Chapter Seven
Ipaused outside Gran’s door and took several deep breaths.
Jakob stood just behind me. I’d agreed to let him come, even after our spat in the downstairs hallway, because he was right about the fact that I would make myself a target without him.
I was less concerned with that, despite his insistence that I couldn’t take care of myself, and more concerned with the fact that I’d inadvertently make a target out of Gran too.
If someone working here was corrupt, it’d be all too easy for them to strike out at her to get back at me, and I would never forgive myself if that happened.
My one stipulation was that we didn’t lie to Gran. I couldn’t play the part of Jakob’s girlfriend in front of her. Not now. Judging by the way he’d shut down, he wasn’t ready to fake being all loved up either.
I took one last steadying breath and turned toward him.
The leathers he wore were matte black like his bike, and the light seemed to bend around his frame as if it were allergic to him.
His blue eyes lacked any hint of warmth.
He stood there like a sliver of night, projecting an aura of stygian violence.
Thanks to the Kevlar padding in his jacket, he looked even larger than he was.
If I didn’t know him, I would give him a wide berth.
As it was, I still wanted to take a step back.
His gaze fixed on me as I faced him, as intense and unyielding as it always was.
“No bullshit with her, right?” I said. “We tell her what’s really going on so she can agree to help us on her own terms.”
“No bullshit,” he said.
“She’s here because she has Alzheimer’s,” I told him. I’d hinted at it back at his apartment, but I hadn’t flat out said it, and I needed to prepare him for this visit.
He said nothing in response. Unlike Hank downstairs, I didn’t even warrant a nod of acknowledgment.
I gritted my teeth against a spark of annoyance and forced my tone to neutral.
“I don’t know if today is a good day or a bad day, so get ready to repeat yourself a couple of times.
She might ask the same question more than once.
If she does, just go with it. Don’t point out that she’s already asked the question.
It’ll just confuse her and make everything worse. ”
Again, he just stared at me.
My right hand twitched, itching to slap him. Instead, I turned and took my anger out on the door, knocking hard enough that it hurt my knuckles.
“Come in!” Gran called.
I pushed the door open and walked inside.
Gran’s place looked like any other middle-class apartment might.
To my right was a bright, farmhouse-style kitchen.
Straight ahead was her living area, elegantly appointed in furniture from her last home.
Opposite the front door was a large bank of windows with a slider set into the middle.
Her rooms faced southwest, looking out over the grounds, and now that morning had bled into early afternoon, light flooded in.
The slider led to a wide balcony, crowded with deck furniture and the terra-cotta pots that held Gran’s little herb garden.
She weaved through the living room and came over to me, arms outspread. “There’s my girl.”
I hugged her for longer than usual, needing her warmth and her comfort right now.
“Everything okay, sweetie?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, pulling away. “Gran, this is Jakob Larson. Jakob, this is my grandmother, Isabelle Evans.”
A small indentation appeared between Jakob’s brows as he looked at Gran.
Surprise maybe? Gran didn’t fit the stereotype of an Alzheimer’s patient.
She was tall, like me, her spine unbent even though she was in her midsixties.
Her blond hair was loose today, and it flowed down her back in a cascade of waves.
She’d been outside a lot this spring, and her skin was flushed with the beginnings of a golden suntan.
Her face was youthful, her green eyes sharp as they took Jakob in.
“Nice to meet you, Jakob,” Gran said, offering her hand.
I held my breath, praying he’d at least be civil.
He stepped forward and slid his hand into hers. “You too, Mrs. Evans.”
“Call me Izzy,” Gran said as they released each other. She stepped back and prodded me with her elbow. “Well done, you,” she said in an appreciative tone.
I nearly choked. “Gran, he can hear you.”
“I know that,” she said, still eyeing him like he was a tall drink of water and she was just dying of thirst. “But he looks like he could be a mean son of a bitch under the right circumstances, and I want to get on his good side.”
“Gran, I am begging you. Put a lid on it.”
Jakob’s gaze slid to me. “I see where you get that mouth of yours.”
Gran let out a whoop of laughter. “Oh, I think you and I are going to get along famously, Jakob.” She stepped up to him, fearless, and slipped her arm through his. “Now, come inside and tell me how you met my baby.”
She led him right past me toward the living room. And he let her. I stood rooted to the spot, regretting this entire day more and more with every passing moment.
