Chapter Four #2
"If you weren't in distress, you would be in your house, leaky roof and all. You wouldn't need an armed guard when you go to work."
"You're armed?" I asked, brows furrowing.
It wasn't like I didn't know that the Rivers brothers knew about guns, but being so close to them, it was quite frankly hard to imagine them handling them.
"I am under strict instructions to keep you safe. By any means necessary." His hand patted his side where there must have been a holster, well hidden under his loose lightweight black hoodie. "So what else is there to do?"
"Just put back the cats in the back. And wait for the Millers to pick up their birds."
"Alright. You do that. I'll sweep."
An hour later, we were parked out back of Kingston's apartment.
"Is Nixon in the office?"
"Yeah, why?"
"I was just thinking I could maybe hang there, help out. The walls will close in on me in the apartment if I'm alone all day."
"Don't think it'll be a problem," he decided, getting out, bringing Padfoot with him.
"Thank Christ," Nixon hissed when we walked in the door. "Someone needs to do something about the beast."
As if on cue, Hannibal came charging out of a back room, barreling toward Rush, hitting him bodily, knocking his solid frame back a foot.
"Nixon, sorry. I totally forgot. I got such a late start this morning. And this one," I said, jerking my thumb toward his brother, "was messing around at the store."
"Did he put the spider on you?" he asked, pretending to be holding back a smile. Badly, I might add.
"It's a tarantula. And no. But he did chase me around with it."
"He once chased Scotti through the house with a cockroach."
"That might even be worse," I decided. In the hierarchy of disgusting bugs, cockroaches were really close to the top.
"Put a frog in her bed with her," Nixon went on. "A hundred-legger on her shower towel."
"Where was your mother?" I asked, outraged on her poor behalf.
"This was after mom passed. When we were all shacked up at King's place."
"Please tell me she got back at him in some small way."
"Small? Not so much. She replaced his shampoo with Nair.
He never fucked with her again after that," he told me with a smirk at the fond memory of his little brother finally getting what was coming to him.
"Pretty boy had to be bald for weeks," he added, jerking his chin to the man in question as he approached. "How'd it go? See anyone?"
"Nothing," Rush said, shrugging it off as Hannibal turned his boisterous attention onto Padfoot—a willing recipient of it.
"Could you even stop to pay attention with all the fucking around?" Nixon asked, the accusation heavy.
But Rush, likely used to it from all his older brothers, seemed wholly unaffected.
"Pretty sure I wouldn't miss a bunch of bad guys storming into the store while we fed and cleaned up after the animals," he countered.
"And you know that I—of all people—know how to tell if I am being tailed. And how to lose one if I got one."
In their little family enterprise of less-than-legal action, Rush had been the wheel man. He was retired, sure, but I was pretty sure there was no losing those types of instincts.
"What?" I asked, watching the way they both swapped looks, having a silent conversation, the type best friends—or brothers, it seemed—could have, wholly without words.
"Just thinking."
"Think out loud," I suggested, looking between them both, settling on Rush who seemed like an easier target.
I should have guessed his instinct of protection was stronger than Nixon's feeling that everyone was entitled to the cold, harsh truth.
"Harry skipped town," Nixon informed me. "They should be looking to track you down in the hopes of getting to him. It's weird that no one has seen anyone."
"I didn't imagine it."
"Obviously," he shot back, rolling his eyes.
Nixon had, in my humble opinion, the most epic of eye rolls.
They somehow conveyed that you're an idiot, you're trying his patience, and no one has ever uttered something quite as ridiculous as you did ever before...
all at the same time. "We found his blood, remember? " he added.
Right.
Duh.
Of course they weren't accusing me of making it up for attention or something like that. They were just trying to piece together what happened, what might happen, what all this meant.
Maybe Kingston was having better luck than they were. I could hope, at least. While, sure, it was nice to be away from the stresses of having to keep a very strict, often very demanding schedule. I would eventually start going stir crazy.
"Well, I have to get going. Nixon will keep an eye on you until Kingston gets back."
Rush informed me, giving me a small smile before moving off.
