“I’ll leave.”
His gaze remained locked with mine a long moment; then he raised both arms and braced them on the brick wall above my head. “Go,” he said harshly.
It wasn’t a suggestion. I ducked under his arm and ran before he changed his mind, grabbing Gemma along the way.
As we rounded the building, I turned back and stopped. He’d climbed onto a crate and was sitting atop it, staring up at the window. With a forlorn sigh, he rested his head against the wall, and I realized he wasn’t going back into the apartment. He just wanted to keep an eye on that window.
At the time, I had wondered whom he’d left inside. I found out two days later when I spoke to an angry landlady. The family in 2C had moved out in the middle of the night and stiffed her for two months’ rent and the costly replacement of a plate glass window. That whole self-preservation thing kept me from mentioning the particulars of the window. When I finally got her to stop harping about lost revenue, she told me she’d heard the old man call the boy Reyes, so Reyes it was. But the burning question was whom he’d left inside. Then the landlady told me.
A sister. He’d left a sister inside. And she had been alone. With a monster.
“I can’t believe it,” Cookie said, pulling me back to the present. “Is he, you know, dead?”
Cookie found out long ago that I could see the departed. She’s never held it against me.
“That’s what’s weird,” I said. “I just don’t know. This is so different from anything I’ve ever experienced.” I checked my watch. “Crap, I have to get to the office.”
“Oh! That’s probably a good idea.” She chuckled. “I’ll be there in a jiff.”
“Okey dokey,” I said, rushing out the door with a wave. “See you in a few. Hold down the fort, Mr. Wong!”
Jenius.
As I trudged the fifty or so feet across the alley and into the rear entrance of my dad’s bar, I contemplated possibilities for why all three lawyers might have stayed behind instead of crossing over. My calculations — allowing for a 12 percent margin of error, based on the radius of the corresponding confidence interval and the surgeon general’s warning — concluded that they probably didn’t stay behind for the tacos.
I took a sec to put my sunglasses in my leather bag and allow my eyes to adjust to the dim lights inside the bar. To put it mildly, my dad’s bar was gorgeous. The main room had a cathedral ceiling with dark woods covering every available surface, and framed pictures, medals, and banners from various law enforcement events covering most of that. From the back entrance, the bar stood on my right, round tables and chairs perched in the middle, and tall bistro tables lined the outer edges. But the reigning glory of the speakeasy was the elaborate, hundred-year-old ironwork that circled the main room like ancient crown molding. It spiraled around and lured the eye to the west wall, where a glorious wrought-iron elevator loomed tall and proud. The kind you see only in movies and very old hotels. The kind with all its mechanisms and pulleys open for its audience to enjoy. The kind that took forever and a day to get to the second floor.
My PI business took up most of the top floor, and had its own entrance on the side of the building, a picturesque New England — style staircase. But I doubted my ability to manage the stairs without undue pain. Since I categorized all pain as undue, I decided to take the elevator inside the bar instead, despite its limitations.
My dad’s voice wafted to me, and I smiled. Dad was like rain on a scorched desert. During my childhood, he kept me from drying up and crumbling into myself. Which would just be gross.
I strolled inside and spotted his tall, slim form sitting at a table with my wicked stepmother and older, non- stepsister. While Dad was the rain, they were the scorpions, and I’d learned long ago to steer clear of them. My real mom died when I was born — hemorrhaged to death while giving birth to me, which has never been one of my favorite memories — and Dad married Denise before I’d turned a year. Without even asking my opinion on the matter. Denise and I never really clicked.
“Hey, hon,” Dad said as I put my sunglasses back on and tried to ease past without being noticed, not really sure why I thought the sunglasses would help.
I was almost annoyed at being spotted before realizing I’d never have gotten away with it anyway. The danged elevator was louder than a Chevy big block and crept up like an injured snail. I was certain Denise would have noticed when a dark-haired girl in sunglasses started elevating beside her.
I strolled toward their table.
“Come have some breakfast,” Dad said. “I’ll share.”
Denise and Gemma had brought Dad sustenance to break the fast. Apparently, I was not invited — big surprise — despite the fact that I live about two inches south of the back door.
Gemma didn’t bother glancing up from her breakfast burrito. The movement might have displaced a hair. Denise only sighed at Dad’s offer and started cutting into his burrito to give me some.
“That’s okay,” I said. “I already ate.”
She glanced up at me then, overtly annoyed. I tended to do that to her. “What did you have?” she asked, a razor’s edge to her voice.
I hesitated. This was a trick; I could feel it. She was feigning concern over the nutritional content of my breakfast to make me think she cared. I stood with my lips sealed shut, refusing to be taken in by such an obvious setup.
But she turned her powerful, laserlike glare on me, and I caved. “A blueberry bagel.”
Her eyes rolled in irritation before refocusing on her burrito.
My dad unfolded from his chair for a kiss and gasped softly when he noticed my jaw. I was fairly certain Denise had noticed, too — I saw her lids widen a fraction of an inch before she caught herself — but since she chose to ignore it, I chose to ignore it as well.
I lowered my glasses quickly and shook my head at Dad. He paused, drew his brows together in displeasure that I didn’t want to explain anything in front of my wicked stepmother, then kissed my forehead.
“I’ll be upstairs in a bit.” He was letting me know he expected an explanation nonetheless.
“That’s where I’ll be,” I said, opening the cage to the elevator, “if you’re lucky.”
He chuckled.
Denise sighed.
My stepmother was never big on the whole nurturing thing. I think she used up all the good stuff on my older sister, and by the time she got to me, she was fresh out of nurture. She did, however, give me one pertinent bit of 411. She was the one who informed me that I had the attention span of a gnat; only, she said I had the attention span of a gnat with selective listening. At least I think that’s what she said. I wasn’t listening. Oh, and she told me that men want only one thing.
And on that note, I must give praise and thanks to the powers that be. I don’t want much else from them either.
But truly, in my stepmom’s defense, who could blame her? I mean, she had Gemma. Gemma Vi Davidson.
It was hard to compete. Especially since Gemma and I were total opposites. Gemma had blond hair and blue eyes. I did not.
Gemma was always an A student. I was more of a B-all-you-can-be kind of gal.
