“How sure are we?”
“‘Bout seventy five percent. My cousin going over to his old baby mutha’s later on. They friends. She told her that he came through there a couple of hours ago smelling like gasoline, asking to shower and shit. I’ll have more on that in a minute. Yo, D, man. If it’s that dude, he need to close his eyes tonight. He can’t live no more.”
“If it’s son, he might get sniped by one of ‘dem youngin’s that’s trying catch Divine’s attention. It’s gonna be a bounty on his fuckin’ head,” Petey muttered.
Petey was right. This shit wasn’t looking good for ol’ boy.
“Kid, y’all good on those safes in there?”
“Yeah, he pulling them up from the floor now. Let me go check up on him.” Kid headed back inside the house despite the firefighters urging them not to. It was my shit and I damn sure wasn’t about to let such personal items stay there in an opened charred house.
“You want me to call Kip?” Petey asked.
“Yeah, but see if he can lay low until this place is empty. I don’t want the officials to know about the surveillance out here unless it’s necessary.”
“You got it, Duke.”
Petey walked off to make the call to Kip, a surveillance specialist that I’d contracted years ago to protect my properties. You almost forget about him until an incident like this when you need him. Footage of the property should be stored and that should pinpoint the perpetrator, if not, point us in the right direction. My gut told me that Big D was behind this in some way. He didn’t like my cutting him off and therefore wringing him dry. You mess with a man’s money, he’ll eventually get desperate and make risky moves. I stayed there for about a half an hour before I decided to head out. The ride back to the marina gave me time to think and plan.
She lay there with the house phone and her cell laying on my pillow, I guess for easy access if I had called. I looked over to the time on the nightstand to see that it was six forty-two.
Taking her by the shoulders, I nudged her, trying to ease her back into a conscious state. “Brimm. Brimm, baby,” I muttered. From her shoulders I shoved her body several times before she had actually awakened. Her tired eyes were red as she tried to focus them.
“Azmir! I’m so glad that you’re back. I must have dozed off…what time is it?” she asked, rubbing her eyes.
It’s nearly seven. Get up…I have your favorite old-fashion oatmeal from the deli around the corner. I don’t want it to get cold.
She took a few moments to collect herself and strode into the shower.
Back out in the kitchen at the table, she took a seat next to me and I opened up her steaming oatmeal. Her yogurt and fresh fruit sat adjacent to it. I rose to put on the kettle for tea. As I filled it Rayna asked, “Well?”
I knew it was coming. We needed to talk, which is why I didn’t serve this to her in bed like I typically did on a weekend morning if I didn’t want her to cook. I took my seat next to her and opened my to go container that held my vegetable omelet.
“Well, it’s bad.”
“How bad?” her eyes were glued go my profile as she licked the smudge of yogurt that had gotten on her thumb. Rayna looked adorable in her boy shorts and matching thin camisole.
“Pretty bad. Nothing salvageable besides a few safes I had there.”
“Where is the house? I know you said you’d just bought this apartment recently, but did you stay at that house before living here?”
I cut into my omelet, prepared to dig in. “Pasadena. Yes, it’s where I lived prior to moving in here. I had lots of things there that I’d been meaning to have packed up, but never got around to it.” In all honesty, I’d been so wrapped up in Rayna that nothing from my past seemed important to rush into here, not even clothes.
“How did the fire start?”