The sound of Reyes’s voice, as close as it was, startled me. I jumped and began to slip, my bottom half proving heavier than my top. I clamped onto the beam with both arms before sliding to my death—or at the very least a painful landing—then looked over at my husband. He was crouched on the beam, his powerful legs holding him in perfect balance. He was barefoot, too, and wore only a pair of gray pajama bottoms with one arm resting casually on a knee. Casually! This was not a casual situation.
“I need the ladder. Uncle Bob moved it.”
“Ah.”
He glanced down. I slipped. He looked back at me. I slipped some more, sweat breaking out over my whole body.
“Reyes, the ladder.”
“I see it.”
“I need it.”
“I see that, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “Seriously?”
“I’ll get it if you’ll drop the case.”
I tried to gape at him, but I was too scared to move. I was literally holding on for dear life with both arms wrapped around the beam and the rest of me dangling underneath. Now was so not the time.
“Reyes,” I said, hoping to be heard over the grinding of my teeth, “if you don’t get that ladder…”
I left the threat hanging. It seemed appropriate. But he only studied me from beneath ridiculously long lashes.
I slipped some more, my sweat making the beam impossible to hang on to.
Cookie’s screech was both alarming and welcome. “Charley!” she yelled as she ran into the room. “Robert told me to come check on you. What are you doing?”
“Can you get that ladder?”
She looked down as Amber walked into the room and stopped short. “Aunt Charley?”
My arms were shaking so badly, I knew I couldn’t hold on much longer. I tried to fling a leg over, but the act only made me slip a little more. As Cookie tried to fit the ladder pieces back together, taking out a framed picture and a fireplace stand in the process, my hold slid another few inches until I was holding on by my fingertips. At least it felt that way.
“Take my hand,” Reyes said.
I looked up at him. He was still crouched down, but if I took his hand, I knew enough about the laws of gravity to know he’d fall with me.
“No,” I said, shaking my head.
“Dutch,” he said, cool as a cucumber sorbet, “take my hand.”
“No. You’ll fall, too. Cookie?”
She stepped back to observe her handiwork. “Does that look right?”
It most definitely did not. The top part was crooked. No way would that hold.
“So, you won’t take my hand because you think I’ll fall?”
I strained to see over my shoulder. If I could just aim for Captain Kirk.
In the next heartbeat, my hold gave. My hands slipped, and I let out a yelp. And waited. Nothing. Then I felt a pressure on one wrist. I opened my eyes and almost cried out in relief. Reyes had caught me. He was standing and held my wrist in one hand. I clasped my other hand over his and then still had to wonder how we were going to get down.
“Well?” he said.
I nodded, panting in excitement, then wondered aloud, “Well, what?”
“Are you going to drop the case?”
Oh, no, he did not.
“It’s your decision.” There was something about the way he said it, something a little too nonchalant that had dread creeping up my spine. The barest hint of a smirk crept across his sensual mouth. Then he said it, and it took me precious seconds to absorb the fact that he was blackmailing me. “Drop the case or I drop you.” Or was that extortion?
Anger exploded inside me. I narrowed my lids, gave him a second to think about what he’d just said to me, then dematerialized my hand. The one he was holding.
With a lightning-quick strike, he tried to catch me with his other hand, but I was already out of his reach.
I hit Captain Kirk before I even knew I was falling. And I hit hard. Also an end table was taking up half of him, so I landed on Captain Kirk, then my face landed on the edge of the end table, bounced off it, then flipped me over the back of the sofa. Who knew my face had been trained in Krav Maga?
“Charley!” Cookie rushed forward. Amber stayed where she was, her jaw hanging in shock, as her mother tried to help me up by dislocating my shoulder. “Charley, are you okay?”
“I’m good. I think.” I sank back to the floor. It was moving way too fast for me to try to get on at the moment, like when I was a kid and tried to time the already-spinning merry-go-round just right. It never ended well.
I heard the lyrical chime of a phone as Reyes knelt beside me. He’d clearly had no problem getting down without a ladder.
Amber checked her phone then said, “I have to get ready for school,” and hurried out.
I shook off the hand Reyes offered, then turned on him. “You could have killed me.”
He made clear his lack of concern with a deadpan. “You did that all on your own.”
“Yeah, but you threatened to.”
“Son of Satan,” he said by way of an explanation.
I scrambled to my feet, assured Cookie I was fine, then headed to our bedroom. If that doorframe hadn’t jumped out of nowhere, I would have made a grand exit. As it stood, I was stumbling on the spinning merry-go-round one second, then cradled in the arms of my husband the next.
He started to carry me to our room. I decided not to argue the point since I could barely walk without getting arrested for public intoxication.
“The file,” I said to Cookie, pointing over Reyes’s shoulder. The broad one that fit my head just right. “Ubie brought the file on the Brooks girl.”
She nodded, then asked, “Are you going to be okay?”
I gave her a thumbs-up before Reyes turned the corner into our room. He dropped my legs and let me slide down the length of him. Then he examined my eye, the one that had tried to take out our end table.
“You need ice.”
“I need a shower.”
