I picked up my fork and ate a piece of cake—oh hell, it was so good—while letting my eyes roam around the room. Despite how long I’d slept, I was still so exhausted, and I was putting it down to stress and anxiety. The tension in the house, now that both Leon and Kai were in the same space, was suffocating.
Not to mention their determination to fuck their way into my heart. Goddamn, my neck was sore today, but it only made me smile as I rubbed a hand over the fresh aches. My thumb ran over the chain of the necklace I’d put on this morning, and I tugged it free from my high-necked top. I wasn’t sure why I’d put it on, but I’d seen it in my bag when I grabbed my clothes and didn’t second-guess myself.
Given everything Kai had told me about Charlotte, it didn’t sound like it was hers. Maybe it belonged to Mo? Something that slimy bastard Timothy had given her?
“Danny?” a young woman—not Nadia—said, approaching my seat.
It took me a hot second to recognize her, then realized she’d changed her hair. Which, considering it’d been nearly three years, was entirely understandable. Pink hair must have been a pain in the ass to maintain.
“Hey, MK,” I replied with a small smile. “I thought I heard you’d moved? Something about a diamond mine?”
She grinned, giving me a knowing look. “Uh-huh, something like that. Are you here alone?”
Her hand was resting on the back of a vacant stool beside me, like she was asking if she could join me. I gave her a nod and indicated for her to sit. “Yeah, I wanted to talk to Nadia, but the waitress brought me cake while I was waiting.”
MK hopped onto the stool and indicated a slice of cake for herself. “It’s such good cake here,” she enthused. “I’m supposed to be heading over to the KJ-Fit in the next block but couldn’t resist a little snack.”
She glanced at her watch, then winced. “Crap, I better take it to go.” She waved at the waitress again and mimed that she needed it in a box, which seemed to be understood. “So… is your presence in town anything my friends need to be concerned about?”
Her question was asked quietly, and I arched a brow. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt so conspicuous in any other town I’ve holed up in. Feels like fucking everyone here knows what I do for a living.”
MK smirked. “Well, that is how we met, and I’m sure you’ve taken jobs for the Timberwolves before. Besides, you’re the least inconspicuous-looking woman in town.”
The friendly waitress delivered MK’s to-go cake in a box, and a coffee to me. MK slid off her stool and picked up the handful of shopping bags she’d left on the floor, juggling to pull out her wallet.
“Oh, um… congratulations?” I offered, nodding to the shopping bags. All of them were from a store called Oh, baby! And the logo included a pacifier and bottle.
“Huh?” MK wrinkled her nose in confusion, then glanced down at the bags in her hand. “Oh, no! Wow, no way. Girl, I’m like not even twenty-two; I’m not responsible enough to be a mom. These are for my friend, Bree. She’s expecting her second any day now and only just found out it’s a girl, so she’s in panic mode. The sales today were too good to resist.”
She was so relaxed and confident, totally at odds with the anxious mess of a girl I’d met when Leon and I worked her contract. Then again, she’d had a serial killer stalking her back then.
“It was nice seeing you.” She smiled. “If you need help with anything while you’re here, give me a call, okay?” She grabbed a pen and scribbled her mobile number on a napkin.
“Thanks,” I replied, and she hurried back out of the cafe with her cake box clutched in hand like a prize. Not that I blamed her, it was great cake.
A few minutes later, as I was scraping the last of the chocolate icing off my plate, an old woman with a take-no-shit expression came out from the kitchen and narrowed her eyes at me.
“You the one asking to see me?” she asked, coming closer and running her gaze over me from head to toe. “I’m Nadia.”
I turned in my seat to face her and offered my friendliest smile. “Yes, I’m Danny. I can see you’re busy, so I’ll cut right to the chase. Did you ever meet a woman by the name of Layla? It would have been about four years ago, and she had an uncle who lived here in Shadow Grove—Jack Wildeboer.”
The old woman’s brows rose, and she gave me another curious look. This time, she took in all my concealed weapons—since I’d tossed a jacket over my shoulder holsters—and paused on the necklace still hanging out of my top.
