FOURTEEN
Oz paced the office, rubbing his temples. He desperately wanted to unsee what he’d just seen in the safe. If that was what he thought it was …
Well, he hadn’t opened one of the packages to find out exactly which drug La Chef had been dabbling in—but dabbling wasn’t even the right word. Trafficking. She was neck-deep in trafficking.
Which, in some ways, Oz had always known. Restaurants weren’t exactly profitable, which was why she used slave labor, but slaves weren’t cheap either. And how the hell did she have money to rent this office or buy her penthouse or have her own private security force—which had scattered like the wind the second she was dead?
Those weren’t things restauranteurs had, not usually. They were definitely things drug kingpins had.
Benedict, bless him, had no idea what was going on. “Is this stuff … valuable?” he asked, peering back into the safe.
“Just a bit,” Oz spat back. He didn’t want to know what it would go for on the street. A lot seemed like a good guess.
“You think this is what Vito was after?”
“Uh, duh?” Oz honestly couldn’t believe someone could be so naive.
Benedict frowned and looked back in the safe. “Why? It’s just some brown-paper packages?—”
“It’s drugs, Benedict. Drugs.”
The felid paused for a moment, his gaze roving the ceiling. Oz could practically see the gears in his head turning. “ Oh ,” he said finally.
“Yeah,” Oz agreed.
They stared at the packages again. “That’s a lot of drugs,” Benedict remarked.
“Mmhmm.” Oz didn’t really know what else to say. It was a lot of drugs. More than any one person had need of, which meant that La Chef had been wheeling and dealing.
He tried to figure out how Vito factored into this. Had she bought the drugs off him, maybe offered him a commission when she sold it or something? Or was she stepping on his toes? Or was she supplying Vito, and she’d taken his money and now she owed him the product?
None of it was adding up—why didn’t Vito ask about the product? Instead, he’d hinted at a loan. He’d suggested he’d take the businesses—Saveur and The Pub and the others—out from under Benedict.
He let his frown deepen, because the more he thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. Some nervous part of him twanged with the idea that discovering the drugs hadn’t solved their problem at all. They still didn’t know what La Chef owed Vito, so how the hell were they supposed to come up with it?
But Vito’s goons had tried to break into the safe. Deep down, Oz knew it meant nothing, but he clung to that fact, like it proved that they were after the drugs.
In all honesty, they might have just thought whatever Vito was after was in the safe. Maybe they didn’t know any more than Oz and Benedict and Farq did.
The thought made him twitchy, so he pushed it away. They’d gotten into the safe, which Vito had sicc’d his goons on, and they’d found the drugs that the mobster was clearly after. Benedict would take the drugs to Vito, and this whole thing would be resolved, and …
And what? This whole charade would be over, and he guessed he’d go back to tending bar at Saveur and getting more than six hours of sleep. He’d stop strolling down to this shitty office block every day, stop bringing his boss a coffee, stop wading through piles of paper with him, stop wandering over to The Pub for a pint served up by Mig, and …
That would be that.
Suddenly, it seemed impossible to go back. Impossible that he’d ever done it before, impossible that he’d ever existed without Benedict asking for his help and smiling at him and sharing beers and lattes and meals with him.
“Ah, fuck,” he said, leaning over the desk and earning himself a quizzical look from the felid in question.
“What is it?” Benedict asked, looking at him like he might suddenly suggest that the drugs were a red herring and he’d actually known the answer all along; he’d just forgotten.
“Um,” Oz said.
“Boss?” Farq called from the hallway, which saved Oz from coming up with some half-assed excuse to cover the fact he’d just realized that he was crushing hard on his owner.
“Yes?” Benedict asked, turning to the door, only to lift his hands as Farq stepped into the room with a gun trained on them.
Farq gestured to the wall. “Unload the safe.”
Well, shit . Oz had never thought Farq had the brains to turn on Benedict.
The thought had never crossed Benedict’s mind either, from the gobsmacked look on his face. “Why?”
Farq gestured with the gun. “’Cause I’m taking whatever ya found in there.”
Benedict’s brow crunched. “Why?” he repeated, like he didn’t understand what was happening. Maybe he didn’t. Benedict honestly seemed like he’d been born yesterday sometimes.