"Don't forget your copy of Raven and the Rake," I called to his back as he moved toward the door, making his body stiffen, his footsteps stall. "You know, your dirty romance novel," I added, hearing Nixon's laugh—full, guttural, the kind you rarely heard from him.
Rush would never live it down.
And that was my plan.
"What'd I ever do..." Rush started, looking over at me, then remembered. "Oh, right. Nicely played."
"It's not quite Nair in your shampoo. But you're going to be hearing about your bodice ripper for years to come. Your children will know about it."
"You know, all that cute you got going on is really just camouflage covering the wicked creature beneath."
"Remember that the next time you want to torment me with an arachnid," I told him as he shot me a smile and moved out the door.
"You good hanging here today? King needs me to check over some surveillance.
It would be easier to just do it in my office.
" He moved toward the door Rush had just left through, sliding the lock, plugging in the security code.
"There's a TV in Kingston's office if you're bored," he added, waving over his shoulder as he disappeared.
Alone, save for the two dogs in the middle of the floor—Paddy on his back, legs flailing as Hannibal lunged playfully, tail threatening to wag straight off—my eyes drifted around.
I'd never been in Kingston's office building before.
I'd known that at the time he set the money down on the mortgage, it had been an ancient, crumbling building, left abandoned for at least as long as my memory served, the windows knocked out by bored teenagers who thought they had something to prove, the holes making easy access for any form of wildlife to trot in, get a feel for the joint, grab the missus and the three-point-five kids, and move right in.
You wouldn't know any of that by looking at it now, of course.
That was thanks to the endless hours of work, the buckets of sweat that Kingston had put into the joint.
He'd had his brothers come in occasionally too, of course, and the Mallicks had lent expert hands for things like the electricity, and extra sets of hands for the sheetrock and new windows.
But as a whole, it was King. All by himself, working his ass off on his dream.
You expected offices—especially those belonging to men—to be sparse, stark, a bit jarring in a way. The kind of rooms that made it clear that you weren't supposed to settle in, get comfortable.
It was like the warmth King had in such abundance inside somehow seeped out, filled the place.
The front wall still had the original brick, cleaned up, re-mortared, lime-washed to a cozy off-white color.
The other walls had been painted a champagne color—all except the ones in the hall leading to the three offices.
Those had been paneled with wide-planked wood planks in varying colors—dark cocoa, nutmeg, golden oak, birch.
The floor—which I imagined had originally been poured concrete at best was now laid with gleaming chestnut hardwood.
There was a sitting area in a small cove on the left—long, low dark brown couches with stiff, neat cushions flanked three sides of an oversized wooden coffee table that held an assortment of magazines and a few short novels.
The walls had large framed photography from the area—the bridge you had to cross over to get to the beach, the sandy shorelines with a rough tide, the docks flanking the Navesink River. All were turned from their original colors to a warm sepia to match the office.
I couldn't help but wonder if he had maybe taken them himself. If he had a hobby for photography. If he really liked the area that much, enough to explore it, capture it, frame it, tack it to the walls. Or if it was simply there to make locals feel a little more at home.
Walking out of the seating area, I looked at the reception desk that I figured was more ornamental than anything else, just put there to make clients feel comfortable. Kingston, as far as I knew, didn't employ anyone.
On the wall behind the desk was a long, low, wooden coffee station with a Keurig, an electric kettle, a small fridge, and a bowl on the counter with an assortment of pods, teas, and sugars.
To the far right was a door with a simple brushed bronze plaque marking it as the bathroom.
In a lot of ways, I could see Kingston here more so than in his apartment. Maybe it was because he spent most of his time here, because he had known he would, had made it as homey as possible.
Pure curiosity had me walking toward the offices, dipping into the closest one that had another neat brushed bronze plaque with Kingston's name on it.
It felt oddly wrong when my hand closed around the knob.
I mean, I had totally snooped through his nightstands at his apartment and his medicine cabinet.
Though when it came to the medicine cabinet, I'd been looking for some aspirin for my crying headache.
And in the bedroom, I had been hoping to find a notepad and pen to jot down the number for Jamie's cell when it randomly came to me.
I shook off the uncertainty, reminding myself that Nixon had invited me into King's office, had told me that the TV was there if I wanted some distraction.