Chapter Sixty
Brock
“None of this shit makes sense,” I told Sawyer over the phone as I scanned the aisles at the bodega a couple corners away from Miranda’s apartment.
“How did no one see anything?” Sawyer asked.
“How did you question them?” Tig asked as Sawyer put me on speaker.
“I didn’t try to fuck information out of them, if that’s what you’re asking,” I said, rolling my eyes, but shooting a guilty look at a group of teens playing hooky and laughing at what I’d said. “I just casually brought up ‘all that hubbub Friday night’ kind of thing.”
“And no one remembers an ambulance or cop cars?”
“No,” I said, settling on a protein bar, then making my way over toward the coffee station.
“Yeah, that makes no sense. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital, right?”
“That’s the billion-dollar question right now, isn’t it?” I asked, pouring some caramel syrup into my cup to cut the bitter, stale scent—and therefore taste—of the coffee.
I instantly missed the fancy-ass machine at Miranda’s apartment, and the perfect coffee it produced. But I didn’t want to be around the place too much in one day, raising brows. I’d already brought enough attention on myself for one day.
And it wasn’t easy to avoid the eagle eyes of the doorman around that place, men who were clearly paid well and had if not affection, then respect, for the tenants of the building.
I needed Miranda to make up some sort of story about my presence. A boyfriend, maybe.
Though, yeah, that felt a little bit like playing with fire.
I had to keep my fucking head in the game.
Not imagining the client naked in the shower.
Or with her skirt hiked up in the kitchen after work, taking it from behind to help her unwind from a long day.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
“What?” Sawyer asked, snapping me back to the moment.
“Coffee’s hot,” I said, shaking my head at myself.
“So what now?” Tig asked.
“I’m off to see a friend about a connection to the cops. Then I am back at the apartment to oversee the new security system.”
“Keep us updated,” Sawyer said.
“Will do.”
“Oh, and Brock?” Sawyer called before I could hang up.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t fuck the client.”
The line went dead after that.
A part of me wanted to be offended. But the other part of me knew that I had a pretty awful track record. Not with active clients, of course. I went ahead and waited until we closed the case before I gave into their advances.
What can I say?
A single gentleman liked to be accommodating to the ladies.
And as tempting as all of those women had been, none of them came close to Miranda Coulter’s sexy ass.
Never mind her incredible looks. She was smart and driven, two qualities I’d always been drawn to. She was together and capable, with just a hint of vulnerability that she clearly didn’t like anyone to see.
And what a fucking treat it would be to get trusted enough to get more of that side of her.
Not that I was going to get the chance.
“Hey, guys,” I called to the teens who were lurking around, likely wondering if they would be able to snag a couple of the beers from the fridge without the owner seeing. “Any of you up around the Chapel Lane building on Friday?” I asked.
“I didn’t steal shit,” the youngest of the group, a the scrawniest of the bunch with a mop of blond hair and a wicked case of acne, making his milky skin red and puffy.
“Good to know,” I said, nodding. “But I was actually just wondering if you saw a bunch of cop cars and ambulances at that building on Friday night.”
“What you gonna give us for that kind of information?” the oldest and, clearly, the most street-wise of the bunch asked.
Tucking my protein bar on top of my coffee, I fished into my wallet with my free hand to pull out a twenty.
“Cop cars, ambulances, what did you see or hear?” I asked.
The kid reached out and snagged the twenty, tucking it into his pocket.
“There weren’t no cop cars or ambulances at that fancy-ass building.”
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“I was scouting that night. Was there from like seven to five or six in the morning. Didn’t see shit.”
Maybe I should have lectured them about scouting for a gang or the mob or whoever the fuck they were working for. But, sometimes, a kid had to do what a kid had to do. You didn’t know what kind of home life they had, how much they needed that extra cash.
So I kept my mouth shut.
“Anything else weird?” I asked.
“Nah, man. It was a calm night. Just fancy-ass people in fancy-ass clothes going out into fancy-ass cars. Same old shit as any other night. Just maybe busier, being a Friday night and shit.”
“Alright. Thanks,” I said, nodding at them, then walking out of the bodega even more perplexed than when I’d gone in.
Could the kids have been bullshitting me to get some extra cash? Sure. But something about that kid’s certainty told me he wasn’t lying. And in affluent neighborhoods, the gang or mob or whoever was running the coke in the area, would have scouts around. Especially on a weekend night.