I pushed off him and stumbled to our bathroom. It wasn’t until I stepped into George, the shower that God built—metaphorically—that it hit me. Someone in that room was not okay. I felt the remnants of anxiety. Stress. Fear. Even despair. All the things I would have felt instantly had I not been dangling from a rafter like a tea bag.
Amber. Something was very wrong with Amber.
* * *
George felt wonderful. I stepped out feeling completely relaxed and satisfied, which was more than I could say about my husband at the moment. He was brushing his teeth. As soon as I got out, he rinsed and got in.
I hurried to get dressed, not wanting another confrontation on the Foster front. He was not going to bully me into dropping the case, so why bother arguing about it? Honestly, between him and Uncle Bob …
Still, Ubie was really starting to worry me. In the past, he would never do something like he’d done today. He would never leave me hanging like that. He’d trapped me on purpose. Tried to get me to take the day off. To stay home. But why? Ubie and I had always been so open. So honest. Why wouldn’t he confide in me now?
I had half a mind not to unmark him for hell. If I could do that. Only one way to find out, but if he didn’t straighten up his act, it was a one-way trip to hellsville for him.
I didn’t bother drying my hair. I pulled it into a ponytail, threw on a sweater, a denim skirt, and a killer pair of ankle boots, grabbed my jacket, and headed out the door. Then I ran back in for my bag. Then I ran back in again for my keys. I was already settled inside Misery, ready to head out—Mr. Foster owned an insurance agency, and I was suddenly in dire need of life insurance on my husband—when I realized I’d left my phone on the charger.
Holy cow. When did I accumulate so much stuff I couldn’t leave home without?
I waffled back and forth on whether to go back in and risk another confrontation—I loved waffles—when a knock sounded on my window.
After jumping three feet into the air, I glared a
t Reyes. Then heat blossomed over my skin, partly from alarm and partly from arousal, when I noticed his attire. Or lack thereof. He stood in the parking lot in a towel. A beige towel that hung low over his hips.
Water dripped off his hair and spiked his lashes, making his dark brown irises glitter all the more. Or that could have been the anger.
I turned the key and rolled down the window, fighting the urge to chastise him. It wasn’t freezing but it was damned sure too cold to be running around wet and nigh naked. Instead, I asked, “Are you going to threaten me again?”
He had both hands braced against the door. My phone was in one of them.
“We need to talk.”
“We tried that, remember? You don’t seem to understand the difference between a conversation and an order. And you’re rubbing off on Uncle Bob.”
His brows slid together. “What do you mean?”
“I mean men. Thinking they can order me around. Thinking they have a say in anything that I do.” I leaned closer. “Anything.”
He paused to think about what I’d said, then leaned closer, too, his warmth wafting toward me. “Your flat-out refusal is not exactly civilized conversation, either.”
“I … you…” I bit down and tried again. “I seem to remember a very recent civilized conversation we had in which we agreed we’d no longer keep secrets from one another.” I studied his face. Watched how the water pooled in his lashes and above his mouth.
He worked his jaw and turned away. “It’s not that simple.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
He glanced down at his feet.
“Reyes, just tell me why you don’t want me on this case. What are you afraid of?”
And that did it. The manly part of him—no, the Neanderthal part—became incensed. Reyes wasn’t the insecure type in most every aspect of his life save one: his darkness. And I was slowly realizing that the Fosters, one of them at the very least, had some kind of perception that pierced the veil of this plane.
But still! He was dark. No shit. It wasn’t like that was a big secret. I could shift onto the celestial plane anytime I chose and see that darkness for myself.
“You think I’m afraid? Of the Fosters?”
“What? No.” That was an odd thing to say. “Of course not.”
“Fine,” he said through gritted teeth. “Do what you want. You always do.”
His frustration knew no bounds. Nor did it know his own strength. He pushed off the door, but in his anger, he literally toppled Misery onto two wheels. She came back down hard as Reyes walked away.
It was my turn to be angry. I jumped out of Misery to inspect the damage. He’d caved in the side of the door. I should have been thankful I could still open it, but I wasn’t. I bent to pick up the phone he’d dropped. My phone. He’d shattered her screen, but she still came on.
By the time I turned back, he was just going inside the building. “You’re buying me a new phone!”
* * *
Having had about enough of men and their appalling sense of entitlement, I decided to pay a visit to another male who was on my shit list: Mr. Abraham Foster. I found his office despite my phone’s shattered screen. She’d had worse. I could barely think of the tequila incident without cringing.
A bell rang out when I walked in, and I was greeted by a receptionist who’d clearly been hoping for a few moments’ respite before being bombarded with customers. I felt her pain.
She put down her coffee cup, forced a silicone smile, and said, “Hello, how can I help you?”
I walked up to the tall desk. “Hi. Yeah, I need insurance?”
She replaced her smile with one more genuine. “You don’t sound very convinced.”
“Right, sorry.” I was still seething, so I took a deep breath and started again. “Do you offer life insurance?”
“We do. Would you like to speak to an agent?”
I needed to make sure the agent I spoke with was of medium height and build, with dark hair and a penchant for child abduction. “Well, a friend recommended I speak to Mr. Foster? Does he work here?”