“At the bar,” Jakob said.
“Did you really? You know, I met my late husband at a bar.”
Her words snapped me out of it. “Gran, it’s not like that,” I said, joining them.
She glanced back and forth between Jakob and me and then snorted. “Bullshit. You two look about as prickly as a pair of pissed-off porcupines. If you didn’t just have a lovers’ quarrel, I’ll eat my shoe.” She dragged Jakob down onto the couch beside her and gave him a serious look. “What happened?”
Jakob’s gaze slid to mine.
I stared at him. Don’t be a dick.
“I told her a hard truth she didn’t want to hear,” he said, meeting my gaze.
Dick!
Gran patted the leather over his forearm. “Good. She can be stubborn as a mule sometimes. She needs a man with enough gumption to speak up to her.”
My face burned, but not with embarrassment. With rage. A hard truth? He’d told me a hard truth I didn’t want to hear? As if it was somehow brand-new fucking information that my leg was my weak spot?
There was a huge difference between tough love and being an asshole, and the way he’d told me I couldn’t take care of myself in the hallway was pure asshole.
He hadn’t done it to try to keep me safe or make me face a difficult fact.
He’d said it out of anger, and in a shitty tone of voice meant to both belittle and hurt me.
Well, he’d succeeded. If Gran wasn’t here, I would have laid into him.
There were several hard truths that Jakob needed to hear himself.
I sat down on the love seat opposite them. “Gran, it’s not like that,” I said again. Because it wasn’t. Last night was a onetime thing. Of that, I was now one hundred percent certain.
She turned to me with a small, teasing smile on her face, but then she caught sight of my expression. Her smile disappeared. “What’s going on?”
“Jakob is a member of the Kings,” I said.
“Who are the Kings?” she asked.
I’d told her about them before, but it wasn’t surprising that she’d forgotten.
Alzheimer’s typically affected short-term memory first. She could recount with perfect detail the dress I wore during a fifth-grade recital, but if I asked her what she had for breakfast yesterday, she might not be able to answer me.
“They’re a motorcycle club in town,” I said. “They think that someone working here might be stealing the residents’ medications and replacing them with placebos so they can sell the drugs in town.”
Gran frowned. Hard. “God-fucking-damn it, Krista. We looked into this place. It was supposed to be the best.”
I grinned. Yes, I had gotten my mouth from her. Also, she remembered looking into this place with me. Today was one of her better days.
“It’s a new problem,” I said.
“What do you need?” She looked from me to Jakob. “Want me to spy on the staff? Be an inside source?”
Jakob shook his head. “No. We want to have you drug tested and make sure your meds aren’t being messed with.”
“I can do that,” she said. “I have an appointment with Dr. Perez in an hour. We can ask her then.”
Jakob turned to me. “I want a tour while we wait.”
Look at him, making demands like I fucking owed him anything after the way he’d been acting.
“Why?” I asked. “Didn’t experience enough tension as we were walking in? Want to intimidate some old folks while you’re at it? Maybe press your luck with Hank and see if he’ll really shoot you?”
“Krista,” Gran said in a scolding tone.
I clenched my jaw and didn’t meet her eyes. I would not apologize to him.
“I want to see if I recognize anyone working here,” Jakob ground out. “If I spot some sketchy motherfucker on staff, it might save us a lot of time.”
Damn it. As tempting as it was to shut him down just to be a bitch, logic always had a way of winning out with me.
What he said made sense. And there might never be another opportunity for him to check the place out.
I was going to have to show him around. I might not like it, but I was going to do it, and that grated.
It must be so much easier to be the kind of person who buried their head in the sand and let their emotions blindly dictate their decisions. I envied those people sometimes.
“Fine,” I said. “But you’d better behave.”
“Look who’s talking,” he shot back.
“Oof, the tension between you two,” Gran said, rising from her seat. She sighed, a hint of longing in her expression. “My favorite part of fighting with your grandfather was when we got around to making up.”
Ewww. “Gran, I never needed to know that.”
She grinned. “We broke a table once.”
I gagged and plugged my ears to protect myself from further trauma.
She laughed and stood from her seat. I knew her; the danger hadn’t passed.
To Gran, the best form of entertainment was embarrassing or shocking those around her, which was why, even though it made me look like an idiot in front of Jakob, I kept my fingers in my ears and hummed to drown out her voice as I followed her out of her rooms.