CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #3
“Even if you think you’re protecting me.”
“You are very annoying when you use my own lessons against me.”
“You taught me well.”
She smiled despite herself.
Kai reached across the small space between chairs.
He stopped before touching her.
Waited.
Nola looked at his hand.
Then put hers in it.
Not forgiveness.
Not everything fixed.
A choice.
“I’m still mad,” she said.
“I know.”
“That one you can know.”
His thumb moved across her knuckles.
“You staying here tonight?”
“If you want me to.”
Nola thought about it.
“Couch.”
Kai looked through the glass door at Dre spread across the entire couch like a starfish.
“Where?”
Nola followed his gaze.
“Floor.”
“You serious?”
“You got money. Buy an air mattress.”
“At two in the morning?”
“There go that resourcefulness problem.”
Kai laughed.
“I’ll go home.”
Nola squeezed his hand before letting go.
“Okay.”
He stood.
At the door, she called him back.
“Kai.”
He turned.
Nola walked over, lifted one hand, and rubbed her thumb over the thin patch beneath his beard.
His eyes narrowed.
“Really?”
“Just checking on it.”
“We having a serious moment.”
“It looked lonely.”
Kai caught her wrist, not hard.
“You lucky I’m trying to improve.”
“You lucky I like you.”
The words came out before she could hide them.
Kai’s expression changed.
Nola did not take them back.
She also did not give him more.
“Goodnight.”
She opened the door.
Kai stood there for one second longer than necessary.
“Goodnight, Nola.”
He left.
The next morning, the case moved fast.
Police identified the burner-phone buyer from the store footage after Vanessa’s old name gave them somewhere to look.
Shawn Harrow.
Thirty-seven.
Former maintenance employee at Broadview Properties.
Current independent contractor with a record for theft and probation violation.
Dre identified him from a photo lineup as the man with the orange watch who had followed him and fought him for the phone.
Police picked Shawn up before noon on the probation warrant and held the new allegations for investigation.
That did not solve the eighty-seven thousand dollars.
It did not explain who had paid Shawn.
It did not clear Rome.
It did one important thing.
It proved Dre had been telling the truth about being hunted.
By Friday, the company attorney confirmed the missing cash had likely been removed physically during the fourteen-minute camera window, then hidden behind manipulated accounting entries. Dre’s fingerprints on the lockbox were expected because he admitted moving it. Other usable prints were partial.
Kai did not fire him.
He also did not bring him back to work.
“You’re suspended while police sort it,” Kai told him in Nola’s kitchen. “Paid for two weeks because you moved the box under work instructions. After that, we reassess.”
Dre looked surprised. “You paying me?”
“Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t.”
“And if a message ever tells you to move cash out an open safe again?”
Dre looked embarrassed. “Call somebody.”
“Who?”
“You. Dez. A manager. Anybody.”
“Good.”
Nola leaned against the counter.
“Look at that. Training.”
Dre gave her the finger.
She threw a dish towel at him.
Mani came downstairs in a bonnet and oversized shirt.
Dez, who had arrived with Kai carrying takeout, looked at her.
Not in a sneaky way.
Not trying to pretend he didn’t.
He just looked.
Mani caught him.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Nola said, “Oh, hell no. Y’all not stealing that word too.”
Everybody laughed.
Mani covered her mouth.
Dez reached over before he seemed to think about it and moved her hand down again.
Mani stared at him.
“You keep doing that.”
“You keep covering it.”
“Maybe I want to.”
“Then I’ll stop.”
He let go immediately.
Mani looked at him.
Something softened.
“I didn’t say stop forever.”
Dez smiled.
Kai looked at Nola.
Nola looked back.
Then they both looked away because this was not their business.
Not yet.
Later that afternoon, Terrence came for Mani.
He did not make a scene.
He stood on Nola’s porch holding flowers that looked like they had cost too much and an apology that looked like it had cost more.
Mani went outside alone.
Nola watched through the front window until Kai gently pulled the curtain from her hand.
“Stop.”
“That’s my friend.”
“And she went outside alone on purpose.”
Nola looked at him.
Damn him.
She stepped away from the curtain.
Mani stayed outside for twenty-six minutes.
When she came back in, she was crying but carrying no flowers.
“You okay?” Nola asked.
Mani nodded.
Then shook her head.
“No. But I will be.”
“What’d you decide?”
“I’m done.”
Dez, sitting at the kitchen table with Dre, lowered his eyes to his phone.
No celebration.
No opportunistic smile.
Mani noticed that.
“He says he loves me,” she said.
Nola touched her hand.
“He probably does.”
“That’s the fucked-up part.”
“Yeah.”
Mani wiped her face.
“I kept waiting for love to make him hear me. It didn’t.”
Nola did not tell her she deserved better.
Mani knew.
Knowing and feeling were different.
They had all learned that lately.
Terrence texted once more that night.
Mani did not answer.
