Chapter Twenty-Seven
TIG
I was a big guy by pretty much any standards.
That being said, Kenzi’s brothers were almost the same size.
Paine and Enzo and the girls shared a father, but Enzo had a different mother.
Even so, there was no mistaking the family resemblance.
They all shared the same skin tone, the same green or hazel eyes, the same dark hair, and the same taller-than-average frames.
Where Kenz was five-nine and Reese maybe only an inch shorter, Paine and Enzo were at least six-four. And solid.
Paine, being a tattoo artist, was also covered in ink.
Street hard with a good heart, that was the Washington brothers.
That being said, when Paine came into the doorway, every molecule in his body sparking off a heady mix of both fear and anger, you saw a lot less of the heart and a lot more of the street.
He was coiled for a fight, to spring into action, to do whatever it would take to ensure the safety of his loved ones.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he hissed as soon as his eyes landed on her, not stopping. No, he charged forward, grabbing her, and hauling her against him, actually picking her up off her feet in the process. “I heard abduction. That was all that piece of shit meter maid would fucking give me.”
And it was right that second that she did something I couldn’t have imagined had I not been witnessing it. Strong, take-no-shit, don’t-need-no-one Kenzi Washington broke.
“He got Cassie.” Her voice cracked and broke and ended on a sob as she face-planted into her brother’s chest, her body shaking with the sobs.
“Who?” The question was sharp, firm, and not directed at Kenzi at all.
When I looked up from her back, his hands still holding her tight, completely unfazed by her crying—something that was maybe a product of having grown up with a couple of sisters.
His green eyes were on mine, recognizing me because he made it his business to know every player in town—legit and not—even though he was out of the lifestyle.
“Someone has been taunting Kenz and Cass for a while now, escalating.”
“Escalating how far before today?” His teeth were on edge. Everything about him got instantly tenser. Because he knew exactly what that meant. He knew his sister didn’t bring him in the fold, didn’t tell him she was in danger, didn’t let him try to help her.
Not being the type to keep things from people who needed and had a right to know, I brought the picture up for him just like I had for Lloyd. “Along with a lot of damage to the store.”
It happened so fast that had I not been paying such close attention, I would have missed it. I watched him go from hot and angry to motherfucking ice cold in a blink.
“How long?”
“She called me in a week ago. Before that, it was the cops.”
“Yeah, ‘cause they know what the fuck they’re doing. When did he take her?”
“Not more than forty minutes ago.”
It was maybe half a minute later when there was a blur of a woman rushing in through the door so fast that she almost plowed into Paine and Kenzi.
“Re,” Paine said, throwing an arm out and bringing her against him so quickly that she likely hadn’t even registered who was there before she was buried against his chest.
“Oh my God,” Reese said against his chest, yanking an arm free and wrapping it around her sister. “Cass?” she asked, only making Kenzi sob louder.
Paine looked over them and at me. “You know they don’t have a deadbolt?” I asked, not sure why I felt compelled to, maybe just because it was something I would want any woman in my life to have. And a security system, mace, a hoard of rabid pit bulls.
“Oh, they have a fucking deadbolt. And I hired a guy to come fucking install it.”
“We canceled,” Reese said as Paine loosened his hold so she could push back slightly, giving me my first good view of her.
See, while most people knew Kenz because she was extroverted and hit the town a lot, unless you spent a lot of time in the library—which, let’s face it, unless you were over seventy or under five, you likely didn’t—you didn’t get to see Reese much.
It was a fucking shame too, because she was every bit as pretty as her sister, if maybe a bit softer, a bit sweeter.
She had the same skin, the same long-legged body, same ass.
Actually, Reese might have had an even bigger one, but she didn’t dress to show it off like her sister chose to, wearing instead some leggings with books all over them and a long t-shirt that scooped enough in the front to not be matronly but was otherwise completely shapeless.
Her hair seemed to be left to do its own thing, but where Kenzi’s ran toward curly unless she straightened it, Reese’s was just somewhat wavy and long.
“Where you going?” Paine asked, tone firm when I went to walk past them to the door.
“Getting my drill out of the truck.”
I walked into the hall, closing the door behind me, taking the first deep breath I had in almost an hour. My hand went for my pocket, grabbing my phone and hitting the speed dial for Sawyer.
