Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
NONA
Iloaded into Trick’s truck and quickly buckled my seat belt as Trick started it up and drove through the neighborhood.
“Trick, what’s going on?” I asked in a small voice as he turned onto the road that would lead us back into town. “I don’t want to sound like a baby, but I’m kind of freaking out right now. Are you sure the kids are all right?”
“The kids are fine,” he replied as my insides twisted into knots. “But I need you to brace.”
A clammy sweat broke out across my skin. “Why?”
“Well… shit, baby. I’m hate to tell you this, but it looks like your salon was broken into earlier tonight.”
My back shot straight in my seat. “What?”
“Calm, Nona.”
“Oh my god.” Dropping my head into my hands, I sucked in a pained breath as my whole body began to shake.
“You’re okay. It’s all gonna be okay.”
I spent the rest of the drive trying to stave off a panic attack, and by the time we pulled up in front of Pure Elegance, I was barely holding it together.
When Trick brought the truck to a stop, I lowered my hands and sucked in a broken, watery gasp.
The front window was shattered. The pretty, swirly script I’d picked out for my logo was destroyed.
I’d spent hours and hours and hours coming up with that design.
It had taken months, but I wanted it to be absolutely perfect.
It needed to represent everything I wanted Pure Elegance to be, and when I’d finally come up with it, I’d been so proud.
I knew I was being ridiculous and petty, but seeing all that hard work shattered into hundreds of thousands of pieces killed me.
Trick gave me a minute to collect myself before asking, “You ready?”
A few tears broke free and trailed down my cheeks. “No,” I whimpered. “But let’s do this anyway.”
I climbed out of the truck and met Trick at the front. He took my hand and led me to one of the uniformed officers standing at the sidewalk.
“What do we got?”
“Good news is the front window shattering triggered the alarm, so whoever busted in didn’t have much time.”
The tension I’d been feeling for the past ten minutes finally started to loosen its vise grip on my chest. In the chaos, I’d forgotten all about the alarm I’d paid through the nose to have installed.
It wasn’t on the level of work that Lincoln did, normal people could afford his kind of security system, but it was nothing to sneeze at.
“Got any idea what they were after?”
The cop looked at me with a sympathetic expression. “We’ll need Ms. Fanning to go through and see if anything is missing, but the guy seemed to know what he was looking for. From what we can tell, he went right for the register and the safe in the back.”
I went on red alert. “What?”
“Register looked to be cleaned out. Safe was beat to hell, but he didn’t have the time to get into it.”
“That….” I gave my head a shake. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Trick turned to me. “Why not?”
“Well, because they were both empty. I empty the register every Friday and take that and all the money in the safe to the bank. I take everything collected on Saturdays and Sundays home with me to deposit on my way into work Monday morning. Anyone who knew what they were looking for should’ve known it was a waste of time.
There wasn’t any cash in there, and there won’t be until we open tomorrow. ”
“You have surveillance cameras with that security system?” Trick asked.
I bit my lip in shame before answering, “No. I didn’t think I’d ever need them, and they cost a small fortune. But you can bet your ass I’m calling first thing Monday and getting the security company on that.”
Trick tugged on my hand, and I looked over at him as he gave me a soft, warm look. “You ready to go inside?”
I didn’t think I was, but I sucked it up and nodded anyway.
I used my key to unlock the front door, refusing to enter through the shattered window, and let out a sigh of relief at what I saw.
The damage seemed to be minimal. Whoever broke in hadn’t trashed the place, thank god, but my register would have to be replaced, and it looked like someone had—unsuccessfully—taken a sledgehammer and crowbar to my safe.
That and the window seemed to be all that was damaged.
They hadn’t ransacked the place like I’d expected.
The stations were all in working order, and if I got the mess cleaned up and plywood put over the window, my girls would still be able to keep the appointments they had booked for the following day.
I walked through the whole salon, going over everything with a fine-tooth comb just to make sure before heading over to the officer we’d seen first upon arrival. “Everything else seems to be in order. It doesn’t look like there’s anything missing.”
“You sure?”
