9. Light to His Dark
Chapter 9
Light to His Dark
Whitney
While Mensa talked to Har, my heart sank reading the news about Donny’s restaurant. The whole building on Pass Road was a loss. According to the article, authorities had not determined if the fire was related to the shooting at Twisted Talons.
“We better roll, Whitney,” Mensa said.
I glanced up into his brown eyes. No matter how much he’d warned me last night, feelings were taking hold. I forced myself to replay his words in my head.
This ends once we leave this room.
We’d had our fun, now we were done.
His ‘protective instinct’ spoke volumes, though. He cared, even though I drove him up the wall.
Even if I was the light to his dark. I still had to nip those pesky feelings in the bud. Bad boys weren’t my thing, even if everything Mensa and I did a few hours ago had felt so damned right. Nobody knew what we’d done in that room last night, and it was better to keep it that way.
I clambered on to his bike after him.
Scanning the lot, the detectives weren’t in sight. Seemed Detective Robinson kept Fortner from following us.
Maybe.
Mensa wasn’t the only one who didn’t trust Fortner.
While we idled at the end of the hotel drive, Mensa reached back, grabbed my hand so I had to wrap my arm around him. With that as my cue, I did the same thing with my other arm. Did I hang onto him like this last night? I hadn’t thought so…but then again, I had definitely stuck close while we were being chased. Him making it so I was pressed this close to him certainly sent a mixed signal, but maybe it was another ‘protective instinct.’
In short order, he guided the motorcycle onto I-10 headed back to Biloxi.
Being on Mensa’s bike wasn’t my first time on a motorcycle, but it was the first time I found my mind clear in the past forty-eight hours.
My thoughts of Fortner fell by the wayside as I considered the situation.
I didn’t know Dontrell Barlow well, but over the past fifteen months, we’d developed a friendship. He had four locations, and his seventeen-year-old son worked with him at the Pass Road location that had burned down. He had a younger brother managing his first restaurant because, as Dontrell said, “it ran like a well-oiled machine.” I didn’t know much about the other two shops because we didn’t get to chat much during my visits, since he had other customers.
Small businesses couldn’t afford setbacks of this magnitude.
A tiny voice asked me what Aunt Nadia would do if something like that happened to her. The expense and headache of that kind of loss was one thing, but I wasn’t sure Aunt Nadia would survive the heartache of losing her business. Something told me Dontrell was the same way, even if he operated three other locations.
Then I wondered about the other workers he employed. What would they do without a job? Or would Donny send them to one of the other locations?
That was a silly question. Donny had a heart the size of the Gulf of Mexico. He’d send those workers to the other restaurants.
I recalled what Rod said to Donny last night before pulling his gun.
If Dontrell’s time was up, why pull a gun in the first place? Donny wouldn’t be able to pay if he was dead. It was a helluva risk to open fire inside a bar.
Then again, people did hasty things when they were angry, and plenty of criminals didn’t think before they acted.
We veered off the interstate and headed toward the police station.
This should be standard procedure. Part of me believed Mensa’s insistence that I have a lawyer was over the top. But lawyers served a clear purpose in the system, and a stronger part of me believed Mensa had it right.
Something was wrong, and a good lawyer would help me navigate this situation.
Mensa parked his bike five blocks from the courthouse.
I hopped off the bike and took off his helmet. “Why didn’t you park closer?”
He grabbed the helmet from me. “Parking here is free. The police station is three blocks on the other side of the courthouse, and I do my best to stay away from LEOs. Do I need to drop you at the door, flower?”
My head reared back. “Flower?”
He opened the saddle bag and tucked his helmet inside. “Are you too delicate to walk?”
I shook my head, turned on my heel, and headed off toward the courthouse. No question, what happened at the hotel was over. I twisted my head to call over my shoulder, “Far from it, Ragstone.”
He hurried up to pass me, pulled an about face, and blocked my path. “You need to understand something.”
I stopped and crossed my arms. “What is that?”
“Club lawyer sent me a message. They’re looking for an arsonist.”
“That was clear from the news article.”
I loved and hated how he could say so much by simply lifting an eyebrow.
He kept quiet.
I tossed my hands out in question. “What?”
“Our lawyer didn’t confirm this, but my hunch is they’re looking at you and me both for this fire.”
“That’s insane.”
“No, you’re insane if you aren’t thinking two steps ahead of these people. Why not call you with info about your car? For that matter, how would they even know where you were?”
“I mentioned it when I reported the car stolen.”