I ate my makeshift lunch in the back of a cab on my way to a much less luxurious area of the city.
Back to an area where I found another private investigator office right next to a bail bonds place and a few doors down from a kickboxing gym.
All of whom were owned by old buddies of mine.
Xander ran the private investigator firm. K operated the kickboxing gym. But it was the owner of the bail bonds place I was after. Gabe. Who I’d happened across on a case we were both working, just from different angles.
We’d both gotten our asses handed to us by a six-foot-six, four-hundred-pound bodybuilder, then nursed our wounds over a few drinks as we tried to work out how to bring the bastard in.
We weren’t close, not really, but he would get me some information if I asked.
His office was a nice place in a bad area, proving that bail bonds was still a solid business if you knew what you were doing. The walls were gray, and all the other accessories black.
It had been remodeled a bit since the last time I was around.
A woman sat behind a desk in the front behind what I imagined was some bullet-resistant glass. Directly beside that was a thick metal door that led to the back where Gabe and his office must have been if he was in.
“Can I help you?” the woman asked, giving me a friendly, but professional smile. The kind that said she might have worked with people who needed help with bail, but she didn’t date them.
“Is Gabe in?” I asked.
“Yes, he is, but he is busy. May I ask who is asking?”
“If you could just mention the blonde in Baltimore, that’d be great,” I said.
“Okay then,” she said, then reached for her phone.
I moved a few feet away, rocking on my heels, knowing he was on his way out.
Not a minute later, the locked door to the hallway was bursting open, and there was Gabe.
He was a pretty-boy type with blond hair and a tall, sturdy frame.
“I had to fucking bleach my eyes after walking into that hotel room,” he said, giving me a smirk.
“Yeah, not one of my finest moments,” I said, thinking back to calling his ass because he was the only person in that damn city that I knew when I found myself chained to a bed naked save for the fucking pillow over my junk after getting robbed by a chick I’d taken back to my room after all that drinking I’d done with Gabe.
“The fuck are you doing in my neck of the woods?”
“I have a case,” I told him.
“That brings you into the city? Must have deep pockets.”
“She does. And I have a favor to ask if you still have contacts on the force.”
“Yeah, of course,” he said, nodding. “Let’s take a walk,” he offered, leading me outside. “So, what do you have going on?”
“A rich businesswoman—“
“Christ, don’t fuck her,” Gabe said, making a snort escape me.
“I’ve had that lecture already. Anyway, she woke up in a hospital with her wrist slit, was forcibly put on a 5150, and has no fucking idea what happened.”
“No shit. That’s an interesting one.”
“Yeah. The problem is, none of the neighbors remember seeing cops or ambulances. Neither do some kids who were scouting on the street that night either.”
“Yeah, that’s weird,” Gabe said. “Did she not remember any of that?”
“Not a fucking thing,” I told him. “All she remembers was expecting Chinese food delivery. She was alone. Then she woke up in the hospital.”
“And you’re sure she just didn’t have a bad night?”
“She’s pretty fucking certain. As is her personal assistant who tracked us down and hired us.”
“Alright. Well, yeah, I can ask if any cops were sent to her address at…”
“The Chapel Lane building.”
“Oh, she’s rich-rich,” he said.
“Penthouse of the Chapel Lane building,” I clarified.
Gabe let out a whistle at that.
“Yeah, someone would remember being called to that apartment.”
“Exactly.”
“I will ask around today and get back to you.”
“I appreciate it.”
“Maybe when the case is done, we can grab some drinks and talk about how it went. Too fucking interesting not to know what went down. Assuming you’re not balls-deep in the client at the end of the case.”
“I can behave myself, for fuck’s sake,” I said, letting out a laugh as a car pulled up and parked a few yards away, a slick jet-black sports car that cost a cool hundred grand, easy.
“Who’d bring a car like that into this…” I started, then the door opened, and out walked a gorgeous woman with black hair and a killer body.
“Brock, this is my girl, Corey. Corey, this is Gabe,” he explained, placing a hand at the small of the woman’s back.
“The blonde in Baltimore,” she said, grinning at me.
“That’s me,” I agreed.
“The chains thing, is that a preference of yours?” she asked. “Gabe never knew.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“Don’t mind her. It’s an occupational hazard to ask.”
“Yeah? What’s the occupation?”
“I own a BDSM club,” she told me, making my brows shoot up.
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
“Good for you. And I get shit for liking successful women?” I asked, giving Gabe a look.