I let my eyes trail through the space once more, blowing out a huge exhale. “Yeah, I’m sure. It was just the register and safe.” I looked back to him and Trick. “It kind of feels like karma, this asshole making the effort to break into my place and ending up empty-handed.”
The hardness that had been laced through Trick’s expression this whole time bled out, and just like me, he relaxed for the first time since getting the call. “And it’ll be even better when we catch this prick and arrest him, knowing he did it all for nothing.”
I really liked the thought of that.
The officers who had responded to the break-in were kind enough to stick around and help Trick and me get the salon back to rights.
Fred Duncan, a patrolman who used to be an epic pain in the ass before turning over a new leaf when he was the responding officer on a grisly murder scene a while back, even ran out to get a couple sheets of plywood he had left over from a project at his house, then helped Trick and a few of the other guys board up my window.
By the time I locked up, the salon almost looked like it hadn’t been touched, but my heart was still heavy that someone in the town I loved so much would be heartless enough to do something like this.
Trick took us back to my house, releasing Diva from her kennel into the backyard so she could do her business while I changed out of my clothes and into my nightie. I’d just fallen face-first into my bed when he entered the room and dropped the pup on the mattress.
As if sensing my sadness, Diva loped up the length of the bed, and I had to turn onto my side as she came to snuggle against my chest. Trick went about locking up and shutting off the lights, taking care of me in that way that was all his that I’d come to love so much.
Once he finished, he climbed into the bed at my back, wrapping his arms around me and holding me tight.
I wouldn’t have thought that I’d be able to sleep after the events of the night, but with my man at my back, and a little diva at my front, I nodded off into dreamland within a minute.
Trick
Hayes walked into the bullpen with two white paper coffee cups from Muffin Top in his hands. He placed one on my desk and walked around to take a seat at his.
“Any word on the break-in at Nona’s place?”
“No,” I grunted, rubbing at the back of my neck in frustration. I hated that something like that had happened to my woman, and there wasn’t a single goddamn thing I could do about it. It had been two days since the break-in, and we were no closer to finding the guy than we had been the night of.
My instincts were telling me Christian Fanning was involved.
It couldn’t have been a coincidence that her place was burglarized just weeks after he asked her for fifteen grand, but there was no evidence.
And when I ran the guys financials, nothing hit.
The asshole was in the negative by a lot but there was no outstanding debt that I could find.
No paper trail, no applications to open lines of credit.
Nothing.
Being helpless wasn’t something I was accustomed to, and it didn’t sit well that I couldn’t take care of this for Nona.
She’d been through enough, been handed enough shit to last a lifetime.
If I could, I’d make it so it was nothing but clear skies and easy sailing for her from here on out.
As long as I had her, I’d do everything in my power to make sure every day was better than the last. So something like this pissed me off.
“Fucker wore gloves so there wasn’t a single print.”
“At least he didn’t get anything.”
“Yeah.” I sighed and took a sip of my coffee, enjoying the heat and the charge the caffeine gave me. “And when I finally find the bastard, I’ll make sure he feels like the fuckin’ chump he is.”
“Goddamn right, brother. In the meantime, how do you feel about shakin’ some junkie trees to see what falls loose?”
My ears perked up. “You got a lead on the dealer we think’s workin’ for Black?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean we can’t kick up some dust to find him.”
A grin slowly pulled at my lips. “Like the way you think. Gimme a minute to—”
His next words brought me to a stop. “Ah fuck. Don’t turn around, man. Actually, you should probably climb under your desk.”
“The hell are you talking about? I’m not hiding under my—”
“Patrick?”
I should’ve hidden under my goddamn desk.
I turned just as Emma closed in on my desk, a soft look in her eyes and a hesitant smile on her face. She wasn’t in her usual outfit of workout clothes that would never see the inside of a gym, and her hair wasn’t in that severe ponytail she favored that really didn’t do much for her face.
Now her hair was down, hanging pin-straight halfway down her back.
She was dolled up to the nines, wearing sky-high heels that clacked loudly against the tile floor.
She had on a pencil skirt that fit like a second skin, and her top hugged just as tight, the neckline dipping so low it showed off the bit of cleavage she had.