Farq looked about as confounded. “Uh, ’cause I’m robbing you?” He sounded unsure.
“What? Why would you do that?”
“Uh …”
While Farq was contemplating his motives, Oz let himself turn to water and slosh across the floor, toward the desk. Once he was behind it, he resolidified, tugging gently on the desk drawers, feeling around in them for hidden compartments or, better yet, a gun of his own.
“I mean,” Benedict went on, “I’m your employer. Why would you rob me?”
Farq stomped a foot. “’Cause that’s how things go around here!” he cried, evidently fed up with Benedict’s inquiries. “If I ever wanna get anywhere, I gotta do bad things!”
“Oh, Farq.” Benedict sounded genuinely heartbroken. “That isn’t true at all.”
“Shut up!” Farq roared. “Nice guys finish last on Kateria! They end up like Oz!”
Bingo , Oz thought as his hand closed around the handle of a pistol. He clicked off the safety, hoping La Chef kept the thing loaded and in good condition.
“I’m not finishing last today,” he snapped, jumping up from behind the desk and pulling the trigger.
The shot went wide and high—probably because Oz had never had the opportunity to fire a gun before—and hit the ceiling, knocking drywall to the floor. The recoil practically bowled him over, but the noise made both Farq and Benedict jump.
Unfortunately, Farq recovered first, and he was angry now. He stalked over to the desk, grabbed Oz by the neck, and dragged him out, gun pointed to his temple.
“Unload the safe,” he grunted at Benedict, who wrung his hands, muttering, “Oh dear, oh dear.”
Oz glanced at Farq, who was busy watching Benedict do his bidding. Then Oz turned himself to goo again and melted down to the floor.
It took Farq a moment to notice. “Hey!” he barked, then tried to stomp on Oz as he zig-zagged around the office.
Benedict, the fool, didn’t move. Didn’t even so much as inch toward the door when Oz finally succeeded in getting Farq to move deeper into the office.
Oz squeaked and squelched when Farq managed to land a foot on him. He resolidified instantly, then curled into a ball on the floor. That stung .
“Now,” Farq said, swinging around and smashing his face off a filing cabinet drawer.
“Sorry about that,” Benedict said. “I must have left that one open.”
“Bastard,” Farq growled, clutching his nose. “You’re gonna pay for that, preacher boy.”
“I’m not a preacher,” Benedict said, but Farq swung the gun at him, apparently deciding blunt-force trauma was better than bullets.
Benedict barely ducked. Oz sat up, still a bit woozy from having his molecules stomped on, watching as Farq swiped at Benedict again, and, again, the cat danced away.
Right toward …
The open window. Farq swung again, and Benedict backed up, sticking his foot through the opening. His eyes went wide when he realized there was nothing but air under him.
Oz wasn’t even sure what he was doing; his body seemed to move of its own accord, leaving his brain on the other side of the office. When he finally caught up, he was outside the building, his molecules expanded to form a kind of net as Benedict tumbled onto him and they slid down a lamp pole to the ground. He risked a glance up, found Farq’s ugly mug peering out the window at them, anger and awe across his visage.
They hit the ground with a thump, and for thirty seconds, Oz thought they’d gotten away clean. Benedict tumbled off him onto the sidewalk, stumbling against a few shocked passersby, then dropping to his knees. Oz, slowly pulling himself back into his usual shape, opened his mouth to speak, then promptly lost his breath when the bullet struck him.
He looked up again, but Farq was gone; the window showed only fluttering curtains and a loose paper or two flapping toward freedom in the breeze.
“Oz!”
There was an ear-splitting scream from someone standing on the sidewalk, and Benedict’s voice swimming through his ears.
“Are you all right?” Benedict’s hand was heavy on his shoulder. Oz felt warmth, then pain, underneath the felid’s palm.
“I, uh …”
“We have to stop the bleeding,” Benedict murmured, almost directly in his ear. Then he turned to the crowd. “We need a doctor! A nurse!”
Someone shuffled forward. “I’m a paramedic,” they said.
“He needs to get to a hospital,” someone else said, and there was a general murmur of agreement.
Oz let his eyes flutter shut, the crowd’s rumbling both overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time. He inhaled deeply through his nose, wobbled left and right, then promptly tumbled deep into the dark embrace of unconsciousness.