“You really do cut to the chase, Danny.” Her gaze returned to my face, and a small frown touched her brow. “Layla… nothing rings a bell. Maybe if I saw her face it might remind me, but otherwise, no. I can’t help. I vaguely recall Mr. Wildeboer, but he wasn’t much for cakes and sweets, so I couldn’t tell you anything about the man. He died of a heart attack about two years ago? Maybe less.”
I studied her for a moment but found no signs of deceit. She was telling the truth, and my shoulders sagged with disappointment. “I knew that would have been too easy. Thank you, anyway. Your cake is delicious.”
Nadia frowned. “Maybe I can’t help you find this Layla person, but I might be able to help you with something else.”
“With what?” I asked, quirking a brow in curiosity.
Nadia nodded to my necklace. “That key. You know what it unlocks?”
I glanced down, picking up the key pendant and twirling it in my fingers. “I don’t… do you?”
The old woman gave me a smug smile, and I made a mental note to send Sabine a muffin basket. Maybe Nadia didn’t know Layla, but Sab had been right about her knowing things.
43
Nadia cleaned up my empty cake plate, then told me to follow her as she led the way through to the kitchens. She had a handful of staff working behind the scenes, including one teenage girl with a deep scowl on her face as she piped out macaron batter onto a stenciled tray.
The girl glanced up as we passed and gave me a polite smile. “Dobroye utro,” she murmured, turning her attention back to what she was doing almost immediately.
I paused though, surprised to hear Russian from a pastry apprentice in Shadow Grove, California. “Dobroye utro,” I replied, casting a curious look at Nadia.
The old woman was frowning at the pastry tray the teen was working on, though. “Chut’ pomen’she, Zoya,” she said, then continued on through the kitchen toward the back. I hurried to catch up with her, and she gave me a glance as she inserted a key into a heavy lock and opened the door.
“Zoya has been here a couple of years but really struggles with English,” she told me quietly. “She’s such a fast learner and a hard worker, though. Makes the most perfect croissants.”
“Is she your granddaughter?” I asked, genuinely curious. Nadia’s Russian was fluent and free of American accent, so logic told me she didn’t grow up in the States.
Nadia shook her head, flicking on a light switch at the top of a narrow stairwell. “No. But she might as well be. Come on, down here.” She started down the stairs, and I followed, hyper-alert the whole time. As we neared the bottom, I even went so far as to pull a gun. Given my luck as of late, it wasn’t inconceivable that this little old lady was leading me into an ambush.
She didn’t comment on it, though, just arched a brow and carried on like it made no difference to her whether I was armed or not.
“About a year ago, or maybe more, there was a troublemaker in town,” she told me as she walked along the corridor at the base of the stairs. The lighting was dim, but we seemed to be the only ones down there. “Limp-dicked little bastard trashed my cafe. Totally destroyed it. Not a single stick of furniture left untouched.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I commented.
Nadia huffed a laugh. “I’m not. Got me a fancy new rebuild for the trouble. You saw how nice it is up there. Anyway, during the renovation, the builders discovered this tunnel hidden behind a false wall. Not totally uncommon, there’s loads of tunnels running around under Shadow Grove. Leftovers from the Prohibition era when one of the Shadow Grove founding families—the Burns family—operated an underground distillery.”
I smiled. “Entrepreneurial.”
Nadia flashed me a toothy smile, and the dim light gave her a slightly demonic quality. “Very. That family moved away a couple of generations ago. They’re in a different criminal industry now. But the tunnels remain…”
“Where does it lead?” I asked, unable to fight my fascination over this totally unexpected twist to an already interesting city.
Nadia chuckled. “Eventually? Probably anywhere you wanna go in Shadow Grove. But the reason I brought you down here, is this.” She strode forward another twenty feet or so, then stopped.
I glanced around, half expecting one of Blanchet’s beta team to leap out and garrote me again. But the corridor remained totally empty.