Chapter Twenty-Six
KENZI
Nothing.
No calls.
No messages.
No more break-ins.
Well, the break-ins might also have had a lot to do with the fact that someone called the company and intimidated them into coming in the very next morning and fixing the camera.
Not only that, but the very nasal-voiced, rat-faced, greasy-haired repairman who raked his eyes over Cass and me like he had never seen a woman before also informed us that not only was he fixing the broken camera, but he was installing two more interior ones and three more exterior ones.
One of those exterior ones? It was facing into the alley along with a motion sensor.
If there was even the smallest bit of doubt about who had called them, it was wiped away with that little tidbit of information.
Tig called.
Tig called and threatened the very stern-sounding owner with a thick Bronx accent and a very professional ‘you’re telling me this like it is somehow my problem’ tone when he spoke to him.
And he did all of that without consulting Cass or me.
Normally, I would be pissed about that. It was presumptuous. It suggested that I didn’t know how to take care of myself. And, well, since my bill didn’t change, it said he either conned the owner or paid for it himself, which would never sit right with me.
I paid my own way in life.
It was something my mother pounded into us when we were kids. Always build your own foundations, always stand on your own two feet. That way, no matter what man comes or goes, he can never knock you down.
Why my mind kept veering into the ideas of relationships every time I thought about Tig was completely beyond me.
First, because he generally wasn’t my type.
Second, because I barely knew the friggin man.
And third, I literally had not seen or heard his voice since the night in the rain.
I got the occasional email update about Barrett finding nothing so far, about the security being too hard to crack and bringing in another professional, or saying he had followed up with all of my exes and found nothing fishy.
He was still chugging along on Cassie’s list, which he had to use social media to cross-reference since she sometimes only had nicknames or knew someone as ‘that Brian that is friends with Mary.’
A splash of wet hit the side of my face, making me jerk back so violently that I almost toppled off the top of the desk where I had been sitting with a sketchpad on my lap that I realized I had been staring at but not working on.
When my eyes shifted, I found Cassie sitting there with a wry smile on her lips, hands on top of her cup of spa water that she had obviously just flicked at me.
“Daydreaming, much?” she asked, knowing I wasn’t one generally known for that particular fancy. That was Reese. I was the realist.
“Sorry. I don’t know what is wrong with me,” I admitted, shaking my hand and putting the sketchpad down on the desk.
I was behind on the designs for June, and the company I paid to sew the patterns would be bitching at me in a day or two, wanting to order the fabrics for the summer collection.
My hand closed around my coffee, and I took a long sip, nose wrinkling when I found it just shy of outright cold already.
How the hell long had I been spaced out?
“I know what’s wrong with you.” Her smile was wicked, and at my brow raise that she knew me long enough to interpret as an invitation to go on, she said it. “You want the D of the dark, sexy giant who made you all heart-eyed because he walked you to your car like some knight in shining armor.”
I coughed hard as I swallowed, finding no dignified way not to seem completely blindsided by that. While true, I had had some naughty thoughts on and off, I figured it was all my own little dirty secret and therefore no big deal.
Apparently, I was as transparent as could be.
Or maybe Cass just knew me well enough to know I was off and traced it back to the day I met Tig.
I comforted myself with the notion that it was likely the latter and no one else would ever know.
“The D, Cass? The D? If I wanted dick, I could go out and get it anytime I want.”
“And yet you’ve been celibate for months.”
“Oh for God’s sake. It’s a dry spell. I’ve been busy. Sex hasn’t been a priority.”
“And yummy Mr. Private Investigator with tree trunk arms hasn’t been making you consider scribbling some time in for some rough and dirty in the storage room?”
Okay.
So maybe I totally had a weird fantasy about getting screwed at work. I couldn’t tell you exactly why. Maybe it was as simple as it was the place I put so much of myself into, all of my passion and dedication, and it felt like it would be explosive to do the deed inside it.
“He does have nice arms,” I allowed because she knew if I saw some good arms, I always commented, and it would be a surefire sign that I was into him if I didn’t at least admit it. “But otherwise…”
“Yeah, yeah. He’s not your type. Blah blah. Your type sucks, in case you haven’t noticed.”