She ate dinner with everybody instead.
Not grilled chicken.
Not a rebellion plate either.
Just what she wanted.
Dez did not comment on it once.
Three days later, Kai asked Nola to come to Vaughn Recovery.
She almost said no because the last time she sat in his office, she had ended up on the desk.
Then she remembered they were still rebuilding and told herself to behave.
Kai met her outside.
“What’s this?”
“Walk with me.”
“Bossy.”
“Request.”
“Better.”
They walked through the yard to the side office where old dispatch had been.
The cabinet Dre said he used stood open and empty.
Kai had left it untouched except for police processing.
“Why show me this?”
He handed her a copy of an access report.
Nola read it.
The cabinet itself had an electronic latch nobody remembered because the old system rarely recorded it correctly.
At 9:17 Thursday night, three minutes after Dre left the box there, the cabinet had been opened with a supervisor code.
Not Dre’s.
Not Serena’s.
Not Kai’s.
A code assigned years earlier to Rome.
Nola looked up.
“This is him.”
Kai leaned against the doorframe.
“Maybe.”
She almost laughed.
“You still saying maybe?”
“Because the code could’ve been copied the same way other credentials were.”
“Do you believe that?”
Kai was quiet.
“Less than I did last week.”
Nola looked at the report again.
“What are you going to do?”
“Nothing stupid.”
“Good start.”
“Police have it. Malik is auditing every time the code was used. Dez is checking where Rome was at 9:17. I haven’t confronted him.”
“Because if he’s involved, he’ll move.”
Kai nodded.
Nola handed the paper back.
“Look at me learning.”
“I’m proud.”
“Don’t.”
He smiled.
They walked outside.
The September afternoon was cooler than it had been when Dre disappeared. One of the drivers was washing a flatbed near the far fence. Somebody argued through an open warehouse door about missing straps. Normal business carrying on around a problem that still had teeth.
Kai stopped near Nola’s car.
“You still mad?”
“A little.”
“True.”
“You gonna ask me that every day?”
“No.”
“Good.”
He looked at her shirt.
Nola wore a white crop top with loose jeans and sneakers.
His eyes moved to the strip of bare stomach, then around her when she turned to unlock the car.
“Don’t.”
“What?”
“You looking at my back.”
“You wore the shirt.”
“For me.”
“Sure.”
She smiled.
Kai stepped closer but did not touch her.
That was new.
He waited.
Nola took his hand and put it on her back herself.
His palm settled there like it had been missing something.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Still got a weight limit?”
Kai closed his eyes.
“Please let that shit go.”
Nola laughed.
Dez came out of the side door at the worst possible time.
“No, don’t let it go. I need answers.”
Kai looked over.
“Why are you here?”
“I work here.”
“Go back inside.”
Dez walked closer, smiling.
“I’m serious. We need to revisit policy.”
Nola leaned against her car.
“What policy?”
Dez pointed at Kai. “For fifteen years, this nigga’s narrow-mindedness protected my dating pool.”
“Here we go,” Kai muttered.
“I never challenged him. Never educated him. Never broadened his horizons. Why? Because I’m not stupid. More BBWs for me.”
Nola laughed.
Dez continued, offended on principle. “Then your greedy ass walked in and ruined a perfectly functioning system.”
“How is that my fault?”
“You made him curious.”
Kai said, “I’m not curious.”
Dez pointed at his hand resting on Nola’s back.
“Nigga, you look researched.”
Nola bent over laughing.
Kai started walking toward the building.
“I’m done.”
Dez called after him, “All I’m saying is don’t start stealing potential wives!”
Kai turned around.
“Mani single now. Go bother her.”
Dez’s whole face changed.
Nola saw it.
“Oh,” she said.
Dez looked suddenly less funny.
“I’m not bothering nobody.”
Kai looked at Nola.
Nola looked back.
Neither said a word.
Dez pointed between them. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?” Nola asked.
“Whatever married-couple eye shit y’all just did.”
Kai frowned. “Married?”
“Figure of speech. Relax.”
“Better be.”
Nola looked at Kai slowly.
He realized he had reacted too fast.
Dez started laughing.
“Oh, this gonna be fun.”
Kai walked inside for real this time.
Nola watched him go.
The problem inside Vaughn Recovery was not solved.
Rome was still working there under quiet restriction. Shawn had not said who paid him. The eighty-seven thousand dollars was still missing. Police had a trail now, but trails took time.
Her parents were sleeping in separate places.
Mani had ended a relationship she once thought would become marriage.
Dre had to sit with the fact that panic almost made him carry somebody else’s crime.
Nola started the car.
For once, she did not feel the need to carry every piece of it before anybody else had a chance.
And Kai Vaughn, for all his old talk about weight limits, had somehow become personally offended by shirts that covered too much of her back.
Nola smiled to herself and pulled out of the lot, Kai’s handprint still warm against the back her shirt refused to cover.