She quirked a humorous brow. “He owns the agency, so, yes. But he’s not in at the moment.”
“Oh, darn.”
“Would you care to see another agent?”
Before she’d finished, I noticed a man who fit Mr. Foster’s description walking across the parking lot to a coffee shop next door.
“No, thanks. I’ll just come back.”
“I can have him call you.” She grabbed a pen. “What’s your name?”
“Um, Cordelia Chase.”
I tensed the moment I said it, wondering if this receptionist was as savvy as the last one. She wrote it on a message pad while simultaneously nursing her coffee, and I tried not to drool. I’d only had the one cup that morning, and in my fury-driven haste, I hadn’t thought to pick up a mocha grande with extra whipped cream on the way.
I thought about asking her for a quick sip when she asked for my number.
“You know what? I’ll just come back. Thanks, though.” I hurried out and wandered as nonchalantly as I could in the direction of the coffee shop, praying the receptionist didn’t notice me stalking her boss.
I spotted Mr. F the moment I walked inside the retro diner and sat in a booth across from him.
A menu landed in front of me, and an older lady with hair teased just enough to hold the three pens sticking out of it asked, “Would you like some coffee, hon?”
“Would I?”
She offered me a knowing grin and, carafe already in hand, poured me a cup. I fought back the moan that threatened to erupt from the back of my throat when the rich scent hit me and graced her with my most appreciative smile. It wasn’t until she winked and spun away that I realized Mr. Foster had taken note of my presence.
Keeping my gaze averted, I let him take me in a solid minute before looking back at him. When our gazes locked, he schooled his expression, shaped it into one of cordial congeniality, and nodded a greeting. Then he went back to his paper, unfolding it and refolding it at a different section. But underneath, he was more shocked to see me than Mrs. Foster had been the day before.
So, once again, he either knew who I was or he could see what I was. But his surprise went deeper. Mrs. Foster had been taken aback, but he was downright astounded. Mrs. Foster must have told him about me. The last thing he was expecting was for me to show up out of the blue.
I decided to push my luck just a little further. “I’m sorry, are you Mr. Foster?”
He looked up, a shock wave punching him in the gut. “Have we met?”
“No.”
“Then how—”
I grinned and pointed to the billboard outside his office. The one with his picture on it.
He had the wherewithal to look sheepish. “Of course.”
“I didn’t mean to bother you. I was just at your office and your receptionist said you weren’t in, so I decided to get some coffee and wait.”
He was staring. He caught himself and put the paper aside. “And you are?”
“Cordelia Chase. I was going to talk to you about insurance, but I can wait.”
“No, please.” He gestured toward the seat across from his. “Join me.”
I grabbed my bag and my cup and did just that.
“You need insurance?”
“Yes. Life insurance. For my husband. He’s dying.”
“Oh.” He didn’t believe me. Not for a hot minute. But he was playing along so I went with it. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. He doesn’t know it, yet, but I have a strong suspicion he doesn’t have long to live.”
Mr. Foster cleared his throat and leaned back in his seat. “Can I ask who your health insurance is with?”
“That’s a good question.” I crinkled my nose in thought. Cookie handled all that stuff. “I don’t know what the name is, but it has a red logo? With, maybe, a triangle? Or a square? Yes, that’s it. It’s definitely a square. Or possibly a circle.?
??
“It doesn’t matter, Ms. Chase.”
“Oh, Cordy, please.”
“Cordy, if I can get some basic information from you, we can go from there. See what we can come up with and get you some quotes. How does that sound?”
I nodded. “Perfect.”
Sadly, I didn’t get a read off him when I said my name, so I still had no clue if he knew who I was or not.
He pulled a memo pad and pen from an inside pocket just as Angel popped into the diner.
“I quit,” he said, bending down so that his face was inches from mine. I had to concentrate not to look at him. “I’m only thirteen. There are some things I just shouldn’t see. Ay, dios mio.” He turned, his agitation evident in his sharp movements. He scrubbed his head.
I dragged out my phone and held up an index finger, faking a phone call. “I am so sorry. I have to take this.”
“Not at all.” He’d schooled his features again and created a steeple with his fingers, but the fact that I took a call in the middle of his break, a break I was interrupting, irked him. As it should have. Rude was a bit of an understatement, but I had to see what was up with my best—not to mention only—investigator.
“Hey, Angel. What’s going on? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”
He spun around to face me again. “My job. Your uncle is a detective for the freaking police department. Do you know what that means?”
“Uncle Bob? Is everything okay?”
“It means he gets called to shootings and stabbings and child abuse cases and guys beating the fuck out of their wives. It means his job is screwed up as hell. And it means I quit.”
I eased out of the booth. “Angel, did something happen to Uncle Bob? Is he okay?”
He railed at me. “No, he’s not okay. Have you been listening?”
Alarm cinched around my throat. “You need to calm down, hon. Tell me what happened.”
After taking a few deep breaths, he finally calmed enough to explain. “He’s at a shooting. Happened early this morning at one of those breakfast places on Central.”
“Like an IHOP or a Denny’s?”
“There was a kid,” he said without answering. “Just eating eggs with his mom before he went to school. What the fuck is wrong with people?”