My type maybe ran a little bit toward metro. I tended to go for guys who knew how to dress, and guys who knew how to dress tended to be just as high-maintenance as I was, which always led to some kind of argument and the inevitable dissolution of the relationship.
My mother would quip that she swore it had nothing to do with the man—that my eye just went to the clothes and made the decision right then and there.
Maybe there was even some truth in that.
Which was really, terribly superficial of me.
But I also dug the fact that most of my metro exes liked clothes and watches because they worked their asses off for them; they were ambitious and liked nothing more than working toward a better life.
Like me.
The only problem there was that they tended to care about work more than me.
Just like I did with regard to them.
It was an ugly cycle, which was why I had stopped really seriously dating and took up a friends-with-benefits arrangement for a long time when I was feeling twirly and needed a release.
I was fully aware that I had been in an unhealthy loop with men, and since I really was okay on my own, I put that on the back burner to be dealt with, well, whenever.
“My type is no longer an issue since I am not dating right now.”
“You’re not in your twenties anymore, Kenz.
I know that work is what is most important to you, and I’m not saying that is wrong, but there is more to life.
And I’m not,” she cut me off when I went to open my mouth, “talking about your sister or brothers or mother or aunts either. I know you are all tight and they are important too. I’m just saying, you can admire your mother’s strength without taking every single page out of her book, K.
You can date. You can find men to trust. Maybe even that Tig guy.
He’s got a little something-something. You can’t deny that. ”
“He had Tims on,” I said, curling my lip.
“He probably gets into shitty situations all the time where those steel toes come in handy. He’s not some fake gangster, Kenz. They’re work boots, not fashion statements. Most men don’t think about what women are going to think about their shoes when they go buy them.”
She was right.
I was being silly judging him on small things.
Really, I was just trying to deflect so she didn’t know how much I was somehow into the stranger.
“Alright, fine, I’ll let it drop,” she said, mistaking my silence for anger. “It’s been twenty. Why don’t you run and pick up lunch?”
Quite frankly, for maybe the first time ever, I needed to get away from Luxe. The air felt thick and hard to breathe, and I was thankful for the escape, even if it was just to run five storefronts down to pick up sushi.
“Alright. Hold down the fort.”
It was ten minutes, maybe fifteen.
The people at the sushi place always ran behind, and I had to wait for our order to finish being put in boxes and then pay.
It was only fifteen minutes tops.
The second my hand closed around the doorknob, a sliver of ice seemed to slide down my spine until every inch of me felt cold, until goosebumps covered over every inch of skin.
An irrational part of me wanted to run screaming.
But seeing as it was just that—irrational—I reached for my phone and unlocked it instead. Paranoid, probably. But always better safe than sorry.
I pulled the door open and walked in. The first thing I noticed was that I didn’t see Cass.
Which wasn’t that weird. Maybe she had to pee. Maybe she was getting drinks from the kitchen for us. Who knew?
But I couldn’t shake the feeling as I kept moving across my perfect floor in my perfect but empty store and toward the desk.
And that was when the bag slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.
Behind the desk where Cass had been was a mess. Papers were littering the floor. My mostly empty coffee had spilled all over the surface, and the ceramic was splintered across the floor.
And, worst of all, there were bright red smears of blood on the edge of the desk and one of Cassie’s shoes discarded on the floor.
My entire body went ramrod straight as panic started to flood my system, making every inch of me feel like it was buzzing, electric, foreign, and intolerable as I whipped around, paranoid. My heart was in my throat as I scanned the store.
My hand rose, shaking so hard that I had trouble scrolling through my contacts before I found the number he had sent me in an email.
“Tig.”
I thought maybe his voice would give me comfort, but it seemed to make the hysteria bubble up inside, making my voice a weird squeak.
“She’s gone!”
There was a short pause. “Who is gone, Kenz?”
“Cassie. She’s gone. She’s… I went for lunch, and I came back, and she’s gone, and there is a mess and blood and her shoe. And she’s gone!”