“Yeah, I know. You told us so,” he picked up, the fuzziness suggesting I was on speaker and Brock was there as well. “What a fucking mess. I know there is a girl out there going through hell, but fuck, could you imagine if this was Kenz?”
It was wrong to think that way, but that being said, I was pretty sure we all were doing it.
“Where are you? At the station?”
“At Kenzi’s. She was shutting down at the store, so Lloyd said I could take her back to calm her down. She was no use to him right then. And now she’s soaking through her brother’s shirt, and I am installing a goddamn deadbolt because these girls like to live dangerously, apparently.”
“Paine is there? Is he pissed at you?”
“Think he’s still reeling too much to be pissed. But I would expect a call or visit if I were you.”
“I’ll deal with him. We go back. Anyway, Barrett called in Alex and some other guy from up at Hailstorm, and they’re at warp speed working all the cameras in this area and all surrounding ones. Janie is trying to get a signal on Cassie’s phone. You said it wasn’t at the scene.”
“I didn’t see it. She was holding it when she was attacked, but then the desk was blocking a lot of her body, and I couldn’t see if she still had it, if he took it, or maybe if it even slid under the desk or something.”
“How far have you gotten on the Cassie chick? Have the cops notified her man yet?”
I was slacking.
It hit me right then as I popped the door on the trunk and reached inside for the tool bag.
I wasn’t doing my job.
I was acting like she was my girl, not my client.
Who the fuck was I to take her home and calm her down? That wasn’t my place. My place was back at Luxe, combing through whatever evidence the cops already fucked with and maybe picking up on some shit they missed. That was where I would be useful.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I was fucking it all up.
Because why?
Because I wanted to be around Kenz?
Really, it came down to that.
What could I say? I was into the woman. There was nothing there to dislike. Was she a hardass? Sure. And I happened to find it hot as hell. It was every bit as sexy as her ambition, her confidence, her intelligence, her independence, and the entire package all that was wrapped in.
It had been a while, I tried to reason with myself.
That was all it was. Work had been eating up my life for months, and I hadn’t made hardly any time for women.
And maybe watching Sawyer, perhaps the biggest workaholic of all of us, find Riya and settle and start a life had done something to me, reminded me of things I had forgotten I wanted.
I appreciated Sawyer’s faith in me when he brought me on the team.
I still didn’t know if it was in spite of or because of the places I had been, the things I had done.
And that uncertainty maybe made me feel I needed to prove myself more than Brock felt he needed to—the two of them having had years having each other’s backs.
So while I had always been a man who made his own way in life, worked for everything he had, I perhaps took it a bit far since I started working at Sawyer Investigations.
In doing so, I forgot the other shit that had always been important to me- some sort of balance in life, a good woman in my bed, a chance for a future, kids, the cheesy shit most men won’t own up to wanting.
I wanted it.
And it had been a fuckuva long time since I even let myself think about it; I had been so caught up in work.
Then I got a case that just so happened to involve the physical representation of the dream woman.
Yeah, that explained it.
I needed to remember she was a client and do the job.
I could find a woman in my free time.
After I put a goddamn deadbolt on her door.
“I’ll take that as a no,” Sawyer said, sounding a mix of amused and frustrated. “I will check in with, oh speak of the devil. Alright, I gotta talk to Lloyd. I’ll fill you in after.”
With that, I grabbed my tool bag and headed back into the apartment, finding the girls missing and Paine standing alone in the kitchen.
The heady aroma of strong coffee was filling the space, something I was going to need about half a gallon of to get through the next twenty-four hours.
I wouldn’t be sleeping. Not until we had something to go on.
“I have two questions and one request.”
“Shoot,” I agreed, putting the bag down.
“Why you and not Sawyer?”
I could have been offended by that, but I wasn’t for two reasons. One, Sawyer absolutely had more training than me. Two, Paine knew Sawyer, and I was a practical stranger. Of course he wanted his sister in the hands of someone he knew and trusted.
“Kenz wasn’t forthcoming about what the issue was, and Sawyer, well, he has…”
“Short patience for bullshit, which Kenz is full of at times.”
“Something like that. He told her no, said to call you and Enzo if you really had something going on.”
“Then you have her case…”