He tilted his head back and sighed. “Shouldn’t have done that.” He brought his gaze back to mine. “If the police had your car, they could have called. Sending those two detectives out reeks of a sneak attack or a scare tactic depending on how you reacted.”
One of my eyes narrowed. “Elaborate, please, because I don’t recall having any reaction since you stepped in before me.”
He dipped his chin. “Yeah, and that’s why I did it. They didn’t have much to go on, and Fortner wanting to follow us… no.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter, Mensa. We’re here now. They’re gonna ask me standard procedure questions, get our statements about the shooting last night, and then we’ll be done.”
With care, he put his hands on my shoulders. “That’s what I’m trying to get through to you, Blume. Don’t expect this to go according to procedure. Either one of us could be getting set up right now.”
My head tilted. “That’s crazy, but I’ll keep it in mind, Mensa. Seriously. We didn’t go anywhere near Donny’s restaurant when we took off from Twisted Talons.”
His eyes widened. “Another damn thing that rubs me the wrong way. We fled from a biker who didn’t take pains to keep up with us on I-10. I get that he caught some traffic mid-way, but that’s no excuse for not gaining on us when we hit that bottleneck. He could have caught up once he made it onto the Interstate.”
“You think he gave up?”
“I think him falling back makes us look like we were on the run from a crime. The only thing that might work in our favor is the fact you paid for your snack stash with your credit card.”
My stomach sank. “I used cash, had to dig out my two emergency fifties.”
“Are you shitting me?” he demanded.
I shook my head. “No, but you paid for the gas with your credit card, right?”
He sighed. “I didn’t want anyone to ping my card so I paid with a twenty.”
I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth. “So there’s roughly forty-five minutes to an hour where we can’t prove where we were.”
His eyes slid to the side and back to me. “Not unless that cashier remembers who we are.”
We stared at each other for a moment.
Then a calculating look crossed his face. “Though… how many people buy pajamas at a fuckin’ truck stop?”
I laughed.
He didn’t. “You remember the cashier’s name? Or better yet, you got a receipt?”
My eyes widened – and then my whole body deflated. “I did, but I threw it away when I brushed my teeth last night.”
As his head twisted, he ran a hand through his hair. “Fuck, Blume.”
I stood a little straighter. “Shoe’s on the other foot here, Kenneth. Did you get a receipt for your gas?”
“Not quite the same thing. You get a name for the cashier? I paid a black man with dreads, but don’t remember his name, and odds are damn good he won’t remember me for shit because his whole day is filled with people telling him twenty-dollars on pump ten.”
I stared off to the side for a beat. “I know she was blonde and it looked like she had a really great color-melt job done recently.”
His eyes closed and his mouth dropped open as if he were painfully confused. He opened his eyes. “Don’t know what the fuck a color-melt job is, but if you remember anything else about her – maybe I can get a prospect or someone to go out there and see if she remembers you.”
I stepped past him because we were cutting it close on that thirty-minute time frame. Mensa fell into step beside me. I glanced up. “Yeah, I remember she had a Betty Boop tat on her inner forearm. She was younger than me, and it seemed odd, but I figured these days young people are into all kinds of things.”
He nodded. “Good. I’ll pass that along.”
We kept walking, and I stayed quiet.
When we were a block away from the courthouse, I couldn’t hack it any more. “Mensa, I don’t want to question your gut, but seriously, they can’t suspect us of this.”
Mensa stopped and locked eyes with me. “You’d be right, except for one thing. Corrupt Chrome came to town just over a year ago. The other brothers weren’t concerned, but I did my research. These assholes… they’re scum. Not a damned thing they won’t do for money, and the fact we were both there when Rod threatened Dontrell… my guess is that gave him the idea to make us the scapegoat.”
Call me a nerd, but I loved people who did their research. The way Mensa didn’t let anyone else’s complacency keep him from being vigilant made me admire him anew. His road name made even more sense now, even if the brothers may have had different reasoning. By my definition, geniuses were smart people, and smart people looked into things so they showed up well prepared.
No matter how much I admired him, I gentled my tone when I spoke. “The scapegoat thing could be true, but you also sound paranoid, Mensa.”
The way he tipped his head, I wasn’t the first person to say that to him. “If overkill is better than being killed, then I’d rather be paranoid than annoyed that I’m sitting in jail.”
I grinned. “Can’t argue with that, Mensa. You have a name for this lawyer? Let’s get in there, and get this over with.”