“Mantis showed up at my house the other night.” I glance around to make sure no one’s within earshot. It’s late, and the shift change came and went. The staff parking lot is full of cars and not much else at this point. Still, I drop my voice. “You need to stop stirrin’ up that pot you’ve stuck your spoon into.”
“Unbelievable.” Abe starts to laugh, but it’s not his usual hearty, boisterous laugh. It’s full of bitterness. “You protecting Mantis too?”
“I’m protecting you. You know you can’t go around threatening him!”
“Why? Because he’s Canning’s dog?”
“Because he has the temper of a rattlesnake that’s been stepped on! Lord only knows what he’ll do if you get him cornered.” There are enough stories floating around about Mantis—sending opponents off sports fields in stretchers, putting a guy in a hospital after a bar brawl, complaints of excessive use of force, from criminals, mind you—to make any smart person wary of that guy.
“Then he shouldn’t have stolen that money.”
I knew it. “They’re getting drugs and bad people off the streets, even if Mantis has a crooked way of doing it. I’m telling you, Abe, leave it alone. For everyone’s sake, but especially your own.” I don’t know how I can warn him any more clearly than that.
“When did you get like this? You weren’t always like this. I guess that assistant chief’s star is just too damn tempting, isn’t it?” He shakes his head, his chocolate eyes alight with anger. “If he’s done it once, he’s done it a hundred times. It’s wrong. I can’t turn a blind eye to that. Now if you’ll move . . .” He opens his door, forcing me back. “I won’t get to put my baby girl to bed—again—thanks to you.”
I barely find time to step out of the way before he’s speeding away.
CHAPTER 40
Grace
The first thing I’m aware of when I awake is the smell of soap.
The second is the feel of a broad chest against my cheek and an arm coiled around my body. It takes my brain several seconds to register the fact that I’m curled up against Noah in my bed, and another few to remember why.
We must have drifted off, going through each line of my dad’s report with a fine-tooth comb. Pages are now scattered beneath our slumbering bodies. Others have slipped to the floor during the night.
I lie frozen for a moment, relishing the warmth of Noah’s strong, hard body, the heat radiating through his thin cotton T-shirt. My palm is flat against the curves of his chest, and it feels even better than I imagined, enough to make my blood race through my limbs and my heart pound.
Just days ago, he was no one. An assumed drug dealer who faced the brunt of my rage. Then, he was a guy I didn’t remember, the son of a woman whom my mother despised. Now . . . he’s the only real person I can count on in my life.
True, he’s deceived and outright lied to me plenty, and yet my anger with him melted almost instantly last night. I want to hate him for protecting his mother, for listening to his uncle, but I can’t. I can’t blame him for hoping that there’s some grand explanation for her involvement, just like I can’t blame him for giving everyone he cares for the benefit of the doubt.
Slowly, I shift my head so I can look up at his face. It’s exactly as I imagined it—boyish and peaceful in slumber, his brown eyelashes a thick fringe. And that jaw . . . My fingertips beg to slide across the layer of stubble covering it.
When exactly did I start having these feelings for Noah? Sure, he was attractive, even when I thought he was my mom’s drug dealer. And I’ve admired him more than once from afar. But lying in bed next to him, my thoughts are on what those soft, full lips would feel like against mine, and on how he’d react if he woke up to find me pressed against him.
When was the last time I trusted anyone the way I seem to trust Noah almost instinctively, no matter how many times he’s given me reason not to?
I never have.
Because I’ve never met a guy like him.
Noah is a genuinely good guy, trying to do the right thing, while protecting the people he cares for. Mom said that’s how Dad was.
What worries me is what happened to Dad because he was trying to do the right thing.
Cyclops stands with a deep stretch from the spot where he made himself comfortable for the night—the pile of decorative pillows that I tossed to the floor—and trots over to the doorway, his tail wagging.
He lets out a high-pitched bark of protest.
I quietly curse the mutt as Noah’s chest heaves with a deep, awakening breath. His eyelids begin to flutter and the sharp jut in his neck bobs with his hard swallow. Still, I don’t move, hoping he’ll drift back asleep.
Cyclops lets out a second high-pitched bark. I can’t ignore him any longer. He may have been domesticated once, but he’s a stray now. That he’s even doing the decent thing by not lifting his leg on the furniture is a miracle.
I move to slide off Noah.
His arm tightens around me instantly, locking me in place. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to—I can feel his heart begin to race. I catch his brilliant blue but sleepy eyes settled on me. “Did you sleep okay?” he asks, his voice grating so deeply that I feel it in my chest.
I consider throwing back my usual sarcastic quip. Then I decide against it, because it’d be a lie and we agreed not to lie to each other. “Better than I have in a while,” I admit. “Even on a bed of paper.”
He groans. “I meant to gather it up before going to my room, but I must have fallen asleep reading.”
“We can find it all easily enough. I highlighted everything important.” The pages summarizing the interview with my mother, and how she couldn’t explain the stacks of money and bags of cocaine and marijuana that turned up in the search warrant execution, taped to the backs and underside of their bedroom furniture. Nor could she explain why my dad left the house that night, other than to say that he had received a phone call and told her he had to go to work.
What was glaringly obvious wasn’t what was in the report, but what wasn’t in it. There was no mention of my dad’s unaccounted-for Colt .45, or his custom-made holster. No mention of my mom’s claims about a suspicious video. And not a single word about him acting as witness to a police corruption crime, which we know Silas—an ADA at the time—was aware of. So many minor details were documented—the times and dates that my father lied to my mother about working, with confirmation that he was not on the clock—and yet none of the facts that may have helped build reasonable doubt. Did they simply exclude them, assuming they weren’t important? Or did Mantis make sure they never made it into the report?
Noah sighs as his fingers drag back and forth against my shoulder.
This is getting too intimate. I should pull away, and yet I stay, frozen against him. “How’d you sleep?”
“Great. Actually, I might still be asleep.”
I frown. “Why do you say that?”
His warm breath skates across my forehead. “Because you’re being nice to me.”
I’ve never been shy, and yet I’m unable to look him in the eye again. “Don’t get used to it.” Meanwhile my body betrays me, pressing into his, reveling in his strength and warmth and protection.
“Hey.”
I sense the air between us shifting, a heady anticipation swelling. “What?”
His hand pushes against my chin, lifting it until our eyes meet again.
He says nothing, but he doesn’t need to. Everything he doesn’t say is clear. The hard swallow, the shaky inhale, the way his fingers curl around locks of my hair, while sweeping them off my forehead.
The way he leans in, painstakingly slowly.
His lips graze against mine in a timid way, as if he’s afraid of my response. Not until the second pass, when he presses a little harder, when he stalls there for a little longer, does it actually feel like a real kiss.
Not until the third pass do I meet his mouth with mine, reveling in the way our lips fit against each other in an unhurried, sensual dance, as his arm around me tightens, as his body coils into mine, his other hand finding my hip. His thumb grazes against my pelvic bone.
I could stop this.